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],…
Hagen, Susan K.
Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 127-43.
Compares the narrative strategy of MerT with the techniques of standup comedy. The narrator of MerT holds up for ridicule the socially sanctioned convention of marriage between young women and old men, while at the same time affirming conventional…
Hira, Toshinori.
Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities (Nagasaki University) 3 (1963); 104-12; 4 (1964): 22-42; 10 (1969): 39-50; 10 (1969): 39-50.
Commentary on social, political, ecclesiastical, and religious aspects of CT, with attention to particular pilgrims. Limited availability at http://hdl.handle.net/10069/9502; http://hdl.handle.net/10069/9506; http://hdl/handle.net/10069/9570;…
Holley, Linda Tarte.
Houston, Tex.: Rice University Press, 1990.
Explores Chaucer's use of "the physics of measurement," an aspect of the science of optics (new in Chaucer's day), which measured "motion and relationships among objects inside a framed space." Chaucer's "verbal structures often move as the eye…
Hoffman, Richard L.
Classica et Mediaevalia 30 (1969): 552-77.
Defends Mel as a meaningful allegory, considering in turn Chaucer's use of the name "Sophia," his reference to wounded feet, and the "extended account" of Christ's passion which indicate framing attention to the Crucifixion. Then tabulates "three…
A "palimpsestic" reading of MerT reveals the irony with which the Merchant treats January and with which Chaucer treats the Merchant, enriching and complicating the "Tale's" identification between the Merchant and January.
Argues that in MerT "January's love of May reflects, in heightened colors," the Merchant's own "commercial love of the world's goods." Explores the possessive nature of January's love of May, focusing on the Merchant's metaphors and references to…
Considers evidence that January's knife-image ("Ne hurte hymselven with his owene knyf"; MerT 5.1840) when commenting on sexual relations with his wife may have indicated to some members of a medieval audience that he was "a sexual pervert of the…
Stillwell, Gardiner.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 57 (1958): 192-96.
Examines the syntax, rhetoric, and emphases of GP 1.280 in comparison with similar locutions elsewhere in Chaucer (especially ShT) to argue that it means, emphatically, " If he [the Merchant] was in debt, the spectator would certainly never know it!"
Wentersdorf, Karl P.
Studies in Philology 63 (1966): 604-29.
Anatomizes motifs in the sources and analogues of the pear tree episode in MerT, focusing on several modern Irish analogues that have details of characterization which parallel those in MerT and have an intervention by male and female fairies.…
In light of the mythological tradition of Janus and connections between January and Adam, January's self-deception in MerT is less bitter than funny. In general, the Tale "is one of the great literary celebrations of marriage, albeit a comic one."
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Explicator 35, iv (1977): 25-26.
The botanical-physical sense of May's appraisal of January's sexual "playing" as "nat...worth a bene" (E 1854) indicates that January has not impregnated May. May's expectancy of impregnation by Damian is frustrated when January interrupts…
