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…
Waller, Martha S.
Chaucer Newsletter 2.1 (1980): 10-12.
Holcot is a source for the conclusion of "Lucrece": his "In Librum Sapientie" includes (1) the statement, not in the Gospels, that Christ found greater faith in women than in men, and (2) a catalogue of pagan good women including Lucretia and others…
Contrasts Troilus's ascent through the spheres at the end of TC and the narrator's comments on it with the analogous materials in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" and "Teseida" (with nods to Dante and Christian liturgy), explaining Troilus's placement among…
Comments on Chaucer criticism produced between 1950 and 1964 and, treating Chaucer's work as a "single fiction," reads it as a "complex examination of what it means to love" in earthly and spiritual ways. An "abyss exists between" the two kinds of…
Wawrzyniak, Agnieszka.
Danuta Gabrys-Barker, Dagmara Gałajda, Adam Wojtaszek, and Paweł Zakrajewski, eds. Multiculturalism, Multilingualism and the Self (Cham: Springer, 2017), pp. 49-61.
Describes uses of the lexemes "trouthe" and "soth" in CT, comparing them with "truth" in present-day English. Shows that, associated with love, light, and wisdom, Chaucer’s "trouthe" differs from his "soth": the former resides in an abstract…
Louis, Cameron.
Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 14 (1997): 173-85.
The first English citations for the word "proverb" come from Chaucer's works, in which the word appears twenty-six times. Chaucer uses the word primarily in its modern and most common sense of "traditional folk sayings"; however, he also uses it with…
Benjamin, Edwin B.
Philological Quarterly 38 (1959): 119-24.
Attributes the disruption of order in the plot of FranT to Dorigen's pride and "indecisiveness" and to Aurelius's "moral flaw" and use of "unlawful" magic. Order is reinstated by means of seriatim "self-sacrifice" triggered by the "manly firmness" of…
