Creekmore, Hubert, ed.
New York: Grove Press, 1959.
Anthologizes samples of Greek, Latin, Provençal, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, Welsh, Irish, Norse, Danish, Dutch, German, and Old and Middle English verse--generally in modern English translation--from the fifth to the fifteenth century. The…
Identifies an early modern allusion to Chaucer and CYT (by Hugh Platt) and one on dreams and, possibly, NPT (by William Vaughan), neither previously noted.
Birney, Earle.
Notes and Queries 204 (1959): 345-47.
Clarifies the Franklin's "morning dish" of a "wine-sop," suggesting dietary or medicinal implications necessary to compensate for his culinary excesses.
Reads FrT as "one of Chaucer's more carefully worked and closely unified poems, and, . . . one of his most dramatic." Focuses on the poem's "Faustian situation," its '"unusual withholding of the denouement," and "its moral implication," exploring…
Explicates GP 1.673 (not 1.163, as in title), adding depth to the multiple, generally sexual innuendoes of the "stif burdoun" borne by the Summoner to accompany the Pardoner's song.
Traces developments in Chaucer's "attitude to love" as reflected in his narrative personae in BD, LGWP, PF, HF, and TC, assessing this attitude in light of the courtly, Chartrian, and neo-Platonic standards of works by Alain de Lille, Jean de Meun,…
Benjamin, Edwin B.
Philological Quarterly 38 (1959): 119-24.
Attributes the disruption of order in the plot of FranT to Dorigen's pride and "indecisiveness" and to Aurelius's "moral flaw" and use of "unlawful" magic. Order is reinstated by means of seriatim "self-sacrifice" triggered by the "manly firmness" of…
Argues that the "key fact" in Chaucer's satiric GP description of the Monk is that he is an "outrider," allowing leeway for suggestive details about diet, hunting, and other worldly concerns. Fabricates a fictional dialogue between the Monk and the…
Argues that the Reeve's efforts to represent himself as respectable are mirrored in the characterization of Symkin in RvT, and Malyne's "repressed subjectivity" reveals Symkin's over-simplified, patristic notions self-definition.
Fludernik, Monika.
David Herman, ed. The Emergence of Mind: Representations of Consciousness in Narrative Discourse in English (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2011), pp. 69-100.
Shows that modern understandings of and distinctions among speech, thought, and signifying gesture do not necessarily obtain in Middle English discourse, and that Middle English literature "displays much more extensive narrative depictions of…
Watkins, John.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995.
Includes discussion of how Chaucer's influence on Spenser's works inflects the Virgilian "epic paradigm" of the Renaissance poet, observing how in his treatments of Dido in HF and LGW Chaucer "figures his poetic identity . . . in terms of…
Bellhouse, D. R.
Franklin, J.
International Statistical Review 65 (1997): 73-85.
Tallies possible evidence of "early probability calculus" in Middle English literature and its lexicon, including discussion of examples from John Gower, John Lydgate, and PardT. In the latter, line 6.653, chances in dicing are "events which had the…
Spicer, Paul.
In Paul Spicer. Sir George Dyson: His Life and Music (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), pp. 160-87.
Includes appreciative summary-description of Dyson's 1931 choral arrangement, "The Canterbury Pilgrims," with comments on its reception and relationship with GP.
Simons, John.
Literature and History, 2d ser., 1, no. 2 (1990): 4-12.
Shows how close is the "bond between literary culture and the ideology and practice of domination enshrined in judicial controls" in late-medieval England after the Black Death. Summarizes statues of labor, taxation, and responses to the Uprising of…
Parkin, Gabrielle.
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Delaware, 2014. Dissertation Abstracts International 84.02(E) (2022).
Explores the agency of objects in medieval understanding, focusing on this concern in books of hours, Margery Kempe, the Tale of Albinus and Rosemund in Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and the stone idol in SNT.
In a section exploring "epic masculinity" in the age of Marlowe, suggests that Chaucer's depiction of Aeneas in LGW and HF anticipates humanist "rethinking" about the hero, that Chaucer "greatly influenced" Marlowe's depiction of him in "Dido, Queen…
Offers a theoretical model for representing language—both oral and literary—and analyzes various modes of discourse such as direct discourse, free indirect discourse, dual voicing, etc. Observes at one point (p. 369) that "Chaucer's free indirect…
Luria, Maxwell.
Dissertation Abstracts 26 (1966): 5439. Full text accessible at ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global; accessed September 14, 2023.
Includes discussion of relations between "storm motifs" and "traditional attitudes towards love (conceived broadly as the relationship between man and the objects of his desire)" in various medieval texts, including BD, TC, MilT, MLT, and ABC.
Richmond, Velma Bourgeois.
Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1966.
Studies the backgrounds and characteristics of literary laments for the dead and includes a survey of Chaucer's knowledge of and uses of the topos: his reference to Geoffrey Vinsauf's lament for Richard in NPT 7.3347ff., and several brief instances…
Badessa, Richard Paul.
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Indiana, 1967. Dissertation Abstracts International 28.10 (1968): 4114A. Full-text access at ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global; accessed September 14, 2023.
Surveys the conventions of English and French courtly literature, emphasizing backgrounds, setting, plot structure, the contributions of Machaut and Froissart, and the influence of the "Pearl." A closing chapter on BD explores how and in what ways…
Whiting, Bartlett Jere, with the collaboration of Helen Wescott Whiting
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1968.
Lists proverbs, proverbial phrases, and sententia from early English writings, arranged alphabetically by topic, with quotations and citations of multiple occurrences in chronological order and indexes of important words and proper nouns. Chaucer is…
Pichaske, David Richard.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Ohio University, 1968. Dissertation Abstracts International 30 (1970): 3953A.
Distinguishes between "the Aesopic and the Reynardian" fable traditions, their uses in the sermon tradition, and their impact on various medieval and Renaissance English literary works, including NPT.
Reiss, Edmund.
Medievalia et Humanistica 1 (1970): 161-74.
Includes brief comments (pp. 168-69) on Chaucer's use of the number 29 in GP and ParsP, and, in BD, on the use of 8 (Octovyen) and references to Argus (the "Arab mathematician Al-Kwārizm") and number symbolism.
