Ackerman, Robert W.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies. Rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 21-41.
References to popular Christianity pervade Chaucer's work, especially CT and the shorter poems, but these usually concern the lower clergy and routine matters. His canon does not include ponderous didactic allegory or theological treatises.
Ackerman, Robert W.
John H. Fisher, ed. The Medieval Literature of Western Europe: A Review of Research, Mainly 1930-1960 (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1966), pp. 110-22.
Discursive bibliography of Chaucer studies (ca. 1930-1960), with five sub-sections: Bibliographies, Editions, and the Chaucer Canon; Chaucer's Life and Times; Chaucer's English; General Critical Works; The Canterbury Tales; and Troilus and Criseyde…
Ackroyd, Peter, trans.
London: Penguin; New York: Viking, 2009.
Primarily a prose modernization of CT (Th in verse; Mel and ParsT excluded) that emulates Chaucer's shifts in register and idiom. Includes a translator's note and an introduction on Chaucer's life and works. Illustratrd by Nick Bantock.
Ackroyd discusses Chaucer within the larger context of describing and defining the distinctive qualities of English imagination, focusing on Chaucer's themes of remembrance, science, and truth as part of the process of becoming English. Considers HF,…
A biography of Chaucer that records his career as a courtier and diplomat and explores how it may have affected his personality and shaped his poetry. Designed for a general audience, with translations of quoted material, suggestions for further…
Adamina assesses the trickster qualities of the fox and of the Nun's Priest, including various kinds of linguistic slipperiness, doubleness, and flattery.
Adams, Alison,Armel H. Diverres, Karen Stern, and Kenneth Varty,eds.
Woodbridge and Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1986.
These essays, which relate to the development of Arthurian prose romance from the early thirteenth century to the end of the medieval period, are arranged chronologically and grouped by theme or text.
Contends that the six things that women desire listed by the wife in ShT (7.173-77) align the wife with the fairy-tale victim of marriage to an ogre, ironically helping to characterize her, her husband, and their marriage.
Adams, George R.
Literature and Psychology 18 (1968): 215-22.
Argues that the seven clerical pilgrims described in GP (Prioress, Monk, Friar, Clerk, Parson, Summoner, and Pardoner) are "partially or wholly defined by their sexual propensities," constituting a thematic pattern of "caritas" in tension with "amor"…
Adams, George R., and Bernard S. Levy.
English Language Notes 3 (1966): 245-48.
Explores the implications of three interrelated allusions in Chaucer's works (TC 2.55ff., KnT 1.1462ff., and NPT 7.3187ff.), observing connections "between Friday, May 3, Venus, the May festival season, and the Invention of the Cross," connections…
Adams, George Roy.
Dissertation Abstracts International 22.07 (1962): 2382.
Examines Chaucer's use of first-person narration, "traditional themes," "rhetorical principles," and "artistic structure" in GP, exploring the pilgrimage and spring motifs, the chain of being, and connections between this chain, the serial…
Adams, Jenny, and Nancy Mason Bradbury, eds
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017.
Collection of essays that represents multifaceted views of gender and material culture in late medieval France and England. For seven essays that pertain to Chaucer search for Medieval Women and Their Objects under Alternative Title.
In BD, Chaucer complicates the chess metaphor by adding the concept of gambling, which had become standard both in literary depiction and in actual play. By doing so, he adds an economic dimension, characterizing marriage relationships in the Middle…
Adams, Jenny.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 (2004): 267-97.
Adams argues that the "discourse of gaming" underlies "Beryn" and its Prologue (a.k.a. "The Canterbury Interlude"), which offer "centralized regulation as a solution to the inequalities inherent in exchange and commerce."
Adams, Jenny.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
Studies the ways that chess represents types of political and social order, examining the "Liber de Moribus Hominum et Officiis Nobilium" of Jacobus de Cessolis, "Les echecs amoureux," BD, the "Tale of Beryn," Hoccleve's "Regement of Princes," and…
Adams, Jenny.
Jenny Adams and Nancy Mason Bradbury, eds. Medieval Women and Their Objects (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), pp. 248-66.
Considers BD and the metaphor of chess, particularly the way in which the rules of the game are remediated in the action of the poem. Looks at gender-crossing in relation to BD, but transcends previous arguments focusing on the chess allegory.…
Adams, John F.
Studies in Medieval Culture 4 (1974): 446-51.
MerT is both fabliau and romance, both realistic and allegorical. Janus was god of gates and of marriage beds. January falls under Aquarius, associated with old age; May, under Gemini, was associated with youth. The name of the sacred Roman gate…
Adams, John F.
Modern Language Quarterly 24 (1963): 61-65.
Observes a variety of astrological and sexual puns, allusions, and emphases in Troilus's address to Criseyde's house ("paraclausithyron"), distancing the reader from Troilus's grief and emphasizing sensual love.
Adams, John F.
Essays in Criticism 12 (1962): 126-32.
Identifies ways that word-play, echoic details, and thematic patterning contribute to the "dramatic" irony in SumT whereby the friar's hypocritical glossing is revealed and insulted without overt glossing by the narrator.
Adams, Percy G.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 71 (1972): 527-39.
Exemplifies the varieties and density of assonance in Chaucer's poetry, commenting on assonance in French, Italian, and English predecessors, and on Chaucer's uses of assonance in combination with other devices of sound and emphasis.
Adams, Robert, and Thorlac Turville-Petre.
Review of English Studies 65, no. 269 (2014): 219-335.
Within this larger comprehensive study of 'Piers Plowman' in Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS 733B (N), the authors note that Chaucer's scribe, Adam Pinkhurst, may have made scribal corrections to the B-text copy M (London, British…
Adams, Robert.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 6 (1984): 83-102.
Discussion of the debt as religious. The characters in ShT are "impenitent" because they and the Shipman have been blinded to moral and spiritual truth by their middle-class milieu.
