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…
Specht, Henrik.
Raken Ringbom and Matti Pissanen, eds. Proceedings from the Second Nordic Conference for English Studies (Abo: Abo Akademi, 1984), pp. 403-13.
Examines "ethopoeia" and "adlocutio" in characterizations and portraiture.
Oka, Saburo.
Hiroe Futamura, Kenichi Akishino, and Hisato Ebi, eds. A Pilgrimage Through Medieval Literature (Tokyo: Nan' Un-Do Press, 1993), pp. 399-411.
Compares love and the transformation of love in RvT with presentations in analogues to the poem, considering them as versions of the one-male, two-female love triangle.
Bugbee, John.
Medievalia et Humanistica 36 (2010) 49-76.
Dorigen in FranT has more than the two options of shame or death: she can also choose to break a bad law, even though the decision to let bad law stand "seems somehow, tragically, to have been taken long before the characters became conscious of…
Barr, Helen.
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2001.
Seven interrelated studies and an afterword that explore "socioliterary practice," considering literature as a material form of social behavior in "internal and dialectical relationship" with the institutions and conventions that shape it and that it…
In light of sociolinguistic categories such as register, distance-solidarity, and dialect, Allman contends, RvPT and the Reeve's portrait in GP stand as sustained examinations of failed sociality and unsatisfied desire at both dramatic and narrative…
Durmuller, Urs.
Andre Crepin, ed. Linguistic and Stylistic Studies in Medieval English. Publications de l'Association des Medievistes de l'Ensignement Superieur 10. (Paris, 1984): pp. 5-22.
Using applied sociolinguistics, Durmuller follows Schauber and Spolsky in analysis of verbal behavior of the Pardoner, whose oddities in language (speech acts, pronominal reference, selection of lexical items) relate to his strange behavior.
Woods, William F.
Papers on Language and Literature 32 (1996): 189-205
Explores ways CkPT respond to themes raised earlier in Fragment 1 and focuses on how CkT provides a "powerfully suggestive" urban setting in which the regulated life of Perkyn's master is contrasted by the mercurial, primal, savage world of thievery…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Masahiko Kanno, Masahiko Agari, and Gregory K. Jember, eds. Essays on English Literature and Language in Honour of Shun'ichi Noguchi. Tokyo: Eihosha, 1997, pp. 17-34.
Discusses Chaucer's uses of moot / moste, focusing on the fusion of social objective factors and the speaker's subjective implications.
Newman, Francis X., ed.
Binghamton, N.Y. : Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1986.
Five essays dealing with the peasants' revolt, peasant resistance, the plague, and social conscience. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Social Unrest in the Middle Ages under Alternative Title.
Cherniavsky, Michael, and Arthur J. Slavin, eds.
Waltham, Mass.: Xerox College Publishing, 1972.
Textbook anthology for use in history classrooms, combining classical, medieval, and Renaissance sources with modern assessments of the status, activities, and treatments of people of lower classes. In a section called "Ideal Types in Traditional…
Boyd, David Lorenzo.
Huntington Library Quarterly 58 (1996): 81-97.
The unique ending of CkT in MS Bodley 686 (ca. 1420-1440) reaffirms the preservation of traditional social systems and the obedience that they entail in the face of rising violence and the fear of political and social instability.
Sampson, Gloria Marie Paulik.
DAI 31.02 (1970): 747A.
Studies the "3500 second-person pronouns" in CT, using a socio-linguistic model that attends to "Social, Kinship, and Ideational Domains" to account for patterns of usage.
Mazzon, Gabriella.
Dieter Kastovsky and Arthur Mettinger, eds. The History of English in a Social Context: A Contribution to Historical Sociolinguistics. Trends in Linguistics; Studies and Monographs, no. 129. (Berlin and New York: Gruyter, 2000), pp. 135-68.
Mazzon demonstrates a "clear correlation between discourse strategies and pronoun use and switching" in CT. You and thou forms indicate "politeness" as well as social status, gender, and characterization.
Knoetze, Retha.
English Academy Review 34, no. 1 (2017): 85-98.
Assesses KnT in light of conventions of the romance genre and Boccaccio's "Teseida," arguing that the tale engages tensions "between a traditional communal feudal ideology and a newer more individualist and commercial outlook present in Chaucer's…
Dennis, Erin N.
Bruce E. Brandt and Michael S. Nagy, eds. Proceedings of the 14th Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literature, April 7-8, 2006 (Brookings, S.Dak.: English Department, South Dakota State University, 2006), pp. 107-23.
Dennis explores how WBP and WBT affirm and challenge the patriarchal assumptions of medieval literary and social traditions.
Peck, Russell A.
Francis X. Newman, ed. Social Unrest in the Middle Ages (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1986), pp. 113-48.
Chaucer's work and alliterative poetry such as "Jack Upland" and the "Plowman's Tale" "shared a common audience." John Ball's letters, like Wycliffe's writings, invoked the mythic simplicity of the early Christian church, appealing urgently to…
Lightsey, Scott.
R. F. Yeager and Brian W. Gastle, eds. Approaches to Teaching the Poetry of John Gower (New York: Modern Language Association,
2011), pp. 36-41.
Compares and contrasts the uses of estates literature in works by Gower, Chaucer, and William Langland, explaining the didacticism of Gower, Chaucer's "playful 'show--don't tell'" in GP, and Langland's allusive allegorizing.
Strohm, Paul.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.
Using a variety of contemporary texts, including statutes, poll taxes, and political treatises as well as fictional narratives, Strohm studies the structure of late-medieval social relations to provide an interpretative context for events in…
Chaucer works with a poetic genre; within it, however, he directs his attention to a specific occasion, probably Richard II's difficulties with royal prerogative in 1387.
Taylor reads ShT and Mel as an opposed pair. In ShT, puns indicate the failure of human attempts at community; in Mel, doublets encourage and iterate a linguistic and aesthetic community. Civil society comes into order in and through Mel, which…
