Minnis, A. J., and Tim William Machan.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Chaucer's "Boece" and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 167-88.
Assesses Bo and its fifteenth-century reception in light of the "well-defined and distinctive" tradition of "academic translation," i.e., as a reflection of the late-medieval interest in semiotics and textual explication. Although Chaucer never…
Scattergood, John.
Essays in Criticism 37 (1987): 110-20.
Chaucer adapts the conventional dawn-song contrast between work and love as activities appropriate to day and night, respectively, in TC and the fabliaux, where "bisynesse" is used to connote lovemaking as the proper work of the night.
Reames, Sherry Lee.
Dissertation Abstracts International 36 (1976): 8036A-37A
Comparison with its sources reveals that the changes in ABC destroy the unity but not the coherence. Chaucer's version comes closer than its source to fulfilling Augustine's recommendations. SNT falls short of its sources in conveying the ethical…
Sanders, Arnold.
Journal of the Early Book Society 17 (2014): 221-29.
Uses personal copy for close comparison with 1687 edition, and views book history as evidence of increasing inability to decode Middle English and the beginning of antiquarianism and collectable Chaucer.
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 101-12.
TC includes references to animals through frequent analogy and extended imagery, but these are often generically inappropriate. Dreams about animals are largely unexplored. Comparison of Troilus to the horse Bayard not only emphasizes the hero's…
Includes discussion of Chaucer's works (pp. 35-45), commenting on the idealized settings found in BD, PF, and LGWP in comparison with their sources; also comments on the lack of such settings in TC and CT.
Fleissner, Robert F.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 86 (1985): 197-98.
"Loy" may refer to the law (from Old French "loy"), compounding the irony of the Prioress's oath "by Seinte Loy." In "taking an oath by the Law 'per se'," she would have taken a stand against unprincipled, secular swearing.
Heffernan, Carol Falvo.
Modern Philology 84 (1986): 185-90.
Functioning in the tradition of "melancholia canina" treatises, Chaucer's dog in BD acts as a catalyst for the melancholy dreamer and enables him to relieve his sorrow.
Behrman, Mary.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 20.1 (2013): 37-45.
Describes teaching Chaucer at Morehouse College, an HBCU institution (historically black college or university), considering topics such as canon expansion, dress codes, linguistic standards, and student identity. Includes student reactions to the…
Schaefer, Ursula.
Andrew James Johnston, Ferdinand von Mengden, and Stefan Thim, eds. Language and Text: Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology (Heidelberg: Winter, 2006), pp. 269-90.
Schaefer considers the process of vernacularization in late medieval English in comparison with other European languages, suggesting that quotations from the period about English are commonplaces rather than reflections of contemporary attitudes and…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Tomonori Matsushita, A. V. C. Schmidt, and David Wallace, eds. From Beowulf to Caxton: Studies in Medieval Languages and Literature, Texts and Manuscripts (Bern: Lang, 2011), pp. 111-49.
Variants in TC passages depicting Criseyde's fluctuating affections reveal the reactions of both early scribes and modern editors to ambiguity in Chaucer's language.
Ohno, Hideshi, Akiyuki Jimura, Yoshiyuki Nakao, Noriyuki Kawano, and Kenichi Satoh.
Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature 62 (2018): 1-13.
Examines linguistic features of Pynson's and de Worde's editions of KnT and discusses similarities to and difference from each other, Caxton's editions, and the Ellesmere and Hengwrt manuscripts.
Cooper, Helen.
Takami Matsuda, Richard A. Linenthal, and John Scahill, eds. The Medieval Book and a Modern Collector: Essays in Honour of Toshiyuki Takamiya (Cambridge: Brewer; Tokyo: Yushodo, 2004), pp. 71-80.
Examines manuscript variants in KnT 1.2616-17 in relation to Chaucer's awareness of alliterative tradition and its lexicon, suggesting that "hurtleth" is preferable to "hurteth" at 2616 and that "born" (D Group) for "hurt" at 2617 may have been…
Finlayson, John.
English Studies 70 (1989): 385-94.
Adduces evidence that Thynne's edition of 1523 is the work of a careful, conservative editor. Thynne did not invent his unique readings but based them on Caxton, Fairfax, and Bodley. In other words, his HF "is truly an edition."
Cross accepts the textual conclusions of Pace, making incorrect assumptions in regard to the poem's connection with Richard II and to Boethius's "De consolatione." One difficulty in Sted stems from a single lexical variation in the verb "envoi."
Spearing, A. C.
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2005.
Spearing counters the assumption that all medieval narration implies a narrator. Medieval literature is permeated with subjectivity, but it is often "subjectless subjectivity," better compared to painting than to oral storytelling. Similar to…
Burns, Sister Mary Florence.
Dissertation Abstracts International 22.04 (1961): 1154.
Studies the Collation Text and the Printer's Copy of Tyrwhitt's edition of CT, identifying his reliance on two manuscript witnesses--British Library Harley 7335 and Cambridge University Library Dd.4.24--and establishing "his fidelity to the…
Daniels, Richard.
James J. Paxson, Lawrence M. Clopper, and Sylvia Tomasch, eds. The Performance of Middle English Culture: Essays on Chaucer and the Drama in Honor of Martin Stevens (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 111-23.
In MilT, Chaucer transformed a bawdy joke into pleasing narrative art, producing in the sexual scenes moments when a reader might feel jouissance. Includes some notes toward a materialist reading of the Tale as a representation of the poetic and…
Spearing, A. C.
Marianne Børch, ed. Text and Voice: The Rhetoric of Authority in the Middle Ages (Odense: University Press of Southern Denmark, 2004), pp. 21-45.
Critiques "dramatic" or Kittredgean readings of the prologues in CT, especially those "newly oiled by Lacan," and considers the prologues in light of the French dit--loosely defined as "speech imitated in clerkly writing" or the "illusion of speech…
Wellesley, Mary.
Julia Boffey and Christiania Whitehead, eds. Middle English Lyrics: New Readings of Short Poems (Cambridge: Brewer, 2018), pp. 122-38.
Analyzes the form and presentation of John Lydgate’'s "Fifteen Joys and Sorrows of Mary," reading it as a bridge between the experiences of poetry and devotion, i.e., for the ways it "relishes the devotional and imaginative possibilities offered by…
Kallstrom, Martha Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 50 (1990): 3945A.
The deserted woman, deriving from classical sources through medieval tradition, embodied the conflict of "amor" and "pietas." Appearing in allusion, exempla, and the poems HF, LGW, MLT, FranT, Anel, and TC, the deserted woman demonstrates for…
Simpson, James.
Helen M. Hickey, Anne McKendry, and Melissa Raine, eds. Contemporary Chaucer across the Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), pp. 218-33.
Proposes as an epistemological and hermeneutical concept that "literary cognition is fundamentally a matter of re-cognition," exploring recognition as cognition in literary texts and in the apprehension of literary texts. Examines Virgil’s "Aeneid"…
The Pardoner masks his questionable oral and sexual potency by conspicuously exhibiting his "bulles" and using them to assert power. These documents remain valid despite their dissonance with the spiritual nature of the Pardoner. PardT demonstrates…
