Schrock, Chad.
Modern Language Review 114 (2019): 643-61.
Examines biblical images, allusions, themes, and narrative patterns in MilPT, exploring various ways that the Miller and Nicholas appropriate the Bible's "authority for personal rhetorical ends." Chaucer's providence-like control of his material is…
Kamowski, William F.
Dissertation Abstracts International 45 (1985): 3645A.
Aware that he was writing in an increasingly literate milieu, Chaucer adapted his text to listening or reading audiences. A development is traced through TC, LGW, CT.
Exemplifies Chaucer's "homely vocabulary" and "naturalistic choice of words," identifying roots in both French and native English, and commenting on instances of idiomatic phrases, rogues' speech, "zesty vocabulary," "oaths and imprecations," sexual…
Glowka, Arthur W.
Language Quarterly 21 (1983): 15-17.
In PF, NPT, TC, ManT, and MerT, Chaucer uses onomatopoeic bird talk for puns, verbal wit, irony, e.g., finds hints in MerT of May as turtle-dove-cuckoo.
Rowland, Beryl.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in honour of Rossell Hope Robbins (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974), pp. 43-55.
Identifies elements of MilT that burlesque the Annunciation, the Incarnation, and the Flood, explaining imagery and allusions derived from the biblical narratives and mystery plays.
An edition and translation of "Filostrato," "Teseida" (excerpts), and "Filocolo" 4.31-34 (excerpts). Includes introduction, bibliography, notes, index of personal names, and three appendices: "The Fortunes of Troilus"; Benoit de Sainte-Maure,…
Shoaf, [Richard] Allen.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2001.
Chaucer's use of metonymy in CT expresses his "anxiety of circulation," which is traced through his references to the fragmented body and bodily functions, infection, magic, rhetoric, and translation. Shoaf examines relationships among tales,…
Aertsen, Henk.
Matti Rissanen and et al, eds. History of Englishes: New Methods and Interpretations in Historical Linguistics. Topics in English Linguistics, no. 10 (Berlin and New York: Gruyter, 1992), pp. 671-87.
The syntactical and lexical innovations in Bo suggest that Chaucer followed Jean de Meun's principles of "open translation" for rendering Latin into the vernacular; similar principles were articulated in the Prologue to the later version of the…
Shimonomoto, Keiko.
Keiko Shimonomoto. The Use of Ye and Thou in the Canterbury Tales, and Collected Articles (Tokyo: Waseda University Enterprise, 2001), pp. 83-92.
Originally published in the Journal of Liberal Arts (Waseda University) 100 (1996), the article surveys criticism of Chaucer's prose style in Bo. Shimonomoto calls for more appropriate discourse analysis, examining two passages in which Chaucer uses…
Carlson, David R.
Robert Taylor, James F. Burke, Patricia J. Eberle, Ian Lancashire, and Brian S. Merrilees, eds. The Centre and Its Compass: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Professor John Leyerle (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1993), pp. 29-70.
Usk's "Testament of Love" relies on Chaucer's translation of Bo and his literary reworking of philosophy in TC, but it reflects even more significantly Chaucer's innovations in writing nondevotional, apolitical, self-consciously literary prose texts.
Examines the manuscript and editorial traditions of BD to argue for a new edition, based on MS Tanner 346, sensitive to the poem's octosyllabic meter and aware of scribal contamination. Suggests a number of emendations.
Rasovic, Tiffany
Year's Work in Medievalism 14: 67-79, 1999.
Explores in BD Chaucer's attitudes toward language and its (in)ability to communicate successfully. The skepticism or nominalism of BD is modified by indications of the power of "extra-linguistic" symbols and signs, providing some "rescue from…
Knight, Stephen.
Leeds Studies in English 20 (1989): 87-98.
A "correlative study" of the near contemporaries, Chaucer and Dafydd ap Gwilym, comparing their formal and linguistic innovations, their respective social standings and concerns with mercantilism and politics, and their relative concern with nature…
Employs critical race studies and adaptation studies to trace the role and frequency of "somatic brownness" in CT and Rom. Considers brownness as a racial category that is capacious, before tracing "Chaucerian brownness" in several modern…
Explores the characterization of the Canon in CYP and the first part of CYT, arguing that he is embarrassed at being a "simple puffer" and not an illuminati of the alchemical arts--"a pathetic if not a tragic figure, broken through following a…
Whittock, T. G.
Theoria: A Journal of Studies 24 (1965): 13-26.
Describes the major theme of CYPT as "the misuse of men's intelligence in the obsessive pursuit of false and meretricious goals," asserting Chaucer's success in creating an "allegorical superstructure" while maintain the "credibility of the specific…
Beidler, Peter G.
Seattle: Coffeetown Press, 2011.
Reprints twenty of Beidler's previously published essays on MilT, WBT, ShT, MerT, and PardT, with an explanatory Preface by Beidler (vii-ix) and a Foreword by Holly A. Crocker (x-xvi) that gauges Beidler's notion of originality and comedy. Includes…
Gillam, Doreen M. E.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 88 (1987): 192-99.
The charged "psychological context" of the GP description of the Pardoner as a mare can be partly reconstructed on linguistic evidence. Later English usage, as well as earlier French and Old Norse citations, indicates that the noun commonly meant…
Burrow, J. A.
Essays in Criticism 36 (1986): 97-119.
ManP reveals Chaucer's art at its most assured. The Host, Manciple, and Cook are united by their role in London's catering trade, and their exchange in the passage shows the Manciple as a blend of malice and circumspection, the Cook as a carnival…
Ginsberg, Warren.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 18 (1996): 55-89.
Irony and allegory displace meaning in opposite directions, and in ManP they conspire to simultaneous affirmation and negation. Like Christ's parable of the wicked servant (Luke 16:1-9), the Manciple's verbal assault on the Cook indicates the way to…
Newstead, Helaine.
J. Burke Severs, ed. Recent Middle English Scholarship and Criticism: Survey and Desiderata (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 1971), 97-107.
Identifies trends in Chaucer criticism from ca. 1950-1970, observing attention paid to his religious views, rhetoric, style, and poetics, with comments on individual studies.
Manuscript compilations, especially the Auchinleck MS, are structural analogues to CT. Manuscripts segmented into booklets parallel the fragments in CT in four ways: segments vary considerably in size and shape; common subjects and themes link…
