Stone, Russell.
Medievalia et Humanistica 42 (2017): 23-42.
Observes that Chaucer's treatment of Alexander in MkT is largely consistent with how Alexander is depicted in fourteenth-century romances and monastic allusions. Suggests that Chaucer declines to condemn Alexander as an unworthy pagan, despite being…
Takada, Yasunari.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 73 (2010): 55-65.
Argues that Chaucer is "constitutionally sensitive" to intellectual realism, preferring sensory experientialism instead. In BD, as in HF and PF, inconclusiveness and tentativeness defer rather than console and encourage a "broader mundane…
Black, Robert.
Revue de l'Universite d'Ottawa 55:1 (1985): 23-32.
MilT 3589-92 alludes to Matt. 5:27-30, where Christ condemns lechery, using the images of hand and eye. Chaucer uses the same imagery to condemn the lecher Nicholas, whose punishment is to be burned a "hand-brede aboute" his "nether ye." The same…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
ERA [English Research Association of Hiroshima] 6.1: 14-49, 1988.
Discusses Chaucer's ambiguous use of words such as "sely," "gentil," and "pite" in LGW, clarifying the gap between efforts to define "good women" and their human weaknesses.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Yoshiyuki Nakao and Akiyuki Jimura, eds. Originality and Adventure: Essays on English Language and Literature in Honour of Masahiko Kanno (Tokyo: Eihosha, 2001), pp. 225-59.
Discusses how and why ambiguity is likely in TC, focusing on the relations between verbal elements such as contiguous structure.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Osamu Imahayashi, Yoshiyuki Nakao, and Michiko Ogura, eds. Aspects of the History of the English Language and Literature: Selected Papers Read at SHELL 2009, Hiroshima (New York; Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 143-57.
Draws from TC examples of how voice contributes to ambiguity, considering how "suprasegmentals" and various phonetic and prosodic features contribute to voice.
Matthews, David.
American Literary History 22 (2010): 758-72.
Matthews considers ways of distinguishing between "medieval studies" and "medievalism" (relating the latter to "antimodernism") and assesses how late nineteenth-century American study of Chaucer "problematizes" the terms. The article contrasts…
Pearcy, Roy J.
English Language Notes 41.4 (2004): 1-10.
Pearcy traces the history and literary use of amphibology-'in Chaucer, a statement capable of two interpretations, uttered by a speaker with supernatural or oracular powers to a listener who can perceive only a meaning at variance with the true…
Matheson, Lister M.
Chaucer Review 25 (1991): 171-89.
An examination of Chaucer's original family name, Malyn, casts doubt on previous claims that Chaucer's family was involved in leather making. For social and commercial reasons, Chaucer was a more acceptable surname. Chaucer used Malyn or its…
Hays, Peter.
English Language Notes 38: 57-64, 2001.
Chaucer's MerT may have influenced William Faulkner's "The Sound and the Fury." Each work presents the pear tree as a central symbol in a plot focused on greed and deception, one comic and the other tragic. Chaucer's and Faulkner's narratives also…
Weiher, Carol.
English Language Notes 14 (1976): 7-9.
Gower's tales of Lucretia and Virginia in "Confessio Amantis" VII are exempla of the fates of lecherous rulers; however, Chaucer's versions of these stories (in LGW and PhyT, respectively) focus, not on the villains, but instead on the admirable…
Robertson, Elizabeth.
Bettina Bildhauer and Chris Jones, eds. The Middle Ages in the Modern World: Twenty-First Century Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), pp. 219-38.
Examines Chaucer's impact on medievalisms of early and later Romantic English poets. Portrays Chaucer's influence on Wordsworth, not only in deliberately medievalist work, but throughout his corpus, focusing on daisies and their presentations in text…
Shikii, Kumiko.
The Fleur-de-Lis Review (December 25, 1980): 25-54.
Chaucer's Monk is by no means an ideal clergyman. He is one of the best targets of Chaucer's satire. He shows the degenerating status of the Church and the religious orders, to remind the readers of the need of renovation from within.
Scheps, Walter
Leeds Studies in English 4 (1970): 1-10.
Argues that the rational absurdity of the plot of NPT and the inapplicability of the various morals applied to the Tale expose the ridiculousness of the fable genre; the Tale is an "anti-fable," as Th is an "anti-romance."
Oberembt, Kenneth J.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 287-302.
The Wife of Bath first weakens the conventional notion of men as reasonable and women as sensual by showing how sensual and unworthy of sovereignty were her five husbands. Then she overthrows this notion when her own feminine-sensual image dissolves…
Brewer, Derek.
Uwe Boker, Manfred Markus, and Ranier Schowerling, eds. The Living Middle Ages: Studies in Mediaeval English Literature and Its Tradition (Stuttgart: Belser, 1989), pp. 115-28.
Certain characteristics of Chaucer's poetry resulted from the influence of the court of Richard II, but paradoxically "in reaction against Richard." Brewer refutes Gervase Mathews's claim for a high state of culture and its influence in the reign of…
Chiappelli, Carolyn Pace.
Dissertation Abstracts International 38 (1978): 4839A.
The opposition of knowledge in HF suggests the fourteenth-century reaction to the scholastic efforts of the thirteenth century to forge a synthesis between reason and faith. However, this dissertation does not argue that Chaucer was a reformer. The…
SqT illustrates how "a poet may come to poetic and prosodic mastery." Chaucer's conscious creation of an inept teller who overuses or misuses rhyme, enjambment, and caesura illustrates the difficult process of maturing as a poet.
Nist, John.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 15 (1970): 85-98.
Discusses apostrophe as speech (or writing) that is "'overheard' rather than merely heard," assessing it as a "powerful esthetic instrument for plumbing the emotional and emotive depths" of literary characters through "overheardedness." Comments on…
Chaucer's knowledge of medieval mathematical imagery is evident in several ways, beginning with his reference to "Argus, the noble countour," who is Algus, the great Arab mathematician Al-Khwarizmi. By refiguring the beginnings and endings of…
Kuhn, Sherman M.
Wolf-Dietrich Bald and Horst Weinstock, eds. Medieval Studies Conference Aachen 1983 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984), pp. 85-102.
Since the noun "armee" or a variant appears in the "best" and earliest Chaucer manuscripts and was used in Old French and Middle English, "armee" (rather than "aryve") is probably the word Chaucer intended in GP 60.
Parr, Roger P.
Studies in Medieval Culture 4 (1974): 428-36.
Chaucer's art of characterization is an act of poetic creation rather than the mere use of rhetorical convention. By employing rhetorical devices which vivify emotion and intensify dramatic action, or which infuse suggestion of movement, Chaucer…
