Considers tears in devotional contexts as a model for viewing tears "as a mode of discourse that is as potent as it is paradoxical: both outward and inward, involuntary and applied, and forming a distinctive voice between passive and active."
Taylor, Willene P.
College Literature Association Journal 13 (1969): 153-62.
Attributes January's cuckholding in MerT to "his own stupidity," reading Chaucer's deployment of antifeminist motifs as deeply ironic and part of his broader thematic concern to show that "everyone is morally responsible for his own acts." Chaucer's…
Statistical analysis, based on Mersand's still-valid assumption that Chaucer's romance vocabulary increased throughout his career, establishes different dates for the composition of different parts of SNT. The first part was probably written in the…
Morgan, Gerald.
In Nicolas Jacobs and Gerald Morgan, eds. "Truth is the beste": A Festschrift in Honour of A. V. C. Schmidt (New York: Lang, 2014), pp. 137-68.
Reviews the "extreme implausibility" of attributing the art of individual tales in CT to the pilgrim-narrators, and argues that the "ideas and arguments" of the tales belong to Chaucer. Also reviews the sequential order of the tales as found in the…
Gaylord, Alan T.
English Miscellany15 (1964): 25-45.
Explores the "shock of contrast" between the rejection of worldly love at the end of TC and the celebration of love found in earlier sections of the poem. The address to "yonge, fresshe folks" (5.1835) is consistent with the protagonists' youthful…
Assesses the "tenderness" of Chaucer's own feelings by examining his adaptations of the genre of consolation in BD and his techniques for evoking "consolatory feeling" in TC.
Lindeboom, B. W.
Ph.D. diss., Free University, Amsterdam, 2003.
In response to Gower's words to Chaucer at the end of "Confessio Amantis" (8.2941-57), Chaucer first revised LGWP and then completely restructured the plan for CT (e.g., taking Mel away from the Man of Law and giving him a "Gower" tale instead).
Blake, N. F.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 223-40.
Studies based uncritically upon the Robinson text may have produced questionable readings in CT: KnT, ParsT and Prol, ClT, ShT, GP, RvT, MilT, NPT. The Hengwrt MS, currently being used for the "Variorum Chaucer" and by Blake, is the earliest…
An introduction to CT designed for student use, with questions for discussion, research suggestions, and a review at the end of several topical sections: (1) biography and socioliterary setting; (2) language, style, and form; (3) reading CT; (4)…
Saunders, Corinne.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 452-75.
Introduces CT as the "epitome" of Chaucer's "literary experimentation," commenting on his social range, the unfinished nature of the work, and, especially, its generic variety--"romance, fabliau, beast-fable, saint's life, miracle story, sermon,…
Fifteen volumes comprise this reading of CT in Middle English: 1) MilT, 2) GP and RvT; 3) GP and PardPT; 4) WBPT; 5) FranPT; 6) MerPT; 7) NPT, ShT, and PrPT; 8) FrPT, SumPT, and Thop; 9) ClT and PhyT; 10) KnT [two cassettes]; 11) MLT, CkT, and ManT;…
Item not seen. Online information indicates that this volume addresses questions about why Chaucer included his legend of Cleopatra in LGW, his sources for the account, and its success as a poem.
In PardT, the youngest thief's use of "capouns" rather than "hennes" or "coks" functions both realistically, as an indicator of the value of the chickens, and symbolically, as a reminder of the sterility of the Pardoner.
Reiss, Edmund.
John P. Hermann and John J. Burke, eds. Signs and Symbols in Chaucer's Poetry (University: University of Alabama Press, 1981), pp. 27-42.
Symbolic details in Chaucer may also be thematic, e.g., the five etymologies of Saint Cecilia's name in SNT, and certain features of GP, MerT, FranT, others of the CT, and TC. Words and phrases also are often thematic.
Isenor, Neil,and Ken Woolner.
Physics Today 3 (1980): 114-16.
HF 782-834 displays an uncanny foreknowlege of details of the modern theory of sound and wave motion, especially in lines 809-13, where, in a great creative leap of scientific imagination, the motion of water waves is transferred to the propagation…
Scheps, Walter.
Leeds Studies in English 9 (1976-77): 19-34.
Although it is uncertain whether Chaucer knew Plutarch's "Life" of Theseus, in KnT the character is a mixture of the two traditions of the interpretation of Theseus: an Apollonian rationalist in Statius (the source in Anel) and a fickle lover in…
Clark, George.
Revue de l'Universite d'Ottawa 52 (1982): 257-65.
Whereas Chauntecleer was caught by the fox on the third of May,Arcite's escape from prison and Pandarus's first visit to Criseyde took place on the fourth. These differences in date have different meanings according to medieval "lunaria,"…
Steadman, John M.
Neophilologus 45 (1961): 224-30.
Suggests that the number of participants in Chaucer's CT pilgrimage--"Wel nyne and twenty" (GP 1.24) plus the narrator--can be seen to signify the "active life," consisting "essentially of penitence and good works." Offers evidence that thirty…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Michigan Quarterly Review 14 (1975): 282-301.
Pandarus, the Pardoner, and the Poet Chaucer are all three creative artists and experience the frustations of the unloved. The Poet created Pandarus and the Pardoner as representation of deep impulses within himself.
Peters, F. J. J.
Studia Neophilologica 60 (1988): 167-70.
Though the dating of NPT to thirty-two days "syn March bigan" is generally emended to bring the tale date to May 3, the unemended text makes literal sense if treated as a reference to "frame story time." The dating thus "should be read in two…
