Fisher, John H., and Mark Allen, eds.
Boston : Thomson Wadsworth, 2006.
Revised edition of CT, based on Fisher's "Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer" (1977), with new on-page glosses and explanatory notes, plus bibliography (pp. 402-41). Includes lightly revised essays on Chaucer's life and language and a new…
Chaghafi, Elisabeth.
English Literary Afterlives: Greene, Sidney, Donne and the Evolution of Posthumous Fame (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020), pp. 26-48.
Outlines the “origins of early modern traditions of ‘lives of the poets’ and biographical reading” of their works. Includes analysis of Thomas Speght’s “Life of Geoffrey Chaucer” in his 1598 edition of Chaucer’s Workes, commenting on revisions made…
Galloway, Andrew.
In Richard W. Kaeuper, Paul Dingman, and Peter Sposato, eds. Law, Governance, and Justice: New Views on Medieval Constitutionalism (Leiden: Brill, 2013), pp. 243-86.
Explores analogues to literary voice in late-medieval English political, legal, and Wycliffite discourses, and analyzes the “common voice” found in John’s Gower’s “Vox Clamantis” (“aged wisdom”) and in PF (“self-making” individual sovereignty). Also,…
Summarizes each of the "comic" tales of CT, with appreciative, inferential, scene-by-scene commentary on techniques of characterization, situations, and enlivening details that make the Tales "amusing." Essentially farcical, the action of MilT…
Brody, Saul N[athaniel].
Ferrante, Joan M., and George D. Economou, eds. In Pursuit of Perfection: Courtly Love in Medieval Literature (Port Washington, NY, Kennikat, 1975), pp. 221-61.
Compares Chaucer's satire of courtly love with similar depictions in "Frauendienst" by Ulrich von Lichtenstein, "De Guillaume au Faucon," and "Flamenca," all of which reflect awareness of the fading of the courtly ideal and the dissolution of noble…
Describes and assesses the presence of the comic mode in English literature, including a discussion (pp. 42-51) of portions of CT (especially MilT, RvT, and WBP) that explores how Chaucer achieves comedy without negating the "seriousness of the…
Enck, John J., Elizabeth T. Forter, and Alvin Whitley, eds.
New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1960.
Textbook anthology of "theories and examples of the comic" that includes John Dryden's adaptation of NPT under the title "The Cock and the Fox or, The Tale of the Nun's Priest," attributing it to Chaucer.
Argues that post-medieval notions of comedy obscure the relations between sense and sententiousness in Chaucer's poetry, explaining that Boethian, analogous thinking underlies Chaucer's art and that Hebraic and Graeco-Roman poetic traditions help to…
Pinti, Daniel J.
Comparative Literature Studies 37: 277-97, 2000.
Medieval commentaries on the "Commedia" (Divine Comedy) inform our understanding of how Chaucer read Dante. In the Hugolino episode of MkT, with its reference to Dante, Chaucer simultaneously authorizes "Inferno" 33 and destabilizes it, exemplifying…
Harrison, Benjamin S.
Dissertation Abstracts International 27.06 (1966): 1786A
Assesses prior critical treatments of Chaucer's uses of rhetoric and traces a pattern of development from his use of the "conventional methods of expansion and embellishment" of the medieval rhetoricians, through "increasing independence" to…
Kelly, Kathleen Coyne.
Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh, eds. Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the "Canterbury Tales" (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016), pp. 218-29
Coins the term "updaptation" to describe adaptations that shift temporalities from past to present, using the term to explore relations between ShT and the BBC television version, the "Sea Captain's Tale." Focuses on the episode's use of film noir…
Utz, Richard.
Studies in Medievalism 19 (2010): 160-203.
Defining Neomedievalism(s)
Uses a postcolonial approach to examine the publication and reception of Robinson's edition of Chaucer's works (1933) in its historical context, particularly the rise of scholarly productivity in the United States and attitudes toward England and…
Keiser, George R.
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 73 (1979): 333-34.
The explanation for the condition of quire 10 in CT is that the leaves became disarranged after the scribe had completed the first half. The order that resulted from his error was ii-iii-i-iv-v-vi. After this faulty order was corrected, the order…
Klassen, Norman.
Christianity & Literature 64.01 (2014): 3-20.
Analyzes the rhetorical structure, themes, and wordplay of the first thirty-four lines of GP, arguing that in CT Chaucer maintains "his commitment to the coherence of creation within the narrative framework of Christianity."
Finkelstein, Dorothee.
Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 207 (1970): 260-76.
Identifies the allegorical traditions that underlie the mysteriousness of alchemy in Arabic and Latin writings, focusing on the sources, nomenclature, and descriptions mentioned at the end of CYT (8.1428-65) especially the comments on mercury,…
Crépin, André.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 227-36.
In NPT, the Nuns' Priest (Nonnes is plural) confesses his own temptations of lust and pride, under the guise of Chauntecleer. The priest is another persona of Chaucer the poet, interested in the same topics (dreams, astronomy, free will, the biter…
Mooney, Linne R.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 15 (1993): 91-109.
Chaucer's works and the works of almanac writers John Somer and Nicholas of Lynn reflect the contemporary tendency to rely on "clock time" rather than earlier forms of computing time. Mooney surveys a variety of ways of telling time, discussing…
Given the numerous verbal parallels between Greene's work and "The Cobbler of Canterbury" (an avowed imitation of CT, published anonymously in 1590), it would seem that Greene "fibbed" when, in a separate publication, he "informed the spirits of…
Medieval encyclopedism, although typically treated as a manifestation of "closed-systems" thinking, has many dimensions that suggest a wider, unresolved view of the universe. Chaucer's works, with other encyclopedic texts, offer examples of open…
