Ishizaka, Ko.
Michio Kawai, ed. Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honour of Michio Masui. The English Association of Hiroshima (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991), pp. 277-88.
Assesses how words of specific actions--such as "sing," "dance," and "play"--operate lexically and how they can help produce a courtly atmosphere by expressing the joy of love.
Zieman, Katherine.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,2008.
Explores how liturgical training and practice, particularly the interrelated devotional activities of singing and reading, affected literacy in late medieval England. Lay devotional ritual became separated from clerical practice, and definitions of…
Dryden's praise of Chaucer in his preface to "Fables Ancient and Modern" is part of the critical orthodoxy of Chaucer's reception, but Dryden's reading/translation of NPT in the "Fables" has largely been ignored. The latter's alteration of the…
Oliver, Kathleen M.
Chaucer Review 31 (1997): 357-64.
The "greyn" placed on the little child's tongue by the Virgin in PrT represents the Eucharistic Host, also known as "singing bread." "Greyn" means "particle," such as that broken from the wafer. The viaticum possessed properties of restoration and…
Musical score for a normalized-spelling version of the closing song (rondel) of PF (ll. 680-92). Performance notes suggest harp effects and ways to involve audience participation. Commissioned by the Buck Hill-Skytop Music Festival.
Braswell, Mary Flowers.
Medievalia et Humanistica 14 (1986): 81-101.
In the contexts of medieval misogyny and penitential manuals, Braswell examines Chaucer's treatment of the sins of women in ParsT. The Parson denounces excess in dress among lords more severely than among ladies.
The blacksmith is an ambiguous figure. Medieval blacksmiths often worked at night because the temperature was cooler, but ordinances forbade them to do so. Furthermore, although the medieval blacksmith was a symbol of the devil, he was also a symbol…
Eaton, R. D.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 104 (2005): 495-513.
In the GP description of the Prioress, the term conscience, used to describe her mental operations, implies not sensibility or emotion but rather prescription or governance. The Prioress's display is not emotive but mimetic, and her performance…
Surveys the presence and significance of the anus and excrement in medieval culture, particularly the religious thought and literature of the age. Includes brief comments on Chaucer's references to dung, farting, and rear-ends in MilT, MerT, SumP,…
Fradenburg, L. O. Aranye.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 (2004): 1-27.
Fradenburg contemplates medieval romance as a product of desire and a producer of jouissance. Considers the functions and values of wonder; the enjoyment and signification of romance; and the relationships of wonder to "vernacularity," technology,…
A doctoral dissertation that explores "simple and direct communication" in CT, focusing on Chaucer's acceptance of human generosity and humility rather than his criticism or satire of human foibles. Individual chapters include discussion of Chaucer's…
Robertson, D. W.,Jr.
John P. Hermann and John J. Burke, eds. Signs and Symbols in Chaucer's Poetry (University: University of Alabama Press, 1981), pp. 11-26.
Concerned with the practical and beneficial impact of his work, Chaucer drew figurative language from everyday sources, e.g., the visual arts. Knowledge of these sheds light on GP, WBT, and RvT.
Gray, Douglas.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Examines how the "lost culture" of oral literary and folk and popular traditions of the Middle Ages influenced medieval writers. Mentions Chaucer's understanding of proverbs and oral and folk culture in ClT, WBT, MLT, FranT, and TC.
Argues that Dante in Canto XIX of his "Inferno," and Chaucer in SumT, "show essentially the same pervasive effects of simony in essentially the same manner," using similar "images of and parodic allusions to" the sin. However, the poets differ in…
Steadman, John M.
Modern Language Notes 75.1 (1960): 4-8.
Suggests that the miller's name in RvT, Simkin, puns on Latin "simus," meaning "snub-nosed," offering classical examples of similar wordplay and identifying characters with similar names in classical comedy.
Yvernault, Martine.
Anna Kukułka-Wojtasik, ed. Translatio i Literatura (Warsaw: University of Warsaw, 2011), pp. 371-83.
This comparative study of the two texts, based on the same motif of the gathering of birds, aims at exposing the spiritual and moral differences of the works. The theological and philosophical intention in Attar has disappeared in Chaucer's treatment…
Borroff, Marie.
Traditions and Renewals: Chaucer, The Gawain-Poet, and Beyond (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 2003), pp. 50-70.
Clearly implied but not stated, May's pregnancy in MerT results from having sex with Damian and helps to punish January's foolishness. In similarly covert ways, the parson of RvT is punished by the pregnancy of Malyne, and all pardoners are…
Zeikowitz, Richard E.
Dalhousie Review 82.1 : 55-73, 2002.
The Pardoner's "altercation" with the Host "reveals how queer power disarms heteronormativity." In GP and PardPT, the Pardoner does not fit modern categories of "gay" or "bisexual"; his queerness is aligned with several forms of verbal and social…
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…
