Williams, George.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 57.2 (1958): 167-76.
Considers Mars "as an exercise in describing human action and emotion in terms of a supposed astronomical event," with the planet/pagan god representing John of Gaunt in his affair with Katharine Swynford (Venus), Mercury representing Chaucer…
Deals with relationship of PhyT to FranT and PardT and suitability of tale to teller, treating the sources in Titus Livius and Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose," as well as the theme of justice.
Magnani, Roberta,
McAvoy, Liz Herbert
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 42 (2020): 311-24.
Posits a "radical revisioning of canon formation . . . made possible by positioning women as queering agents," and discloses the "female-coded discourses of spirituality and literacy embedded" in KnT. Reads the romance against "The Booke of Gostlye…
Myojo, Kiyoko, and Noburu Notomi, eds.
Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2015.
Includes a chapter on the issues of the text of CT. In Japanese. For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for What Is a Text? under Alternative Title.
Spearing, A. C.
Digital Philology 4.1 (2015): 59-105.
Questions the "narrator theory of narration," critiquing the "concept of the internal, potentially unreliable narrator"; examining "the history of the term narrator"; studying "the theories of narration implied by scribal annotations in some medieval…
Frost, William
Western Humanities Review 27 (1973): 39-59.
Seeks to define the phrase "Canterbury tale," by exploring the relative usefulness of various critical approaches to Chaucer's tales. Comments on how the tales engage their respective genres in "unpredictable" ways, how they characterize their…
John, Lilse C.
Notes and Queries 201 (1956): 97-98.
Seeks advice in understanding the phrase "Chaucer's borrow" which appears Sir Nicholas H. Nicholas's "Memoirs of the Life and Times of Sir Christopher Hatton" (1847), where it is quoted from a letter to Hatton from William Dodington. Clarifies the…
Greenwood, Maria K.
Colette Stévanovitch, ed. L'Articulation langue-littérature dans les textes médiévaux anglais, II. Actes du colloque des 25 et 26 juin 1999 á l'Université de Nancy II. Collection GRENDEL, no. 3. (Nancy: Publications de l'Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 1999), pp. 143-62.
Explicates Chaucer's uses of grammatical tenses in GP, especially in the descriptions of the Knight, Squire, and Yeoman, distinguishing how various tenses and narrative points of view direct readers' reactions to the pilgrims. Considers indirect…
Greenwood, Maria K.
Rosalynn Voaden, René Tixier, Teresa Sanchez Roura, and Jenny Rebecca Rytting, eds. The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 189-200.
Dryden's translation of KnT "tidies, clarifies, and modernizes" the text for its eighteenth-century readers, turning Chaucer's "subversive parodies back into the illusory heroic idealizations" of Statius and Boccaccio. Greenwood focuses on the…
Annotations by 16th- and 17th-century readers show an ongoing interest in Chaucer as a source of sententiae and a focus of antiquarian interest; they also shed light on the role of women readers and on the household as a reading center. Their net …
Lewis, Robert Enzer.
Chaucer Review 2.3 (1968): 139-58.
Analyzes the context, syntax, and lexicon of Chaucer's reference to his now-lost "Of the Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde" (LGWP-G 414-5) to help establish its nature as a translation of Pope Innocent III's entire "De miseria humane conditionis."…
Argues that the context and argument of Horobin's refutation of Fletcher's earlier essay are deficient (see "The Criteria for Scribal Attribution: Dublin, Trinity College, MS 244, Some Early Copies of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Canon of…
Boitani, Piero.
Piero Boitani, ed. Chaucer and the Italian Trecento (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 115-39.
Dante and Chaucer shared a common knowledge in the classics, medieval philosophy, and science. For HF, Chaucer drew on the "Purgatorio" and the "Paradiso" more than on the "Inferno." TC is Chaucer's equivalent of the "Divine Comedy" and the…
Anderson, Judith H.
Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, eds. Acts of Interpretation (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1982), pp. 105-18.
Close reading of the uses of the conjunction "but" as an "illogical adversative" in Spenser's Proem to Book 6 of "The Faerie Queene," compared and contrasted with Chaucer's related uses in his GP. Generally, Chaucer's usage "serves narrative…
Proposes a Wittgensteinian approach to Chaucer's language that eschews the inherent limitations of linguistic description and stylistic analysis. The poet's works are about language.
Aloni, Gila.
Leo Carruthers and Adrian Papahagi, eds. Paroles et silences dans la littrature anglaise au Moyen Age (Paris : Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2003), pp. 119-34.
Three concerns in LGW--space in "Thisbe," rhetoric in "Lucrece," and the exchange of women in "Hypsipyle and Medea"--demonstrate that the power of apparently passive women lies in their moral superiority over men.
Ruud, Jay.
Nicholas Wallerstein and Roger Ochse, eds. Proceedings of the Ninth Annual Northern Plains Conference on Early British Literature (Spearfish, S. D.: Black Hills State University Printing, 2002), pp. 74-83.
Examines Chaucer's translation of Petrarch's Sonnet 132 (TC 1.400-420), commenting on his facility with Italian and his comprehension of the sonnet and other verse forms. Chaucer's translation redirects the emphasis of the lyric to concern for…
Argues that in translating Renaud de Louens's "Le Livre de Mellibee" in his own Mel, Chaucer created an "overtly rhetorical style for purposes of parody." Probably an expansion of an earlier, abridged translation by Chaucer, Mel is characterized by…
Rowland, Beryl.
Studia Neophilologica 51 (1979): 205-13.
Like his French predecessors, Chaucer employs a commonplace detail and dialogue to impart to his fabliaux a sense of domestic, small town, and rural life. However, while unity in design and treatment characterize the French fabliaux, Chaucer's are…
Lerer, Seth, and Deanne Williams.
Shakespeare 08 (2012): 398-410.
Argues that Shakespeare's reading of Thomas Speght's edition of Chaucer's "Works" (1598) provoked his creative imagination as well as providing source material, looking closely at how Chaucer's depiction of Julius Caesar's death in MkT affected…
Beal, Rebecca S.
Chaucer Review 44 (2010): 440-60.
Rubrics in "Filostrato" manuscripts label Calkas's bid to trade a prisoner for his daughter as an "oratory." Chaucer's version of the speech fulfills the formal requirements of a speech arguing "for a particular course of action" and in so doing…
Hollander, Robert.
Journal of Anglo-Italian Studies 11 (2011): 1-28.
Explores Chaucer's "nuanced reworkings" of his source texts in the last twelve stanzas of TC, focusing on his adaptations of Boccaccio's "Filostrato," his "Teseida," and Dante's "Commendia," but also commenting on uses of Virgil, Statius, and…
Like the Canon's Yeoman and unlike St. Cecile (SNT), Roger the Cook is spiritually leaden, exhibiting all four of lead's distinctive qualities: heaviness, earthiness, pallor, and muteness. After his altercation with the Manciple in ManP, Roger is…
Summary description of CT, with comments on Chaucer's life and language, and appreciative analysis of the characterizations of several pilgrims, the conflicts between their tales, and the "eternal relevance" of the work overall. Recommends cinematic…
Evans, Robert O.
Notes and Queries 202 (1957): 234-37.
Analyzes the meter of the opening line of CT (GP 1.1), focusing on renderings of “Aprill(e)” in manuscripts and printed editions, comparing it with meter elsewhere in CT, and arguing "that there is a strong possibility, even a probability, that…
