In addition to overt allusions to law and its practitioners and his depictions of legal proceedings, Chaucer weaves legal terminology into his texts and uses "embedded" references to real court cases in developing his plots and characters. Advocates…
Stadnik, Katarzyna.
SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature 23 (2018): 87-114.
Analyzes the "Legend of Dido" in LGW to reveal how narrative serves as a "cognitive tool for shaping worldviews" held within cultural communities. Discusses the "cognitive-cultural underpinnings" and strategies Chaucer uses to tell a fragmentary…
Burch, Beth.
Language Quarterly 17.3-4 (1979): 50-51.
Chaucer's version of MLT is more like Trevet's than the folktale version identified as "The Handless Maiden." If Chaucer knew this folktale version, his choice of Trevet's more sophisticated version is another tribute to his art.
Mustanoja, Tauno F.
Jess B. Bessinger, Jr., and Robert P. Creed, eds. Franciplegius: Medieval and Linguistic Studies in Honor of Francis Peabody Magoun, Jr. (New York: New York University Press, 1965), pp. 250-54.
Identifies several medieval analogues to the sentiment expressed in ManT 311-13, the earliest being the "Carmen as Astralabium Filium," attributed to Peter Abelard.
Jackson, Kate.
Leeds Studies in English 43 (2012): 93-115.
Discusses the "framing elements" of Mel, its glosses in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts (comparing them with those in ParsT), and the codicological contexts of the five fifteenth-century manuscripts of the Tale that exist "outside the story…
Harrington, David V.
Notes and Queries 209 (1964): 166-67.
Observes differences between January's reference to proverbially "sotile clerkis" (MerT 4.1427) and the Wife of Bath's reference to proverbially "parfyt" ones (WBT 3.44c; perhaps cancelled). The first is anti-clerical; the latter pro-clerical, and…
Griffith, Philip Mahone.
Explicator 16 (1957): item 13.
Assesses Chaucer's use of the name "Damian" in MerT as an allusion to St. Damian who, with his brother St. Cosmos, was associated with medical healing. Attends to a pun on "leech" (healer) in the tale.
Hench, Atcheson L.
English Language Notes 3.2 (1965): 88-92.
Argues that the phrase "been lyk a cokewold" (MilT 1.3226) means that John fears he is a cuckold, not that he will be a cuckold, observing misconstruals in editions and translations of the Tale.
Whitaker, Cord J.
Black Metaphors: How Modern Racism Emerged from Medieval Race-Thinking (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), pp. 68-88.
Explores relations among rhetorical and philosophical principles of contrariety, Alison's "freedom from consequences" in the plot of MilT, blackness and whiteness in physiognomy, and the black and white imagery in the description of Alisoun's…
Burton, T. L., and Rosemary Greentree, eds. with annotations by David Biggs, Rosemary Greentree, Hugh McGivern, David Matthews, Greg Murrie, and Dallas Simpson.
Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1997
The complete annotated bibliography of scholarly and critical treatments of "The Miller's Tale,""The Reeve's Tale,"and "The The Cook's Tale" from 1900 through 1992, subdivided into the following categories: editions, translations, and modernizations…
Goodall, Peter, ed.
Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, 2009.
A comprehensive annotated bibliography of scholarly and critical discussion of MkT and NPT, subdivided into the following categories: editions and translations; bibliographies, handbooks, and indices; manuscripts and textual studies; prosody,…
Pratt, Robert A.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 61 (1962): 244-48.
Cites the Wife of Bath's allusion to "Crisippus" (WBP 3.677) to suggest that St. Jerome's "Epistola adversus Jovinianum (1.48) is the source of Pandarus's reference to "natal Joves feste" (TC 3.150) and that the locution is part of Pandarus's…
Watkins, Charles Arnold.
Dissertation Abstracts International 28.09 (1968): 3653A.
Describes the aesthetic standards espoused by the pilgrims in CT and argues that the Nun's Priest "fits his tale to his audience even as he tries to alter the views of the audience" and tries to solve for himself the question of free will versus…
Stillwell, Gardiner.
English Studies 37 (1956): 149-57.
Maintains that Chaucer indicates that there is a "single theme" in HF, arguing that "Distrust of worldly felicity . . . is Chaucer's 'o sentence'," and hypothesizing that the poem "was written for a New Year's entertainment." Cites several…
Tagaya, Yuko.
The Society for Chaucer Studies and Koichi Kano, eds. To the Days of Studying Medieval English Literature: Essays in Memory of Professor Tadahiro Ikegami (Tokyo: Eihosha, 2021), pp. 40-56.
Considers the evil of indulgences through comparisons between PardT and its East Asian analogues. In Japanese.
Uphaus, Robert W.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 10 (1968): 349-58.
Addresses the "intentional ambiguity" of PF, arguing that it results from the tension between "discursive" and "non-discursive" aspects of the poem, a distinction derived from Susanne Langer. Uses a variety of lexical patterns and oppositions to show…
Regan, Charles Lionel.
Notes and Queries 209 (1964): 210.
Offers the "Pseudo-Augustinian treatise on penance 'De Vera et Falsa Poenitentia, Liber Una'," as the source of ParsT 10.1025 where Augustine is cited.
Argues that the language of Ret should not be understood as a modern retraction would be; expresses skepticism that Ret is actually meant to retract works like CT.
Campbell, A. P.
Revue de l'Universite d'Ottawa 35 (1965): 35-53.
Accepts Ret as earnest but impersonated, surveying critical opinions, and suggesting that it is best read as an instance of Chaucer's "contrast principle" in operation, offering examples of his "many pretended or real about-faces" in CT. After ParsT,…
Grennen, Joseph E.
Philological Quarterly 42 (1963): 562-66.
Shows that the phrase "secree of secrees" in CYT 8.1447, cast as a "superlative genitive," suggests a "whole class of alchemical expressions identical in form" and thereby "sharply emphasizes Chaucer's ironical denunciation of the oracular…
Describes the fabliau features of ShT, comments on its likely (though unknown) source, observes that its "personal generalizations" are unusual in the genre, and assesses its treatment of women and its stylistic features as evidence that its original…
