Psychological analysis of six of the Canterbury pilgrims (Knight, Man of Law, Narrator [in Mel], Pardoner, Clerk, and Second Nun, followed by "six recreations" in prose that attempt to project the characters as modern storytellers.
Schibanoff, Susan.
Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweickart, eds. Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), pp. 83-106. Reprinted in Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature (Routledge, 1994), pp. 221-45.
Discusses the "well-established 'topos' of manuscript literature that women readers alone are offended by antifeminist texts" and examines Chaucer's defense of himself in portraying Criseyde's guilt. Asserts that Chaucer's Wife of Bath, being…
Contrasts WBT to popular romance narratives of the period, arguing that notions of "sentence"--i.e., of "meaning that is inscribed into a narrative by its author"--force high cultural glossing onto popular texts that may not be best suited to such…
Traditions of simultaneous affirmation and negation found in pseudo-Dionysian mystical theology account for Ret's treatment of the reader and its relation to CT.
Ross, Thomas W.
Robert F. Yeager, ed. Fifteenth-Century Studies: Recent Essays (Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1984), pp. 137-60.
Latin-English glosses from BL MS Add. 37075 and other hitherto unpublished sources throw light on attitudes toward words for sex, body parts, and body functions as used by Chaucer and Scottish Chaucerians.
Williams, Tara.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 27 (2005): 93-127
In ClT, Chaucer expands notions of female power, helping to shape an idea of womanliness, especially as manifested in submissiveness, production of heirs, and self-sacrifice. Williams analyzes the linguistic and cultural category of "womanhood" in…
Evans, William Dansby.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 1175A.
Examines Eliot's senior-year courses at Harvard for their medieval focus (in art, literature, and philosophy) in the light of primary materials (including Eliot's annotated Chaucer textbook).
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Renascence 35.3 (1983): 167-82.
Reads the allusions to Chaucer's GP, Virgil's "Aeneid," and, most extensively, Pope's "Rape of the Lock" in Eliot's "The Waste Land" as signals to his rejection of the "Classical/Christian tradition."
Linke, Hansjürgen.
Die Neueren Sprachen: Zeitschrift für Forschung und Unterricht und Kontaktstudium auf dem Fachgebiet der Modernen Fremdsprachen n.v. (1962): 485-96.
Examines the style and techniques of Chaucer's quasi-optical, quasi-cinematic ("quasi-optische," "quasi-filmescher") scene changes in CT, with particular attention to those in MerT. Focuses on relations between external and internal drama in such…
Gray, Paul Edward.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 7 (1965): 213-24.
Argues that Dorigen and Arveragus's agreement at the beginning of FranT "to marry and remain courtly lovers" reflects the Franklin's illusory "double standard" that falsely assumes compatibility between marital and courtly love, symbolically undercut…
Luengo, Anthony E.
Revue de l'Universite d'Ottawa 50 (1980): 223-32.
Chaucer's treatment of "sententiae" in ParsT is best understood in terms of the schema provided by Thomas Walleys in his 14th-century "De modo componendi sermones." The Parson adopts many of Walleys' 14 methods of linking "senteniae" to control…
Concentrates on "colloquialism" in Chaucer's syntax in the context of popular romance and poetry, including some examples from Old English, finding that "discontinuous patterns of word-order" and "negative forms of emphatic expression" contribute to…
Attends closely to the syntax of three stanzas of PrT, describing their intricacies and "strong effects," by commenting on predication, modification, rhyme, grammar, and related prosodic concerns.
Pedagogical guide to selections from Tennyson, Chaucer, and African poetry, with recommendations on how to explicate poetry, focusing on theme and style. The Chaucer section (pp. 60-111) addresses GP and NPT, emphasizing Chaucer's goals of moral and…
Posits a connection between literature, subjectivity, and the diagnosis of medical symptoms in the late Middle Ages. Uses CT and other literary and medical works.
Orlemanski, Julie.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
Studies medical language and the "etiological imagination" of late medieval England, i.e., the "envisioning, arbitrating among, and emplotting [of] intricate causal chains" that seek to represent or explain the "frictional interface of causation and…
Hsy, Jonathan.
Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 13 (2016): 477–83.
Explores how deafness is represented in some medieval medical treatises as a social phenomenon, "not an ill in itself"; in Teresa de Cartagena's autobiography as a "deaf gain" rather than "hearing loss"; and in Chaucer's Wife of Bath as a mark of her…
Kinney, Arthur F., Kenneth W. Kuiper, and Lynn Z. Bloom, comps.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970.
Item not seen; the WorldCat record indicates that this is a compilation of literary works and extracts from the classical era to the twentieth century, including WBT.
Pardee, Sheila.
Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 14 (1993): 65-79
Chaucer's portrayal of the Monk and of the monk in ShT is complex and sympathetic. Contemporary expectations about monks are clear in the Host's reactions to the Monk. Daun John fits the stereotype but may be motivated by a desire to chastise…
Woods, William F.
Chaucer Review 39 (2004): 17-40.
RvT is "concerned with breaking the ranks of social hierarchy" and what causes individuals to desire such breaks. The clerks, the women, Bayard, and especially Symkyn all experience "frustrated desire," which leads Symkyn "to expand into outer or…
Pratt, Robert A.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 59 (1960): 208-11.
Adduces an historical account from 1862 concerning a drinking game that involves turning over cups to suggest that "turne coppes" at RvT 1.3928 may indicate Symkyn caroused in similar fashion.
In Jungian terms, the experiences of the knight in WBT express a psychic interaction with the mother archetype, leading to the ultimate goal of finding the anima.
Underlying many traditional stories is the basic structure of the individual emerging into adulthood and establishing his or her identity by destroying parent-images and finding a beloved equal. A chapter on Chaucer establishes his equivocal and…
