Constance is not, as Delany (1974) claims, a character who embodies and recommends self-degradation and abject submission to power in all its forms. What is important is that Constance discovers in the course of her experience that Providence, not…
Bennett, J. A. W.
J. A. W. Bennett. The Humane Medievalist (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura; Wolfeboro, N.H.: Boydell & Brewer, 1982), pp. 13-29.
Diffident comparisons point out the "Englishness" of both Chaucer and Langland (though Chaucer gives us little of London city life, his limits being Dartmouth, Strother, Oxford, and Cambridge). Bennett discusses the down-to-earth tones, association…
Bennett, J. A. W.
S. S. Hussey, ed. Piers Plowman: Critical Approaches (London: Methuen, 1969), pp. 310-24 and 352-53.
Explores the affinities and "common sympathies" between William Langland and Chaucer, including their "Englishness," their views of religion and virtue, their shared sense of human variety, and the possibility that Chaucer may have read "Piers…
Ehrhart, Margaret Jean.
Dissertation Abstracts International 35 (1975): 7299A-300A.
Through study of Machaut's 'dits', we begin to get a sense of what Chaucer saw in Machaut's work. In addition to appreciation of his style, Chaucer must have recognized in Machaut's constant theme--human love, rightly and wrongly ordered--a sense of…
Kawasaki, Masatoshi.
Eigo Seinen (Tokyo) 135:9 (1990): 433-35.
Considers the conflict between "authority," which is based on higher culture, and "experience," characteristic of folk mode, emphasizing the significance of "game in ernest" in CT. "Game" derives from the festive storytelling contest.(In Japanese).
Wallace, David.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 19-37.
Traces Chaucer's increasingly creative use of sources and development as a poet: his treatment of French materials in Rom, BD, and HF; his use of Dante in BD and HF; his adaptation of Boccaccio in Anel, PF, and TC; and his own developing,…
Dor, Juliette De Caluwe.
North-Western European Language Evolution 2 (1983): 73-91.
Classifies French conversational loan words (A-D) in CT by frequency, grammatical nature, and date of first occurrence. Only thirty-nine words are used first by Chaucer, who innovates less than previously thought.
Chaucer defines the "up-so-doun" world using three devices: dramatized "impossibilia" (the rhetorical expression of a passionate conviction believed to be an impossibility), role reversal (involving a triumph of the weaker over the stronger), and…
Gillmeister, Heiner.
New York and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1984.
Identification of the source, 1 Samuel 6, of "Truth, a "poeme a clef," leads to the question of how allegorical interpretations of a medieval exegete could impinge on the poet's life and work. Emphasizing medieval name lore (onomastics), the author…
Hodges, Laura F.
Dissertation Abstracts International 46 (1985): 1620A
The headdress, cloak, and jewelry of the Prioress, correct or appropriate according to fourteenth-century views, conflict ironically with her character.
O'Connell, Brendan.
Clíodhna Carney and Frances McCormack, eds. Chaucer's Poetry: Words, Authority and Ethics (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2013), pp. 134-57.
Notes that counterfeit and forged documents appear frequently in CT, but most frequently in exemplary and ethical tales such as MLT and ClT. This suggests Chaucer's lack of trust in this kind of writing and his preference for an ethics based on…
Reiss, Edmund.
Larry D. Benson, ed. The Learned and the Lewed: Studies in Chaucer and Medieval Literature. Harvard English Studies, no. 5 (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1974), pp. 95-111.
Gauges Chaucer's "view and use of love," concentrating on BD, TC, and KnT as his only narratives that take courtly love seriously, both as a theme and a plot device. Even in these cases, courtly love is presented pejoratively--both foolish and…
The context of CT changes the meaning of SNT. Although SNT is a clear statement of the 'right path,' ParsT reminds us at the end that we cannot come close to following that path. Spiritual perfection is rare; for the rest of us there are remedies…
Bookis, Judith May.
Dissertation Abstracts International 43 (1982): 1140.
In PrT, MLT, ClT, SNT, and PhyT, Chaucer manipulates the genre and rhetoric of the saint's life in differing ways to evoke audience response to the professional stereotypes of the narrators.
Thro, A. Booker.
Chaucer Review 5.2 (1970): 97-111.
Shows that "in Chaucer's comedy the triumph of wit is often a 'creative' act, an act of imaginative invention and ingenious construction," commenting on the division of the fart in SumT, demonstrating the prevalence of creative, constructive…
Howes, Laura L.
Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior, eds. Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 321-43.
Chaucer presents Criseyde as a victim of several betrayals--by Calchas, by the Trojan parliament, by Pandarus, and by the narrator--and prompts the possibility of readers' betrayal of her as well. Obedient to her father but unfaithful to her lover,…
Valdes Miyares, Ruben.
SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature 2 (1992): 142-53.
Explores Chaucer's understanding of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth to argue that Criseyde's reference to Eurydice (TC 4.791) is the poet's way of "lending voice" to a classical figure who, like Criseyde, was the object of barter.
Minnis, Alastair, and Eric J. Johnson.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., eds. Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000), pp. 199-216.
Assesses Criseyde's fearfulness in the context of "late-medieval accounts of the psychology and ethics of fear," arguing that Chaucer presents her not as a "culpably fickle female" but as an (equally essentialized) "attractively fearful female."
Ryan, Lawrence V.
English Literary Renaissance 17 (1987): 288-302
Francis Kynaston's translation of TC in Latin rhyme-royal stanzas was influenced by Henryson's and Shakespeare's depictions of Criseyde. Substantial omissions in Books 4 and 5 of the translation simplify the character and reduce readers' sympathy by…
Bevan, E. Dean.
Ulrich Müller and Kathleen Verduin, eds. Papers from the Fifth Annual General Conference on Medievalism 1990 (Göppingen: Kümmerle, 1996), pp. 435-41.
Comments on Bevan's efforts to represent in a film script various aspects of Chaucer's art in TC: Chaucer's sense of history, the subtleties of his diction, and his "world view."
In TC 5.1095, "publisshed" (contained in five manuscripts) is preferable to "punisshed" (in fourteen manuscripts) because the fourteenth-century sense of "denounced publicly" better suits the immediate context in the poem and the widespread bad…
Pinent, Pat.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 39-49.
Considers three groups of ecclesiastical figures in CT, categorizing them by religious role and descriptive technique: 1) members of religious orders (Prioress, Monk, and Friar), who the narrator "damns by faint praise and irony"; 2) servants of the…
Hatton, Thomas J.
Chaucer Review 3.2 (1968): 77-87.
Argues that the GP description of "Chaucer's perfect Knight . . . seems carefully constructed to accord with the aims" of a "unified crusade" that was articulated by Philip de Mézières in his proposal to organize an Order of the Passion of Jesus…
