Welsh, Andrew.
Robert Boenig and Kathleen Davis, eds. Manuscript, Narrative, Lexicon: Essays on Literary and Cultural Transmission in Honor of Whitney F. Bolton (Lewisburg, Penn.: Bucknell University Press; and London: Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 76-95.
Examines how narrative and sententiousness interact in The Physician's Tale and The Manciple's Tale as examples of Chaucer's explorations of the nature of this interaction. PhyT is a "story in search of a moral," while ManT is a "collection of…
Fischer, Andreas.
Rudiger Ahrens, ed. Anglistentag 1989 Wurzburg. Proceedings of the Conference of the German Association of University Professors of English, no. 9 (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1990), pp. 310-19.
Observes similarities of form and theme in FranT and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, particularly the focus on trawthe/trouthe in each, arguing that they transcend the romance genre. Contrasts FranT with Menedon's Question in Boccaccio's Filocolo…
Dinkler, Michal Beth.
Religion and Literature 47, no. 1 (2015): 221-35.
Within the framework of examining Chaucer and Dostoevsky, discusses critical approaches to literary examples in relationship to teaching the Bible as literature.
Agbabi, Patience.
Literature Compass 15.6 (2018): n.p.
Agbabi's personal account of adapting Chaucer's poetry in her "Telling Tales" (2014) and in her contribution to the anthology "Refugee Tales" (2016)--an adaptation of FranT entitled "Makar."
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015.
An extended essay in "thinking beyond anthropocentrality" by appreciating "lithic" ontology and "geophilia" ("geology without dispassion"), an example of posthumanist, object-oriented consideration that seeks to dislodge assumptions about…
The section entitled "Authentic Languages" includes a sub-section on Chaucer that raises questions about modern ability to gauge the authenticity of the northern literary dialect in RvT.
Calle Martin, Javier.
SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature 06 (1996): 64-84.
Traces the classical and colloquial origins of Chaucer's stereotyped comparisons (e.g., "as stille as any ston," "white as chalk"); describes their syntax; and assesses the functions of grammar, alliteration, and prosody in the development of terms…
Discusses the stylistic device of inverting or rearranging word order for poetic effect. Highlights the writing of William Dunbar, who acknowledged Chaucer to be included among the "masters who by making were remade."
Steiner, Wendy.
Rosemary Feal, ed. Profession 2008 (New York: Modern Language Association, 2008), pp. 24-32.
Personal narrative about Steiner's composition of an opera inspired by WBT, intended for production as a full-length animated film. Includes sketches and storyboards by John Kindness.
Brown, Carole Koepke.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1987): 3030A.
That theme relates to numerical structures is apparent not only in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" but also in FranT,where each of the three parts reveals a pattern of A ("a major trouthe"), B (complaint), and C (helpful human intervention). Thus,…
Robinson, Peter.
Norman Blake and Peter Robinson, eds. The Canterbury Tales Project Occasional Papers, Volume II (London: King's College, Office for Humanities Communications, 1997), pp. 69-132.
Analyzes textual variants of WBP, using the data and computer analysis available on Robinson's "The Wife of Bath's Prologue on CD-ROM". Corroborates Manly and Rickert's A, B, C, and D groupings and their affiliations, suggests two more (E, F) that…
Swinford, Dean.
Modern Philology 111 (2013): 1–22.
Focuses on HF, 584–92, clarifying the meaning and implications of "stellifye," arguing that the narrator's fear of stellification reflects Chaucer's concerns about social and poetic ascent, and describing how the allusion to Ganymede evokes a…
Benson, C. David.
Jenny Adams and Nancy Mason Bradbury, eds. Medieval Women and Their Objects (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), pp. 267-87.
Discusses SNT as Chaucer's only hagiographical work to evaluate the medieval perception of art. Contrasts the medieval devotion to earthly relics in relation to St. Cecilia's desire to shed the physical and enter the spiritual, while paralleling her…
Using available electronic transcriptions of manuscripts of WBP and MilT tests the reliability of a statistical model ("interpolated, modified Kneser-Ney smoothed 3-gram backoff model") for determining various linguistic and scribal features of the…
Ellis, Mark Spencer.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 29-45.
Argues that PardPT challenges modern readers' "conventional notions about character and events" and "undermines some fundamental assumptions about social morality." Anonymity, loaded rhymes, and, above all, a consistent lack of decision-making and…
Stanley, E. G.
Arno Esch, ed. Chaucer und Seine Zeit: Symposion für Walter F. Schirmer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), pp. 121-48.
Examines Chaucer's stanzaic and metrical dexterity in TC, discussing how and with what effects he bridges stanza breaks and how he creates emphasis through repetitions, rhyme pairs, caesuras, enjambment, narratorial disavowals, and shifting of climax…
Fein, Susanna.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Visual Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), pp. 89-114.
Argues that PardT and ShT, juxtaposed but not linked in the Ellesmere manuscript, implicitly embed Crucifixion imagery toward a critique of materialist values. By positioning the "human incapacity to 'see' spiritually against glimmering signs of…
Bishop, Kathleen A., ed.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010.
Thirteen essays by various authors, most of them concerned with the influence of Chaucer's work or his reception. For individual essays, search for Standing in the Shadow of the Master? under Alternative Title.
Dyer, Christopher.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989.
Bridging the social and economic histories of medieval England, Dyer examines the inequalities of English society as inherent rather than as economically shaped among the upper classes, townsmen, and peasants. GP offers criticism of a simplistic…
Minnis, Alastair.
Ursula Schaefer, ed. The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 43-60.
Minnis discusses the impact of Aristotelian social and political theory on the rise of a growing lay culture in France and England. Considers similarities among several "discourses of secular power" - including Chaucer's KnT and Gower's advice to…
Trahern, Joseph B.,Jr., ed.
Knoxville, Tenn. : University of Tennessee Press, 1989.
Eight articles on standardization of English, three of specific interest to Chaucerians. Includes bibliography of Fisher's work through 1987. For the three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Standardizing English under Alternative Title.
Blake, N. F.
Joseph B. Trahern, Jr., ed. Standardizing English: Essays in the History of Language Change, in Honor of John Hurt Fisher (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), pp. 57-81.
Illustrates the difficulties editors face in dealing with literary representations of regional or non-standard dialects, citing scribal variations of northern features of RvT before examining at greater length examples of dialects in Shakespeare's…
Blake, N. F.
Masahiko Kanno, Gregory K. Jember, and Yoshiyuki Nakao, eds. A Love of Words: English Philological Studies in Honour of Akira Wada (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1998), pp. 3-24.
Blake examines the spelling variants of terminal -n and -m in a variety of words in WBP to show that fro/from was relatively erratic. Similar analysis indicates that final -e was obsolescent as a plural marker and in weak adjectives. Blake suggests…
