Assesses ambivalence, conventional morality, and the functions of art in CT and in Juan Ruiz's "Libro de Buen Amor," commenting on the role of the narrator in Chaucer and the "staging" of multiple views on "caritas" and "cupiditas" in both works.
The Merchant's language snares the reader into displaying bad taste. It accomplishes this by making May a sympathetic character and by allowing the reader to belong to a select group which sees through the deceptions of the tale. However, the…
Crampton, Georgia Ronan.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974.
Examines the commonplace theme of "agere et pati" (to act and to suffer) in the works of Chaucer and Spenser, especially KnT and books 1-4 of Spenser's "The Faerie Queene," exploring oppositions between deed and emotion, action and passion, and…
Argues that members of the "School of Christian Interpreters" err when seeing the transcendent ending of TC as implicit throughout the poem, and evaluates the actions of Troilus and Criseyde in terms of courtly love and the operation of Fortune,…
Howard, Donald R.
Modern Philology 57 (1960); 223-32.
Reviews medieval ideas of degrees or grades of perfection, particularly as related to virginity as the "highest form of chastity" and marriage, a compromise even when admirable as in FranT. PhyT and SNT, both of which may follow FranT in the order of…
Late-medieval versions of CYT 8.1428-81 misread and/or misrepresent the text as an authority on alchemy, a reflection of a pervasive admiration of Chaucer as a man of science. Not until Enlightenment debunking of alchemy did scholars recognize these…
Waller, Martha S.
Chaucer Newsletter 2.1 (1980): 10-12.
Holcot is a source for the conclusion of "Lucrece": his "In Librum Sapientie" includes (1) the statement, not in the Gospels, that Christ found greater faith in women than in men, and (2) a catalogue of pagan good women including Lucretia and others…
Contrasts Troilus's ascent through the spheres at the end of TC and the narrator's comments on it with the analogous materials in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and "Teseida" (with nods to Dante and Christian liturgy), explaining Troilus's placement among…
Comments on Chaucer criticism produced between 1950 and 1964 and, treating Chaucer's work as a "single fiction," reads it as a "complex examination of what it means to love" in earthly and spiritual ways. An "abyss exists between" the two kinds of…
Wawrzyniak, Agnieszka.
Danuta Gabrys-Barker, Dagmara Gałajda, Adam Wojtaszek, and Paweł Zakrajewski, eds. Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self (Cham: Springer, 2017), pp. 49-61.
Describes uses of the lexemes "trouthe" and "soth" in CT, comparing them with "truth" in present-day English. Shows that, associated with love, light, and wisdom, Chaucer’s "trouthe" differs from his "soth": the former resides in an abstract semantic…
Louis, Cameron.
Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 14 (1997): 173-85.
The first English citations for the word "proverb" come from Chaucer's works, in which the word appears twenty-six times. Chaucer uses the word primarily in its modern and most common sense of "traditional folk sayings"; however, he also uses it with…
Benjamin, Edwin B.
Philological Quarterly 38 (1959): 119-24.
Attributes the disruption of order in the plot of FranT to Dorigen's pride and "indecisiveness" and to Aurelius's "moral flaw" and use of "unlawful" magic. Order is reinstated by means of seriatim "self-sacrifice" triggered by the "manly firmness" of…
Heninger, S. K., Jr.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56 (1957): 382-95.
Analyzes the "repeated allusions to the Scholastic concept of a divinely-ordained universal order" in ClT. Shows that such allusions are generally not in Chaucer's sources, and that they help to characterize the Clerk as a "serious scholar and devout…
Köseoğlu, Berna.
Research Journal of English Language and Literature 6, no. 1 (2018): 153-59.
Assesses the role of Pandarus in TC as a "go-between" and as "spokesman" for and agent of typical medieval understandings of love, fortune, suffering, and the tenuousness of human happiness.
Wurtele, Douglas J.
American Benedictine Review 41 (1990): 59-79.
Via reference to and obvious knowledge of St. Augustine's doctrine of spiritual healing through self-punishment and the concept of Christ the Physician, the Pardoner (despite his blatant duplicitous misuse of Church teaching) ascertains his pride and…
Adams, Robert.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 6 (1984): 83-102.
Discussion of the debt as religious. The characters in ShT are "impenitent" because they and the Shipman have been blinded to moral and spiritual truth by their middle-class milieu.
Robinson, Peter
Vincent P. McCarren and Douglas Moffat, eds. A Guide to Editing Middle English (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 249-61.
Argues that computer technology is changing "what scholars do as they edit," drawing examples from the activities of the "Canterbury Tales" Project to describe the new quesions raised about visual reproduction of manuscripts, representation of…
Brewer, Derek.
A. E. Christa Canitz and Gernot R. Wieland, eds. From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui on His 75th Birthday (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), pp. 75-92.
Surveys medieval and modern understandings of honor as background to discussing the concept in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Malory's "Le Morte Darthur," and PhyT. Virginius "rightly kills" Virginia "to protect his own honour as well as her…
Analyzes the gothic, inorganic structure of BD, commenting on the poem's status as a lament, an elegy, and a consolation; its clear articulation of various parts; and its consistency with the compositional advice given by rhetorician Geoffrey of…
Argues that the Reeve's efforts to represent himself as respectable are mirrored in the characterization of Symkin in RvT, and Malyne's "repressed subjectivity" reveals Symkin's over-simplified, patristic notions self-definition.
Fisher, John H., ed.
Allen, Mark, ed.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977 and 1989.
Boston: Wadsworth, 2012.
A comprehensive edition of all of Chaucer's known works (including Equat and Rom), with glosses and notes at the bottom of the page and a text that relies on the collations of previous editors. Includes introductions for each of the works; additional…
Fischer, Steven R.
Berne and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1982.
Collates dream interpretations from twenty-three manuscripts in Latin, Old English, Middle English, Old French, German. Sourcebook for medieval imagery, literature, and psychology.
Rudd, Gillian.
London and New York : Routledge, 2001.
A discursive handbook to Chaucer's life and its context, his works, and criticism of his works. The biographical portion provides basic information and notes the variety of Chaucers constructed over the years. Rudd discusses the works chronologically…
