Brosamer, Matthew.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York : Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 235-51.
Brosamer investigates hell-mouth imagery in PardT, MLT, and LGWP, drawing upon a number of sources, especially De miseria condicionis humane by Pope Innocent III. The corruption of sin has an alimentary dimension, from ingestion to defecation.
Woolgar, Christopher M.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 262-76.
Reviews medieval cooks who could possibly have been models for Chaucer's Cook and suggests that Chaucer uses the Cook to reflect the social and moral issues of estates literature. Also, discusses the Cook's dislikes in CT and his connections with…
Nitecki, Alicia K.
Chaucer Review 16 (1981): 76-84.
Although the major sources of the Old Man figure have long been known, the existence of the figure in alliterative and lyric poetry shows how Chaucer transforms the tradition. His Old Man is a trope for man's desire for transcendence.
SNP and SNT express a feminist point of view not present in the original sources and analogues, but added by Chaucer in order to portray dramatically her character. She is contrasted with the Prioress and the Nun's Priest.
Rosenberg, Bruce A.
Chaucer Review 2.4 (1968): 278-91.
Provides point-by-point contrasting details and themes from SNT and CYT to argue that they were composed as a pair, wedded by a "theory of contraries." Focuses on fire, sight, work, the theme of God's will, the language and imagery of alchemy, and…
De la Torre Moreno, Maria Jose.
Teresa Fanego Lema, ed. Papers from the IVth International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1993), pp. 293-303.
Examines the GP sketch of the Prioress for evidence that she is poorly matched with her vocation, a mismatch especially evident in her attractiveness, coquetry, and "zest for life."
Stokes compares the pledges of love-troth in the "Prose Lancelot" and TC, suggesting that they reflect a "specific kind of romantic relationship," neither marital nor illicit nor clandestine, but "solemn and binding" and based on the man's service to…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
Michio Kawai, ed. Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honour of Michio Masui. The English Association of Hiroshima (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991), pp. 159-77.
Considers MkT complete as an experiment in a new literary form that Chaucer used to medievalize materials.
The conception of the action of RvT in three dimensions is designed to provide more than narrative realism. By reducing the miller's area of influence, Chaucer represents metaphorically his being cut down to size by the students.
Shibata, Takeo.
Hiroe Futamura, Kenichi Akishino, and Hisato Ebi, eds. A Pilgrimage Through Medieval Literature (Tokyo: Nan' Un-Do Press, 1993), pp. 145-63.
Examines double-entendre in ShT, especially with words that relate to characters' action.
Addresses the engagement of medieval literature in the construction of European and Muslim identities in CT. Traces the origin and the politics behind the western construction of Muslims as "God's enemies in the Middle Ages and how this…
Uses MLT, among other works, to show that in Middle English romance, with its limited expression of characters' inner lives, identity is expressed and revealed through "external signs," outward behavior, and immutable "key characteristics."
Minnis, Alastair.
R. N. Swanson, ed. Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 169-95.
There is a paucity of writing on indulgences in medieval vernacular literatures. Minnis explores depictions of pardoners and indulgences in PardP, Langland's "Piers Plowman, "and John Heywood's "The Foure PP" and "The Pardoner and the Frere."…
Gastle, Brian W.
Susannah Mary Chewning, ed. Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020], pp. 203-16.
Examines John Gower's consideration of the "appropriate purpose and use of incarceration, including comparison of his Tale of Tereus” in the "Confessio Amantis" with Chaucer's analogous account in LGW. In Gower, imprisonment precedes the rape of…
Machan, Tim William.
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 91 (1997): 31-50.
Examines the textual tradition of Bo in light of the twelfth- to fifteenth-century textual tradition of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," suggesting that the best text of Bo is Cambridge University Library ii.iii.21.
Chaucer's Pandarus is based to a certain extent on the character of Philosophy in Boethius's Consolation, and his Troilus resembles Boethius. Troilus's change during the poem can be attributed to the fact that "he has experienced the consolation of…
Schauber, Ellen,and Ellen Spolsky.
Centrum 5 (1977): 20-34.
Since the speech acts of Alison consist of arguing, insisting,challenging, and confiding, the message is that she is always struggling against the givens of her world. She is Lady Philosophy "manque" since her views of behavior are hardly proper and…
The "presentational features" of MS HM 140 (prose format, absence of ClP, reduction of multivoiced discourse) transform its "mode of signification from performance to textuality," suggesting history and truth. This presentation radically alters the…
Stein, Robert M.
James J. Paxson and Cynthia A. Gravlee, eds. Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid Through Chaucer (Selinsgrove, Penn.: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1998), pp. 188-205.
As the Miller refuses to allow easy closure to KnT, so the Tale's opening is rooted in the uneasy conquest of Femenye. Throughout the Tale, patterns that suggest resolution fail to reach their hoped-for conclusion, indicating the ongoing nature of…
Describes CT with recurrent attention to major critical approaches. Focuses on several recurrent themes ("how we come to know something" and the "interpretation of authority"), with sustained discussions of GP, KnT, MilT and RvT, WBPT, FranT, PardT,…
Makowski, Elizabeth M.
Julia Bolton Holloway, Constance S. Wright, and Joan Bechtold, eds. Equally in God's Image: Women in the Middle Ages (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), pp. 129-43.
Discusses canonical doctrine about sexual relations in marriage as it was understood between the twelfth and mid-fourteenth centuries--an era in which scientific jurisprudence came of age. Makowski focuses on the concept of conjugal debt, referring…
Molencki, Rafal.
Nikolaus Ritt and Herbert Schendl, eds. Rethinking Middle English: Linguistic and Literary Approaches (New York and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 147-60.
Molencki traces the phonetic and semantic conflation of "dare" and" tharf," once distinct verbs, now obsolete. Scribal errors contributed to the obsolescence of "tharf" and its replacement with the more flexible OE "neden." The essay draws examples…
