Brereton, Georgine E.
Medium Aevum 27 (1958): 173-74.
Proposes that an error of transmission in Chaucer's source (Frère Renaud de Louens' "Livre de Mellibee et Prudence") accounts for the inaccurate claim in Mel: that Ovid says a weasel can slay a bull. The proposed error confuses Ovid's "viper"…
Nall, Catherine.
Stephanie Downes, Andrew Lynch, and Katrina O’Loughlin, eds. Writing War in Britain and France, 1370–1854: A History of Emotions (London: Routledge, 2018), pp. 73-88.
Explores the theme of knightly and royal pity (and related concepts, such as mercy, compassion, and resulting actions) in literary representations of war in a range of late medieval English texts, with particular attention to the Alliterative "Morte…
DeMarco clarifies the classical and medieval distinctions between "public" and "private" violence and explores efforts to justify each type of violence, showing that Prudence's advice to Melibee is "secular," "pragmatic," and ultimately Ciceronian.…
Dove, Debra Magai.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 1175A.
Violence, induced by the impermissible crossing of borders, involves clashing social codes and evokes varying attitudes: Beowulf authorizes it; Juliana opposes it; "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and MilT develop its ambiguities. Sir Gawain poses a…
Roberts, Anna, ed.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998.
Ten essays by various authors, including discussions of AElfric's female saints, "Emare," English translations of Christine de Pizan, and other topics. Includes a slightly revised reprint of Carolyn Dinshaw's "Rivalry, Rape, and Manhood: Gower and…
Kawasaki, Masatoshi.
Eigo Seinen (Tokyo) 133 (1987): 24-26.
A comparative survey of the relationship between Vinsauf's "Poetria nova" and Chacuer's poetry; shows the poet's artistic mind influenced by various rhetorical devices. Particularly emphasizes the significance of "apostrophe," considering the visual…
Aiken, Pauline
Studies in Philology 53 (1956): 22-24.
Adduces Vincent of Beauvais' "Speculum Doctrinale" to support reading "houres" in Chaucer's description of the Physician (GP 1.416) as a plural of "the technical Latin term for each stage of the development of a disease."
Murphy, Kevin M.
Dissertation Abstracts International A80.01(E) (2018): n.p.
Includes discussion of how Chaucer "lays bare . . . [h]ow language and other signs may be adopted to obscure the patently obvious,” arguing that the Pardoner's "constant insistence on corporeal language and imagery always returns the reader to the…
Fisher, Judith L., and Mark Allen.
William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum, eds. Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures (New Castle, Del. : Oak Knoll; London: British Library, 2003), pp. 233-73.
The authors explore two kinds of Victorian medievalism (antiquarian detail and moral didacticism) in visual tradition, surveying Victorian depictions of CT in painting and book illustration and focusing on various illustrations of ClT. Includes a…
Looks at flattery "as a practice" (for communicating with superiors) and "as a discourse" (the conventional railings against the practice) in a variety of Middle English texts. Chapter 3 examines Mel, MerT, and NPT as "conjunctions of flattery and …
Bodden, M. C.
Susannah Mary Chewning, ed. Intersections of Sexuality and the Divine in Medieval Culture: The Word Made Flesh (Burlington, Ver.: Ashgate, 2005), pp. 51-73.
The carnal quest in MerT has as its goal an erotic union in the "paradys terrestre." This desire is fulfilled in an inverted via mystica, enforcing the ambiguity of mystical language as a mode of knowing.
Explores the role of virginity in notions of late-medieval bodies, genders, identities and social practices. The study, focusing on female religious versions of virginity, is structured around decreasing degrees of enclosure, examining hagiographic…
Pearsall, Derek.
Joerg O. Fichte, ed. Chaucer's Frame Tales (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 1987): pp. 35-49.
With characters slightly less than human, Chaucer's fabliaux, a sort of "guerrilla warfare on established values," deviate from the classical definition of comedy ridiculing vice and folly to correct deviancy. Fabliaux characters are opposed to the…
Ruiz Sánchez, Marcos.
Cuadernos de filologia clásica: Estudios latinos 34.02 (2014): 241-65.
Studies several versions of the story of PardT, identified as tale type AT 763 ("The Treasure Finders who Murder One Another"). Assesses the functions of the characters, the genres in which it has been written, and the purposes of the story…
Crepin, Andre.
Guy Bourquin, ed. Hier et aujourd'hui: Points de vue sur le moyen age anglais (Nancy: Association des Młdiłvistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supłrieur, 1997), pp. 117-23.
Examines diachronically the values of "e" in weakly stressed syllables, revealing the extent, causes, and consequences of phonetic and morphosyntactic changes: loss of syllables and inflectional endings, efforts to make spelling consistent, and…
Cawsey, Kathy.
Images of Language in Middle English Vernacular Writings (Woodbridge: Brewer, 2020), pp. 13-43.
Argues that in its adaptations of poetic traditions (particularly representations of the four elements and "ars grammatica") and in dealing "explicitly with the problematics of language and poetry," HF is "almost an anti-'ars-poetica'.” In it,…
Hwang, Joon Ho.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 12 (2006): 371-92.
HF reflects Chaucer's efforts to imitate Dante's innovation and use of the vernacular; the poem shows Chaucer's struggles with nonstandard forms of English and the lack of an English literary tradition.
Ebin, Lois (A.). ed.
Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University, Medieval Institute Publications, 1984.
A diversity of critical perspectives presented by R. W. Hanning, D. Kelly, F. Goldin, J. M. Ferrante, E. Vance, W. Wetherbee, G. D. Economou, J. B. Allen, G. Olson, R. O. Payne, and L. Ebin to focus on creation of poetic works of Lydgate, Dunbar,…
Matsuda, Takami.
Kiyoko Myojo and Noburu Notomi, eds. What Is a Text? An Introduction to Textual Scholarship (Tokyo: Keio University Press, 2015), pp. 81–104.
Refers to Paul Zumthor's notion of "mouvance," and argues that CT should be understood not as a single text but as a group of different, co-existent texts. In Japanese.
Bourgne, Florence.
Leo Carruthers, Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, and Tatjana Silec, eds. Palimpsests and the Literary Imagination of Medieval England (New York: Plagrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 115-36.
Vernacular authors anxious about the fragility of texts due to the impermanence of the medium and scribal transmission called attention in their writing to forms of engraving in stone and wax. As writing habits changed, the depiction of writing…
Argues that Equat exemplifies how late medieval writers blended "theoretical and practical material, exploiting the flexibility of the vernacular and moulding it to their needs." Following Kari Anne Rand, treats Equat as the work of John Westwyk…
Taylor, Andrew.
Michael Johnston and Michael Van Dussen, eds. The Medieval Manuscript Book: Cultural Approaches (Cambridge- Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 199-214.
Explores the "various degrees of control" exerted by medieval vernacular poets over the production of their manuscripts, maintaining that evidence from the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts indicates Chaucer "was clearly not moving expeditiously…
McCabe, T. Matthew N.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 563-79.
Discusses the "very novelty of Gower's claim to be a nationally significant, elite, literary author by examining specific articulations of this claim." Examining the implications of such a claim, McCabe argues for Gower's influence on English poetry…
