De la Torre Moreno, Maria Jose.
Teresa Fanego Lema, ed. Papers from the IVth International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1993), pp. 293-303.
Examines the GP sketch of the Prioress for evidence that she is poorly matched with her vocation, a mismatch especially evident in her attractiveness, coquetry, and "zest for life."
Stokes compares the pledges of love-troth in the "Prose Lancelot" and TC, suggesting that they reflect a "specific kind of romantic relationship," neither marital nor illicit nor clandestine, but "solemn and binding" and based on the man's service to…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
Michio Kawai, ed. Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honour of Michio Masui. The English Association of Hiroshima (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991), pp. 159-77.
Considers MkT complete as an experiment in a new literary form that Chaucer used to medievalize materials.
The conception of the action of RvT in three dimensions is designed to provide more than narrative realism. By reducing the miller's area of influence, Chaucer represents metaphorically his being cut down to size by the students.
Shibata, Takeo.
Hiroe Futamura, Kenichi Akishino, and Hisato Ebi, eds. A Pilgrimage Through Medieval Literature (Tokyo: Nan' Un-Do Press, 1993), pp. 145-63.
Examines double-entendre in ShT, especially with words that relate to characters' action.
Addresses the engagement of medieval literature in the construction of European and Muslim identities in CT. Traces the origin and the politics behind the western construction of Muslims as "God's enemies in the Middle Ages and how this…
Uses MLT, among other works, to show that in Middle English romance, with its limited expression of characters' inner lives, identity is expressed and revealed through "external signs," outward behavior, and immutable "key characteristics."
Minnis, Alastair.
R. N. Swanson, ed. Promissory Notes on the Treasury of Merits: Indulgences in Late Medieval Europe (Boston and Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 169-95.
There is a paucity of writing on indulgences in medieval vernacular literatures. Minnis explores depictions of pardoners and indulgences in PardP, Langland's "Piers Plowman, "and John Heywood's "The Foure PP" and "The Pardoner and the Frere."…
Gastle, Brian W.
Susannah Mary Chewning, ed. Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020], pp. 203-16.
Examines John Gower's consideration of the "appropriate purpose and use of incarceration, including comparison of his Tale of Tereus” in the "Confessio Amantis" with Chaucer's analogous account in LGW. In Gower, imprisonment precedes the rape of…
Machan, Tim William.
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 91 (1997): 31-50.
Examines the textual tradition of Bo in light of the twelfth- to fifteenth-century textual tradition of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," suggesting that the best text of Bo is Cambridge University Library ii.iii.21.
Chaucer's Pandarus is based to a certain extent on the character of Philosophy in Boethius's Consolation, and his Troilus resembles Boethius. Troilus's change during the poem can be attributed to the fact that "he has experienced the consolation of…
Schauber, Ellen,and Ellen Spolsky.
Centrum 5 (1977): 20-34.
Since the speech acts of Alison consist of arguing, insisting,challenging, and confiding, the message is that she is always struggling against the givens of her world. She is Lady Philosophy "manque" since her views of behavior are hardly proper and…
The "presentational features" of MS HM 140 (prose format, absence of ClP, reduction of multivoiced discourse) transform its "mode of signification from performance to textuality," suggesting history and truth. This presentation radically alters the…
Stein, Robert M.
James J. Paxson and Cynthia A. Gravlee, eds. Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid Through Chaucer (Selinsgrove, Penn.: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1998), pp. 188-205.
As the Miller refuses to allow easy closure to KnT, so the Tale's opening is rooted in the uneasy conquest of Femenye. Throughout the Tale, patterns that suggest resolution fail to reach their hoped-for conclusion, indicating the ongoing nature of…
Describes CT with recurrent attention to major critical approaches. Focuses on several recurrent themes ("how we come to know something" and the "interpretation of authority"), with sustained discussions of GP, KnT, MilT and RvT, WBPT, FranT, PardT,…
Makowski, Elizabeth M.
Julia Bolton Holloway, Constance S. Wright, and Joan Bechtold, eds. Equally in God's Image: Women in the Middle Ages (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), pp. 129-43.
Discusses canonical doctrine about sexual relations in marriage as it was understood between the twelfth and mid-fourteenth centuries--an era in which scientific jurisprudence came of age. Makowski focuses on the concept of conjugal debt, referring…
Molencki, Rafal.
Nikolaus Ritt and Herbert Schendl, eds. Rethinking Middle English: Linguistic and Literary Approaches (New York and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 147-60.
Molencki traces the phonetic and semantic conflation of "dare" and" tharf," once distinct verbs, now obsolete. Scribal errors contributed to the obsolescence of "tharf" and its replacement with the more flexible OE "neden." The essay draws examples…
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…
