Chaucer may have intended to end MkT with the account of Zenobia--extracting it from LGW--and thereby to offer her narrative as a remedy for the Monk's "spiritual condition," which develops over the course of CT. Lindeboom compares Chaucer's…
MkT makes a political statement reflecting Richard II's tyrannous activities during the altter years of his reign. The stories of misgovernment suggest a late date of composition for the work. The character of the Monk is based on Nimrod, himself…
Wurtele, Douglas J.
Journal of Literature and Theology 1 (1987): 192-209.
Chaucer's portrait of the Monk is consistent throughout CT. In narrating MkT, the Monk distorts biblical passages such as the Samson exemplum, showing himself remiss in biblical studies just as the GP Monk is lax in other clerical duties.
Grennen, Joseph E.
American Notes and Queries 6 (1968): 83-85.
Identifies the sexual and medical implications of several details in the GP description of the Monk, including his association with venery and food, his baldness, and his being fat "in good point" (1.200).
The Monk (who, alone among the pilgrims, discusses both meter and genre at length) with his hundred tragedies can be viewed as a "rival poet" whose "imaginative narrowness," "verbal repetition," "tiresome" syntax, and encapsulated world view stand in…
The reference to Rochester just before MkT helps explain the choice of teller, the nature of the tale, and the narrator's refusal to "pleye" when he is interrupted. Rochester Cathedral included a monastic house; it contained a mural of Fortune's…
The labors of Hercules, employed by Boethius to show how man may determine his own fortune, are misused by the Monk, who sees the "Consolation" only as a source for secular tales.
Read in accord with the medieval one-handed alphabet, the hand positions in Chaucer's Hoccleve portrait form the monogram GC. These positions appear to be a constant in the tradition of Chaucer portraiture, including the Ellesmere miniature. Such…
Each of the five names Chaucer uses for the moon goddess denotes a particular aspect of the goddess. A study of these names in TC, FranT, KnT, and MerT and of the functions they denote helps us understand the personalities of the women who invoke…
Wood, Chauncey.
R. F. Yeager, ed. Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutability, Exchange (Victoria B. C.: University of Victoria, 1991), pp. 75-84.
With its focus on sin, ParsT is the most Gowerian and least Chaucerian of the CT, even though Gower's presentation of sin is expository and Chaucer's indirect.
In contrast to the strong heroines in French romances, Criseyde is a weak, passive individual who does not act but is acted upon. Chaucer creates her this way deliberately to make her "magically attractive"--she is "lovely undefined responsiveness,"…
Besserman, Lawrence [L.]
North-Western European Language Evolution 34 (1998): 99-153.
Historical assessment of Chaucer's multi-word (or phrasal) verbs, assessing the syntax and semantics of such verbs, the drift to post-positioning of the particles in these verbs (e.g., "wente forth" rather than "forth wente"), and the effects of…
Jimura, Akiyuki.
Shizuya Tara, Mayumi Sawada, and Larry Walker, eds. Language and Beyond: Festschrift for Hiroshi Yonekura on the Occasion of His 65th Birthday (Tokyo: Eichosha, 2007), pp. 265-83.
Discusses Chaucer's proverbial wisdom in Mel. In Japanese
Hardman, Phillipa.
Review of English Studies 37 (1986): 478-94.
Studies Chaucer's sources, invocations to, and use of the muses in Anel, HF, TC, and CT. The use in CT is humorous. In HF, the muses are a "metaphorical model" for the "art poetical." In TC, muses chart the changing attitudes of the narrator.
Identifies a "consistent pattern" in Chaucer's works of comparing "the songs and melodies of lovers to sacred and philosophical medieval musics," religious and astronomical. Examines concord and discord in musical references in KnT, PF, ManT, TC,…
Steinberg examines differences between depictions of Nature in Spenser's Mutabilitie Cantos and in Chaucer's PF. For Spenser, disorder inheres in nature, while in Chaucer it results from human "pettiness and passion." Such differences remind us of…
Kawasaki, Masatoshi.
Journal of British and American Literature (Komazawa University) 33 (1998): 1-11
Assesses the importance of Troilus's apotheosis, emphasizing Chaucer's debt to Boethius and considering the poet's uses of juxtaposition and his fusion of classical and medieval ideas.
Corpus Christi plays are "analogues for the construction of time and space" in CT. In the plays and in the poem, time and space are both physical and metaphysical, unifying characters and audience in the "single teleology" of movement toward…
Çetiner-Öktem, Züleyha.
Interactions: Ege Journal of British and American Studies 28, nos. 1-2 (2019): 1-12.
Argues that Chaucer reformulates "mythocultural memory" in LGW when he depicts traditional male heroes as "diminished men," neither valorous nor gentle. By deconstructing the "structurally adamant images of the Greco-Roman male," the poet escapes…
Zhang, Lian.
American Notes and Queries 31.1 (2018): 9.
Examines translations of Chaucer's name in light of Chinese traditions, specifically with regard to a family's values and wishes revealed through name choice.
Taylor, Paul Beekman.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 95 (1994): 243-48.
Chaucer's use of the name Geffrey in his poetry contains a humorous and self-reflexive impact, although reference to his ancestral name Malyn does not.
Coghill, Nevill.
D. S. Brewer, ed. Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature (University: University of Alabama Press; London: Nelson, 1966), pp. 114-39.
Describes Chaucer's rhetoric and style in CT, exploring his orchestration of narrative economy, climax, pace (especially in relation to rhyme and meter), and verisimilitude, Identifies "flaws" in SumT and PhyT, and admires the symbolic…
