North, J. D.
Mededelingen der Koninklijke Nederlandse Akademie van Wetenschappen, Afdeling Letterkunde, Nieuwe Reeks 54 (1991): 154-62.
Derived from North's book, Chaucer's Universe (Oxford, 1988), this article argues that Chaucer's imagination was illuminated by astrological and astronomical knowledge of an unusually high quality.
Shirley, Charles Garrison.
Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1979): 6118A.
Computer-generated concordances and frequency lists help in deciding which part of a character's vocabulary is especially significant. Pandarus' vocabulary emphasizes his expertise in using social and family relationships. Criseyde applies words to…
Mustanoja, Tauno F.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Chaucer and Middle English Studies in honour of Rossell Hope Robbins (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974), pp. 104-10.
Shows that the use of verbs as rhyme words is ubiquitous in medieval (and later) poetry, and therefore not particularly Chaucerian as has been suggested. Suggests that rhyming with infinitives is especially prevalent because the form is…
Higuchi, Masayuki.
Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature 25 (1980): 1-12.
Distinctions made between "expression-oriented" and "content-oriented" texts serve as a framework for demonstrating the interrelated nature of language in RvT. Philological tracings of word associations set up lexical chains that illustrate semantic…
Kendrick, Laura.
Danielle Buschinger and Arlette Sancery, eds. Mélanges de langue, littérature et civilisation offerts à André Crépin à l'occasion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire (Amiens: Presses du Centre d'Études Médiévales, Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, 2008), pp. 197-203.
Kendrick considers secular and religious contexts in which the smile of the Prioress may be understood.
Ellis, Robert.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Queen Mary, University of London, 2012. Open access at https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/handle/123456789/8821 (accessed January 30, 2023).
Volume 1 examines various concerns with vacuous, misleading, and/or oblique language in bureaucratic and literary texts produced in London during the reign of Richard II, including discussion of CkT, ManT, and SqT for the ways they depict anxieties…
Desmond, Marilyn.
In John F. Miller and Carole E. Newlands, eds. A Handbook to the Reception of Ovid (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014), pp. 161-73.
Surveys the impact on medieval poetry of Ovid as a love poet, including comments on Chaucer's use of "Ars amatoria" in WBP, where Ovid's "erotic poetics" are "domesticated" and the reception of his poem reaches its "zenith." Central to "Chaucerian…
Chaucer reconceptualized CT in response to a challenge levied in Gower's "Confessio Amantis." Shaping the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner to embody the Seven Deadly Sins, Chaucer responded to Gower's taxonomy in the "Confessio" and, in doing so,…
Argues that the "citole" held in Venus's right hand in KnT 1.1959 evinces the influence of "the 'Ovidius moralizatus' of Petrus Berchorius (Pierre Bersuire)," and explores the possibilities of other influences on the depictions of Venus in KnT and in…
Argues that the image of the "citole" in KnT 1959, instead of a "concha" also found in traditional sources, contributes to the theme of "harmonious order" in the poem that is temporarily disrupted by the Venus/Mars strife.
Offers evidence that the "Ovidius Moralizatus" of Peter Bersuire (Petrus Berchorius) was the source of iconographical details associated with Venus in Chaucer's descriptions of the goddess in HF 131-39 and KnT 1.1955-66.
Crockett, Bryan.
David Chamberlain, ed. New Readings of Late Medieval Love Poems (Lanham, Md.; New York; and London: University Press of America, 1993), pp. 67-93.
Reads Lydgate's "Temple of Glas" as a "sustained, ironic treatment of frustrated love," citing the following as sources of details of the poem and influences on its formal techniques: "Roman de la Rose," HF, TC, PF, KnT, and MerT.
Lazarus, Alan J.
Larry D. Benson and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Wisdom of Poetry (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Michigan University, 1982), pp. 145-49.
Plots the course of Venus astronomically to show the planet would have been clearly visible in the northwest in 1374, 1377, 1380, and 1382, and possibly in 1375 and 1379.
Both the Proem to TC 3 and PrP praise celestial ladies, celebrate their influence on the world, and relate closely to the story that is to follow. Moreover, the works discuss the same topics in similar ways. Chaucer praises both physical and…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Chaucer Review 14 (1980): 313-18.
J. E. Hankins' view of the "Pervigilium Veneris" as a source for PF has not caught on because no one has yet found a persuasive verbal echo. Such an echo appears in the list of persons love has destroyed: PF, 286-92 has a counterpart in…
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…
