Green, Margaret, ed.
Grabianski, Janusz, illus.
New York: Franklin Watts, 1965
Anthologizes animal fables from worldwide cultures and various historical periods, classical to modern, including a modernized prose adaptation of NPT, here titled "The Tale of Chanticleer" (pp. 158-64), accompanied by five pen-and-watercolor…
Fowler, David C.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984.
Sequel to the author's "The Bible in Early English Literature," this volume surveys literary trends using biblical traditions: examines medieval drama, lyrics, PF, works of the "Pearl" poet, and "Piers Plowman."
Boitani, Piero.
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1999.
Studies of how Scriptural narratives and their themes have been "re-Scriptured" in particular works of Western literary tradition. Chapter 3 (pp. 77-100) explores how NPT prompts and resists the exegetical potential in reading and leads to…
A frame-tale narrative modeled on and adapted from CT, with tales told by a range of individuals traveling by bus in 1969 to attend the "Woodstock Music and Art Fair." The introduction acknowledges Chaucer's inspiration in form, styles, and…
Recent debates over editing of "Canterbury Tales" reflect "best-text" (Hengwrt) versus "best-book" (Ellesmere) views, but both sides continue to make editorial assumptions about unity and closure.
Includes selections from GP, WBP, and PardP in Middle English, with glosses, and an introduction in which Bloom comments on Chaucer's characterizations, his influence on Shakespeare and Spenser, and reading Chaucer in its original Middle English.
Fleming, John V.
Robert G. Benson and Susan J. Ridyard, eds. New Readings of Chaucer's Poetry (Rochester, N.Y., and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 51-74.
Fleming examines Chaucer's mixture of sacred and secular texts and illustrates how Chaucer's idea of the Wife of Bath grew from an amalgamation of Le Roman de la Rose, Ovid, and St. Jerome, particularly in WBP.
Mooney, Linne R., and Lister M. Matheson.
Library, 7th ser., 4 : 347-70, 2003.
The Northumberland manuscript of CT (Alnwick Castle 455) shows evidence that the scribe had access to a manuscript of CT that included the Prologue and Tale of Beryn and that he worked in a scriptorium that produced multiple copies of popular texts.
Lumiansky, R. M.
Tulane Studies in English 9 (1959): 5-17.
Focuses on the opening section of BD, arguing that it depicts a "Narrator suffering excessive grief resulting from bereavement, who within the poem moves toward a means of consolation based chiefly upon a conception of Nature as Life, and whose…
The stellar phenomenon of TC 3.624-25 certainly occurred in 1385, more likely May 12 (though Saturn was not quite in Cancer, something which Chaucer's Tables may have erred about) than June 9, when a crescent moon may not have been visible in London.
Schaefer, Ursula, ed.
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006.
Nine essays by various authors with an introduction and epilogue that discuss literary and linguistic aspects of early standardization in English. For five essays that consider Chaucer specifically, search for Beginnings of Standardization under…
Johnston, Andrew James, and Claudia Lange.
Ursula Schaefer, ed. The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 183-200.
The authors consider linguistic and cultural factors in English standardization of the fourteenth century, including the reciprocity of Chaucer's contributions to standardization and the role standardization played in "'the making' of Chaucer."
Benson, Larry D.
Theodore M. Anderson and Stephen A. Barney, eds. Contradictions: From "Beowulf" to Chaucer (Aldershot, Hants: Scolar; Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1995), pp. 243-65.
Surveys the lyric and romance traditions of England and France that most likely influenced Chaucer's early writing, commenting on how Rom, ABC, and BD reflect the possible sources and development of Chaucer's colloquial English style.
Munsterberg, Marjorie.
British Art Journal 18.1 (2010): 12-25.
Claims that writing about painting in England began with Chaucer's "definition of visual art" in PhyT 6.9ff., sketching classical and medieval background to Chaucer's description, particularly Pliny, Bartholomeus Anglicus, John Trevisa, and the Roman…
Item not seen. The WorldCat record indicates that this score is for four unaccompanied female voices, with duration of "about 4 min. 30 sec.", with "Text by Chaucer." and difficulty appropriate to "Advanced high school-college; difficult-moderately…
Rogers, H. L.
A. Stephens, and others, eds. Festschrift for Ralph Farrell (Bern: Lang, 1977), pp. 185-200.
TC opens in "high style" comparable with Virgil's "Aeneid" or Milton's "Paradise Lost." This style creates an epic frame for the poem which is sustained by the correlation of Troilus the lover with Troilus the warrior. Donaldson is wrong in…
Doniger, Wendy.
Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press, 2000.
A cross-cultural, transhistorical anatomy of one motif in the "mythology of sex" in literature and film--the "story of going to bed with someone whom you mistake for someone else." Discusses structuralist and psychoanalytic explanations of variations…
Specht, Henrik.
Studia Neophilologica 56 (1984): 129-46.
As seen in GP, the formal method of characterization is rooted in Cicero, Priscian, and Matthew of Vendome. The physical repugnance of the Summoner symbolizes moral ugliness.
Yager, Susan.
Literature and Belief 27 (2007): 55-68.
The BBC's 2003 adaptation of MLT updates Chaucer's Tale, incorporating plot, character names, and thematic elements such as faith, exile and return, trauma and healing, and time and repetition. Constance, a Nigerian refugee, finds love and fellowship…
Kelly, Kathleen Coyne.
Gail Ashton, ed. Medieval Afterlives in Contemporary Culture (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015), pp. 134-43.
Comments on each of the BBC television versions of Chaucer's narratives (MilT, WBP, KnT, PardT, ShT, and MLT), exploring how adaptation, updating, and remediation duplicate or change aspects of Chaucer's aesthetics and morality.
Rosenberg, Bruce A.
Chaucer Review 14 (1980): 344-52.
Among the oral-tradition analogues for FranT is the story of the Bari Widow, similar to it in ways that Boccaccio's version is not. Analysis of Chaucer's adept use of it and other oral-tradition stories demonstrates the mastery of his creation.
Patristic and scholastic writers condemn flattery as misuse of speech and an activity conducive to fraud. Chaucer's stricture on flattery initially appears comic, yet it is more direct and explicit than Langland's harsh condemnation, which Chaucer…
Green, Richard Firth.
Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone, eds. The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 163-84.
Surveys ballad scholarship and argues that exploration of medieval ballads has value for broader study, suggesting, for example, that "King Henry" provides useful contexts for the gentility speech in WBT.
Identifies "new Romance analogues" for details in GP, MilT, WBPT, PardT, ShT, and ParsT in three fifteenth-century Catalan narratives: "Disputa de l'ase" ("The Argument of the Ass") by Anselm Turmeda, the "Llibre de fra Bernat" ("Book of Friar…
