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.
Richardson-Hay, Christine.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1988): 43C.
Discusses the artistry of Chaucer's GP portraits: their relationship to contemporary literary expectations and the "conventional medieval portrait," their order, their importance in creating a "sense or 'reality,'" and their "interaction" with…
Gertz, SunHee Kim.
Papers on Language and Literature 35: 141-65, 1999.
Examines how Chaucer manipulates the conventions of the "descriptio" in TC, arguing that he capitalizes on its metaliterary potential. Chaucer gives texture to the descriptio of Criseyde by spreading it throughout several portions of the narrative.…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
Stephen A. Barney, ed. Chaucer's Troilus: Essays in Criticism (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1980), pp. 297-317.
Chaucer is concerned with showing the consequences of the consummation of the love of Troilus and Criseyde as it concerns both characters and narrator. The events following this consummation scene also broadly parallel those in Dante's "Purgatorio"…
Emonds, Joseph.
Braj B. Kachru, and others, eds. Issues in Linguistics: Papers in Honor of Henry and Renée Kahane (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1973), pp. 185-93.
Anatomizes Chaucer's uses of the "'ing'-morpheme," arguing that "Chaucer's dialect did not contain a gerund as a normal grammatical device" (even though examples exist) and that English "participles and derived nominal had become phonetically…
Dane, Joseph A., and Irene Basey Beesemyer.
English Studies 81: 117-26, 2000.
The printing history of Chaucer and Lydgate runs parallel until about 1540. After that, only the printing of Chaucer continues, although Lydgate's works are often included in editions of Chaucer or Chauceriana. The 1542 Statute "An Acte for…
Focuses on Chaucer's uses of "this" to "create narrative tone and dramatic meaning" in CT, discussing a variety of examples and exploring metrical, rhetorical, and syntactic features as they help in characterization. Includes comments on the six uses…
Identifies in KnT a "series of metamorphoses that expose the dehumanizing force of Venerian love," arguing that Chaucer converted Boccaccio's "random collection" of animal images into a "formal pattern" and obliquely affirmed the Boethian notion that…
Articulates various "levels of perception" manipulated by Chaucer to create comic irony through his personae in BD, HF, PF, LGW, and CT. The "Chaucerian pose" is relatively constant in the early poems where the narrator is a "reasonable man" (but "no…
