Critics differ in their assessment of the structure and the nature of the consolation in BD. Chaucer uses juxtaposition as his structural principle. The consolation is Boethian, transcending the intensity of human grief, but Chaucer insists upon…
Deligiorgis, S.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 70 (1969): 297-306.
Analyzes the relations between verse form and meaning in ShT and PF. In the first, patterns of closed and open couplets (where rhymes do or do not "coincide with syntactical closure") align with sententiousness and its uses; in the second, the…
Valdes Miyares, Ruben.
Teresa Fanego Lema, ed. Papers from the IVth International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1993), pp. 305-13.
Mutual concern with mystical wholeness and unity in Chaucer, Langland, and Malory derives from literary and intellectual tradition rather than from the authors' philosophical acceptance of such an ideal. The ideal is unattainable in their works,…
Nolan, Charles J.,Jr.
Chaucer Review 13 (1979): 363-72.
Pity blends the language and structure of amorous and legal complaints. Legal bills, like "The Bill of Complaint" in the second part of Pity, have a tripartite structure: address, statement of grievance, and prayer for remedy. Recognition of this…
Benson and Andersson's discussion in "The Literary Context of Chaucer's Fabliaux" (1971) fails to account for the complexity of folktale derivation. A tale may have two sets of analogues, one set related through surface structure (detail, character,…
Bolton, W. F.
Language and Style 11 (1978): 201-11.
The Pardoner, making, through structure, game of his tale's morality and morality of its game, wishes the Pilgrims to play gullible churchgoers and to depose the Host, who rebuffs him. NPT's structure reveals covert anti-feminism manifesting the…
Examines "ironic foreshadowings, ambiguities and reversals" in SumT, arguing that they give it "a subtle and satisfying unity." Focuses on overturned expectations, dramatic ironies, and poetic justice in the plot, in the friar's lecture to Thomas,…
Quinn, William A.
Critical Survey 29.3 (2017): 48-64.
The Ptolemaic universe of MLT should have a still center, but neither this Tale nor the CT as a whole seems to reflect "a single interpretive order." Thematic and tonal threads pull in different directions, as if the Tale harbored an anticipation of…
Kurtz, Heidi.
DPhil Dissertation. University of Oxford, 2013.
Item not seen. Abstract available at https://ethos.bl.uk. Examines stress in Middle English verse, exploring "how tension is created through the matching or mis-matching of lexical stress with the expected metrical template" in the Hengwrt version of…
Theatre Record 25.25 (2005):1678-83 and 26.14 (2006): 815-18.
Reprints of Stratford and London newspaper and magazine reviews of Mike Poulton's two-part adaptation of CT for the stage, performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company. Includes cast list for each part.
The Prioress's French of "Stratford atte Bowe" (as opposed to the French of Paris) has drawn considerable speculation, but it can be examined more effectively in light of "a wider background," including Chaucer's characterization of Madame Eglantine,…
Rothwell, W[illiam].
Modern Language Review 80 (1985): 39-54.
Despite earlier movements to standardize French, from which English borrowed heavily, the language of Chaucer's Prioress would have been nonstandard both in pronunciation and in morphology. Analysis of Anglo-Norman documents is needed to assess…
Kinney, Clare Regan.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
Addresses the features of poetic narrative that are distinct from prose narrative, concentrating on self-consciousness about poetic form, intertextual relations, and authentication. An introduction and separate chapters consider TC, The Faerie…
Pearsall, Derek.
F. R. P. Akehurst and Stephanie Cain Van D'Elden, eds. The Stranger in Medieval Society (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), pp. 46-62.
Explores the nuances of "strange" and "stranger" in Middle English, arguing that noncitizens, immigrants from the provinces, and merchants were considered strangers in London. Comments on the 1381 massacre of Flemings and Chaucer's allusion to it…
Suggests parallels between medieval literature and African-American literature, with particular attention to Layamon and August Wilson (stories of origin), Gloria Naylor's "Linden Hills" and Dante (a suppressive desire for harmony), and Naylor's…
Beard, Drew.
Irish Journal of Gothic and Horror Studies 8 (2010): n.p. [Electronic publication]
Describes medieval dream visions, characterizes Chaucer's examples as simultaneously concerned with destabilizing assumptions and containing dissent, and compares aspects of Chaucer's dream visions with the "postmodern" horror movie series, "A…
Driver, Martha.
Ian Gadd and Alexandra Gillespie, eds. John Stow (1525-1605) and the Making of the English Past: Studies in Early Modern Culture and the History of the Book (London: British Library), pp. 135-43.
Driver assesses "Stow's pervasive intellectual influence on two later antiquarian readers of Chaucer." To Browne and Le Neve, Stow's edition was "a highly regarded and trusted exemplar, used to supply omissions, correct errors, and add notes."
Chaucer uses East and West to signify differences in storytelling in MLT: chivalric vs. travel romance; hagiography vs. history; linear narrative vs. apostrophe and prayer. Chaucer leads his readers to see the Tale as "trapped in Western chauvinism,"…
De Ridder, Antonio Joaquim.
Dissertation Abstracts International A76.07 (2015): n.p.
Examines Marguerite in the context of other historical writers of "framed short fiction," including Chaucer, and suggests commonalities with CT, and ClT, in particular.
