Edwards, A. S. G.
Chaucer Review 25 (1990): 76-77.
By emending Constance's plea to the constable from "The lyf out of hir body for to twynne" to "The lyf not of hir body for to twynne," an emendation that has no support from the variant readings of the manuscripts, we can bring the line into harmony…
Raybin, David.
David Raybin and Linda Tarte Holley, eds. Closure in The Canterbury Tales: The Role of The Parson's Tale (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000), pp. 11-43.
ParsT confronts and resolves the dual focus evident throughout CT: the intricate variety of human error and the radical simplicity of penance. Echoing GP--and recalling the theology of spiritual progress reflected in FrT, PardT, ClT, and Mel--ParsT…
Tomasch, Sylvia.
Mark L. Greenberg and Lance Schachterle, eds. Literature and Technology (Bethlehem, Penn.: Lehigh University Press, 1992), pp. 66-98.
Theseus's attempts to impose order upon his world reveal Chaucer's familiarity with medieval cartographical constructs as well as their underlying intellectual visions and political motives. This is most apparent in the construction of Theseus's…
Somerset, Fiona.
English Literary History 68: 315-34, 2001.
Various late-medieval English texts (including the Wycliffite "Twelve Conclusions" and Roger Dymmok's "Reply" and other Wycliffite discourse) reflect "anxiety" about laypeople's inabilities to discern clerical hypocrisy. In FrT, Chaucer distinguishes…
McClellan, William.
John M. Hill and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds. The Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages: Reconstructive Polyphony. Essays in Honor of Robert O. Payne (Madison, N.J., and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 149-63.
The Clerk's polemical stance in relation to Petrarch in ClP differentiates the Clerk's voice, rhetorical style, and ideology from Petrarch's, thus allowing for the introduction of dialogic discourse in the Tale itself.
Carruthers, Mary [J.]
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21: 3-26, 1999.
Confronts questions of canonicity, the "value" of literature, and the relations between language and literature, encouraging members of the New Chaucer Society to help revitalize the role of language study. Equipped with a historical sense of how no…
In addition to large formal sections, the "ordinatio" of fifteenth-century TC manuscripts marks categories of text and genre shifts (songs, letters, lyrics). Such practice, resembling that in manuscripts of Machaut and Froissart, suggests that TC…
Saito, Isamu.
Kinshiro Oshitari et al., eds. Philologia Anglica (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 1988), pp. 346-55.
The Nun's Priest's pronouncement, "Taketh fruyt, and lat the chaf be stille," has been interpreted exegetically. Scriptural exegesis, however, is invalid for explicating NPT, which is Menippean--dialogic and polyphonic.
Hawes, Clement.
Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 15:2 (1989): 12-25.
The dream in PF is a "populist countervision" both to Cicero's "Dream of Scipio's" "stoicism that excludes love" and to the tercelets' 'fine amour that abuses (love)." Ultimately, "it is precisely the earthy and earthlythat are shown to serve...the…
Dane, Joseph A.
Notes and Queries 237 (1992): 276-78.
Line 3164 of NPT includes a pun, for "confusio" is also a technical term referring to the meaning of words. The joke: an apparent mistranslation is not one.
Witte, Stephen P.
Papers on Language and Literature 13 (1977): 227-37.
Chaucer's use of the mouse, traditionally associated with gluttony and drunkenness, his juxtaposition of it to Christian terms like "charitee" and "tendre herte," and the possible allusion to Christ's sacrifice as Satan's "mousetrap" suggests harsh…
BD's central theme is that change is necessary and inevitable and must be graciously accepted. Initially the Black Knight avoids change; by the end of BD he is reconciled with, and embraces, change. In BD, Chaucer succeeds in his portrayal of…
Shoaf, Richard Allen.
Dissertation Abstracts International 38 (1978): 4812A.
BD is revisionary art which de-mystifies the language of conventionalized desire and revises the Boethian consolation dialogue. The narrator suffers the same "tristitia" as the knight and must be cured. A confession entails the knight's Augustinian…
Leicester, H. Marshall, Jr.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: "The Wife of Bath." (Boston and New York: Bedford-St. Martin's, 1996), pp. 234-54.
Treats the Wife of Bath as a subject in the process of self-definition who simultaneously seeks to deconstruct the society that constitutes that process. Leicester focuses on the dream of blood in WBP (577-82) to show the difficulty of determining…
Abdalla, Laila.
Jennifer C. Vaught, ed. Rhetorics of Bodily Disease and Health in Medieval and Early Modern England. Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 65-84.
Considers PardPT in light of Augustinian semiotic theory. Focus on the body in the Pardoner's materials signals the need to attend to the objects of signs, and the quarrel with the Host "renders impotent" the Pardoner's nominalist "attack on…
Czarnowus, Anna.
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 40 (2004): 299-310
Suggests a link between KnT and MkT: Saturn's "children" can be either individuals born under the sign of Saturn or societies suffering the effects of the "Age of Saturn." The predicament of the Monk's Hugelyn and his children can be read in light of…
Sleeth, Charles R.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 89 (1988): 174-84.
The invocations of a mother's advice in WBP, PardT, and MkT, in contrast to the wisdom of "Oure Lady" invoked by the two nuns in CT, become an ambiguous source of authority not in themselves but because of the actions they appear to justify.
Kensak, Michael.
T. L. Burton and John F. Plummer, eds. "Seyd in Forme and Reverence": Essays on Chaucer and Chaucerians in Memory of Emerson Brown, Jr. (Provo, Utah: Chaucer Studio Press, 2005), pp. 83-96.
Assesses the narrator's digressions and "digression-returns" in BD, arguing that they are part of Chaucer's indications of the inexpressibility of grief.
Knight, Stephen.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22: 381-86, 2000.
Recurrent concern with lordship in MkT and in the GP sketch of the Monk reveals the Monk's pretense to knightly status, a case of estate transgression.
Ward, Antonia.
Studies in Medievalism 09 (1997): 44-57.
Argues that the impulse behind Furnivall's Chaucer scholarship was homosocial, a desire to become as close to Chaucer as possible and to share his love of the poet with other men as a way of bringing them closer together. This homosocial element has…
Petrina considers the citation of Gower and Chaucer at the end of "The Kingis Quair" and the poem's context in Bodley MS Arch. Selden. B.24, a manuscript with a high number of misattributions to Chaucer; also speculates about intellectual exchange at…
Harvey, Gordon Charles.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1988): 1150A.
Redirecting the verse letter from Horatian urbanity and medieval rhetoric, Chaucer achieves an intimate, familiar tone. His successors from Dunbar to the Renaissance develop variously.
