Blamires, Alcuin.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 335-51.
Blamires introduces TC as Chaucer's "longest finished poem," commenting on sources, fusion of genres, suppleness of verse form and diction, the characters' sympathies, and the poem's "emotional trajectory."
Kaylor, [Noel] Harold, [Jr.]
Marcin Krygier and Liliana Sikorska, eds. To Make His Englissh Sweete upon His Tonge (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), pp. 11-19.
Following a four-part epistemological scheme posed in Boethius's Consolatio, Chaucer develops Troilus's love in TC from senses through images and reason to intelligence. As a figure of emotion, subject to tragedy, Troilus serves as a contrast to…
The original audience of TC would have read the decision of the Trojan Parliament in light of the 1385 Durham Ordinances, clause 3. Since this clause explicitly prohibits the imprisoning of unarmed women, the parallel suggests Criseyde's status as a…
Considers Troilus' allusion to Oedipus at 4.300, and rejects the suggestion that it reflects psychological understanding; Troilus refers to Oedipus as an exemplar of someone victimized by Fortune.
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen], ed., with the assistance of Catherine S. Cox.
Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992
Sixteen essays or portions of longer works, all pertaining to metafictive or metatextual aspects of TC as a self-conscious work of literature. Each includes a synoptic introduction. For the nine essays that are here published for the first time,…
Bishop, Ian.
Bristol: Univeristy of Bristol Academic Publications, 1981.
The poem's central interest lies in the attempt by two human souls to establish the deepest and most testing of relationships. The representation of this relationship involves more than a dialogue: it insinuates a dialectical process that worries…
Surveys Ockhamism and Chaucer's exposure to it. Through both a "philosophical interpretation of character" and a close analysis of images, words, and discourse, Andretta maintains Chaucer's allegiance to "manifest truths that are skeptical, and only…
Baron, F. Xavier.
Papers on Language and Literature 10 (1974): 5-14.
Considers Troilus's "altruistic love" of Criseyde to be one of the "outstanding examples in late medieval romance" of "self-abnegating love," i.e., "placing another's good before one's own." Troilus's hesitancy to act is a manifestation of this…
Utley, Francis Lee.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in honour of Rossell Hope Robbins (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974), pp. 272-89.
Examines various passages of praise of Troilus in TC, comparing them with a fifteenth-century Middle English theological poem, "The Sixtene Poyntes of Charite," observing that Chaucer's hero, while not Christian, exemplifies the Pauline ideals of the…
Argues that in Book 4 of TC Chaucer presents a "conflict between reason and desire" (amplified from Boccaccio's "Filostrato"), helping to characterize and evaluate Troilus as, simultaneously and ambiguously, "both strong and weak," reasonable as a…
Barney, Stephen A., ed.
Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1980.
Contains seventeen essays or excerpts from longer works by various authors, fourteen previously published, some with very brief additional "afterwords." For the three newly-published pieces, search for Chaucer's Troilus: Essays in Criticism under…
An examination of Skeat's Rime-Index to Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" shows that "vowel length is an unneeded hypothesis" and Chaucer's vowels may be classified solely on the basis of "quality, not quantity."
Alson, Angus.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 63-70.
Argues that the balanced opposition between the sacred and the secular in the opening and closing sections of the GP encourages readers to be tolerant and cautious in judgment.
Dutton, Marsha L.
Benjamin Thompson, ed. Monasteries and Society in Medieval Britain: Proceedings of the 1994 Harlaxton Symposium. Harlaxton Medieval Studies, no. 6 (Stamford: Watkins, 1999), pp. 296-311.
Dutton reads the Prioress and the Second Nun as paired opposites: one childish, the other adult. In PrPT, the Creator is subordinated to his creatures, who seem "unaware of the effects of the Incarnation." SNPT reasserts the proper order, in which…
Lawton, David.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 3-40.
In ParsP, ParsT, and Ret, we are "forced to confront" the textuality of CT; the "various conflicting interpretations" are conditioned by habitual responses to CT. Four standard approaches to ParsT--absolute, ironic, dualistic, and textual--result in…
Hardman, Phillipa.
Review of English Studies 31 (1980): 172-78.
Chaucer's contemporaries were familiar with his "tyraunts of Lumbardye" (LGW, G. 353), notorious for their cruelty. The Lombard setting of ClT suggests proverbial Lombard tyranny for Walter, an imperfect mixture of tyranny and pity, for he rues…
Taylor, Joseph.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 109 (2010): 468-89.
In RvT, Chaucer's references to language, lore, and the North both explore uncanny (in the Freudian sense) political differences among regions and reveal notions of nation. The North or Northernism plays a small but significant role elsewhere in CT,…
Taylor, Karla.
Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds. The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 47-82.
Italian vernacular literature (rather than French court culture) inspired Chaucer to develop his authorial voice. FranT is a reading of Decameron 10.5 that illustrates the development of Chaucer's distinctly English agenda.
Benson, C. David.
Christianity & Literature 37 (1988): 7-22.
Benson urges that Chaucer be returned from merely professional scholarship to the mainstream of English literature and finds that structuralist, poststructuralist, Marxist, and feminist theories give new perspectives on Chaucer's work. Equally,…
North, J. D.
Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1988.
North reveals a cryptic extension to Chaucerian criticism: a celestial allegory. Part 1 is a guide to late-medieval understanding of the planets and their influences on humans, physiologically and morally, including chapters on the spheres, the…
Lester, G. A.
English Language Notes 27:1 (1989): 25-29.
The "De re militari" of Flavius Vegetius Renatus--translated three times into Middle English-condemns poorly kept armor. This passage supports the argument of Terry Jones ("Chaucer's Knight" SAC 5 (1983), no.137) that the physical deterioration of…
