Mel suggests that interpretative perspective is crucial to meaning. Like the rest of fallen nature, language is indeterminate, so prudence is required to make sense of contingent existence. Apparent contradictions in Mel disappear if we understand…
Windeatt, Barry.
Christopher Cannon and Maura Nolan, eds. Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann (Cambridge: Brewer, 2011), pp. 211-30.
Swooning in medieval literature points to a marked cultural contrast between medieval sensibilities and modern ones for which swooning is extreme and exceptional. This broad survey defines swooning as a "loss of consciousness, brought on by…
Yuasa, Nobuyuki.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 41 (1994): 59-83.
Comments on the names of selected characters, including the names of Chaucer's CT pilgrims and some of the characters in the tales. Compared with Spenser's and Shakespeare's names, "Chaucer's fictional names are rather limited in kind and number,"…
Rowland, Beryl.
Revue de l'Universite d'Ottawa 51 (1981): 163-71.
Chaucer's address to Thought in the Invocation to book 2 stresses the function of memory in his art. Love tidings are words from old books. Books are still the activator of new poems, even though "auctorite" may be enriched by "experimentum." The…
Leicester, H. Marshall,Jr.
PMLA 95 (1980): 213-24.
Readers have over-emphasized the persona of the narrator(s) in CT, making the tales themselves but an appendage to the frame. But in fact there are many internal contradictions in such a "dramatic" reading of the poem. The tales are insistently…
Notes Chaucer's attention to "loss of sexual power" in the process of aging, commenting on two brief passages in modern translation: WBP (3.198-203) and RvP (1.3879-382, 3887-98).
Nolan, Barbara.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 203-22.
In BD Chaucer skillfully breaks with French poetic practice to produce a new kind of poetry. The enigmatic narrator does not participate in established conventions; an insomniac amateur reader, he does not fully understand the matter he presents.
Smoot, Maxine Bixby.
Dissertation Abstracts International 35 (1975): 6735A
Chaucer artfully uses meter to support meaning. The tensions between meter and speech rhythm, enjambment and run-on lines, rhyme and alliteration, and denotation and onomatopoeia all display his technical virtuosity.
Schlauch, Margaret.
D. S. Brewer, ed. Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature (University: University of Alabama Press; London: Nelson, 1966), pp. 140-63.
Describes and comments on the range and subtleties of Chaucer's prose styles, with recurrent comments on his stylistic adaptation of sources. Treats the "plain" style of Astr, the "heightened" homiletic style of ParsT, the "eloquent" style of Mel,…
Describes the Franklin's grasping "imitation of noble ways" in FranPT and in his GP description. The genre and rhetoric of the Tale are outdated, absurd, and/or obtrusive, while its depictions of ideals of marriage, gentility, and patience are either…
Nist, John.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 11 (1966): 1-10.
Coins the term "pathedy" to describe Chaucer's "serene middle ground" between tragedy and comedy, applying the term to the "quality of love" that characterizes Troilus in TC and to the tragicomic contradictions and essential humanity of several of…
Drimmer, Sonja.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
Examines the importance of visual images in late medieval manuscripts, and the significance of manuscript illuminators in the development and spread of English literary culture. Discusses illuminated manuscripts of Chaucer’s CT, and illustrated works…
Papica, Raymund.
Dissertation Abstracts International A78.01(E) (2017): n.p.
Studies "depictions of armor" in CT, Malory's "Le Morte D’Arthur," and Spenser's "The Faerie Queene," "exploring how these works help us understand medievalism in contemporary media," and investigating "how armored bodies function as a way to think…
Brewer, Derek.
Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, ed. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 221-43.
Recognition of the arming of the warrior "topos" guides us to many formal arming passages: in the Babylonian epic, the "Iliad," The Bible, the "Aeneid," Irish literature, "Beowulf," the "Chanson de Roland," "Erec et Enide," the Arthurian series,…
The Pardoner's interruption of the WBP causes shifts in her tone and subject, but also alerts us to parallels between the two characters: wide travels, sermon-like autobiographical prologues, and tales which feature central characters who are…
Saito, Mother Masako, R.S.C.J.
Dissertation Abstracts International 25.03 (1964): A1897.
Explores the archetypal imagery of bondage and liberation from bondage in five "clusters" in CT: chivalric prison, animal confinement, "juridical bondage with its emphasis on 'wit,' entrapment, and hell and purgatory.
Brewer, Derek.
Derek Brewer, Tradition and Innovation in Chaucer (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 1-21.
Characterizes several differences between the archaic (prescientific) and modern mindsets: literal vs. relative, oral vs. literate, mythic vs. scientific. Includes a brief discussion of Chaucer's mixture of the two.
Wood, Chauncey.
Modern Language Quarterly 25 (1964): 259-71.
Argues that the astrological data in GP and MLH establish the date of the beginning of the Canterbury pilgrimage as April 17, the same day as the departure of Noah's ark, evoking notions of sinfulness and salvific baptism, reinforced by imagery of…
Ussery, Huling E.
Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 50 (1965): 545-56.
Maintains that the PhyT was "specifically adapted especially to the Physician as teller," arguing that the opening of the Tale and its rhetoric reflect the arts training common to late-medieval physicians, that various details reflect the teller's…
Dwyer, Richard A.
Chaucer Review 8 (1974): 221-40.
Savors the indeterminacies of manuscript transmission, treating them as a form of "anonymous or indeterminate revision" in contrast with strict, modern notions of authorial revision. Exemplifies the variety found in manuscripts of "Piers Plowman," CT…
