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.…
Sigal, Gale.
John M. Hill and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds. The Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages: Reconstructive Polyphony. Essays in Honor of Robert O. Payne (Madison, N.J., and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 2000 ), pp. 221-40.
The twelfth-century alba genre offered a more flexible paradigm for gender roles than critics have realized, a flexibility that Chaucer, in his appropriation of the alba in TC, continues and capitalizes on as he highlights the lovers' differences in…
Krier, Theresa M.
Theresa M. Krier, ed. Refiguring Chaucer in the Renaissance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 165-88.
PF and "Love's Labours Lost" develop similar relations between lyrics and poetic or dramatic narratives. Shakespeare emulated Chaucer's movement from narrative to song--a psychoanalytic release from courtly or social constraint into "cosmic,…
Brewer, Derek S.
Studies in English Literature (Tokyo), English Number (1972): 3-15.
Comments on the ambiguities and implications of the ages of the protagonists in TC, considering evidence that indicates Troilus is "twenty or less," Criseyde, "several years older," and Pandarus, a "middle-aged trendy."
Deals with medieval systems of dividing life into ages, with ages based on time divisions, and with exhortations to overcome the difficulties of various ages and to act one's age. Discusses the GP Squire as a youth, the Wife of Bath's youth, old…
Brown, Peter, and Andrew Butcher.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Examines CT within the social and political life of the later fourteenth century. Chaucer had an unusually assimilative, syncretic, and integrative imagination, but he lived at a time of disintegrating social and religious forms and values. He was…
Jenkins, Simon.
A Short History of London: The Creation of a World Capital ([London]: Viking, 2019), pp. 33-42.
Chapter 4 of a social history of London, with emphasis on the plague, the status of the Church, the vivid characterizations of CT as a "window on the world . . . in all its richness," and Richard Whittington's mayoralty. Also published in The City on…
Item not seen; the single WorldCat record states that this is a filmstrip for children, with "Photographs of original pictures and the English countryside [that] illustrate life in the Middle Ages in England."
Interactive audio/video presentations on a series of historical and literary topics that relate to Chaucer, designed for classroom use. Includes nine presentations: "Interview with Chaucer," "Medieval London," "Chaucer Abroad: France," "Chaucer…
Allen, Valerie.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Introduction and study guide to Chaucer and his works (especially CT), with emphasis on connections with contemporaneous history and literature. Includes advice on how to approach medieval texts; extracts from the literature with discussion; a …
Evans, Ruth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 263-70.
Considers the implications of source study and its revitalization in response to recent theory, raising questions about its (possibly irreconcilable) relationships with intertextuality, "genetic criticism," invention, translation, and electronic…
Edwards, Suzanne M.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Investigates the "discourses of [rape] survival" in medieval literature and its historical contexts, addressing the aftereffects of rape as they are depicted in saints' lives, anchoritic literature, accounts of raped wives (particularly Lucretia in…
Fowler, Elizabeth.
Thomas C. Stillinger, ed. Critical Essays on Geoffrey Chaucer (New York: G. K. Hall; London: Prentice Hall International, 1998), pp. 59-81.
In KnT, Chaucer questions force as a basis for government. Conquest "dissolves voluntary social bonds" and fails to produce the consent necessary to a good society. An agent of force, Theseus uses rhetoric to control others, and his final speech is…
Cavin, John A., III.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1996): 198A.
Considers the opposing theories of James Thorpe and G. Thomas Tanselle and emphasizes the need for full understanding of the aesthetic of meter, as with Chaucer's "heroic" line.
Johnston, Andrew James.
Helen Fulton, ed. Chaucer and Italian Culture (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021), pp. 145-68
Explores relationship between "astrology and governance," and Chaucer's ekphrastic descriptions of classical and Italian architectural and visual arts in KnT.
