Cooper surveys Chaucer's linguistic and poetic innovations, emphasizing that his rewritings of classical, French, and Italian models were "far from being acts of homage." Chaucer may have thought of himself as a literary heir, but he was an…
Trigg, Stephanie.
Glenn D. Burger and Holly A. Crocker, eds. Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), pp. 25-46.
Highlights the connections between uses of the phrase “weeping like a beaten child” in both Chaucer and Malory, simultaneously exploring the semantic range of weeping elsewhere. These examinations offer further important lessons about the history of…
Sidhu, Nicole Nolan.
Maryanne Kowaleski and P. J. P. Goldberg, eds. Medieval Domesticity: Home, Housing and Household in Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), pp. 177-208.
Adaptations of its sources shape ClT in ways that encourage male, bourgeois readers to imagine themselves as Griselda's protectors. Infused with a sense of moral and patriarchal responsibility and driven by religious devotion, such readers also…
Considers the work of Chaucer, among others, as an example of non-hypertextual writing that nonetheless creates the user disorientation often associated with negotiations of hypertext.
Delony, Mikee C.
Priscilla Pope-Levison and John R. Levison, eds. Sex, Gender, and Christianity (Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2012), pp. 33–57.
Examines connections between women's weaving and preaching by focusing on Alisoun. Uses the metaphor of weaving to establish how Alisoun "wove textiles and words as a mode of female expression and critique of the patriarchal church's interpretation…
McNamara, Rebecca F.
Literature and Medicine 33.2 (2015): 258-78.
In BD, Chaucer reinvents the "dits amoreux" tropes of Froissart (in "Le paradis d'Amours") and Machaut (in "Le jugement dou roy de Behaingne"), applying Galen's humoral medicine to depictions of the lovelorn knight. Likewise, in KnT, the banished…
DiMarco, Vincent.
English Language Notes 25:4 (1988): 15-19.
Behind the mysterious "vitremyte" that Zenobia is forced to adopt in MkT 2372 lies the Maeonian mitra, a cloth cap worn by Greek women. As a symbol of effeminacy, it is used in Boccaccio, for example, in the humiliation of Hercules. In Zenobia's…
Hole, Jennifer.
Jennifer Hole. Economic Ethics in Late Medieval England, 1300-1500 (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), pp. 99-125.
Surveys literary depictions of economic ideals and economic abuses among the aristocracy in ParsT; Form Age; Wynnere and Wastoure"; "Piers Plowman"; and works by Gower, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, focusing on the "portrayal of lords and rulers, both as…
Kaplan, Philip Benjamin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 3465A.
Defines anti-Semitic art as any work that employs pejorative stereotypes about Jews without repudiating them. Focuses on Shakespeare's "Merchant of Venice" but also considers PrT and Marlowe's "The Jew of Malta."
Suggests possible sources for Chaucer's ideas on parenthood that influenced CkT, including the "Wisdom commentary of Dominican friar, Robert Holcot." Also compares Holcot's views on parental responsibility with those in PhyT.
Daichman, Graciela S.
Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986.
Examines the medieval nunnery as an institution and the records of indecorous behavior of medieval nuns. A stock character of medieval literature, the "profligate nun" is seen in Chaucer's Madam Eglentyne and the Archpriest of Hita's Dona Garoza.
Allen, Valerie.
Lisa Perfetti, ed. The Representation of Women's Emotions in Medieval and Early Modern Culture. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2005, pp. 191-210.
Uses examples from Chaucer, "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and the "Ancrene Wisse" to explore how shame differs for men and women. For men, shame stems from a wide range of cultural experiences associated with chivalry, while women's shame is…
The discourse of PardPT "disrupts binary structures and exposes the fallacy of essentialist ideologies"; it "interrogates the literary and social consequences of identity categories" assumed in "christological exegesis." The Pardoner's relics recall…
Over six centuries, Chaucer's verse has been construed in a "bewildering variety of ways." This essay surveys the reception of Chaucer's metrics from his immediate contemporaries to the present and considers the process of "transmitting metrical…
Proposes that "fade" is an "Anglicized form of Occitan "fado"/"fada" and therefore further evidence that the "Gawain" or "Pearl" Poet served in Aquitaine, associated with military and/or diplomatic exploits, as did Chaucer. Proposes several possible…
Terry Jones, in "Chaucer's Knight: Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary" (1980), maintains that Chaucer criticizes the Knight and his motives and expects his audience to join him. Evidence shows, however, that the Knight is portrayed sympathetically…
Hornsby, Joseph A.
Chaucer Review 22 (1988): 255-68.
By establishing a truer picture of the fourteenth-century Inns of Court, we can see the improbability of Chaucer's having been educated there. First, Chaucer's education at the Inns of Court is questionable. Second, the fourteenth-century Inns of…
Spearing, A. C.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 73 (2010): 41-54.
Despite Chaucer's characteristic humility about his poetry and the absence of any references to poetry in his "Life-Records," critics are wrong to deemphasize the respect that subsequent writers accorded to his writing. Imitation of Chaucer's poetic…
Loomis, Roger Sherman.
In MacEdward Leach, ed. Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Albert Croll Baugh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), pp. 21-44.
Gauges the extent and depth of Chaucer's philosophical and theological skepticism in comparison with the views of some of his contemporaries--Wycliff, Langland, Gower, Julian of Norwich, and more. Identifies skeptical attitudes on free will,…
Kinghorn, A. M.
English Studies 44 (1963): 197-204.
Commends Thomas Warton for his appreciation of Chaucer in his "History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to the Close of the Sixteenth Century" (1774-81), acknowledging that the critic largely ignored Old English, denigrated much Middle English…
Considers a potential crisis in the teaching of Chaucer and suggests attending more to the pragmatic matters of teaching and less to theoretical problematizing.
Kline, Daniel T.
Joel T. Rosenthal, ed. Essays on Medieval Childhood: Responses to Recent Debates (Donington, Lincolnshire: Shaun Tyas, 2007), pp. 108-23.
Chaucer's additions to his sources in PhyT emphasize the "domestic contours" of the story. PhyT is a critique of the "social efficacy of the patriarchal family." Virginius first fails to protect his daughter and then murders her; he is "no better a…
Introduces four previously unknown documents, including a Chaucer life record connected to his guardianship of Michael Staplegate, which offer new perspectives on Chaucer's life and poetry. Implies that Chaucer's wardship of Staplegate extended as…
A classroom anthology of poetry about war from Chaucer to the twentieth century. Includes (pp. 9-12) the description of the temple of Mars from KnT (1.1967-2050), with a narrative summary of the Tale and observations about how Chaucer combines a…
Middleton, Anne.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 119-33.
Chaucer's examination of chivalry in KnT, SqT, and FranT is a "mediation on the means of representing it," offering the audience "style reflexiouns" on the making of fiction.
