Boheemen, Christel van.
Dutch Quarterly Review of Anglo-American Letters 9 (1979): 1-27.
The fundamental distinction in KnT is not between Palamon and Arcite, but between them and Theseus. The Dionysian misrule of Thebes is symbolically contrasted to the Apollonian order or Athens. The mythic structure of the narrative prepares a…
Burrow, J. A.
J. A. Burrow. Essays on Medieval Literature. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), pp. 27-48. Also in Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Medieval and Pseudo-Medieval Literature (Tubingen: Narr, 1984), pp. 91-108.
Analyzes characters, both divine and human, in KnT as "representatives of the "three ages of man: youth, maturity, and old age."
Nelson, Joseph Edward.
Dissertation Abstracts International 41 (1980): 242A.
Unlike the knight of the chivalric theorists, who is ideally a force for justice and stability, the knight of the courtly romance is a solitary figure whose primary concern is self-fulfillment without regard to the community at large. As a courtly…
Sanderlin, George.
USF Language Quarterly 26:3-4 (1988): 11-12.
Addresses two questions: Is KnT a romance? and Whose story is it, Palamon's or Arcite's? More lines are devoted to these issues than to philosophic matter and Theseus. Arcite shows more nobility than any other character in KnT, and the story…
Provost, William.
Susan J. Ridyard and Robert G. Benson, eds. Man and Nature in the Middle Ages (Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South Press, 1995), pp. 185-98.
Describes Chaucer's various uses of the terms "kynde" and "nature" (and their derivatives), focusing particularly on their semantic range and potential as personifications
Purdon, Liam O.
Julian N. Wasserman and Lois Roney, eds. Sign, Sentence, Discourse: Language in Medieval Thought and Literature (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989), pp. 144-52.
Sted, which begins as a complaint, reveal the poet's "anxiety over the mutable condition of language."
In the Dido episode of LGW, Chaucer minimizes both Aeneas's destiny and his character, focusing on Dido's character and thus producing a (negative) feminist exemplum.
Cowen, J.M.
Notes and Queries 229 (1984): 298-301.
The wording of these lines closely resembles the phraseology found in an Italian translation of Ovid's "Heroides." The line "Youre anker which ye in oure haven leyde" (line 2501) may be a sexual pun. Treats Boccaccio's "De genealogia deorum" as…
Cowen, Janet M.
Studies in Philology 82 (1985): 416-36.
In LGW, Chaucer uses the narrative approaches of hagiography (brevity, narrative selection, and focus for commemorative and edificational purpose) to achieve variations in tone and perspective. The heroines, however, are exempla of human, not…
Seymour, M. C.
Review of English Studies 37 (1986): 528-34.
Argues that missing quires, rather than Chaucer's abandonment of LGW, account for its incompleteness and that a redactor, not Chaucer, revised LGWP in MS Gg.4.27.
Although earlier Christian comment (especially Augustine's) blames Lucrece for being motivated by love of reputation, English chroniclers and the "classicizing" friars variously reworked her story. The views of Ridevall and Higden, reasserting…
CT Fragment VII illustrates and undercuts the Aristotelian causes of literature. Thus, ShT demonstrates the near efficient cause, the teller; PrT, the remote cause, God. Chaucer-the-Pilgrim, the final cause, separates delight and instruction in Th…
Fujiki, Takayoshi.
Shukugawa Studies in Linguistics and Literature 4 (1980): 1-13.
The puzzling character of the earthly love and life of human beings is what PF tries to explore and discover. Chaucer revealed an irrational aspect of humanity in this work.
Sánchez Martí, Jordi.
Journal of English Studies 3 : 217-36, 2001-02.
Applies modern translation theories to Rom, identifying Chaucer's goal of testing the "capacity of English to attain higher spheres of expression." Far from being a servile translator, Chaucer composed a "metapoem" with a range of translational…
A. A. MacDonald's objection to reading "woman" for "wo man" in line 847 of MLT is a misunderstanding of a more fundamental problem--that traditional attitudes toward gender may have played a part in separating two letters in a context wherein certain…
"Thy wo and any wo man may sustene" is always printed thus, perhaps because the Ellesmere MS has a virgule between "wo" and "man." Hengwrt does not include a virgule, and a persuasive case can be made for printing "Thy wo, and any woman may…
MacDonald, Alasdair A.
Chaucer Review 22 (1988): 246-49.
John C. Hirsh's proposed emendation of "wo man" to "woman" in MLT 847 is probably unwarranted. Consideration of manuscript evidence, as well as syntax and cultural context, render Hirsh's reading implausible.
Haahr, Joan G.
Helen R. Lemay, ed. Homo Carnalis: The Carnal Aspect of Medieval Human Life. Acta 14 (1990, for 1987): 105-20.
The Wife of Bath (the female counterpart of the "senex amans") stands in opposition to the Husband-Merchant in MerT. They are "mercantile figures of similar status and class," the Wife involved in production, the Merchant in export. Each sees sex…
Interprets the pear and enclosed garden of MerT by the Christian iconography of a medieval painting of Saint Barbara in an enclosed garden. Lloyd finds both January and May choosing the garden of pleasure over the love of Christ or of Mary.
Encourages separation of teller and tale in interpreting CT, reading MerT in light of its sources but not MerP. The narrator of the Tale identifies more with Justinus than with January and shows "a measure of sympathy" for May. In this way the Tale…
Argues that Boccaccio's "Decameron" influenced MerT deeply, even though it may not be the primary source of the plot. The characterizations of MerT (especially the "mental blindness" of January) are more like those in "Decameron" 7.9 than those in…
Proposes that "upon the viritoot," often glossed as "to be astir," actually means "fairy toot," a common topological expression from England. This second meaning suggests that Gervase the smith, speculating on why the angry Absolon has appeared to…
