Rutherford, Charles S.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 78 (1977): 350-58.
Clanvowe uses Chaucerian themes and conventions with deftness. He recognizes irony based on logic, characterizes through rhetoric, and employs all three conventional endings of debate form.
Kaylor, Noel Harold, Jr., ed. and Philip Edward Phillips, eds.
Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr., and Philip Edward Phillips, eds. New Directions in Boethian Studies. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 45 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 223-79.
Transcribes the text of "The Boke of Coumfort of Bois," a Middle English translation of Book 1 of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, found only in MS Auct. F.3.5. Accepts the claim in the Bodleian catalogue that the translation depends upon…
Kaylor, Noel Harold, Jr., Jason Edward Streed, and William H. Watts, eds.
Carmina Philosophiae 2 (1993): 55-104.
Publishes "for the first time a full transcription of an anonymous Middle English translation of Book I of the "Consolation of Philosophy" which is held by the Bodleian Library of Oxford University and catalogued as MS AUCT. F.3.5," drawing the title…
Cannon, Christopher.
Mark Chinca, Timo Reuvekamp-Felber, and Christopher Young, eds. Mittelalterliche Novellistik im Europäischen Kontext: Kulturwissenschaftliche Perspektiven (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 2006), pp. 326-46.
Cannon explores the critique in MilT of the limited Boethianism of KnT. The double plot of MilT and its emphasis on turning harm to joke are more genuinely Boethian than is the tragic emphasis of KnT.
Knowing Boethian philosophy (as Chaucer intended his audience to do) enables the reader of TC to gain a double perspective, both inside and outside the temporal limits of the text. This position is analogous to God's position and allows one to…
apRoberts, Robert P.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 69 (1970): 425-36.
Regards Criseyde's departure from Troy in TC as a "fated event," while it is a matter of fortune in Boccaccio's "Filostrato." Shows how Chaucer adjusts his source, increases the dramatic irony of the plot, and gives to his readers a perspective that…
Cherniss, Michael D.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 68 (1969): 655-65.
Details way in which the dialogue between the Dreamer and Black Knight in BD "closely follows the pattern of the first two books" of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," with the Dreamer paralleling Philosophy and the Knight the character…
Margherita, Gayle Margaret.
Dissertation Abstracts International 51 (1991): 4115A.
Applies Freudian and feminist theory to three extracanonical medieval texts, presenting them as the "unconscious" of works in the literary canon. Also analyzes BD and TC.
Travis, Peter W.
Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior, eds. Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 231-47.
Travis explores the Host's "hypermasculine vision of literary genius" in Part 7 of CT, especially the Host's comments in MkP, NPP, and NPE. Using parody rather than satire, Chaucer gently exposes the "phallocentric presuppositions" of Western…
Kao, Wan-Chuan.
Stephen Ahern, ed. Affect Theory and Literary Critical Practice: A Feel for the Text (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 25-43.
Describes "premodern theories of affect rooted in humoral theory and faculty psychology," and explores the affects of wonder and shame in FranT as well as its queered futurity, focusing on Aurelius's brother, who occupies "the position of the…
Boitani, Piero,and Anna Torti, eds.
Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, N.Y. : D. S. Brewer, 1999.
Ten essays by various authors, originally presented at a symposium on "The Body and Soul in Medieval Literature." Most of the essays focus on Middle English literature, including some comparisons with medieval French and Italian works and some later…
Zarins, Kim.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017.
Cautions that what we say about the Pardoner's body "might say something about ourselves"; summarizes critical discussion of the Pardoner's sex, sexuality, and rhetoric; and comments on the Old Man, Death (compared to Terry Pratchett's Mort), the…
Kruger Steven F.
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 301-23.
Considers how the bodies of Jews are related to Christian bodily miracles in Chaucer's PrT and the Croxton "Play of the Sacrament." Kruger clarifies the relation between the positive valuation of the body in late-medieval spirituality and the attack…
Dundes, Alan, ed.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
A collection of essays treating the legend of Jews killing Christians, particularly children. Fourteen essays cover such areas as case histories, folkloristic tales and literary texts, surveys of the legend in different locales, ritual-murder…
The parallel between Griselda and Mary, from preelection and marriage through maternal suffering to final coronation, is integral and pervasive in ClT. Mary embodies the canonical myth of the life of the Christian soul from baptism to heaven;…
Studies the uses, meanings, and nuances of the concept of magnanimity in the English Middle Ages and Renaissance, including discussion of Chaucer, who, although "he makes no full-scale attempt to portray the magnanimous man in his wholeness,"…
Wurtele, Douglas. J.
Annuale Mediaevale 21 (1981): 91-110.
Proceeding by "oblique allusions and undertones," the treatment of the Virgin in MerT is "mordantly ironic," leading up to January's "brazen parody of the 'Canticum Canticorum'." This blasphemy is appropriate to the Merchant's bitter cynicism.
Armstrong, Dorsey.
San Francisco: Kanopy Streaming.
Includes commentary on "Piers Plowman"; Boccaccio's "Decameron"; and the impact of the plague on Chaucer's life, CT (especially PardT), and BD, claiming that Chaucer "could not have been Chaucer" if not for the plague.
Williman, Daniel, ed.
Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1982.
Six essays by various hands on the plague and its effects: demographics, millenarianism, iconography of death, the "Decameron," and Middle English literature.
Hinton, Norman.
Donald E. Hayden, ed. His Firm Estate: Essays in Honor of Franklin James Eikenberry (Tulsa Okla.: University of Tulsa, 1967), pp. 72-78.
Argues that the Plague, or Black Death, "stands behind" BD, helping to "give it a shape and a meaning," describing late-medieval attitudes toward death and fortune as described in commentaries on plague.
Antonelli, Roberto.
Piero Boitani, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 21-48.
Compares the treatment of love in the "Roman de Thebes," "Brut," and "Eneas" to that in Benoit's "Roman de Troie," a twelfth-century romance and apparently the first work to introduce Briseis-Cressida. A product of Anglo-Norman love debate, Benoit's…
Loschiavo, Linda Ann.
Chaucer Review 13 (1978): 128-32.
Argues for the later date on two counts. First, discrepancies in the records allow only the conclusion that in 1361 Blanche was at least 14 years of age. Second, the custom of early marriage makes plausible that Blanche was only 12 when married in…
Saito, Shun'ichi.
Bulletin of the Daito Bunka University: The Humanities 22 (1984): 119-28.
Discusses parallels between the Birds' Parliament and the Good Parliament in 1376. In PF, Chaucer probably parodied the obstreperous Commons that played an active part in this historic parliament.
