Pasolini in his "Canterbury Tales" identifies himself as Chaucer because his central concern is relationship of artist to art, focusing on sexuality and morality. The Merchant's Tale and Wife's Prologue show respectability cloaking lust; the Friar's…
Pigott, Margaret B.
Fifteenth-Century Studies 5 (1982): 167-89.
BD and PF shift from "belief to skepticism in Chaucer's attitude toward the three principal ways of arriving at truth--religious experience, written authorities, and revelations of dreams."
Southall, Robert.
Review of English Studies 15 (1964): 142-50.
Describes the Devonshire manuscript (Ds) and comments on its provenance. Newly identifies a Chaucer fragment in the manuscript (f. 59v) from TC 1.946-52.
Miller, Clarence H.
Chaucer Review 30 (1995): 211-14.
It was commonly assumed in the Middle Ages that the devil carried arrows and shot them at his human prey. That the Friar's "yeoman" bears arrows "brighte and kene" (1.1381) is yet another clue that escapes the stupid summoner.
Baird, Joseph L.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 70 (1969): 104-06.
Suggests that in the drama of CT the Summoner's idea of friars residing in Satan's arse (SumP) was prompted by the demon's promise to the summoner in FrT that he would know the devil's "privetee" (3.1637), an echo of the Miller's claim about "Goddes…
Dalbey, Marcia A.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 75 (1974): 408-15.
Examines the allegorization of Pluto and Proserpine in the "Ovide Moralisé" and argues that it discloses how as figures of "earthly lust" their episode is well integrated into MerT.
Evans, Ruth.
Elizabeth Herbert McAvoy and Teresa Walters, eds. Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetite in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002), pp. 182-95.
Surveys originary myths in which human females have sex with supernatural beings, focusing on versions of the story of Albina and her sisters, who have sex with demons-incubi and give birth to the giants of Albion. Evans reads the Wife of Bath's…
Vasta, Edward.
American Notes and Queries 22 (1984): 126-28.
Characteristics of the Reeve suggest stereotypes of a medieval devil: his beardlessness, Northern origin, phlegmatic character, and sharp wit. He fits all six literary types of the Devil in Hannes Varter's "The Devil in English Literature."
"Panne" in Chaucer's day sometimes designated a piece of clothing, sometimes a cooking utensil--and popular tradition associated the devil in hell with "pannes" (cooking utensils) and cauldrons. Chaucer's early audiences would have recognized in FrT…
Pratt, Robert A.
MacEdward Leach, ed. Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Albert Croll Baugh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), pp. 45-79.
Proposes several "distinct stages" in Chaucer's development of the "magnificent individuality" of the Wife of Bath, focusing on his uses in WBP of source material drawn from Jerome, Theophrastus, Deschamps, and others. Assumes that the Man of Law…
Kibler, William W.,and James I. Wimsatt.
Mediaeval Studies 45 (1983): 22-78.
These poems from the University of Pennsylvania MS French 15 show what was happening to the pastourelle and serventois in France from 1300 to the time when Froissart began writing similar lyrics in London, before 1364.
Owen, Charles A., Jr.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 57.3 (1958): 449-76.
Posits a "chronology of growth" for the CT, seeking "to follow the imagination of the poet and to recapture the dynamics of creation" evident in Chaucer's apparent changes in plan. Comments on earlier scholarly efforts to explain or understand…
Iyeiri, Yoko.
Yoko Iyeiri and Margaret Connolly, eds. And Gladly Wolde He Lerne and Gladly Teche: Essays on Medieval English Presented to Professor Matsuji Tajima on His Sixtieth Birthday (Tokyo: Kaibunsha, 2002, pp. 127-43.
Examines occurrences of "any" in four Middle English texts, including CT. The word occurs more frequently in negative contexts in formal tales (KnT, ClT, Mel, and ParsT) than elsewhere.
Masui, Michio.
Mieczyslaw Brahmer, Stanislaw Helsztynski, and Julian Krzyzanowski, eds. Studies in Language and Literature in Honour of Margaret Schlauch (Warsaw: PWN—Polish Scientific Publishers, 1966), pp. 245-54.
Addresses Chaucer's techniques of evoking and changing moods in TC, closely examining hope and fear in Book 2, and commenting on imagery, character psychology, and diction.
Loomis, Roger Sherman.
London: Hutchinson University Library, 1963.
New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964.
Comments on several thematic concerns as they occur in Chaucer's works as well as in Arthurian tradition (pity, renunciation of the world, etc.) and summarizes scholarship pertaining to the Auchinleck MS as a source for Th; also discusses WBT as a…
Brim, Constance E.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1992): 156A.
Latin and French antifraternal works preceded English ones, which display a distinctive treaatment of friars as peddlars,as in Chaucer's SumT. In the Renaissance, antifraternal writing gradually disappeared from Britain, along with the friars.
Investigates the combination of serious message (the nature of "love-in-the world") and comic method in HF, exploring Chaucer's shifts in narrative stance, his adaptations of Dante, his uses of irony, and the similarities between his methods and…
Zucker analyzes Chaucer as rhetorician, poet, and Christian poet influenced by Boethius, Macrobius, and Dante, arguing that Chaucer writes HF as a game inventing a "refuge" world,as a serious commentary on love, and as an an autobiography of the…
Dyer, Frederick B., Jr.
Paolucci, Anne, ed. 1564-1964: Shakespeare Encomium (New York: City College, 1964), pp. 123-33.
Compares and contrasts Chaucer's "Pandare" of TC with Shakespeare's Pandarus of "Troilus and Cressida," emphasizing the degenerate nature of the latter and Shakespeare's reduction of the "great depth of . . . personality" that characterizes…
Edwards, Robert R.
Studies in Philology 96: 394-416. , 1999.
Discusses the exegetical tradition of the passage in Lamentations that lies behind TC 5.540-53, linking Boccaccio, Dante, and Chaucer with that tradition.
Morgan, Gerald.
English Studies 59 (1978): 481-98.
GP is a coherent structure indicating a subtle spiritual reality coinciding to Christian doctrines. It is not seen simply as a social vision, but as encircling both moral and spiritual truths which match: generosity to "gentils," materialism to…
Owen, Charles A.,Jr.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 221-42.
Since Kittredge, we have come to see a dramatic structure at the heart of CT, with interaction not only among the tellers but also among the tales themselves. Many points, however, are still in dispute: the order of the tales, the question of…
Miskimin, Alice (S.)
Jean-Jacques Blanchot and Claude Graf, eds. Actes du 2e Colloque de langue et de litterature ecossaises (moyen age et renaissance) (Universite de Strasbourg, 1978), pp. 198-206.
Discussion of the literary background of Douglas's poem takes account of Chaucer's references to music, especially in HF and PF.
Asaka, Yoshiko.
Studies in Medieval Language and Literature (Tokyo) 2 (1987): 15-29.
A closely argued analysis of the meaning and design of PF. The three parts are designed to give harmony and balance to the poem, which explores debate on the question of love.
