Librach, Ronald S.
Interpretations 14.2 (1983): pp. 1-14
Explores nuances of Boethian Providence, fortune, destiny, and human perceptions of them in KnT, along with relations between death and love in their worldly and spiritual manifestations. Argues that in KnT Chaucer burlesques the "romantic…
Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Review 6.1 (1971): 38-43.
Argues that we do not know whether or not Damian completed the act of copulation in the pear tree of MerT, impregnating May, despite Emerson Brown's claims that he did neither. More important are the facts that January has been cuckolded and that he…
Schmidt considers Langland's "attitude to the moral and artistic demands of his poem," his versecraft, his use of medieval Latin quotations and works on the art of poetry, and his diction, puns, and rhetorical art. Contains brief references to…
Sasamoto, Hisayuki.
Hideshi Ohno, Kazuho Mizuno, and Osamu Imabayashi, eds. The Pleasure of English Language and Literature: A Festschrift for Akiyuki Jimura (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 2018), pp. 319-33.
Focuses on how ClT differs from its two sources, Petrarch's "Historia Griseldis" and its anonymous French translation "Le livre Griseldis," and argues that Chaucer adds his original expression of the characters' emotion so as to encourage the…
In her "Foreward" to this collection of Reece's poems (ix-xiii), Louise Glück comments on the theme of virtue in ClT as a "problem" for modern readers, "possibly because virtue unconvincingly disarms brutality." She also observes that Reece's book…
McKinley, Kathryn L.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 90-111.
The concept of piety was complex and problematic during the Middle Ages, and Chaucer's refusal to align himself with one side or the other in ClT is distressing. Griselda is neither a paradigm for lay sanctity nor an ironic or satiric character.
Outrage at Walter's treatment of Griselda, seeing Griselda's story as a religious allegory of patience, even seeing it as a folk tale rewritten--such responses indicate that ClT is a poem "divided against itself." One way to resolve these conflicts…
One should not apply a naturalistic test to ClT, which displays the traditional characteristics of the parable--an illustrative story directed to a single point. The point here is that Griselda is true to God, which is a sufficient principle of life…
Loganbill, Dean
William C. Johnson and Loren C. Gruber, eds. "New" Views on Chaucer: Essays in Generative Criticism (Denver: Society for New Language Study, 1973), pp. 29-34.
Locates examples of modernism and the "absurdist point of view" in ClT and MLT, suggesting points of comparison with Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot."
Winny, James, ed.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966.
Presents ClPT in Middle English (based on Robinson's 1957 edition), with notes and glossary at the end of the text, along with an appendix (pp. 91-99) that offers lines 4.813-924 of ClT in facing-page juxtaposition with one of its source texts, "Le…
Hui-jeong, Seon.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 22.2 (2014): 31-59.
Examines the irony and paradoxes of ClT, claiming that through the Tale, the Clerk "challenges an audience as Griselda's impassive patience challenges Walter." Views the Clerk as a "complicated figure of utter submissiveness and essential silence…
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Studies In the Age of Chaucer 17 (1995): 45-66.
Griselda and Dorigen embody more coherent subjectivities than do their counterparts in analogous tales, although neither becomes a true agent in the outcome of her plot.
Hilmo, Maidie.
Journal of the Early Book Society 10 (2007): 71-105.
Hilmo encourages the view that wood-cuts enhance text through visual rhetoric; specifically, Caxton's addition of a bow to Chaucer's Clerk in his edition of CT represents the Clerk as a moral satirist.
Swan, Marjorie E.
English Studies in Canada 13 (1987): 136-46.
In telling his tale, the Clerk gradually abandons his allegorical refutation of the Wife's view of marriage by becoming more critical of Walter and more sympathetic to the human plight of Griselda, whom he comes to regard as an embodiment of natural…
Grossi, Joseph L.,Jr.
Richard J. Utz, ed. Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm (Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston, Ont.; Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen, 1995), pp. 147-78.
Reads ClT as a realist's attack on nominalism, with Walter depicting an unfree diety, and Griselda, rampant fideism. Chaucer moderates the Clerk's realism at the end of the Tale and in the Envoy.
Lenaghan, R. T.
Larry D. Benson, ed. The Learned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature. Harvard English Studies, no. 5 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 31-43.
Argues that in SqT, FranT, KnT, and TC Chaucer used romance to reconcile his two responsibilities as a lay clerk: "to speak of morality and of the refinements of love."
Walsh, Lora.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 43 (2021): 75–109.
Interprets Griselda of ClT "as the late medieval English Church wedded to a secular power [Walter] that would radically dominate and divest her in the name of reform." Resists "domineering exegetical acts," using "literary and feminist…
Middleton, Anne.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 2 (1980): 121-50.
Examines medieval redactions of Boccaccio's Griselda story to suggest that Chaucer retells it in order to raise literary questions analogous to moral ones. The Clerk combines Petrarch's affective purpose and high style with the exemplary force and…
Briggs, Charles F.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 187-205.
Presents a variety of historical contexts for Chaucer's characterization of the Clerk, discussing medieval universities, manuscripts from fourteenth-century Oxford, and the role of clerks in medieval society. Includes appendices of "Manuscripts…
Bernardo, Aldo S., and Saul Levin, eds.
Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1990.
Twenty-six essays on the impact of the classics on medieval art, history, philosophy, education, and literature. Topics range widely from Coptic textiles to fourteenth-century England, from neo-Platonism to speculative grammar--all addressing the…
Federico, Sylvia.
Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2016.
Studies the works of Thomas Walsingham for their importance in the field of late fourteenth-century English "public classical literature," helping to define this field by focusing on nuances in Walsingham's treatments of political events in…
