Gertz, SunHee Kim.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Gertz reads HF in light of modern semiotic theory (Maria Corti, Umberto Eco, and Roman Jakobson) and medieval traditions of "fürstenspiegel" (mirror of princes), with particular attention to visual signs and codes. Contrasts Chaucer's techniques of…
Bowden, Betsy.
Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation (San Marino, Calif.: Huntingon Library; Tokyo: Yushodo, 1995), pp. 171-204.
Surveys pilgrim protraits, ranging from Caxton's woodcuts to Blake's 1809 (1810?) engraving of "Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims," exploring "earlier readers' understandings of Chaucer's text (in order) to begin to distinguish those perceptions that…
Yager, Susan.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1992): 3922A.
Bo states that seeing should be deliberate action. Chaucer, who uses many words relating to seeing (and apparently introduced some into English), treats failure to perceive (Argus, January, Walter, Troilus) and illusion (HF, MLT, FranT, CYP, and…
Clogan, Paul M.
Gerald Gillespie, Margaret R. Higonnet, and Sumie Jones, eds. Visions of History, Visions of the Other. Vol. 2 of Earl Miner, gen. ed. ICLA '91 Tokyo: The Force of Vision. 6 vols. Proceedings of the XIIIth Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1995), pp. 144-51.
Depictions of Thebes indicate various medieval views of history. "Roman de Thebes" blurs contrasts between pagan and Christian, classical and historical. Boccaccio's "Teseida" resists the modernization and secularization of romance tradition. TC…
Watson, Nicholas.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 27 (1997): 145-87.
The belief that all humanity will attain salvation occurs with surprising frequency in Middle English writings. Though influenced by Latin theology, the sentiment was generated primarily by English and Anglo-Norman vernacular culture. PF shows the…
Reorients the critical habit of assessing the structure and details of HF in light of Gothic architecture, arguing that the poem affiliates "Gothic" and "Other," and "dramatizes" the narrator's encounter with the "familiar world of the self and the…
Jordan, Robert M.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 195-200.
Like modern theorists, Chaucer is concerned with language as a reliable vehicle to account for reality, as in HF, ManT, TC,Ret. The pilgrim narrator shifts in viewpoint and style; Chaucer exploits the gap between language and reality, as in TC, LGW,…
In MerT and two French fabliaux ("Les perdris" and "Le prestre qui abevete"), the "victims' justifiably skeptical search for visual proof" paradoxically results in deceptive "visual confirmation." Examining how this process takes place may elucidate…
Brantley, Jessica.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 315-34.
Brantley describes "texts that record acts of looking" as a "distinct medieval literary genre and a distinctly medieval way of knowing," addressing dream visions (including BD, PF, HF, and LGWP), mystical visions, and the parody of a visionary…
Deals with both real ecstatic visions and fictional literary visions and gives criteria to discern them. Thus it provides the background for Chaucer's dream poetry as well, quoting Langland, BD, HF, LGW, PF, etc.
Njoku, Benedict C.
Thomas Halton, ed., and Joseph P. Williman, ed. and pref. Diakonia: Studies in Honor of Robert T. Meyer (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1986), pp. 302-307.
Derivations of words in Chaucer referring to saintliness and morality.
Sturges, Robert S.
Helen Fulton, ed. Chaucer and Italian Culture (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021), pp. 120-44.
Focuses on TC's connections with Dante's "Convivio" and "Vita nuova." Although there is no “evidence for direct borrowing from the 'Vita nova,'” Sturges claims that Chaucer's and Dante's "sensory aspects of love" are similar in the three works,…
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…
