Steiner, Emily, and Lynn Ransom, eds.
Philadelphia: The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, 2015.
Presents essays that explore ways that manuscript evidence is used to understand "literary, geographic, scientific, devotional, and hagiographical knowledge" in the later Middle Ages. For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for Taxonomies of…
Hardwick, Paul.
Paul Hardwick, ed. The Playful Middle Ages: Meanings of Play and Plays of Meaning: Essays in Memory of Elaine C. Block (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2010), pp. 81-91.
Explores relations between vernacularity and scatology in MilT and "Til Eulenspiegel," commenting on how use of the "kultour" in MilT plays upon the Knight's earlier reference to a plough and undermines clerical discourse in which the plough is a…
Ellis, Jeremy R.
Secaucus, N.J.: Carol Publishing, 1996.
A discursive lexicon of "dirty" language, sexual and scatological, including a brief section (pp. 8-14) on Chaucer’s vocabulary, listing sample words and describing several scenes and examples from MilT, WBP, and elsewhere. Reprinted under the…
Schotland, Sara Deutch.
Albrecht Classen and Marilyn Sandidge, eds. Friendship in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Explorations of a Fundamental Ethical Discourse (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 525-41.
Canacee's kindness toward the formel eagle shows Chaucer's sympathy for women and appreciation of female friendship. The formel, like other females in Chaucer, has been abused by men--and warns Canacee against them. In creating a painted mew for the…
Baswell, Christopher (C.)
Charlotte Cook Morse, Penelope Reed Doob, and Marjorie Curry Woods, eds. The Uses of Manuscripts in Literary Studies: Essays in Memory of Judson Boyce Allen (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992), pp. 121-60.
Medieval habits of reading characteristically produce "a voicing and an inscription of that voicing" (123), allowing for a fluidity of margin and text, reader and author. Geffrey's position as author and glossed text in LGWP and the Wife's position…
Matlock, Wendy A.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 217-31.
Explores anthropomorphism and the "connaturality" of human and nonhuman animals in PF and Lydgate's "Debate of the Horse, Goose, and Sheep," noting the comments of medieval and modern philosophers on the traditional animal-human binary. Lydgate's…
Raybin, David.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 244-49.
Reviews personal experiences of helping secondary teachers learn how to approach and teach Chaucer. Offers both a summary of the necessity of this kind of outreach and the results of these types of interactions.
Wright, Constance S., and Julia Bolton Holloway, eds.
New York : AMS Press, 2000.
Ten essays, two fictional narratives, and one lecture on Apuleius, his legacy, and the traditions of folly. Reprints Holloway's "The Asse to the Harpe: Boethian Music in Chaucer." For two new essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Tales Within…
Bowden, Betsy.
William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum, eds. Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures (New Castle, Del. : Oak Knoll; London: British Library, 2003), pp. 121-90.
Reproduces and assesses various eighteenth-century depictions of CT or the Canterbury pilgrims, including Thomas Stothard's illustrations for Bell's British Poets (1782-83), the set of pilgrim portraits (here associated with John Vanderbank) in John…
Kamali, Elizabeth Papp.
Speculum 96.2 (2021): 367-417.
Explores how medieval English law dealt with doubt and ambiguity, particularly in cases where the identity of the accused was uncertain Examines various legal cases, including the infamous case of the "Green Children" of Woolpit, and argues that…
Includes (pp. 256-76) KnT in a modern prose version from Eleanor Farjeon's "Tales of Chaucer" (1930), here "slightly cut" and titled "Palamon and Arcite." Includes a b&w illus. of Emelye walking below the prison tower.
Owen, Charles A.,Jr.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 179-94.
Portraying himself as a participant in a supposedly actual pilgrimage, Chaucer freed his characters from his control and avoided predetermining the meaning of their tales.
An anthology compiled to promote reading among young readers in Eritrea. Includes international tales, ancient to modern, in modern English adaptation, including ClT (here titled "The Scholar's Tale: The Test of a Good Wife."
Psychological analysis of six of the Canterbury pilgrims (Knight, Man of Law, Narrator [in Mel], Pardoner, Clerk, and Second Nun, followed by "six recreations" in prose that attempt to project the characters as modern storytellers.
Schibanoff, Susan.
Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweickart, eds. Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 83-106. Reprinted in Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature (Routledge, 1994), pp. 221-45.
Discusses the "well-established 'topos' of manuscript literature that women readers alone are offended by antifeminist texts" and examines Chaucer's defense of himself in portraying Criseyde's guilt. Asserts that Chaucer's Wife of Bath, being…
Contrasts WBT to popular romance narratives of the period, arguing that notions of "sentence"--i.e., of "meaning that is inscribed into a narrative by its author"--force high cultural glossing onto popular texts that may not be best suited to such…
Traditions of simultaneous affirmation and negation found in pseudo-Dionysian mystical theology account for Ret's treatment of the reader and its relation to CT.
Ross, Thomas W.
Robert F. Yeager, ed. Fifteenth-Century Studies: Recent Essays (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1984), pp. 137-60.
Latin-English glosses from BL MS Add. 37075 and other hitherto unpublished sources throw light on attitudes toward words for sex, body parts, and body functions as used by Chaucer and Scottish Chaucerians.
Williams, Tara.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 27 (2005): 93-127
In ClT, Chaucer expands notions of female power, helping to shape an idea of womanliness, especially as manifested in submissiveness, production of heirs, and self-sacrifice. Williams analyzes the linguistic and cultural category of "womanhood" in…
Evans, William Dansby.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 1175A.
Examines Eliot's senior-year courses at Harvard for their medieval focus (in art, literature, and philosophy) in the light of primary materials (including Eliot's annotated Chaucer textbook).
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Renascence 35.3 (1983): 167-82.
Reads the allusions to Chaucer's GP, Virgil's "Aeneid," and, most extensively, Pope's "Rape of the Lock" in Eliot's "The Waste Land" as signals to his rejection of the "Classical/Christian tradition."
Linke, Hansjürgen.
Die Neueren Sprachen: Zeitschrift für Forschung und Unterricht und Kontaktstudium auf dem Fachgebiet der Modernen Fremdsprachen n.v. (1962): 485-96.
Examines the style and techniques of Chaucer's quasi-optical, quasi-cinematic ("quasi-optische," "quasi-filmescher") scene changes in CT, with particular attention to those in MerT. Focuses on relations between external and internal drama in such…
Gray, Paul Edward.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 7 (1965): 213-24.
Argues that Dorigen and Arveragus's agreement at the beginning of FranT "to marry and remain courtly lovers" reflects the Franklin's illusory "double standard" that falsely assumes compatibility between marital and courtly love, symbolically undercut…
Luengo, Anthony E.
Revue de l'Universite d'Ottawa 50 (1980): 223-32.
Chaucer's treatment of "sententiae" in ParsT is best understood in terms of the schema provided by Thomas Walleys in his 14th-century "De modo componendi sermones." The Parson adopts many of Walleys' 14 methods of linking "senteniae" to control…
