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…
Dixon, Lori Jill.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1996): 674A.
Sixteen fifteenth-century CT Tales" manuscripts-- anthologized on the basis of theme, subject, or interest--survive. They reveal middle-class taste through their moral and devotional content and indicate the popularity and availability of…
Kendrick, Laura.
Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation (San Marino, Calif.: Huntingon Library; Tokyo: Yushodo, 1995), pp. 281-305.
Surveys French compilations to argue that CT "appears to burlesque the uniformly high-minded French prose compilations ... actively encouraged by the Valois princes in the second half of the fourteenth century."
Emmerson, Richard Kenneth,and Ronald B. Herzman.
Werner Verbeke, Daniel Verhelst, and Andries Welkenhuysen, eds. The Use and Abuse of Eschatology in the Middle Ages. Mediaevalia Lovaniensia, Ser. 1, no. 15 (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 1988), pp. 404-24.
After advocating eschatological explication of medieval poems not explicitly apocalyptic in nature and concluding that Thomas Wimbledon's "Sermon" (1388) exhibits personal and universal eschatological elements, Emmerson and Herzman examine such…
Frank, Robert Worth,Jr.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 143-58.
Although Chaucer's "tales of pathos"--MLT, ClT, PhyT, PrT, and MkT--do not constitute a genre, they share characteristics: lack of comedy, absence of irony, little complexity, abstract settings, and characters "motivated by a single virtue." Each…
Pearsall, Derek.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 125-42.
Treats setting, tone, and structure of the six comedies in CT: MilT, RvT, ShT, MerT, FrT, and SumT. Discusses the first four as fabliaux, the last two as "masterpieces of satirical anecdote" that do not deal with sex and marriage.
Burrow, J. A.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 109-24.
Discusses the five "romances" in CT. WBT, ostensibly an Arthurian romance, is actually a "fairy tale, told by a woman and dominated by women"; Th is an "outright burlesque" of contemporary English roamnces; SqT, unfinished, does not offer the…
Partridge, Stephen.
Norman Blake and Peter Robinson, eds. The 'Canterbury Tales' Project Occasional Papers, Volume I (Oxford: Office for Humanities Communication Publications, 1993), pp. 85-94.
Critiques the inaccuracies, inconsistencies, and inconclusiveness of the Manly-Rickert description (Chicago, 1940) of the glosses in manuscripts of CT. Compares glossarial manuscript groups to the textual groups identified by Manly and Rickert,…
Review article covering six recent books: B. Boyd's Variorum edition of PrT; R. Jordan's Chaucer's Poetics and the Modern Reader; L. Kendrick's Chaucerian Play; L. Koff's Chaucer and the Art of Storytelling; C. Lindahl's Earnest Games; and L.…
Olson, Paul.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1986.
CT reflects the social, political, economic, and intellectual milieu of the late fourteenth century: the tales arise from Chaucer's deep concern about contemporary crises and his conviction that the "parlement"--all levels of society engaged in…
Arabic literature--characteristically framed, open-ended, "eye-witness," first-person narrative, often including a journey--prefigures Boccaccio's "Decameron," Gower's "Confessio Amantis," and Chaucer's CT. Petrus Alfonsi's twelfth-century…
Green, Richard Firth
Notes and Queries 241 (1996): 259-61.
Challenges E. Talbot Donaldson's emendation of the Hengwrt reading "wight" (WBP 117); "wright" is acceptable Middle English syntax, makes good sense as it stands, and accords well with contemporary notions of God's perfect design of the sexual…
Frese, Dolores Warwick.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 249-56.
Frese reads water, dressing, and "suckling" imagery in Boccaccio, Petrarch, and ClT as vestiges of Dante's concern in "De vulgari eloquentia" with using "vernacular" language for "literature of lasting value."
Herzog, Michael B.
Chaucer Review 22 (1988): 269-81.
The issues raised by the narrative style of BD, particularly in the use of its ambivalent first-person narrator, suggest Chaucer's early interest in an art that maintains a tension between convention and innovation.
Rooney, Anne.
Review of English Studies 38 (1987): 299-314.
Reviews scholarship and examines the hunt in BD in the context of other portrayals of the hunt in medieval literature. Because of its portrayal of sudden and shocking death, the "ubi sunt" tradition is an appropriate context: the poem ends with the…
