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…
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…
