Shows that double entendre "invests the entire narrative action" of RvT, explicating individual puns and demonstrating the prevalence of the sexual implications of flour, milling, and grinding throughout the tale and in later works by John Heywood…
Delany, Sheila.
Minnesota Review, New Series 5 (1975): 104-15.
The Wife of Bath turned the sexual economics of her time to her advantage. Margery Kempe could not so capitulate. Religion became her way of asserting ownership of herself.
Hopkins, Amanda, Robert Allen Rouse, and Cory James Rushton, eds.
Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2014.
Collection of essays explores British medieval sexuality and sexual expression in literature. Examines fabliaux and romances of Chaucer, Gower, and Malory; alchemical texts; and satirical poetry of William Dunbar. The Introduction (pp. 1-11)…
Stockton discusses the "critique of cynical reason" in CT as part of a larger psychoanalytical discussion of the role of comedy in the formation of the foundations of civilizations.
Bahr, Arthur.
Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh, eds. Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the "Canterbury Tales" (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016), pp. 230-38.
Shows that the BBC television adaptation of PardPT concentrates more on sexual predation than on death, and argues that this eliminates both the sexual and the contextual queerness of Chaucer's original, which requires of its audience "rigorously…
Karras, Ruth Mazo.
Jacqueline Murray and Konrad Eisenbichler, eds. Desire and Discipline: Sex and Sexuality in the Premodern West (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996), pp. 201-16.
Karras surveys depictions of female commercialized sex in the English late Middle Ages. It is difficult, she suggests, to separate kinds and degrees of prostitution, because prostitution was regarded as an "extreme case" of the general sinfulness of…
Tavormina, M. Teresa, ed.
Tempe: ACMRS (Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies), 2006.
Edition and comprehensive study of Trinity College, Cambridge, MS R.14.52, which was produced by the Hammond scribe. Includes five essays by various authors on physical features of the manuscript, an edition in ten sections by various editors,…
Surveys depictions of sexual activities and attitudes toward them in the literature of medieval Europe. Includes a brief life of Chaucer and recurrent comments on his works (see the Index), with a summary description of sexuality and scatology in…
Payer, Pierre J.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1984.
In the development of sexual codes in the Penitentials, treatment of a wide variety of sexual behavior became more and more sophisticated in reaction to actual practice.
Kraishan, Majed R.
Dissertation Abstracts International C81.04 (2014): n.p.
Argues that "by subverting traditional literary genres, and inventing new ones, Chaucer provided alternative life-views," reframing traditional views of eroticism in CT (KnT, MilT, RvT, WBPT, PhyT, ShT) and TC.
Argues that Chaucer combines earthly and spiritual love in TC "into one general view of love, one in which the two notions are not mutually exclusive," reading Troilus's ascent through the spheres as a kind of reward or salvation for loving well.
Cornelius, Michael G.
Blake Hobby, ed. Human Sexuality (New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2009), pp. 95-104.
Introduces MilT as a fabliau, contrasts it with KnT, and comments on the "punishment" received by each of the major characters, including Alisoun, who is victimized by being a wife and through whom Chaucer critiques marriage.
Archibald, Elizabeth.
Journal of Medieval Latin 11 (2001): 27-49.
Archibald surveys accounts of Oedipus and of Semiramis in classical and medieval texts, focusing on their concern or lack of concern with incest. Recurrent mention of Dante, Boccaccio, Christine de Pizan, and Chaucer-in particular TC, MLT, PF, and…
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"…
Peter G. Beidler identifies "Heile van Beersele" as a likely source for MilT, supporting his argument with seventeen words he ascribes to Middle Dutch origin in MilT. Only one "or perhaps two" of those words prove to be "distinctively Dutch,"…
Fincher, David, dir.
Burbank, Calif: New Line Cinema, 1995.
Murder-mystery action drama in which the serial killer uses the Seven Deadly Sins to organize his crimes. Includes several visual and verbal references to ParsT and CT.
D'Arcens, Louise.
Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh, eds. Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the "Canterbury Tales" (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016), pp. 208-17.
Argues that the concern with reading and liberation in the BBC television version of KnT is "reflexive," mirroring the goals of the six-part series. The series' goal of "freeing" readers from "academic Chaucer" is paralleled by efforts to liberate…
Finds parallels between FranT and Chretien de Troyes's "Eric and Enid" as both courtly texts and antiadulterous ones. Chaucer's contribution to the dialectic is the integration of "fin'amour" with Truth expressed as Christian virtue, defending…
Merrix, Robert P.
Chaucer Review 17 (1983): 235-49.
"Modern" medieval sermons, as contrasted with patristic sermons, are not structurally rigid, but PardT follows agreed-upon elements and sequences of material and relates theme to form.
Rowland, Beryl.
Florilegium 9 (1990, for 1987): 125-45.
ParsT is a collage, drawing mainly on penitential materials, variously rendered in paraphrase, word-for-word translation,free idiomatic redaction, and adaptations that appear to derive from more than one source. Ssome sections are sermonlike,…
Hanning, Robert W.
New York: Columbia University Press, 2010.
Considers "social and political crises that activate the comic poetry" of Ovid, Chaucer, and Ariosto. In particular, chapter 2, "Chaucer: Dealing with the Authorities, Or, Twisting the Nose That Feeds You," addresses Chaucer's humor as it relates to…
