WBT is a tale of transformations best understood by applying to it Jung's concept of anima. The knight's quest is really a search for understanding of his inner self, the feminine psyche. The transformation of the hag at the end mirrors his own…
Enske, Fred van, trans.
Maastricht: Boekenplan, 2010.
Item not seen; reported in WorldCat, with the note: "Engelse gedichten van Chaucer tot de Beatles met vertaling" [English poetry from Chaucer to the Beatles with translation]. In Dutch and English.
Performance of music composed by Logan Skelton, including "Chaucer Songs," a "set of six songs with a textless interlude" set to poems by Chaucer (from MercB, from Bal Compl, BD 1223-44, Purse, from Lady, and PF 680-92). Sung by Philip Frohnmayer;…
Gray, Douglas.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Literature in Fourteenth-Century England (Tubingen: Gunter Narr; Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 83-98.
Characterizes the nature and conventions of Middle English lyrics, looking briefly at representative examples. Includes discussion of Chaucer as both a representative lyricist and one who breaks boundaries in his short poems.
Treats prosimetrum as "a unique medieval genre that mixes not only prose and verse but also narrative and lyric," and studies its implications for theorizations of the lyric mode, particularly the opposition between the Romantic notion of lyrics as…
Russell, J. Stephen.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 176-89.
By electing not to include the exact text of "O Alma Redemptoris Mater" (of which there were several versions) in PrT, Chaucer forces the audience to think through issues of verbal prayer vs. prayers of the heart that express the intent behind the…
A young-adult novel, modeled on CT, in which senior high school students on a bus trip from Canterbury, Connecticut to Washington, D.C. share stories about their awakening sexuality. Characters' names (including the primary narrator, Jeff Chaucer)…
The dreamer's apparently inept, clumsy responses to the knight's complaint result not from sympathetic tactfulness, but rather from his ignorance of courtly love conventions. His recognition of the transience of all earthly things in the knight's…
Wing, Susan L.
Cornelia N. Moore and Raymond A. Moody, eds. Comparative Literature East and West: Traditions and Trends. Selected Conference Papers (Honolulu: College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature, University of Hawaii, and the East-West Center, 1989), pp. 139-51.
Wing explores similarities and differences among the characterizations of Emelye in Boccaccio's Teseida, KnT, Anne de Graville's Le beau romant, and The Two Noble Kinsmen. The characterizations differ, but only in Shakespeare and Fletcher's play is…
Eliason, Norman E.
Modern Language Notes 71.3 (1956): 162-64.
Suggests that the pun on "hooly" in RvT 1.3983-84 as "holy" and wholly" encourages us to also see further word-play in the tale: "panne" as "penny" at 1.3944 and "allye" as "alloy" at 1.3945, both related to recognizing the connotations of "bras" as…
Sakai, Satoshi.
Journal of Tokyo Kasei Gajuin College (May 1980).
Chaucer's strenuous effort to protect Criseyde from harsh criticism against her is an indication that he is a man with interests in humanity in the dawn of the Renaissance rather than a medieval writer.
Altough the behavior of Alisoun and the knight of WBT counters the teachings of the medieval church, such behavior exemplifies a Christian attitude toward love and marriage.
Leffingwell, William Clare,Jr.
Dissertation Abstracts International 41 (1981): 3592A.
Chaucerian irony works variously: in PardT to show unadmitted brotherhood in sin; in MLT to reveal the narrator's limitations; in KnT to undercut chivalry; in TC to show the self-subversion of courtly love; in PF to ridicule the narrator's neglect…
Mendelson, Anne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1978): 2295A.
The incongruity of the method of theological "quaestiones" (humble) in WBP with the Wife's aggressive, arbitrary approach and some of her orthodox assertions create the comic effect. WBT exhibits a transformation: the intellectual authority of the…
Lindahl, Carl.
Journal of Folklore Research 34 (1997): 263-73.
Folklorists' recent interest in performance tends to neglect the chronological context of storytelling, for which now-maligned type and motif indexes remain useful. A change in pattern usually signals a change in meaning. For example, the ending of…
Fleming, John V.
Susan J. Ridyard, ed. Death, Sickness, and Health in Medieval Society (Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South, 2000), pp. 123-32.
Describes Chaucer's fusion of sources--Boccaccio, Boethius, the Bible, and Horace--in his presentation of Troilus' love as sickness and as analogous to the art of writing, focusing on Troilus' complaints and Pandarus' advice about letter-writing.
Comments on several themes that recur in Chaucer's poetry and surmises that they may reflect something of his mindset. Discusses cosmic journey and pilgrimage, prayer, experience and authority, and love tidings.
Considers Thomas Aquinas's "Summa theologica" as a source of the concern with demons' bodies in FrT, arguing that Chaucer followed Thomas's account of this question with intelligent and close attention.
Burnley, David.
English Language Notes 23:3 (1986): 15-22.
Offers more adequate definitions than previously suggested of psychological terms Chaucer derives from his French sources for BD, particularly "turnen into malice," "to mochel knowlechyng," "wyt so general," "pure suffraunt...wyt."
SqT may originally have been written for a Northern English audience, which could appreciate its echoes of Mandeville's "Travels" and "Gawain and the Green Knight."
Horobin, S. C. P.
Notes and Queries 245.1: 16-18, 2000.
Explains an eccentric spelling in the Hengwrt version of RvT (heem, or "home") as descending from Old Norse (East Norse "hem"), extended by a kind of imitation in Ellesmere to geen ("gone") and neen ("none"). Ellesmere also mistakes a Northern form…
Lázaro Lafuente, Luis Alberto.
SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature 5 (1996): 18-28.
Surveys scholarship and evidence concerning Chaucer's familiarity with Spanish literature, arguing that critics have exaggerated the possible influence. It is "highly improbable" that Chaucer was directly influenced by medieval Spanish writers;…
Sudo, Jan.
Studies in English Literature (Tokyo) 45 (1969): 221-36.
Explores the possible originations of select rhyming pairs in Chaucer's works, especially those involving proper names, observing Latin and Continental precedents and also commenting on recurrent non-onomastic rhymes that involve semantic…
