The artist of the Fairfax frontispiece manipulates similarities between traditional depictions of Venus "rising from the sea" (anadyomene) and Christ in baptism. The visual echoes express a form of "Christian skepticism" that parallels questions…
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…
Analyzes the grotesque Bahktinian realism of inversions and bodily functions in medieval narratives; includes comments on the "prayer-belch" and farting in SumT and on ass-kissing and farting in MilT, compared and contrasted with analogous materials.
Bardsley, Sandy.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006.
Includes brief discussion of the Wife of Bath's claim that verbal disorder is the special preserve of women; in this way, the Wife shares important parallels with the unruly wife of Noah in the Chester and York Flood plays.
Considers the "floral atmosphere" of the House of Rumor in HF and sees it as a "place of production [that] appears as entwining, encircling vegetation."
Employs the metaphor of the vegetable to examine a variety of poetic works, emphasizing "metamorphic natural processes, and thus the dissolution of boundaries between states of being." Considers CT as an example, focusing on complicated, entertwined…
Pugh discusses the value of "vectored" writing assignments for undergraduate analyses of "multigeneric" texts, focusing on TC. "Vectored analysis"--defined here as the "examination of a text from at least two converging yet separate…
Kamowski, William.
Julian N. Wasserman and Robert J. Blanch, eds. Chaucer in the Eighties (Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1986), pp. 193-207.
CT entails two levels of reader response: the fictional listeners on the road to Canterbury and the reader audience. The reactions of the pilgrims warn the reader not to misinterpret the tales by responding to them uncritically, as many of the…
Benson, C. David.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986. (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987): pp. 159-67.
Chaucer experiments with "different aesthetic and doctrinal possibilities" in his religious tales, which, "far from being dull and dutiful," demonstrate his literary virtuosity. Though MLT and ClT tell similar stories, MLT is a religious romance…
Knapp, Peggy A.
Chaucer Yearbook 1 (1992): 157-75.
Curry's and Robertson's critical efforts seek to disclose stable, authoritative meaning; they reflect the hermeneutics of Hirsch, concerned with finding valid interpretation. The efforts of Aers and Patterson reflect Gadamer's reconstruction of…
Three types of secret love can be found in TC and CT--KnT, MilT, RvT, MerT, FranT, ShT. The first type concentrates on secret feelings; the second, on illicit relations. The third, found particularly in TC, is distinct in that the story "follows…
Ohno, Hideshi.
Yoshiyuki Nakao and Yoko Iyeiri, eds. Chaucer's Language: Cognitive Perspectives (Suita: Osaka, 2013), pp. 79-98.
Assesses the significance of variant readings of think ("thinken" or "thenken") in SumT, line 2204, from several linguistic points of view, and emphasizes the semantic and syntactical differences between the impersonal and personal constructions.
Pearsall, Derek.
Vincent Gillespie and Anne Hudson, eds. Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013), pp. 197-205.
Looks at distinction between "scribal variation" and "authorial revision" in medieval texts. Includes specific discussion of CT and TC.
Johnston, Andrew James.
Regina Toepfer, ed. Tragik und Minne (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter, 2017), pp. 207-24.
Explores tragic fate and the genre of tragedy in TC, arguing that the "double sorwe" of the opening of the poem (I.1) anticipates the "tragedye" mentioned at the end (V.1786) and that each applies to Criseyde as well as to Troilus. Includes…
Vila de la Cruz, Maria Purificacion.
Margarita Gimenez Bon and Vickie Olsen, eds. Proceedings of the 9th International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature (Vitoria-Gasteiz: Dpto. Filologia Inglesa, 1997), pp. 275-84.
Discusses the women in CT as emotional and intellectual reflections of male characters.
Summarizes Roy Vance Ramsey's (1994, 2010) defense of the Manly-Rickert text of CT, including Ramsey's recognition of the "piecemeal" production of the eight-volume work and his assessment of the dates and scribes of the Hg, El, and Dd manuscripts.
Gerritsen, W. P.,and A. G. Van Melle,eds.
Nijmegen: SUN, 1993.
A dictionary of themes and topics in medieval literature and their legacy in later literature, the visual arts, opera, etc. Mentions Chaucers references to Arthur, Aeneas, Troilus, and Gawain.
Assesses the prosody of Willem van Afflighem's "Het Leven van Sinte Lutgart" as iambic pentameter, gauging its place in the development of the meter. Includes a section (pp. 13-19) on Chaucer's iambic pentameter. In Dutch.
Andrews, Barbara Hakken.
Dissertation Abstracts International 40 (1980): 5855A.
The central issue for interpretation in TC is the nature and source of human value. The two primary ways in which values are established and tested in the poem are through the use of a significant amount of philosophical material relating to the…
Davis, P. J., ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020.
The introduction to this edition of Valerius includes a section on "The Later Middle Ages: Benoit, Guido, Chaucer, and Boccaccio," discussing whether or not "medieval writers were familiar with Valerius Flaccus." Demonstrates that, although Chaucer…
Storm, Melvin.
Modern Language Quarterly 48 (1987): 303-19.
Alison shares features with that "popular exemplar of medieval comic shrewishness," Noah's wife of the mystery plays, and especially the Uxor Noe of the Towneley cycle: old husbands, outspokenness, direct address to the audience, fondness of…
Azinfar, Fatemeh Chehregosha.
Atheism in the Medieval Islamic and European World: The Influence of Persian and Arabic Ideas of Doubt and Skepticism on Medieval European Literary Thought (Bethesda, Md.: Ibex Publishers, 2008), pp. 233-65.
Azinfar reads the comic treatment of Dante in HF as a skeptical rejection of religious authority and discusses depictions of theological contradiction in Mars, Venus, and WBP. Chaucer's rationalism aligns him with other skeptics and atheists,…
