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.
Martin, Jennifer L.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 60-74.
Cites instances in which the Wife of Bath crosses over between binary sets (male/female, sex/gender, authority/experience), and suggests that she cannot be seen simply as a feminist. Nor is she simply a victim.
Anderson, Judith (H.)
English Literary Renaissance 24 (1994): 638-59.
Spenser's depictions of the Bower of Bliss and the Temple of Venus ("The Faerie Queene" 2 and 4) are indebted to PF and, to a lesser degree, Th for explicit references and more general personal and cultural allusions.
Burger, Douglas A.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 165-78.
Compared with Boccaccio's "Il filocolo," Chaucer's innovations--evident in his treatment of the black rocks, the heroine, magic, and the love of Dorigen and Arveragus--create broader contexts: marital love, courtly love, magic,and the theme of…
Hilary, Christine Ryan.
Dissertation Abstracts International 41 (1980): 242A.
The religious "confessio"-tradition includes three modes: "Confessio peccati," "confessio fidei," and "confessio laudis." "Confessio fidei," which implies a self-testimony, provides the dominant mode for the secular literary "confessio" tradition,…
Birhanzel, Candace.
[Jay Ruud, ed.] Papers on the "Canterbury Tales": From the 1989 NEH Chaucer Institute, Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota ([Aberdeen, S.D.: Northern State University, 1989), pp. 112-25.
Comments on reading ClT as both "realistic and religious, tied to the character of . . . the Clerk."
Presents evidence of a coherently conceived allegory in ClT: God is to Man as Perfection is to Imperfection, a hierarchy based not on rank but on virtue. Thus God is to Man as Griselda is to Walter.
Cherniss, Michael D.
Chaucer Review 6.4 (1972): 235-54.
Argues that the Clerk's Envoy "generates a unifying theme which runs through" MerT--the possibilities of "perfection and imperfection in marriage, expressed as paradise and purgatory"--an echo of the concern with "purgatory" in WBPT. Explores the…
Rosenberg, Bruce A.
Chaucer Review 5.4 (1971): 264-76.
Tallies similarities between the pear tree episode in MerT and the cherry tree account in an apocryphal narrative about the pregnancy of Mary, mother of Jesus. Explores parallels among various analogues, and explains how the parallels capitalize on…
Scoppettone, Stefanie Anne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1996): 2496A.
Though Chaucer has been scorned for creating humor, the bulk of CT is serious, and seriousness and humor should no longer be perceived as mutually antagonistic. Chaucer's humor develops as a structuring "glue" arising through literary methods that…
Ridley, Florence H.
Clausdirk Pollner, Helmut Rohlfing, and Frank-Rutger Hausmann, eds. Bright Is the Ring of Words: Festschrift fur Horst Weinstck zum 65 Geburtstag (Bonn: Romanistischer Verlag, 1996), pp. 251-57.
Briefly surveys the ways Chaucer leaves "gaps" in CT--omissions, repetitions, reversals, etc.--and suggests how ParsT provides a wholeness despite these gaps.
Benson, C. David.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 93-108.
The characters in CT are neither fully developed nor consistent; tellers and their tales are loosely connected. Thus, Kittredge's "dramatic theory" is limited: it leads readers to focus on personalities of the pilgrims rather than on Chaucer's…
