Heninger, S. K., Jr.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 56 (1957): 382-95.
Analyzes the "repeated allusions to the Scholastic concept of a divinely-ordained universal order" in ClT. Shows that such allusions are generally not in Chaucer's sources, and that they help to characterize the Clerk as a "serious scholar and devout…
Köseoğlu, Berna.
Research Journal of English Language and Literature 6, no. 1 (2018): 153-59.
Assesses the role of Pandarus in TC as a "go-between" and as "spokesman" for and agent of typical medieval understandings of love, fortune, suffering, and the tenuousness of human happiness.
Wurtele, Douglas J.
American Benedictine Review 41 (1990): 59-79.
Via reference to and obvious knowledge of St. Augustine's doctrine of spiritual healing through self-punishment and the concept of Christ the Physician, the Pardoner (despite his blatant duplicitous misuse of Church teaching) ascertains his pride and…
Adams, Robert.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 6 (1984): 83-102.
Discussion of the debt as religious. The characters in ShT are "impenitent" because they and the Shipman have been blinded to moral and spiritual truth by their middle-class milieu.
Robinson, Peter
Vincent P. McCarren and Douglas Moffat, eds. A Guide to Editing Middle English (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 249-61.
Argues that computer technology is changing "what scholars do as they edit," drawing examples from the activities of the "Canterbury Tales" Project to describe the new quesions raised about visual reproduction of manuscripts, representation of…
Brewer, Derek.
A. E. Christa Canitz and Gernot R. Wieland, eds. From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui on His 75th Birthday (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), pp. 75-92.
Surveys medieval and modern understandings of honor as background to discussing the concept in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Malory's "Le Morte Darthur," and PhyT. Virginius "rightly kills" Virginia "to protect his own honour as well as her…
Analyzes the gothic, inorganic structure of BD, commenting on the poem's status as a lament, an elegy, and a consolation; its clear articulation of various parts; and its consistency with the compositional advice given by rhetorician Geoffrey of…
Argues that the Reeve's efforts to represent himself as respectable are mirrored in the characterization of Symkin in RvT, and Malyne's "repressed subjectivity" reveals Symkin's over-simplified, patristic notions self-definition.
Fisher, John H., ed.
Allen, Mark, ed.
New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977 and 1989.
Boston: Wadsworth, 2012.
A comprehensive edition of all of Chaucer's known works (including Equat and Rom), with glosses and notes at the bottom of the page and a text that relies on the collations of previous editors. Includes introductions for each of the works; additional…
Fischer, Steven R.
Berne and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1982.
Collates dream interpretations from twenty-three manuscripts in Latin, Old English, Middle English, Old French, German. Sourcebook for medieval imagery, literature, and psychology.
Rudd, Gillian.
London and New York : Routledge, 2001.
A discursive handbook to Chaucer's life and its context, his works, and criticism of his works. The biographical portion provides basic information and notes the variety of Chaucers constructed over the years. Rudd discusses the works chronologically…
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…
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…
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…
