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Chaucer's Reticent Merchant
Taylor, Karla.
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 189-205.
Reticence shapes the relations between narrator and audience in the Merchant's portrait in GP, where the importance of the unexpressed first surfaces, and in MerT. The rhetorical figure of reticence depends on the reader's cooperation.
The Bodies of Jews in the Late Middle Ages
Kruger Steven F.
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 301-23.
Considers how the bodies of Jews are related to Christian bodily miracles in Chaucer's PrT and the Croxton "Play of the Sacrament." Kruger clarifies the relation between the positive valuation of the body in late-medieval spirituality and the attack…
Love and Disorder: A Fifteenth-Century Definition of Love and Some Literary Antecedents
Moser, Thomas C., Jr.
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 243-64.
Analyzes a lyric with the invented title of "Inordinate Love Defined," which appears uniquely on the final leaf of a fifteenth-century manuscript, Copenhagen Thott 110, in the Royal Library. Also discusses briefly a lyric fragment of TC (1.400-406).
The Textual Environment of Chaucer's 'Lak of Stedfastnesse'
Strohm, Paul.
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 129-48. Also in Paul Strohm. Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 57-74.
Sted reflects the same ideology as Richard II's contemporaneous program to disenfranchise the Lords Appellate. Both manipulate the assumption that sworn-oath, liveried affinities threaten social stability. Strohm delineates the political and social…
Treason in the Household
Strohm, Paul.
Paul Strohm, with an Appendix by A. J. Prescott. Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 121-44.
The statutory redefinition of treason in 1352 and a case of domestic treason in 1387 (Elizabeth Wauton) suggest that Chaucer conceived the Wife of Bath to be a household traitor, one whose insurrections against her husbands are analogous to broader…
Queens as Intercessors
Strohm, Paul.
Paul Strohm, with an Appendix by A. J. Prescott. Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 95-119.
Assesses the intercessory roles of Phillippa and Anne in pleading, respectively, for the burghers of Calais and the citizens of London. Analyzes the ideology of intercessory discourse in Chaucer's pleading queens, especially Alceste in LGWP, who…
Saving the Appearances: Chaucer's 'Purse' and the Fabrication of the Lancaster Claim
Strohm, Paul.
Paul Strohm, with an appendix by A.J. Prescott. Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 75-94. Also in Barbara Hanawalt, ed. Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), p. 21-40.
Discusses the tenuous nature of Henry's early success in usurping Richard's crown and his program of enlisting writers in support of his cause. The last stanza of Purse reflects the political assumptions that underpinned Henry's claims to the…
Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context
Hanawalt, Barbara A., ed.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992.
Ten essays explore the intersection between history and literature in Chaucer's lifetime; issues of class, gender, and politics are recurrent concerns. One essay on literature and Richard II's court, two on Langland, one on medieval hunting, and one…
The Court of Richard II and the Promotion of Literature
Bennett, Michael J.
Barbara A. Hanawalt, ed. Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), pp. 3-20.
Richard's court was important as a cultural force in England's first "golden age" of literature. Members of his coterie were the first audience of poets such as Chaucer and Gower, and it seems likely that his travels were related to the production…
The Writing Lesson of 1381
Crane, Susan.
Barbara A. Hanawalt, ed. Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), pp. 201-21.
Asserts the importance of assaults on written documents in the so-called Peasants' Revolt of 1381, exploring the hegemony that writing represented to the rebels. Assesses how Langland's revisions of Piers Plowman reflect his concerns with the…
Chaucer and Gentility
Saul, Nigel.
Barbara A. Hanawalt, ed. Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), pp. 41-55.
Chaucer views gentility as a matter of virtue rather than of birth or economics, reflecting contemporary shifts in aristocratic lifestyles. Italian influences and decreasing military service made it necessary for the aristocracy to redefine…
Chaucer and the Absent City
Wallace, David.
Barbara A. Hanawalt, ed. Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), pp. 59-90.
Contrasts Chaucer's depiction of London's social tensions in CT with Boccaccio's depiction of Florence's unity in Decameron 6.2, Pampinea's story of Cisti. The duplicities and deceptions of CkT and CYT (at odds with the Host's governance) are like…
The Reign of Edward III: Crown and Political Society in England, 1327-1377
Ormrod, W. M.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1990.
Analyzes the contribution of Edward III to England's growth as a nation, emphasizing such institutional changes as the development of the Commons in Parliament, the emergence of a systematic exchequer, and the commissioning of justices of the peace. …
Liebe als Krankheit
Reichl, Karl.
Theo Stemmler, ed. Liebe als Krankheit: 3. Kolloquium der Forschungsstelle fur europaische Lyrik des Mittelalters an der Universitat Mannheim (Tubingen: Narr, 1990), pp. 187-215.
Surveys the forms and conventions of Middle English lyrics that treat love-sickness, including MercB, and those in TC and KnT.
'Amor hereos' als medizinischer Terminus technicus in der Antike und im Mittelalter
Haage Bernhard D.
Theo Stemmler, ed. Liebe als Krankheit: 3. Kolloquium der Forschungsstelle fur europaische Lyrik des Mittelalters an der Universitat Mannheim (Tubingen: Narr, 1990), pp. 31-73.
Examines "amor hereos" as a medical phrase, identifying its roots in classical tradition and tracing its development in the humoural tradition of the Mid-East and Western Europe.
Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts
Strohm, Paul. With an appendix by A. J. Prescott.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1992.
An introduction and seven essays explore the mutual contingency of history and literature in late-medieval England. The collection interprets historical texts for contemporary attitudes and ideologies, discovering, for example, the "carnivalesque"…
Liebe als Krankheit: 3. Kolloquium der Forschungsstelle fur europaische Lyrik des Mittelalters an der Universitat Mannheim
Stemmler, Theo, ed.
Tubingen: Narr, 1990.
Nine essays by various authors on love-sickness in classical and medieval literature. The essays discuss the topos in medicine, classical writing, medieval Latin, Islamic writing, troubadour poetry, ansd medieval vernacular languages: Spanish,…
Chaucer's Religiosity and a Twentieth-Century Analogue, Muriel Spark
Richmond, Velma Bourgeois.
Modern Language Quarterly 51 (1990): 427-45.
Modern discussions of Chaucer and Spark deemphasize the clear religious strains in their fictions. The grotesque, the absurd, and the aberrant are present in both as worldly flaws requiring divine transcendence.
Geoffrey Chaucer
Richmond, Velma Bourgeois.
New York: Continuum, 1992.
Biographical review; consideration of the fourteenth-century cultural context; and critical discussion of all of Chaucer's works. Half of the chapters are devoted to the CT, divided by subject and tone into secular romances, fabliaux, religious…
Dido, Emily, and Constance: Femininity and Subversion in the Mature Chaucer
Russell, J. Stephen.
Medieval Perspectives 1 (1988, for 1986): 65-74.
Chaucer's Dido, Emelye, and Custance differ from their respective literary ancestors. In each case, Chaucer gives to his heroine a significant speech or set of speeches that subverts the narrative in which she appears, counterpointing the dominant…
Wife's Prologue/Christine
Newman, Barbara.
Medieval Feminist Newsletter 9 (1990): 18.
Brief comments about "pairing" WBP and Christine de Pizan in the classroom; mentions the Wife's "deliberate misreading, invective, and outright mockery" of misogynistic writing, and Chaucer's irony that "slices Jerome and the Wife with a single…
Voices in Translation: The Authority of "Olde Bookes" in Medieval Literature
Sinnreich-Levi, Deborah M., and Gale Sigal, eds.
New York: AMS, 1992.
This collection of fourteen essays honors Helaine Newstead and focuses on the sources--primarily Celtic--of Arthurian literature. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Voices in Translation under Alternative Title. …
The Romance of Anxiety in Chaucer's Franklin's Tale
Martin, Ellen E.
Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi and Gale Sigal, eds. Voices in Translation: The Authority of "Olde Bookes" in Medieval Literature (New York: AMS, 1992), pp. 117-36.
Capitalizing on foregoing treatment of fidelity and intention, the ending of FranT poses a hypothetical and interminable debate over reading the characters. In this concluding turn, Chaucer points up an essential link between the characters' selves…
Benighted Love in Troy: Dawn and the Dual Negativity of Love
Sigal, Gale.
Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi and Gale Sigal, eds. Voices in Translation: The Authority of "Olde Bookes" in Medieval Literature (New York: AMS, 1992), pp. 191-205.
Through their dramatic rendering of the lovers' discrepant responses to the coming of dawn, the aubades in TC highlight the tempermental differences of the characters and prefigure their separate, though intertwined, fates.
England in The Reign of Edward III
Waugh, Scott L.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
A descriptive political history of Edward's reign that explores how his personality and style of ruling were crucial to the development of political order and various domestic institutions. Pt. 1 surveys major events of Edward's reign; pts. 2 and 3…