Especially in the Eagle's speech on sound in HF, Chaucer's verse reflects his concern not with the monological, authoritative, written aspects of speech but with speech as an exploratory, vital, interactive process, recently explored by such…
Sanders, Barry.
Studies in Medieval Culture 4 (1974): 437-45.
WBP/WBT are best read as one woman's satire of both preachers and their anti-feminist propaganda. Attacking antifeminism in medieval preaching, she uses the structure of the medieval sermon.
Jimura, Akiyuki.
The Ohtani Studies (July 30, 1980): 1-20.
The admirable and delicate precision with which each character works depends on the poet's skillful use of adjectives and similes. The writer illustrates this fact with particular reference to the descriptions of Troilus and Criseyde.
Dor, Juliette De Caluwe.
Andre Crepin, ed. Linguistic and Stylistic Studies in Medieval English. Publications de l'Association des Medievistes de l'Ensignement Superieur 10. (Paris, 1984): pp. 63-79.
Reconsiders Fisiak's survey of Chaucer's derivational affixes in function of her corpus of French loan words in the conversational sections of CT. Distinguishes between wholesale borrowings and French words onto which morphemes had been attached,…
Jimura, Akiyuki.
English and English Teaching, Vol. 2: A Festschrift in Honour of Kiichiro Nakatani (Hiroshima: Department of English, Faculty of School Education, Hiroshima University, 1997), pp. 57-69.
In TC, descriptions of nature, including natural objects, plants, and animals, reflect the characters' emotions. When characters "act in harmony with nature," things go well; when they act against nature, they are destroyed by its "uncontrollable…
Chaucer's depiction of the legendary battle of Actium likely reflects both his understanding of contemporary naval warfare technology and his awareness of military treatises by Vegetius and Giles of Rome.
Ellis, Deborah S.
Chaucer Review 27 (1992): 150-61.
Both in the GP portrait of the Reeve and in RvPT, Chaucer draws on medieval devil iconography and folklore, deepening the sinister character of this pilgrim and helping to explain his particular hair style, his thinness, his home in the North, and…
ManT reflects Chaucer's awareness of the dangers of challenging authority, yet he repeatedly challenges Christian and Boethian orthodoxies concerning evil. KnT does not reconcile the existence of evil, and the orthodoxy of Christian Providence in MLT…
Holsinger, Bruce.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Outlines "Chaucer's lives as poet, public figure, and literary persona," with recurrent reminders of the limits of what can be known from surviving evidence. Designed for pedagogical, includes suggestions for further reading.
Diekstra, F. N. M.
Neophilologus 67 (1983): 131-48.
Chaucer has adapted "ironic hints" from the analogue in Machaut's "Voir dit" to a bourgeois persona that demolishes "finer sensibilities," thus ironically reversing the tenor of the older material.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Nobuyuki Yuasa et al., eds. Essays on English Language and Literature in Honour of Michio Kawai (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1993), pp. 45-52.
Discusses Chaucer's exploitation of the potential for ambiguity in such devices as cohesion, coherence, deixis, background assumptions, conversational implication, speech acts, and the narrative functions of speech.
Collette, Carolyn P.
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. 127-47.
Collette examines the tradition of Mariology in relation to PrPT and SNPT. In their "Prologues," the Prioress and the Second Nun invoke the Virgin "as a figure of virtuous female power and speech." In their "Tales," however, women and children die…
Argues that the "artistic unity" of NPT is evident in "light of the [Nun's] Priest's personality," a man who is dissatisfied with "his position in life as a servant to a group of women." Differences between NPT and its source in the "Renart"…
Ginsberg, Warren.
Teresa Tavormina and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Endless Knot: Essays on Old and Middle English in Honor of Marie Borroff (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 129-40.
Examines GP sketches of the Wife of Bath, the Miller, and the Franklin to exemplify how Chaucer's arrangements of details can best be understood relationally.
Stevenson, Barbara Jean.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1986): 896A-897A.
Controversy has arisen over Derek Price's theory that Chaucer wrote Equat. Apparently, Chaucer did not. Although Morton's "stylometry" test supports this view, the test itself reveals weaknesses.
Smallwood, T. M.
Studies in Philology 82 (1985): 437-49.
Chaucer's digressions distinguish the narrative structure of PardT, WBT, MerT, FranT, PhyT, and ManT from others of the period in a way not accounted for in rhetorical models of the period ("Confessio Amantis," "Decameron," "Ovide Moralise," "Gesta…
McDuffie, Isaac
Ph.D. Dissertation. Louisiana State University, 2017.
Fully accessible at https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4182/; accessed February 5, 2025.
Argues that Chaucer's works "reflect an increasing awareness of the fragility of the author's implied voice and the dangers of misprision in a listening reception," largely an effect of the rise of English as a written language and tensions between…
Consideration of contemporary education and conditions shows the Physician a capable and ethical "practisour" who "follows the established medical practices and standards of his time."
Prendergast, Thomas A.
Thomas A. Prendergast and Barbara Kline, eds. Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), pp. 258-69
Suggests that Usk's autobiographical Testament of Love has affected critical understanding of Chaucer's biography, influencing assumptions about Chaucer's level of political involvement and the relations between his politics and his poetics.…
Hard and soft analogues to Dorigen's conversations with Aurelius in FranT indicate that she is less a victim than someone playfully complicit in "flirtation." Offering "positive rhetorical models," Boccaccio and Christine de Pizan depict women who…
Brown, W[illia]m J.
University of Colorado Studies. Series in Language and Literature 10 (1966): 15-22.
Argues that the dramatic interchange between the Miller and the Reeve in MilP "anticipates every important argument in Chaucer's formal defense" of including the ribald MilT in CT. Together the two "apologies" constitute a "richly comic but…
Describes grammatical and metrical conditions that restrict or encourage pronunciation of final -e at the end of lines in Chaucer's verse. Introduces double-consonant rhymes as a previously unnoticed factor in these concerns, explores their…
