Browse Items (16012 total)

Cooney, Helen.   Chaucer Review 32 (1998): 339-76.
PF offers an example of Chaucer's intertextuality. The two "olde bokys" mentioned--Macrobius's commentary on "Somnium Scipionis" and Alain de Lille's "De planctu naturae"--inform the themes of suffering in love and the limitations of natural law in…

Cowgill, Bruce Kent.   Journal of English and Germanic Philology 74 (1975): 315-35.
Chaucer's unifying theme in PF is political rather than otherworldly. It involves the contrast between an orderly world governed by natural law (the gate's first inscription and Scipio's "commune profit") and a chaotic world controlled by selfish…

Smarr, Janet.   Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 113-22.
Like "Inferno" 5, PF contains references to Earthly Paradise and Hell, the dream, and the fate of those who attend to private lusts. Dante compares the plight of souls to that of several kinds of birds, including three of the four bird categories in…

Reed, Thomas L.,Jr.   Thomas L. Reed, Jr. Middle English Debate Poetry and the Aesthetics of Irresolution (Columbia and London: University of Missouri Press, 1990), pp. 294-362.
Discusses irresolution, style, persona, the "experiential labyrinth," Chaucer's sources, and the relationship of PF to the contemporary political world. The term "Parlement" evokes the university and law. The chapter is divided into five parts: …

Fries, Maureen.   John F. Plummer, ed. Vox Feminae: Studies in Medieval Woman's Songs (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, 1981), pp. 155-78.
The vernacular "woman's song" focuses passively on the beloved (not the speaker's feelings), powerless to control the beloved. Such features serve as a context to analyze the "comic sex- and/or class-role reversal" in RvT, MerT, and Antigone's Song…

Friedman, John Block.   Chaucer Review 7.3 (1973): 250-66.
Surveys approaches to NPT, and discusses its appropriateness as a homiletic exemplum to the Priest as narrator, discussing its rhetoric, its misogynistic depictions of females, and its allusions to mermaid song and Physiologus (7.3270-72)

Frese, Dolores Warwick.   Chaucer Review 16 (1982): 330-43.
Following medieval rhetorical tradition, Chaucer has hidden his own name in the tale in anagrammatic fashion: "Ge" (for Geffrey, Chaucer's spelling of his own name) plus "Chau"ntl"c"l"er" results in "gentele Chaucer," employing the roman letters…

Shallers, A. Paul.   ELH 42 (1975): 319-37.
NPT is indebted to the naturalistic and mock-heroic tone of the French "Roman de Renard," as well as to an indigenous English tradition of didactic beast fables and exempla. The Priest's concluding exhortation on humility marks the point of the…

Harwood, Britton J.   Annuale Mediaevale 21 (1981): 5-30.
Treating MilT as myth, Harwood examines the way in which "objectlike" concretions and "ideational representatives" reveal a universal logic.

Stevens, John.   Piero Boitano and Anna Torti, eds. Medieval and Pseudo-Medieval Literature (Tubingen: Narr, 1984), pp. 109-29.
Deals with Wom Nob, and Ros; metrics, French sources in Machaut, Deschamps.

Coletti, Theresa.   Chaucer Review 15 (1981): 236-49.
In ShT, Chaucer may have used the well-known text of Proverbs 31.10-31, which praises the valiant woman, in ironic fashion. The scriptural "mulier fortis" is praised for her "huswifery," her provision of food and clothing, her "rendering" to her…

Thundyil, Zacharias.   Christianity and Literature 20.3 (1971): 12-16.
Gauges Chaucer's attitude toward "reason and revelation," and argues that "one of the structural principles" of CT is the "pursuit of moral wisdom," particularly in movement from KnT to ParsT and in the image of pilgrimage.

Boitani, Piero.   Medium Aevum 45 (1976): 50-69.
While using the Italians' narrative structures in MkT, Chaucer twists the styles and themes of Dante and Boccaccio. The pathos and direct narrative of Chaucer's Hugelyn supplant the horror and ambiguities of Dante's Ugolino. Chaucer's Cenobia…

Gaylord, Alan T.   Studies in the Age of Chaucer 6 (1984): 65-84.
Th is analyzed in the context of CT and compared with PrT. The deliberate failure of Th to achieve the promised "miracle" is a comment on the difference between miracles and poetry: miracles "overwhelm" debate, while poetry evokes it.

Richards, Mary P.   Chaucer Review 9 (1975): 212-15.
Since chronicle accounts of St. Neot's habits are contradictory, three extant recensions of the saint's life provide the best explanation of Chaucer's allusion in MilT. These recensions suggest that the poet establishes an ironic parallel between…

Alexander, Michael, ed.   Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1986.
For beginners, a study outline that introduces the major issues in MilT.

Miller, Robert P.   Chaucer Review 5.2 (1970): 147-60.
Assesses MilT as an "anti-authoritarian" complaint against the estates--the clergy, the courtly aristocracy, the "providers," and women--depicting "the kind of thing the Miller would like to see happen to such people."

Lee, Brian S.   South African Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 15 (2005): 55-68.
Comments on the upbringing of young people in CT. Mentioned in only three lines, the "mayde child" in ShT exemplifies the late medieval practice of wardship. The words signify the callous immorality of the guardian who, like the governesses…

Gruber, Loren C.   William C. Johnson and Loren C. Gruber, eds. "New" Views on Chaucer: Essays in Generative Criticism (Denver: Society for New Language Study, 1973), pp. 43-50.
Argues that ManT contributes to the theme of the linguistic slipperiness in CT, depicting how language fails to reflect reliably the "actual nature of the world."

Striar, Brian.   Criticism 33 (1991): 173-204.
ManT expresses ambivalence about verbal signification and asserts the power of poetry. The role of Phoebus (a figure of poetry), imagery of caging, the figure of the crow, and violations of poetic decorum affirm humanist poetics, despite the…

Silar, Theodore I.   Notes and Queries 242 (1997): 306-9.
Citing examples from feudal law and practice, Silar argues that MLT 2.168 has a specific legal sense and should be translated "[Custance's] hand, in which the right to grant estates in the feudal tenure of frankalmoign."

Johnson, William C.,Jr.   Chaucer Review 16 (1982): 201-21.
MLT is a test case of Chaucer's use of Christian materials directed toward a "new human center." Christ and Christianity are uniquely transformed into a pervasive humanism, through Chaucer's tolerant ambivalence.

Bestul, Thomas H.   Chaucer Review 9 (1975): 216-26
The long tradition describing the relationship between rhetoric and emotion is reflected in Chaucer's pathetic tales. Particularly in MLT, narrative comment upon the action and vivid description are the conventional strategies used to lead the…

Calkin, Siobhain Bly.   Christopher Cannon and Maura Nolan, eds. Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann (Cambridge: Brewer, 2011), pp. 1-24.
MLT engages with ideas found in Latin and French treatises advocating crusade and assesses the rhetoric and practices of crusades, critiquing their mercantile aims, the ignorance of cultural differences dooming efforts to convert Muslims, and poor…

Overbeck, Pat Trefzger.   Modern Philology 73 (1975): 157-61.
Many sources and analogues for Chaucer's poem, including the "Roman de la Rose," "Panthere d'amours," "La dance aux aveugles," and "Trionfo d'amore," as well as a reference in his own LGW (G, 403-05), suggest that the "man of great authority" is the…
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