Horobin, S. C. P.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 99 (1998): 411-17.
The similar scribal features of three manuscripts of CT (Devonshire; Trinity College, Cambridge R.3.3; and Bodleian Rawlinson Poetry 223) have sometimes been attributed to a group of scribes and supervisors. This attribution has been used to support…
Keenan, Hugh T.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 79 (1978): 36-40.
The "snow" of food and drink in the Franklin's house evokes manna, which was like hoarfrost in the Bible, and therefore snow in medieval references. The result is eucharistic parody, discrediting the Franklin's feast.
Moseley, Charles.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 105-18.
Surveys the narrative techniques of the GP as they set up and anticipate those of the entire CT: the suggestiveness of pilgrimage and frame narrative, the impressionistic variety of the pilgrims and their juxtapositions, the naïve but subjective…
Farrell, Thomas J.
David G. Allen and Robert A. White, eds. Subjects on the World's Stage: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Newark: University fo Delaware Press, 1995), pp. 38-53.
Uses of the word "fyn" by Criseyde, Pandarus, and the narrator invite the reader to consider the teleology of the various parts of the work.
Herzman, Ronald B.
Anthony Pellegrini, ed. The Early Renaissance: Virgil and the Classical Tradition (Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York, 1985), pp. 1-17.
In FrT, Chaucer humorously uses references to Dante's story of Frate Alberigo. In reference to "Inferno," canto 33, to reverse Dante's pattern of punishment and sin, Chaucer specifically names Dante; and Chaucer's description of Satan is fashioned…
Harwood, Britton J.
Review of English Studies 39 (1988): 413-17.
The haberdasher, carpenter, weaver, dyer, and tapestry maker of the GP must each have belonged to his own "communitas," or mystery, and the five could not (by law and custom) be members of a sixth company. Harwood shows that the "fraternitee" was…
Lane, Robert C.
Anne C. Hargrove and Maurine Magliocco, eds. Portraits of Marriage in Literature (Macomb: Western Illinois University, 1984), pp. 107-24.
The marriage speech of Averagus and Dorigen is of pivotal importance in understanding the dynamics of their marriage. Human interaction does not guarantee valid or shared meaning.
Grund, Peter J.
Review of English Studies 65, no. 271 (2014): 575-95.
Differentiates "literary" uses of alchemical terms from those of alchemical treatises and shows that Chaucer's CYT is one of the seven most frequent alchemical sources in the seventy citations within the "MED."
Allen, Valerie.
Review of English Studies, n.s., 40 (1989): 531-37.
The "first stok" of Gent 1 refers to God as the father of "gentilesse" of Gent 8, to Christ as its exemplar and model. The genealogical image operates as metaphor, pun, and paradox in the poem.
Fleming, John V.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Interpretation: Medieval and Modern (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 189-200.
The narrator's fidelity and infidelity to sources are a major theme of TC, reflecting a tradition of translation theory and practice that extends back to Horace and is heavily influenced by Boethius.
Green, Richard Firth.
V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne, eds. English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 87-108.
Surveys evidence for the existence of "courts of love" in late medieval French and English culture, considering historical evidence such as Charles VI's "cour amoureuse," and the literary evidence of the love debate, the "demande d'amour," the flower…
Baswell, Christopher C.,and Paul Beekman Taylor.
Speculum 63 (1988): 293-311.
Borrowing from classical, mythographical, and iconographic sources, Chaucer uses Helen of Troy in TC both as a character and as a model to parallel and emphasize Criseyde's calm detachment and ultimate infidelity, leading to betrayal of Troilus and…
Wheatley, Thomas Edward.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1992): 805A-06A.
The "forms of allegory" found in Walter of England's Latin "Fabulae," as well as its "structure and vocabulary of scholastic presentation, profoundly influenced the fables of Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and Robert Henryson." Discusses NPT,…
Shigeo, Hisashi.
The Meiji Gakuin Review (March, 1979): 137-69.
The "epilogue" of TC apparently reveals Chaucer's denial of worldly love. However, it should be interpreted as the poet's complexity and uncertainty in his attitude towards "love," one of his major themes.
Markot, Margaret Lindsey.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1988): 1777A.
Treatments of Dido and Aeneas in HF and LGW indicate that Chaucer develops a narrator-character who mediates actively between subject and audience in a more modern way than do his sources.
Robertson, Elizabeth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 23: 143-80, 2001.
Through various alignments of Muslim and Christian characters and transgressions of social and gender boundaries, Chaucer "defamiliarizes" essentialist categories of race, class, gender, and especially religion in MLT. In particular, Chaucer depicts…
Wurtele, Douglas (J.)
Florilegium 11 (1992): 179-205.
The Wife's pain and anxiety in regard to clerical pronouncements on the sinfulness of carnal pleasure in marriage and on the superiority of virginity to the married state suggest that she is reacting chiefly to the dominant "rigorist" school of…
Haskell, Ann S.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 72 (1971): 723-34.
Finds three kinds of character doubling in TC: Hector is an "echoic or reflective doubling" of Troilus, Pandarus and Troilus double as complementary portions of one lover, and Diomedes is Troilus's "dramatically opposing" double.
Wimsatt, James I.
Mediaeval Studies 34 (1972): 388-400.
Summarizes similarities between BD and Jean Froissart's "Dit dou Bleu Chevalier," and argues that Froissart imitated Chaucer's poem, commenting on the occasions of the poems and their relative chronology, narrative and linguistics details, and the…
The Reeve's dialect is usually considered a rendering of Norfolk dialect. However, Knox argues that the word "ik" indicates a Norfolk joke, revealing the Reeve's anachronistic and backwards speech.
Hamel, Mary.
Robert R. Edwards, ed. Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 149-62
Critics have attributed Chaucer's description of naval warfare in the Legend of Cleopatra to his knowledge of contemporary battles. Hamel argues instead that Chaucer, like other medieval writers and even historians, drew the elements of his…
In MilT, the coulter was chosen by Chaucer for its etymological and judicial significance and because it parallels a scene from "Tristan and Iseult"--the trial by ordeal.
