Brewer, D[erek]. S.
Poetica (Tokyo) 1 (1974): 1-20.
Examines the word "sad" in ClT to show that meaning and nuance in Chaucer's poetry derive, not from patterns of similarity or metaphor, but from metonymic contiguity, which functions much as does the "creative contiguity" of Gothic juxtaposition.…
Drucker, Trudy.
New York State Journal of Medicine 68 (1968): 444-47.
Describes various disorders, discomforts, and diseases among the Canterbury pilgrims and in their tales, commenting on medieval and modern understandings of symptoms and causes.
A detailed examination of Chaucer's principal direct source on significative dreams, Robert Holcot's commentary on The Book of Wisdom, "Super Sapientiam Salomonis," and of Chaucer's method of constant mixture of various viewpoints (especially those…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 75-91.
Chaucer deals with a concern of earlier poets--humanity's place in the universe--and with concerns of his own time--the bases and abuses of civil and ecclesiastical authority, the limits of human freedom, and the implications of will and…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
Lawrence D. Roberts, ed. Approaches to Nature in the Middle Ages: Papers of the Tenth Annual Conference of the Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 16. (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1982), pp. 47-62.
Discussion of nature and woman in twelfth-century latin works of Bernardus Silvestris ("Cosmographia") and Alain de Lisle ("De planctu naturae")l, with comments on PR and the Wife of Bath.
Examines the significance of astrological allusions to the "form and meaning" of CT, particularly how they reflect and contribute to the work as a "dramatic allegory" of human pilgrimage through worldly sorrow.
Stavrou, C. N.
South Atlantic Quarterly 55 (1957): 454-61.
Rejects Matthew Arnold's claim that Chaucer lacked "high seriousness," commenting on the "close interrelationship between the ironist and moralist" in the older poet's works, and suggesting that, though genial in his acceptance of human variety and…
Offers a "new look at Chaucer's folktales," distinguishing between written and oral analogues to portions of CT, focusing on oral motifs, and categorizing the tales in accord with the numbering system in the 1961 revised version of Stith Thompson's…
Explores Chaucer's uses of narrative terms, such as "storie," "tale," "fable," "tretys," "tragedye," "legend," etc.," focusing on their relative degrees of exposition, fictionality, and historicity and the faithfulness of the narratives to source…
Madsen, Reta Margaret Anderson.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57.11 (1997): 4755A.
Argues that Chaucer modified, extended, and developed the "conventions" of medieval rhetoric (including the "doctrine of three styles"), exploring his uses in light of the "Poetria Nova" of Geoffrey of Vinsauf and the pseudo-Ciceronian "Rhetorica ad…
Silvia, Daniel S.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in honour of Rossell Hope Robbins (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974), pp. 153-63.
Distinguishes between two kinds of manuscripts of CT: those in which the entire poem is the sole item or the dominant one and those in which individual tales appear in anthologies. Focuses on the second kind, observing the moral or courtly nature of…
Ingham, Muriel Brierley.
Dissertation Abstracts International 68.10 (1968): 4132-33A.
Identifies and analyzes the motifs and imagery of death in England in the fourteenth century to the sixteenth, including discussion of the relatively positive depictions of death in TC and CT.
Ikegami analyzes in OE and ME literature formal problems of verse and prose, narratives, manuscripts and incunabula, Latin and vernaculars, to explain the differences between medieval and modern English literature.
In addition to etymologically undetermined words in Chaucer and to words whose ironic use obscures their true meaning, Chaucer's portrayal of characters (e.g., Reeve, Plowman, Yeoman, the widow of NPT, Griselda, and Symkyn in RvT) reveals that he was…
Curtis, Penelope.
Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson, eds. Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), pp. 128-45.
An "earthscape of renewals and pilgrimages," CT is chiefly incarnational and pluralistic, with four exceptions. As pious tales with separate value structures and terms of reference differing from the GP principle of "purifying, abstracting and…
Lemos, Brunilda Reichmann.
Revista Letras 30 (1981): 7-16.
Departures from Boccaccio's tale of Griselda are examined to prove that Chaucer had been familiar with three other versions, those of Petrarch, MS 1165, and Mezieres. Chaucer used differences in detail to add delicacy to enhance the emotional…
Eitler, Tamás.
Michael D. Fortescue et al., eds. Historical Linguistics 2003: Selected Papers from the 16th International Conference on Historical Linguistics, Copenhagen, 11-15 August 2003 (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2005), pp. 87-102.
Eitler studies the development of the "incipient standard" syntactic pattern (subject-verb-object), comparing data from Chaucer's prose works with data from other ME prose, characterizing his idiom as the "(relatively) upper class sociolect" of…
Sherman, John Stores.
Dissertation Abstracts International 37 (1976): 995A.
Chap. I studies Chaucer's awareness of the assets and liabilities of working within a tradition in PF and Purse. Chap. II argues that HF is finished. Chap. III sees the contradiction between the Pardoner's confession and tale as an effort to put…
Gray, Douglas.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press, 1990), pp. 81-90.
King James, Henryson, Dunbar, and Douglas were influenced by Chaucer rhetorically and stylistically, as well as in their choices of genre; but Gray emphasizes the influence of Chaucer's ideas and themes--noting particularly how Chaucer's "powers" of…
Burnet, R. A. L.
Notes and Queries 227 (1982): 115-16.
Although Ann Thompson's "Shakespeare's Chaucer: A Study in Literary Origins" explores parallels between TC and LGW and "The Merchant of Venice," it does not note the Chaucerian echoes in Portia's warning of Bassanio (5.1.23Off.), which is similar to…
Chetwynd, Marvin Gaye, illus.
London: Four Corners, 2014.
Art edition of selections from CT: GP, MilT, RvT, FrT, MerT, WBT, SumT, and PardT, with collage-like illustrations that combine imagery from medieval and modern sources,
Dramatic adaptation of portions of GP, KnT, WBT, PardT, FranT, NPT, and MilT, designed for "youth groups and dramatic societies." Includes stage directions, brief production notes and instructions, property list, etc. Musical score for piano, by…
Brewer, Derek.
Stefan Horlacher and Marion Islinger, eds. Expedition nach der Wahrheit: Poems, Essays, and Papers in Honour of Theo Stemmler (Heidelberg: C. Winter, 1996), pp. 513-24.
Critiques approaches to TC that separate the narrator of the poem from Chaucer, briefly tracing modern ideas of character and irony from Kittredge to Donaldson and Muscatine, and on to deconstruction and feminism. New Critics and their descendants…
