Kertz, Lydia Yaitsky.
Medievalia et Humanistica 45 (2020): 75-99.
Clarifies "two distinct modes of ekphrasis, the literal and the literary," exploring how and where they are deployed in HF (storm at sea and wall paintings of Dido and Aeneas) and in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (castle description and Gawain's…
Weiskott, Eric.
Notes and Queries 265 (2020): 12-13
Discusses previous scholarship on line 1315 of BD, and suggests that emending the line to “Gan [hym] homwarde for to ryde" brings it into conformance with the rest of this "briskly tetrametric poem."
Edwards, A. S. G.
Chaucer Review 55 (2020): 113-16.
Presents evidence from a "description of a manuscript of Chaucer’s 'Treatise on the Astrolabe' that appeared in a sale catalogue in 1843." This description, because it doesn’t correspond to any known, available copies, suggests another manuscript of…
Flannery, Mary C.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 42 (2020): 1-25.
Challenges scribal and editorial choices to use "swyve" at ManT, 256, where the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts (and two others) have some form of "et cetera," arguing that the latter is "likely an example of authorial play." Gauges the meanings,…
Turner, Joseph
Chaucer Review 55, no. 3 (2020): 298-316.
Argues that "through the Nun's Priest's portion of Fragment VII Chaucer navigates much of the theories of characterization found in the late medieval rhetorical treatises known as the 'artes poetriae,' or the arts of poetry," and offers "a critique…
Matlock, Wendy A.
Chaucer Review 55, no. 4 (2020): 462-83.
Positions Mel and ManT as "vivid examples of Chaucer's polyphonic authority that highlight the rich network of gendered speech constituting his mature voice." Argues that Chaucer's ventriloquized women in Mel and ManT translate continental sources…
Offers evidence for the source for the opening of the ShT, connecting it with Gilbertus Minorita's "Dictinctiones" and its quotation of then-contemporary vernacular poetry.
Traces the figure of the "sursanure" in FranT, demonstrating that this superficially healed wound is an apt metaphor for Chaucer/s soft or "sunken" sources.
Burger, Glenn D.
Chaucer Review 55, no. 4 (2020): 422-40.
Traces the struggles of Dorigen in FranT as a kind of conduct literature for wives, as Dorigen's pain in Arveragus's absence is linked to "two contemporary French conduct texts--'Le Livre du chevalier de la Tour Landry' (1371) and 'Le Mesnagier de…
Goodrich, Micah.
Will Rogers and Christopher Michael Roman, eds. Medieval Futurity: Essays for the Future of a Queer Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2020), pp. 153-80.
Traces Chaucer's uses of purses and other cavities in PardPT as sites of queer reproduction. Throughout, "locates the ‘purs’ as a gendered, sexualized, and economized site of social exchange."
Swenson, Haylie.
Will Rogers and Christopher Michael Roman, eds. Medieval Futurity: Essays for the Future of a Queer Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2020), pp. 189-96.
Reassesses the role and value of the falcon and the mechanical horse in SqT. Demonstrates through these depictions that SqT creates "interspecies and intrasexual relationships of care outside of the gendered human norms of chivalric romance."
Morrison, Susan Signe.
Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment 11, no. 2 (2020): 118-27.
Draws on debates about slow cinema to suggest how ClT evokes a "slow eco-aesthetics" with an ethical impact. Based on the notion that medieval pilgrimage texts evoke a slow aesthetic, the strategies of slowness and patience in the tale of Patient…
Morrison, Susan Signe.
Medieval Feminist Forum 56, no. 2 (2020): 73-92.
Uses "lessons from trauma studies concerning silence, as well as new materialist and ecocritical approaches," to explore the resistance of Griselda's patient silence. "[T]hrough a preponderant use of negative words"--a "poetics of negation"--Griselda…
Bryan, Jennifer E.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 42 (2020): 73-109.
Extends discussions of ClT as a "political fable," focusing on the theme of common profit and on the Clerk as a philosopher, assessing both in light of Bo as an "account of the philosopher's duty to the common profit." Rejects the "Griseldean values…
Describes hay as a symbol of ephemerality, materiality, and avarice in FrT and argues that "the summoner's urging his companion (a fiend) to seize a cart of hay . . . draws him closer to the very substance that symbolizes his own sinful propensities…
Flannery, Mary C.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2020.
Investigates how medieval English literature "encouraged women to safeguard their honour by cultivating hypervigilance against the possibility of sexual shame." Includes discussion of women’s virtue and honor during Chaucer's time, with particular…
Claridge, Alexandra.
Notes and Queries 265 (2020): 338-40.
Presents connections between the "epithet 'of bath'" in relation to the Wife of Bath and a character in the fifteenth-century play "Lucidus and Dubius," who also refers to himself as "a childe of bathe." Suggests that this understanding "has the…
Argues MLT does not ultimately offer (English) land and (Christian) civilization as images of stability or "legal fixity" but the sea and Constance's paleness as images of an "exemplary fluidity," emphasizing that the tale is about "global ethics"…
Concentrates on the depiction of the Near East in MLT and other contemporary analogues, developing a "“comparative methodology for analyzing representations of the Near East that focuses on their adaptation of earlier (Anglo-)French sources and…
Sottosanti, Danielle.
Studies in Philology 172 (2020): 240-60.
Focuses on the Sultaness in MLT and argues that the text explores the ramifications of forced conversion and feigned baptism, along with larger issues of deception and truth.
Discusses the wives of CT, and, in particular, Constance in MLT, suggesting that "unruly" wives are generally English and that virtuous ones are continental. Traces how Chaucer's use of these good wives offers space for him to rethink England, the…
Honda, Takahiro.
Research Reports, National Institute of Technology, Fukushima College 61 (2020): 161-68.
Analyzes the concepts of mutability and instability in MLT, arguing that Chaucer constantly approaches these concepts in relation to worldly authorities, and that this implies lessons for such authorities. In Japanese, with English abstract.
Thomas, Arvind.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer SAC 42 (2020): 27-72.
Identifies parallels between the legal maxims of RvPT and the commentaries of medieval canon and civil law, including ones by Giovanni da Legnano (cited in ClT, 34) and a pair of canonists named (in Latin) Aleyn and John. Focuses on laws that pertain…
