Donnelly, Colleen.
Language and Style 24: 433-43, 1991.
Surveys interactions between women's speech and silence, on the one hand, and generic conventions, on the other, in KnT, WBT, ClT, MerT, FranT, and ShT. Chaucer variously confirms or complicates the expectations about female speech embedded in the…
Gardner, John.
John P. Hermann and John J. Burke, eds. Signs and Symbols in Chaucer's Poetry (University : University of Alabama Press, 1981), pp. 195-207.
While "Robertsonianism" has produced scholastically defensible but totally lunatic readings, such as MilT as a "Christian meditation," it has also brilliantly illuminated BD. Its chief failure is tone deafness toward WBT, HF, etc. PF, LGW, TC,…
NPT reveals "the dangerous nature of signs" and offers a view of signification that looks forward to Derrida. The many oppositions foregrounded in the poem (truth/fiction, "confusio"/"blis," predestination/free will, etc.) point to the inscription…
Hughes reads CT as an allegorical political critique of the reign of Richard II. The GP descriptions allegorically represent aspects of Richard's personality or persons in his court. Each of the individual tales comments on specific political events…
Forste-Grupp, Sheryl L.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1996): 674-75A.
Analysis of legal documents and letters (especially treacherous or forged) in Middle English romances reveals that these fictions (including MLT) reflect popular attitudes of the 1300s and 1400s. Though speech had been preferred earlier, written…
Thundy, Zacharias P.
Literary Half-Yearly 20.2 (1979): 64-77.
Chaucer is careful to dwell on the pilgrimage to Canterbury as an interior, not merely as an exterior, experience, thus giving it an allegorical significance. This allegory can be seen as twofold: a journey from reason to faith and a movement from…
Owen, Charles A., Jr.
Mediaeval Studies 22 (1960): 366-70.
Explores the events of a single day in the first half of Book 2 of TC, particularly changes Chaucer made to Boccaccio "Filostrato," showing how this section helps to characterize Pandarus and Criseyde. Argues that the "muted contrast" between the…
Wasserman, Julian N., and Lois Roney, eds.
Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989.
Fourteen essays and an introduction explore "the subject of language in medieval literature" using traditional approaches together with modern critical theory, focusing on "what medieval writers themselves wrote about language," and specifically…
Everest, Carol A.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998) pp. 91-103.
From the perspective of medieval psychology, January's pretensions to youth and sexual vigor are ridiculous and potentially fatal, since his sexual overactivity diminishes vital spirits and causes, among other effects, blindness and eventually death.
Schmidt-Hidding, Wolfgang.
Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1959.
Opens with a chapter on Chaucer (pp. 9-35)--followed by ones about William Shakespeare, Henry Fielding, Thomas Sterne, Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain--surveying his self-portraits, narrative poses, characterizations, ironies, and the…
Describes the unique copy of portions of "Sidrak and Bokkus" found in Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, Amsterdam, MS M199, an early modern alchemical miscellany. Accompanying the selections, manuscript annotations refer to a wide variety of…
Duncan-Jones, Katherine.
Review of English Studies 25.98 (1974): 174-77.
Suggests a possible "echo" of HF and PF in Philip Sidney's "Old Arcadia," where "philosophical reflections by the dreamer are partly burlesqued" in the vision which follows.
Considers Robert Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" as a tragedy and the role of writing in the demise of the central character. Also explores medieval attitudes toward leprosy, versions of the Criseyde story before Henryson, and Henryson's debt to…
Dent, Judith Anne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1988): 1774A.
Showing his perception of inadequacies in the practice of medicine through the Physician's portrait in GP and PhyT, Chaucer reveals his belief in the balance of mind, body, and soul and the need for God as physician in BD, GP, WBT, MilT,MerT, KnT,…
Feinstein, Sandy, and Neal Woodman.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 49-66.
The Pardoner is compared to a hare, goat, and horse, and PardT refers to smaller animals usually considered vermin. The three gluttonous rioters are appropriately called shrews, and the poison used to kill them is ostensibly bought for rats and a…
Reconsiders the social status of franklins in the late medieval period and points out that their gentility is ambiguous. Discusses the value of "gentilesse" in FranT by comparing the tale with Boccaccian analogues, taking into account the…
Comments on questions of "prior circulation and authorial revision" that were disclosed by the Manly-Rickert edition of CT and suggests that recent advances in codicology and the history of the book may offer future editors new perspectives from…
Bergvall, Caroline.
PennSound (Sound recording; MP3 format. Recorded in London, September 22, 2006.) [writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Bergvall.php].
Four poems inspired by Chaucer's CT, written and recorded by Bergvall: "The Host's Tale"; "The Summer Tale (deus hic, 1)" [link to text included]; "The Franker Tale (deus hic, 2)" [link to text included]; and "The Not Tale (funeral)."
Boffey, Julia.
Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 69-82.
Discusses whether British Library MS Harley 116 and Cambridge University Library MS Hh 4.12 were meant to be anthologies or whether the quire signatures indicate discrete works that came together by accident.
Fizzard, Allison D.
Journal of British Studies 46 (2007): 245-62.
Fizzard considers Chaucer's GP description of the Monk among other satires and accounts of monastic dress, exploring in particular debates about standards of dress among Augustinian monks.
Item not seen; cited in MLA International Bibliography, where it is described as concerned with the memory, thought, and the muses in HF and LGW. In Japanese.
Boffey, Julia.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 38 (2016): 265-73.
Explores the connections between two compilations produced by scribe John Shirley--Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20 and British Library, Additional MS 16165--suggesting that the manuscripts indicate John Lydgate's two different reactions to the…
Item not seen; cited in MLA International Bibliography, where it is described as concerned with Hisashi Shigeo's theories of women and love in Chaucer. In Japanese.
