Surveys critics who argue that the Wife of Bath murdered her fourth (and perhaps her fifth) husband, compares details of WBP with those of the trial of Alice Kytelar in 1324, and suggests that the Kytelar trial may have influenced Chaucer's creation…
Raybin, David.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 95 (1996): 19-37.
Reads ManT as a "story both of a wife who cuckolds her jealous husband and of a sexually aware trickster [the crow] who uses his knowledge, voice, and wit to gain freedom from his gilded cage." Both the wife and the crow seek freedom, but unlike the…
BD should be given Chaucer's own title (LGW 418): "The Death of Blanche." Chaucer's title is more fitting for a poem of anti-consolation that emphasizes "death's power over the loveliest visions of youth and happiness."
Stockton, Eric W.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 6 (1961): 47-59.
Treats PardPT as parts of a structured sermon against gluttony, gambling, swearing, and "'superbia', pride in its most Satanic form." The revelers and the Pardoner himself are guilty of the latter.
Wallace, Andtew.
The Presence of Rome in Medieval and Early Modern Britain: Texts, Artefacts and Beliefs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 172-218.
In Wallace's volume dedicated to examining various aspects of the importance of Rome and the Latin language--classical and Christian--in early British culture, this chapter focuses on their roles in theorizing and depicting relations between living…
Historical murder mystery set in 1400, in the months after Henry IV's usurpation of Richard II's throne. "Master" Chaucer and Adam are involved with copying Lollard treatises; Matilda, Chaucer's house-maid, is involved with friar-cum-sleuth Brother…
Prins, A. A.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in honour of Rossell Hope Robbins (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974), pp. 342-47.
Resolves the apparent inconsistencies of astronomical dates in GP and MLP by explaining that Chaucer knew of and calculated by means of the "precession of the equinoxes," as is evident in FranT.
Ferris, Sumner.
Modern Philology 65 (1967): 45-52.
Speculates "about the real state of Chaucer's purse in late 1399," examining details of the poem "Purse" and the relative chronology of the poet's life records to conclude that he wrote "Purse" to Henry IV because of actual financial duress.…
Matthews, Lloyd J.
Chaucer Review 20 (1986): 221-34.
Chaucer's acquaintance with Dante and his return from the Italian journey in 1373 provide termini of 1372-74 for Mel. Later, Mel was included among the CT to be narrated by the Man of Law. Finally, it was moved to its place in fragment 7 or B2.
Rand, George I.
American Notes and Queries 7 (1979): 149-50.
Observes that Chaunticleer's mistaken reference to Macrobius as the author of the "Somnium Scipionis" (7.3124) may suggest that NPT predates PF (i.e., "no later than 1386"), where Macrobius is accurately identified as the author of the "Commentary"…
Tripp, Raymond P.,Jr.
Chaucer Review 20 (1986): 208-21.
Absolon's intentions in MilT are uglier and darker than realized by readers who recognize the non-Boethian nature of the tale. Absolon's plowshare, for all its sexual symbolism, is a murderous weapon intended for Alison.
White, Thomas.
Myra Seaman, Eileen A. Joy, and Nicola Masciandaro, eds. Dark Chaucer: An Assortment (Brooklyn, N. Y.: Punctum Books, 2012), pp. 191-203.
Suggests that the textual layout of Th is authorial in the Ellesmere, Hengwrt, Cambridge MS Gg.II.27, and Dd.IV.24 copies of Th. Because other manuscripts do not adhere to this layout, they exemplify how scribes interpret texts rather than transmit…
Summarizes the scholastic idea of the book and applies the concept of the written word (book) as "essential epistemological instrument" to Wolfram's "Titurel" fragments (ca. 1220) and to TC. Chaucer presents Troilus as a misreader of texts who only…
Friend, Albert C.
Modern Language Quarterly 18 (1957): 305-08
Suggests Chaucer "was walking on dangerous ground" in choosing 1Timothy 6:10 ("Radix malorum . . .") as the theme of the Pardoner's sermon, adducing a Latin sermon by Oxfordian Robert Lychlade on the same theme that led to him being brought to trial…
DeZur, Kathryn Michelle.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 414A, 1999.
Analyzes the relationships of "interpretation, authority, and female sexuality" in works by Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Sidney. TC and WBPT contrast a lady seduced by her reading with a woman empowered by hers.
Gutiérrez Arranz, José M.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2009.
Commenting on medieval literary renditions of the story of Troy, Gutiérrez Arranz identifies places where Chaucer refers or alludes to this material, focusing on Chaucer's references to specific characters.
Biddick, Kathleen.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30: 449-62, 2000.
Reading the loathly lady's discourse on gentilesse (WBT) against the Statutes of Kilkenny (imposed by the English crown on the Anglo-Irish in 1366) highlights the conflict of nobility as defined either by blood line or by behavior (sanguinity or…
Contrasts the historical status of late-medieval plowmen with their literary status, considering Chaucer's Plowman in GP, Langland's "Piers Plowman," and the "other more minor plowmen poems" of late-medieval England.
McCracken, Peggy.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
Mentions MLT, PrT, and ClT in the larger context of gender and blood in medieval culture. McCracken argues that gendered cultural values are "mapped onto blood and that cultural values are inscribed into a natural order." Compares Chaucer's MLT with…
Taylor, Andrew.
Paul Budra and Betty A. Schellenberg, eds. Part Two: Reflections on the Sequel. (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 34-52.
Reads the "Tale of Beryn" and Lydgate's "Seige of Thebes" as acts of resistance to Chaucer's dissolution of his fiction in the meditation that is ParsT. These continuations of CT seek to keep alive the drama of CT through visualization, a form of…
Suggests Arabic texts not as sources for MerT, but as fellow exemplars of certain similar "universal" archetypes (tree, garden, billet-doux, key). Juxtaposes Arabic tales (some from "The Arabian Nights") with MerT, and organizes stories by tree type…
Contrasts Chaucer's version of Custance in MLT with that of Gower and Trevet in order to show how Chaucer emphasizes the foreignness of Custance in England and the negative reaction to her, comparing them with documentary instances of xenophobia…
Explores the classical and medieval poetic theories that underlie the genre of the fabliau, particularly its lack of concern with meaningfulness, commenting on several French fabliaux, and discussing the comedy and satire of MilT, RvT, ShT, and SumT.…
Comber, Abigail Elizabeth.
DAI A74.05 (2013): n.p.
Suggests that texts like PrT might be taught by examining their presentation of non-followers of Christianity as monsters, an alternative to post-colonial approaches.
