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…
Stroud, Theodore A.
College English 17 (1955): 109-10.
Identifies modern analogues to ShT and Boccaccio's "Decameron" 8.1 in Thomas Menkel's 1946 short story, "Secret Debt," and Menkel's reported source in a "Scotch joke," surmising general transmission of the tale.
Green, A. Wigfall.
University of Mississippi Studies in English 1 (1960): 1-11.
Considers aspects of Th that are "burlesque," commenting on diction, meter, details, various rhetorical figures, and rhymes that convey irony and comedy. Poses many of these examples in contrast with parallels elsewhere in CT.
Bleeth, Kenneth.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017.
A complete annotated bibliography of scholarly and critical treatments of SqT, FranT, and PhyT from 1900 through 2005, subdivided into the following categories: editions and modernizations of each tale; sources, analogues, and later influence of each…
Haller, Robert S.
Modern Philology 62 (1965): 285-95.
Argues that SqT is a "rhetorical satire" of the Squire; attributes the excesses of the Tale to the teller's youthful "defective knowledge" of rhetorical arts and argues that it is Chaucer's means of critiquing the "pseudo-genre of romance" and…
Argues that Chaucer uses philosophical language in describing the fart joke of SumT in order to burlesque the "logical thinking" of scholastic thinkers, particularly the Merton Calculators, showing how literature can "more effectively" work out…
Fleming, John.
Notes and Queries 210 (1965): 17-18.
Suggests that the French "Somme le Roi" may be the ultimate source of the reference to "Placebo" in SumT 3.2075 and that "Roman de Fauvel" is a "more likely immediate source."
Ebel, Julia G.
College English 29.3 (1967): 197-206.
Applies "principles" of medieval visual art (scale and perspective) to aid in understanding how BD magnifies the Black Knight's loss by presenting it in the context of the analogous accounts of the narrator's malaise and the grief of Alcyone.
Al-Ibia, Salim E.
Studies in Language and Literature (Montreal) 11.1 (2015): 57-61.
Supports the so-called "Bradshaw Shift" that recommends moving fragment VII of CT to a position just after fragment II, arguing that the move better enhances the "thematic relationship among" ShT, and the fabliaux of fragment I, MilT, and RvT.
Glosses "party" in "party white and rede" (KnT 1.1053) as "literally 'parti-colored,'" referring to a single kind of flower, the daisy, citing LGWF 42-43 as evidence.
Explores proverbial implications of the variant readings of KnT 1.1810, "than woot a cokkow or [var. of] hare," and suggests "hare" might be a pun on "whore."
Curtis, Carl C. III
Lewiston, N. Y.: Mellen, 2008.
The first two chapters of this book look at the Knight and KnT in the context of the "heroic life." The Allegory of Rule and the Allegory of Love offer ways to understand Palamon and Arcites's fight in the wood. The second two chapters examine the…
Clogan, Paul M.
Explicator 23.8 (1965): item no. 61.
Suggests that Chaucer's reference to "Thorus" as a sea-god derives from a misunderstanding of Statius's "theori" in the "Achilleid" and its medieval gloss.
LaHood, Marvin J.
Philological Quarterly 43 (1964): 274-76.
Identifies changes that Chaucer's made to his source, Ovid's "Fasti," when shaping his version of the story of Lucrece in LGW, changes that "Christianized" the account.
Suggests that "double meaning seems deliberate" in a pun on "lecher" and "healer" in Pluto's use of "lechour" (MerT 4.2257) when he pledges to restore January's eyesight.
Wilson, Robert C.
Explicator 24.4 (1965): item no. 32.
Suggests that the name "John" links RvT with MilT, claiming that the Reeve "repays the Miller with a tale in which he himself plays a leading part--that of carpenter John.
Contends that the six things that women desire listed by the wife in ShT (7.173-77) align the wife with the fairy-tale victim of marriage to an ogre, ironically helping to characterize her, her husband, and their marriage.
Severs, J. Burke.
Explicator 23.3 (1964): item 20.
Comments on the uses of "master" and "Rabbi" in SumT 3.2184-88 as a means to convey the hypocrisy of the Summoner's friar (along with Chaucer's Friar in GP 1.261). The references are rooted in the biblical source, Matthew 23:5-11.
Contends that the WB's reference to grinding at a mill (WBP 3.389) capitalizes on traditional sexual associations of mills with women, anticipated at her reference to "barly-breed" (WBP 3.144).
Suggests that when she refers to her "dame" at lines 3.576 and 583 the Wife of Bath is recalling her gossip, dame Alys, identified at 530, 544, and 548.
Explores the possibilities of using folklore, ornithological markings, and Chaucer's possible first-hand experiences to offer perspective on several birds and their attributive qualities referred to in PF, and one each in MilT, RvT, and SumT.
Kaminsky, Alice R.
Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1980.
Evaluates some 500 items of TC criticism considered under the headings Historical, Philosophical, Formalistic, and Psychological. In addition to illuminating the poem, the book provides a trenchant critique of modern critical theory and practice.
