Edits and translates a hitherto unknown Anglo-Norman analogue to PrT. The "Hugo de Lincolnia" is the only vernacular version of the story of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln produced contemporaneously with Chaucer's hagiographical tale.
Benson, C. David.
American Benedictine Review 24 (1973): 299-312.
Demonstrates that John Lydgate's modifications of his sources in his "Troy Book" result in a "convincing picture of the ancient world," although Lydgate did not achieve the superior historical texture that Chaucer produced in KnT.
Brook suggests that Sir Paon de Ruet may have been "a cadet of the family of the Lords of Roeulx" and part of the entourage of Philippa of Hainaut. He was probably born about 1309.
Dawkins, Richard.
Boston and New York : Houghton Mifflin, 2004.
Dawkins uses the frame-and-tale structure of CT to organize a series of excurses on evolution and the development of biological life. Recurrent references to Chaucer and CT, with brief discussion on evolutionary biology as a model in the Canterbury…
Wilson, G. R., Jr.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language14 (1972): 381-88.
Charts the development of the dreamer in BD from concern with abstract grief to concern with real grief and from selfishness to concern for others; this progress effects "a detailed anatomy of compassion" that encourages compassion in Chaucer's…
Medieval allegory "prefigures cinematic consciousness." In Wegener's film "Der Golem," "Judaeo-Christian figural allegory, coupled with the narratology and the phenomenology of film," shifts "the deep past into the present in centrifugal, shocking,…
Heyworth, Gregory George.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 4375A, 2001.
Transmission of ancient Greek and Roman culture through Ovid to later tradition affected romance and shaped attitudes in popular literature. Heyworth discusses works by Marie de France, Chrétien de Troyes, Chaucer (with emphasis on politics in the…
Explores the combination of religion and secularity in ClT, discussing its fusion of ideals and practical realities as Chaucer's means to increase the ambivalences of his sources. The tension between the Clerk's moralization of the Tale and its…
Morrow, Patrick D.
Patrick D. Morrow. Tradition, Undercut, and Discovery: Eight Essays on British Literature (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1980), pp. 16-36.
Adjustments to the traditional narrative in ClT compel us to read Walter, Griselda, and the "peple" as complex characters, rich in ambiguity, in a setting that "moves between an ideal and real world" (27). These complications enrich the simple…
Reiner, Emily.
Dissertation Abstracts International A71.04 (2010): n.p.
Investigates various characterizations of Greeks in Old French and Middle English, including that of Diomede in TC, a depiction "informed by classical ideas and Chaucer's depictions of Jews and Saracens in other works." Troilus, in contrast, is…
Nakao assesses the use of "as she that" as it is applied to Criseyde, identifying the unusually high frequency of the phrase in TC, its various functions and semantic range, and the way that Chaucer exploits this variety "to hold in balance his…
North, John.
New York: Hambledon and London, 2002.
Examines the "highly contrived" allegory of Hans Holbein's painting, "The Ambassadors" (1533), assessing its religious theme as conveyed through evocations of "astronomy and geometry, optics and various occult arts." Also argues that the painting…
Manuscript evidence indicates that only after Chaucer's death did editors assemble copies of individual tales and links to arrange the fragments (reflecting various stages of development in Chaucer's plan) into their differing ideas of a coherent…
Osberg, Richard H.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 76 (1977): 40-54.
The large amount of alliteration in narrative and lyric poetry of the courtly tradition, including Chaucer's poetry, is derived from certain veins of devotional prose of the thirteenth century.
Singh, Catherine.
Leeds Studies in English 7 (1973): 22-54.
Claims that William Dunbar's debt to Chaucer (WBPT) in his "Tua Meriit Wemen and the Wedo, "although "important and considerable, is often exaggerated beyond helpfulness." The poem owes a great deal to earlier alliterative poetry, in particular…
Reads Mel as a "moral allegory," identifying where (in relative degrees) Chaucer and his sources encourage peaceable Christian humility and reliance upon on God's aid rather than self-assertive militancy in resisting the world, the flesh, and the…
Shynne, Gwanghyun.
Journal of English Language and Literature 42 (1996): 3-21.
The allegory of ParsPT assumes that literature can somehow represent truth, while the theology of ParsPT emphasizes the impossibility of humanity's comprehending such truth. Ret espouses a mediating negative allegory that indicates divine…
Little, Frances.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1989): 3358A-3359A.
Protagonist and narrative are usually aligned in medieval literature, but the protagonist is alienated from the narrative when his or her ethos conflicts with generic context, as in Chaucer's TC and CYT and in works of Malory and Hoccleve, among…
Taylor, Paul Beekman.
Chaucer Review 17 (1982): 1-4.
"Zephirus" and "licour" are not merely stylistic adornment but referential as well. The words evoke alchemical change and purification, themes that run through many of the tales and conclude the collection in ParsT with spiritual rebirth.
Collette, Carolyn P.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 243-48.
Collette offers Umberto Eco's notion of a "rhizome labyrinth's indefinite structure" as a heuristic tool for describing the relationship of a text to its "cultural matrix" rather than to specific sources. Focuses on CYT.
Burt, Kathleen.
South Atlantic Review 86, no. 1 (2021): 58-76.
Anatomizes the theme and structures of failure in CYPT, contrasting the Canon's Yeoman and Chaucer-pilgrim as narrators, and tallying ways that failure dominates the narrative: failed science, failed rhetoric, failed comedy, failed moralizing, and…
Ziolkowski, Theodore.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Surveys the figure of the alchemist and the uses of alchemical imagery in western literature, focusing on how satire and trivialization of the subject gave way to more esoteric uses, especially as the practice of alchemy gave way to chemistry.…
