Describes several "difficulties" in the close reading of medieval poetry, and then examines complex "interplay between the real and apparent plots" of "Pity," reading the addressee as both a Lady and as an abstract emption, and tracing shifting…
Findon, Joanne.
English Studies in Canada 32.4 (2006): 25-50.
Explores relations between medieval romance and medieval religious drama, focusing on the "woman cast adrift" motif in the Digby Mary Magdalene play. Assesses how contrasts between the protagonists' agency in the play and in versions of the Constance…
Aciman, Alexander, and Emmett Rensin.
New York: Penguin, 2009.
Parodies more than eighty works, most from the western literary canon, in strings of 140-word "tweets," with an Introduction, Glossary, and Index. Includes CT (pp. 184-85) in seventeen tweets, with emphasis on GP, WBP, and MilT, and touches of faux…
Owen, Charles A., Jr.
Mediaeval Studies 21 (1959): 202-10.
Corroborates and extends Carleton Brown's effort to show (in 1937) that the MLH was intended to introduce the first story in the CT, exploring evidence and counter-evidence for positing an "original opening sequence" as follows: GP, MLH, Mel, MLE,…
Argues that "gentilesse" is the main concern of SqT, linked to the sub-themes of integrity, mercy, education, truthful rhetoric, youthfulness, and social class.
Tabulates and assesses the uses of singular "ye" and "thou" in CT, considering usage norms, rhyme patterns, and scribal variants, and identifying patterns of high incidence of "incorrect" usage in CYPT, KnT, WBP, and Mel, while ParsT is also highly…
Critiques attempts to modernize Chaucer's verse for the sake of the "common reader," preferring Augustan "imitations" to twentieth-century renderings in verse or prose, but finding them all to be relatively dull and incapable of replicating Chaucer's…
Meech, Sanford B.
[Syracuse, N.Y.]: Syracuse University Press, 1959.
A close reading of the structure, themes, and rich characterizations of TC, examined in comparison with its primary source, Boccaccio's "Filostrato," and with sustained attention to ancillary sources and Chaucer's particular emphases, especially the…
Aligns details of GP 1.361-78 with historical evidence to argue that the five tradesmen or "Burgesses" described by Chaucer belonged to a "craft fraternity [rather than a parish fraternity] and that the Drapers' Fraternity (or Brotherhood of St. Mary…
McCall, John P., and George Rudisill, Jr.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 58 (1959): 276-88.
Argues that Chaucer's personal experience of the 1386 Parliament influenced his depiction of parliamentary activity in TC (4.141ff.), detailing events of the historical parliament, Chaucer's likely feelings about it, and changes and additions Chaucer…
Manley, Francis.
Modern Language Notes 74 (1959): 385-88.
Traces backgrounds to the coral beads held by the Prioress (GP 1.158-59), both as an amulet against evil and a charm for earthly love, also found in John Donne's "Sonnet. The Token," lines 10-12.
Madden, William A.
College English 20 (1959):193-94.
Challenges Paul Ruggiers' essay, "Some Philosophical Aspects of 'The Knight's Tale'" (1958), maintaining that the critic fails to distinguish between Chaucer's views and those of the Knight, and disagreeing with his interpretations of several points…
Lumiansky, R. M.
Tulane Studies in English 9 (1959): 5-17.
Focuses on the opening section of BD, arguing that it depicts a "Narrator suffering excessive grief resulting from bereavement, who within the poem moves toward a means of consolation based chiefly upon a conception of Nature as Life, and whose…
Lloyd, Michael.
English Miscellany 10 (1959): 11-25
Argues that Arcite is as much a romantic hero of KnT as is Palamon, both as a "Chaucerian idealization of love" and as a representative of humanity's "proper relationship to Fortune." Includes comparison of Arcite with Boccaccio's analogous Arcita in…
Koonce, Benjamin G., Jr.
Mediaeval Studies 21 (1959): 176-84.
Describes the "traditional Christian" symbolism that underlies the fowler/bird and winter/spring imagery in LGWP 125-39, identifying biblical roots, exegetical commentary, and literary examples that precede Chaucer, suggesting that the "alert…
Observes that references to Elijah and Elisha in SumT 3.2116-18 evince "Chaucer's awareness, if not endorsement, of the widely held belief that the 'earliest anchorite' Elijah was the founder of the Carmelite Order," and provides various features of…
Compares a horoscope and its accompanying Latin text found in Equat with two analogous versions, showing that it has closest relations with the Nürnberg version printed in 1659.
Kellogg, A. L.
Notes and Queries 204 (1959): 190-92.
Disagrees with editorial explanations of FrT 3.1314, arguing that the subject of the sentence, a "composite sinner," is the recipient of "pecunyal peyne." Offers supporting evidence from several contemporary sources.
Kaske, R. E.
Modern Language Notes 74 (1959): 481-84.
Identifies biblical and patristic resonances in GP 1.634, suggesting that they help to "deepen an already ugly picture of spiritual as well as physical deformity."
Examines the "apparent momentary tenderness between Aleyn and Malyne" in RvT 1. 4234-48, reading the passage as a parody of the "dawn-song," variously known as the "aube," "aude," "aubade," or "tageliet," an "established form in the medieval poetry…
Hitt, Ralph E.
Mississippi Quarterly 12 (1959): 75-85.
Describes how, as protagonist of NPT, Chauntecleer is the "mock-hero" of Chaucer's burlesque, engaging in three "battles" and failing because of his own vanity, the target of Chaucer's satire. His "avisioun" was no vision at all, a result of…
