Looking at BD, HF, and PF, Robinson examines Chaucer's relations to his masters and his dilemma in connecting books and imagination with actual life, in creating puzzles for the demands he felt "of the poetry of the poem." Chaucer's dreamscapes are…
Explores Chaucer's literary self-consciousness by tabulating and analyzing his wide-ranging and complex variety of literary terms, including terms that describe the process of writing and the impact of literature, as well as terms of genre, rhetoric,…
Examines the topoi of "game" versus "ernest" and "authority" versus "experience" in Chaucer's works, considering the influence of medieval rhetorical tradition on the poet's imagination.
Jost, Jean E.
Albrecht Classen, ed. The Book and the Magic of Reading in the Middle Ages. (New York and London: Garland, 1998), pp. 171-217.
Chaucer involves his readers in a romancelike quest of introspection. By way of infinite regression, they encounter first the text, then a reading character, and finally themselves. The process encourages both Socratic self-knowledge and pleasurable…
Olmert, Michael.
Arete: The Journal of Sport Literature 2:1 (1984): 171-82.
Briefly surveys the practice of drawing lots in ancient history, the Bible, medieval literature, and Chaucer's works, focusing on the GP "lottery" to select who will tell the first tale.
Farrell, Thomas J.
Chaucer Review 20 (1985): 61-67.
The introductory lines in question (Th-MelL *2143-54), if analyzed syntactically, lexically, and rhetorically, indicate that the "litel tretys" is Mel itself, rather than CT generally or the source of Mel.
Grace, Dominick M.
Florilegium 14 (1995-96): 157-70.
Interpretations of "tretys" in MelP have assumed a single referent for both occurrences of the term. But here and elsewhere Chaucer challenges assumptions of consistency between word and meaning. In making the first use of "tretys" refer to Mel and…
A biography of Richard Stury, based on public records, with recurrent attention to his forty-year acquaintance with Chaucer as friend and associate. Touches on the "long unsolved question of Chaucer's relation to Lollardy."
Strohm, Paul.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 17 (1995): 23-42.
Reads Chaucer's reference to cooks' turning "substaunce to accident" (PardT 538-40) as a joke about Lollard attitudes toward the Eucharist. Employing Freudian psychology of jokes and New Historicist evaluation of Lollard views and views of Lollards,…
Social history of late-medieval London produced to accompany an exhibition at the London Museum "concerned with life in London" during Chaucer's time. The text comments on Chaucer's life and on social, political, mercantile, and ecclesiastical…
Robertson, D. W., Jr.
New York: John Wiley & Sons,
An account of London in the late fourteenth century, including descriptions of its historical topography and architecture, the city's customs, a chronicle of its major events and history, and its role as an intellectual center. Chaucer is mentioned…
Wimsatt, James I.
Danielle Buschinger and Wolfgang Spiewok, eds. Etudes de linguistique et de litterature en l'honneur d'Andre Crepin. Greifswalder Beitrage zum Mittelalter 5, WODAN ser., no. 20 (Greifswald: Reineke, 1993), pp. 447-53.
Some features of Chaucer's putative lost lyrics may be inferred from those that exist. There may have been hundreds of occasional lyrics, reflecting Chaucer's penchant for octosyllabics and decasyllabics and for isosyllabic stanzas. He was skilled…
Phillips, Helen.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 414-34.
Describes the nature and legacy of the dream vision genre and assesses Chaucer's four dream poems (BD, HF, PF, and LGW), exploring the dynamics of courtliness and learning, experience and authority, endings and implications,…
Archibald, Elizabeth.
Carolyn Muessig and Ad Putter, eds. Envisaging Heaven in the Middle Ages. Routledge Studies in Medieval Religion and Culture, no. 6 (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), pp. 222-36.
Archibald surveys Italian, French, and English literary instances of love compared to heaven, hell, paradise, or purgatory, commenting on Chaucer's uses in CT (WBT, KnT, and especially MerT) and LGW and exploring the more sustained use of this set of…
Welch, Jane T.
Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1978): 3569A-70A.
Comic irony was used by Chaucer throughout CT, even in the tales generally considered to be serious or pious. ManT, SumT, FranT, PhyT, MLT, PrT, SNT, and ClT all display Chaucer's ironic point of view, although the reader's appreciaiton of this…
Argues that Chaucer's claim in LGW that St. Augustine "hath gret compassioun / Of this Lucresse" is neither ironic nor misinformed, but is an accurate account of Augustine's position. Situating Augustine's comments about Lucretia within the broader…
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.
