Tachau, Katherine H.
Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1988.
Charts the "development of a complex of optical, epistemological, and semantic ideas" in fourteenth-century Oxford, London, and Paris. Cits SqT 225-35.
Surveys representations of the virtues and vices in western art and literature from Plato and Aristotle to C. S. Lewis and Paul Cadmus, offering excerpts and brief discussions of individual works. The section on medieval representations, "The…
Carruthers, Mary.
Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt, eds. Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Middle English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), pp. 73-87.
Focuses on how Troilus's "disciplined imagination" can be viewed through an understanding of "rhetoric's ancient connection with moral philosophy."
Sklute, Larry (M.)
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1984.
Dream visions, TC, the "outer form" of CT, and individual tales reveal an authorial evasion of closed, authoritative determinations of meaning and moral values--correlative to the cognitive indeterminacy of late-medieval nominalism. CT is suited to…
Slaughter, Eugene Edward.
New York: Bookman, 1957.
Classifies various kinds of love in Chaucer's works--religio-philosophical, courtly, heroic, and syncretistic--with sub-categories of virtues, vices, and sins in each. Describes the sources, characteristics, and overlapping of the classifications,…
Prior, Sandra Pierson.
Cindy L. Carlson and Angela Jane Weisl, eds. Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), pp. 165-80.
PhyT combines several conflicting ideas of virginity: its role in confronting the "ritualized violence of sacrifice," its emphasis on "bodily wholeness," and its "figuration of innocence and purity." In comparison with its sources, PhyT emphasizes…
Solberg, Emma Maggie.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018.
Studies the complicated sexuality of the Virgin Mary in late medieval English literature, exploring scriptural and apocryphal backgrounds; visual imagery; and dramatic, narrative, and lyrical texts. Includes comments on wives' secrets and the…
Winstead, Karen A.
Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1997.
Divides Middle English saints' lives about virgin martyrs (ca. 1200-1450) into three subgroups and examines how each reflects the cultural conditions of its reception.
An understanding of Virgilian tragedy, which entails not only a perspective but also a 'retro'spective, helps clarify Chaucer's description of TC as "tragedye."
Reid, Lindsay Ann.
Explicator 72.02 (2014): 158-62.
Identifies the classical sources (Virgil and Ovid) and explores the implications of two tree metaphors that Pandarus uses to encourage Troilus to court Criseyde.
Dor, Juliette.
Adrian Papahagi, ed. Métamorphoses (Paris: Association des Médiviéstes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2003), pp. 197-218.
In LGW, Chaucer questions his two major sources--Virgil's Aeneid and Ovid's Heroides--to express the naked text of the myth and, simultaneously, to assert his own authority. Aeneas is selfish and irresponsible in LGW (Chaucer's third treatment after…
Brereton, Georgine E.
Medium Aevum 27 (1958): 173-74.
Proposes that an error of transmission in Chaucer's source (Frère Renaud de Louens' "Livre de Mellibee et Prudence") accounts for the inaccurate claim in Mel: that Ovid says a weasel can slay a bull. The proposed error confuses Ovid's "viper"…
DeMarco clarifies the classical and medieval distinctions between "public" and "private" violence and explores efforts to justify each type of violence, showing that Prudence's advice to Melibee is "secular," "pragmatic," and ultimately Ciceronian.…
Dove, Debra Magai.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 1175A.
Violence, induced by the impermissible crossing of borders, involves clashing social codes and evokes varying attitudes: Beowulf authorizes it; Juliana opposes it; "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and MilT develop its ambiguities. Sir Gawain poses a…
Roberts, Anna, ed.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.
Ten essays by various authors, including discussions of AElfric's female saints, "Emare," English translations of Christine de Pizan, and other topics. Includes a slightly revised reprint of Carolyn Dinshaw's "Rivalry, Rape, and Manhood: Gower and…
Kawasaki, Masatoshi.
Eigo Seinen (Tokyo) 133 (1987): 24-26.
A comparative survey of the relationship between Vinsauf's "Poetria nova" and Chacuer's poetry; shows the poet's artistic mind influenced by various rhetorical devices. Particularly emphasizes the significance of "apostrophe," considering the visual…
Murphy, Kevin M.
Dissertation Abstracts International A80.01(E) (2018): n.p.
Includes discussion of how Chaucer "lays bare . . . [h]ow language and other signs may be adopted to obscure the patently obvious,” arguing that the Pardoner's "constant insistence on corporeal language and imagery always returns the reader to the…
Fisher, Judith L., and Mark Allen.
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. 233-73.
The authors explore two kinds of Victorian medievalism (antiquarian detail and moral didacticism) in visual tradition, surveying Victorian depictions of CT in painting and book illustration and focusing on various illustrations of ClT. Includes a…
Looks at flattery "as a practice" (for communicating with superiors) and "as a discourse" (the conventional railings against the practice) in a variety of Middle English texts. Chapter 3 examines Mel, MerT, and NPT as "conjunctions of flattery and …
Bodden, M. C.
Susannah Mary Chewning, ed. Intersections of Sexuality and the Divine in Medieval Culture: The Word Made Flesh (Burlington, Ver.: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 51-73.
The carnal quest in MerT has as its goal an erotic union in the "paradys terrestre." This desire is fulfilled in an inverted via mystica, enforcing the ambiguity of mystical language as a mode of knowing.
Explores the role of virginity in notions of late-medieval bodies, genders, identities and social practices. The study, focusing on female religious versions of virginity, is structured around decreasing degrees of enclosure, examining hagiographic…
Pearsall, Derek.
Joerg O. Fichte, ed. Chaucer's Frame Tales (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1987): pp. 35-49.
With characters slightly less than human, Chaucer's fabliaux, a sort of "guerrilla warfare on established values," deviate from the classical definition of comedy ridiculing vice and folly to correct deviancy. Fabliaux characters are opposed to the…
