Evaluates twenty of Chaucer's standalone lyric poems, considering their prosodic features, poetic qualities, and representations of various "aspects of experience."
Bloch, R. Howard.
Qui Parle 2 (1988): 22-45; Representations 28 (1989): 113-34.
Explicates Virginia's death by reference to patristic definitions of virginity as the desired ideal veiled in substance, a state inevitably transgressed by the gaze. By extension, the ideal that virginity implies is destroyed by its articulation. …
Baugh, Albert C., ed.
New York: Appleton-Century Crofts, 1963.
A teaching edition that includes BD, HF, PF, TC, LGWP-F and the legend of Cleopatra, CT (without Mel or ParsT), and eight short lyrics (Ros, Adam, Gent, Truth, Sted, Scog, Buk, and Purse), with bottom-of-page notes and glosses, and a glossarial…
Hoy, Michael, and Michael Stevens.
London: Norton Bailey, 1969.
Comprises seven essays (three by Stevens; four by Hoy) that discuss eight portions of CT (GP, KnT, PrT and ClT, CYPT, FranT, PardPT, NPT), with brief notes, bibliography, and an index. Recurrent concern with unity, narrative skill, aesthetic order…
Umland, Sam.
Platte Valley Review 21 (Winter 1993): 17-33.
In the GP sketch and in MLPT, Chaucer characterizes his Man of Law as one who does not recognize Divine design behind the pattern of natural events, eternal law behind natural law. The Man of Law errs in focusing on temporal events, failing to…
Green, Richard Firth.
Notes and Queries 238 (1993): 303-305.
Discusses GP 313-20 with particular reference to the meaning of "fee simple," suggesting that it implies sharp practice by the man of Law and that the portrayal of him is critical.
Farrell, Robert T.
Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, eds. J. R. R. Tolkien: Essays in Memoriam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 159-72.
Previous criticism often finds an unresolved tension between tale and teller in MLT and in the tale itself, leading a critic like Edward A. Block to declare the work "poor art." However, the admitted tensions within the tale between a feeling of…
Harty, Kevin J.
Studies in Short Fiction 18 (1981): 75-77.
The Man of Law's allusion to the story of the nine daughters of Pierus, as presented in Ovid's "Metamorphoses" 5, is viewed as literary criticism that emphasizes the fact that the Man of Law is reluctant to be compared to the daughters--who lost…
Skilled in the law and both learned and adept in poetry, the Man of Law crafts a tale of sin, free will, and providence. Though Custance is steadfast, her will is free and consequential, the foundation of true judgment. MLT proposes a concept of…
Grennen, Joseph E.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 84 (1985): 498-514.
MLT reflects the occupation of its teller both in its concern for "legal particularities" and in its vision of the beauty and order of the law, in such terms as "prudence" and forms of "govern." Constance's own name suggests "justitia."
Reads the Man of Law's materials in CT as an unfolding characterization of the lawyer, commenting on the relationship of tale to teller, the narrator's use of law and legalistic rhetoric, and the relation of MLT to other rhyme royal tales in CT. The…
Reads MLT as a satire on its narrator whose volatile comments on the action of the poem contrast sharply with Constance's own patient acceptance, and characterize him as "anti-Boethian, anti-humanistic, [and] anti-religious," a man interested in…
MLT extends the concerns with wooing and governance that are developed in Part 1 of CT, especially when considered in light of the extended version of CkT found in Bodley MS 686, which is edited and appended to this essay.
Harrington, David V.
Moderna Språch 61 (1967): 353-62.
Resists impulses to denigrate the artistry of MLT and argues that the rhetorical passages--including several of the narrator's apostrophes--achieve "genuinely intense emotion" rather than mere sentimentality.
Rose, Christine M.
College Literature 28.2: 155-77, 2001.
Use of sources and analogues in the classroom can provide baffled students a point of entry into the complexities of MLT and allow them to appreciate the importance of redaction in medieval literature. In particular, examining Chaucer's feminization…
Hardman, Phillipa.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 93 (1994): 204-27.
The portrait of the Man in Black of BD reflects a traditional "imago pietatis," the Man of Sorrows. So, to a lesser degree, do the Falcon of SqT and Criseyde.
Crocker, Holly A.
Lynn T. Ramey and Tison Pugh, eds. Race, Class, and Gender in "Medieval" Cinema (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 183-97.
The characterization of Chaucer in Helgeland's film reinforces the film's concerns with authority and masculinity, ultimately revealing that "canonical authority" is "anachronistic."
Owen, Charles A (Jr.)
Thomas Hahn and Alan Lupack, eds. Retelling Tales: Essays in Honor of Russell Peck (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 259-74.
The autobiographical character of Chaucer-the-pilgrim's reportage and of the individual "Tales" in CT intensifies the nuanced contradictions of the Manciple's portrait in GP,of the competing voices in the lengthy ManP, and of the Manciple's…
ManT examines the kind of language by which a poet can survive. Given the historical context of Richard II's reign and the contemporary chronicle literature that warned of the necessity of suppressing one's speech, the individual must resort to…
Correale, Robert M.
Chaucer Review 25 (1991): 238-65.
Because it contains the fewest emendations and corresponds most closely to Chaucer's MLT, the version of Les Cronicles in the MS Paris, Bibl. Nationale, Franc. 9687, fols. 1va-114va (ca. 1340-50), will serve as a base text for the Chaucer Library…
Kaske, R. E.
Jerome Mitchell and William Provost, eds. Chaucer the Love Poet (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1973), pp. 45-65.
Restricts the "marriage group" to the four components originally proposed by George Lyman Kittredge (WBPT, ClT, MerT, FranT), disclosing the intricacies of their interconnections and considering in turn their various attitudes toward sex and mastery…
Kellogg, Arthur L., and Robert C. Cox.
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 155-98.
Discusses Chaucer's three references to May 3 as an ambivalent "destinal date," arging that the date is affiliated with tragic fortune in TC, with humanistic outlook in KnT, and with comic reversal in NPT. This sequence comprises a "kind of limited…
McCall, John P.
Modern Language Notes 76.3 (1961): 201-05.
Argues that Chaucer's references to May third, assigned in Ovidian tradition to "the goddess Flora and her celebrations," is a day on which the "force of love is especially and powerfully felt," and therefore "a suitable day for Pandare [TC 2.56],…
