Studies aspects of PhyT that derive from hagiography, particularly its emphasis on Virginia as a "virgin martyr," not found in Chaucer's sources. As a result of Chaucer's various changes and genre modifications, the tale raises "grave questions of…
Leon Sendra, Antonio R.,and Francisco J. Garcia De Quesada.
Purificacion Fernandez Nistal and Jose Ma Bravo Gazalo, eds. Proceedings of the VIth International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (Valladolid: Universidad de Valladolid, 1995), pp. 207-16.
Assesses the Physician as a skillful practitioner and comments on PhyT, audience response to the tale, sources, arrangement of materials, and Chaucer's message.
Windeatt, Barry.
English Miscellany 26-27 : 79-103, 1977-78.
In TC, Chaucer's "greater vehemence," his increase in specificity, and his heightening of emotion characterize his adaptations of Boccaccio's "Filostrato."
Comparison with contemporary documents show ParsT to be a manual for penitents; homiletic elements are minimal and the appeal is to reason rather than the emotions. Despite numerous minor inconsistencies ParsT has a clear and effective structure. …
The 'certyn thyng' the narrator deludedly pursues through scholarly exploration is the necessity of undergoing experience (i.e., entering the gates "for better of for worse") to discover the meaning of love. Nature's concern for the "commune profyt"…
It has been argued that the poem exhibits multiplicity and disharmony, though the poet shows a commitment to traditional forms of culture. There is no such commitment in PF. The multiplicity of authority and the "continuous self-reflexivity" does…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Chaucer Review 25 (1990): 1-16; 85-95.
Although PF clearly treats love and courtship, its most central or motivating problems is the relationship between choice and will or understanding. Chaucer demonstrates a more thoroughly informed engagement with contemporary philosophy than critics…
Baker, Donald C.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 428-45.
Substantive criticism of PF really begins in 1935 with Bronson, who stated that the poem is a study of contrasts between man's views of love. Later critics have elaborated this view, noting the polarities of the work: the "Somnium" and the garden,…
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…
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)
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…
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…
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.
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…
