Waterhouse, Ruth,and John Stephens.
Southern Review (Adelaide) 16 (1983): 356-73.
Since literature is linear and sequential, the reader must reassess each line in terms of all previous lines to influence the total effect and alter perspective. Comparing Chaucer's treatment of the past to "Beowulf," Gower, and Malory, refers to…
Baugh, Albert C.
Arno Esch, ed. Chaucer und Seine Zeit: Symposion für Walter F. Schirmer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), pp. 55-69.
Describes the English royal interest in the political and military maneuvers in Castile, Navarre, Aragon, and France that involved Pedro the Cruel, Pedro the Bold, Henry of Trastamara, Bernard du Guesclin, the Free Companies, and England's Black…
Rushton, Cory James.
Amanda Hopkins, Robert Allen Rouse, and Cory James Rushton, eds. Sexual Culture in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2014), pp. 147-60.
Reviews scholarly criticism of TC. Argues that the effectiveness of the work is in part the result of Chaucer shaping the reader's complicity with Pandarus. Also discusses Criseyde's desirability, and the theme of sexuality in TC and LGW.
Rejects "unsupported biographical inference" about the lives and personalities of Chaucer and William Langland, arguing that it is illogical to assume that the personae they project in their poetry are autobiographical. Conflation or confusion of the…
Rand Schmidt, Kari Anne.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993.
Concludes that the case for Chaucer's authorship of Equat remains "not proven"; i.e., Equat "cannot be identified as Chaucer's work." This conclusion is built on examination of handwriting, dialect, and style, showing that Equat is a holograph in…
Rand, Kari Anne.
Studia Neophilologica 87 (2015): 15-35
Presents new evidence that "shows that the author [of Equat] was not Chaucer," connecting the unique manuscript of the treatise (Cambridge, Peterhouse, MS 75.I) with the work and life of John Westwyk, a monk of Tynemouth. Includes paleographical…
Mann, Jill.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval English Literature (Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 3-12.
Chaucer's presentation of himself as a reader of literature is a metaphor for our own reading of his work, an acknowledgement of his concern with the reciprocal relationship between the reader's mind and the text.
The hermeneutic method in Nicholas of Lyra's "Postilla" gave new richness to the understanding of the biblical "sensus literalis," expanding it to include parabolic senses and typology, and fostered more interactive reading. Similar principles seem…
McQuain, Jeffrey Hunter.
Dissertation Abstracts International 44 (1983): 761A.
Although both Chaucer and Shakespeare inherited the classical misogynist tradition, their works reflect a belief in the equality of the sexes, the value of marriage, and the association of virtue with with women.
The central question for NPT is not whether it is allegorical or ironic but how it uses allegory and irony to refigure its own past. This tale was composed for a court audience at the beginning of a new vernacular tradition. What kind of authority…
Woehling, Mary-Patrice.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1991): 1742A.
By manipulating his presumed sources and through the voices of the narrator and his characters, Chaucer develops reader-response strategy with such rhetorical devices as repetition and wordplay. The reflexive TC shows both love and language as…
Minnis, A. J.
P. R. Robinson and Rivkah Zim, eds. Of the Making of Books: Medieval Manuscripts, Their Scribes and Readers. Essays Presented to M. B. Parkes (Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press; Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1997), pp. 259-79.
Explores the "complicated medieval matrix of ideas concerning the relationship between authority and fallibility," commenting on representations of the topic from Petrarch's depiction of Cicero to Chaucer's depiction of the Pardoner. As a preacher…
Wood, Chauncey.
Patrick J. Gallacher and Helen Damico, eds. Hermeneutics and Medieval Culture (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 51-60.
"Medieval authors mistrusted their readers' potential responses and felt obliged to direct that response accordingly"; in medieval literature, the author's address to the reader was "a device to activate the critical intelligence, while deactivating…
Wright, Sylvia.
British Library Journal 18 (1992): 190-201.
Identifies and describes portraits of authors in initials of British Museum MS. Add. 42131. Two of the three depictions of Chaucer are by the same hand as the miniature accompanying Hoccleve's Regement of Princes (Arundel MS. 38).
Reads the Pandarus/Troilus relationship in TC as a variation on the priest/pupil motif also found in works by Ovid, Andreas Capellanus, Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun, and John Gower.
Questions assumptions about Chaucer's authorial practices and challenges J. L. Lowes's theory that F is the earlier version of LGWP. G may be earlier, a hypothesis that accounts for structural differences in the two versions and for numerous lexical…
Furrow, Melissa [M.]
Forum for Modern Language Study 33 (1997): 244-57.
Uses extracts from the Middle English "Mirrur," the fourteenth-century translation of Robert de Gretham's thirteenth-century sermon collection, to explore the context and significance of Ret.
Despite the textual authority of the half line (GP A 164) "and preestes thre," arguments from an analysis of Chaucer's practice in the portrayal of other pilgrims suggest that the words should be suppressed in a modern edition. There were probably…
Mehl, Dieter.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in honour of Rossell Hope Robbins (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974), pp. 173-89.
Explains how TC "creates its own audience" through the narrator's addresses to readers/listeners that help to involve them as putative lovers, as judges of the characters, and, most importantly, as participants in the making of historical fiction and…
Davidoff, Judith M.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 5 (1983): 103-25.
Frame and vision are linked according to late-medieval literary expectations which establish in the dreamer a state of "need" and in the audience the expectation of that need to be "fulfilled."
Hanning, Robert W.
Yearbook of English Studies 11 (1981): 1-28.
Extrinsic models for twelfth-century audiences of chivalric romances (Duly, Bezzola, Legge) should be complemented by indirect evidence that defines such audiences as literary virtuosos, humanists able to evaluate romances to discover the poet and…
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Modern Philology 115 (2017): 1–30.
Examines manuscript rubrics and glosses that engage ideas of authorship, specifically those that cite an "auctor" or "aucteur" in manuscripts of the "Roman de la Rose," Machaut's "Judgment of the King of Navarre," TC, and CT. Gauges the kinds and…
Includes essays that define current Auchinleck manuscript studies. For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives under Alternative Title.
