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…
Morrison, Stephen.
Claire Vial, ed. "A noble tale / Among us shall awake": Approches croisees des "Middle English Breton Lays" et du "Franklin's Tale" (Paris: Presses Universitaires de Paris Ouest, 2015), pp. 27-34.
Focuses on how playfulness breaks the limits of existential constraint in FranT.
Ruggiers, Paul G.
Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, ed. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 83-94.
Chaucer gives large emphasis and exaggerated length to the didactic. Mel and ParsT are so solidly "there" in the structure of CT that we would not understand the dynamics of the poem if we did not take them into account. Chaucer vies with Dante in…
Item not seen. The WorldCat record quotes an Exhibition guide [Bodleian Library]: MilT as "abridged to four pop-up spreads . . . also illustrates the four seasons and major festivals of the religious calendar. Each spread contains an envelope holding…
Hiscoe, David W.
David G. Allen and Robert A. White, eds. Traditions and Innovations: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1990), pp. 35-49.
Although the narrator of TC tries to separate pagan from Christian and body from spirit, the poem's allusions to 2 Corinthinians are an "indictment of (his) disastrous attempt to sunder the heavenly and the earthly."
Argues that the Franklin's gentility is a "watered-down version" of traditional gentility, aligning FranT with eighteenth-century bourgeois "sentimental comedy." Contrasts KnT and FranT, maintaining that "virtue releases man from the bonds of…
The author investigates some of the ways in which Chaucer exploited the scheme of CT to enlighten us about the nature of the art of narrative, and demonstrates some of the modern senses in which the poet dramatized the medieval pilgrims with…
Concentrates on the links between the Tales in Part 7 of CT, arguing that this "Literature Group" is concerned primarily with the "art of storytelling," particularly the responsibilities of audience and author as dramatized in the directions and…
McIlhaney, Anne E.
Chaucer Review 31 (1996): 173-83.
In CT, generally, and in MLT, FrT, PhyT, PardT, and PrT, specifically, devils act as agents of God to tempt evildoers. Although they fail, evildoers in CT are armed with the God-given ability to avoid such temptation through their reason,…
Gordon, Stephen.
Studies in Philology 119 (2022): 191-208.
Focuses on the medical effects of the herbs mentioned in Th to argue that the narrator's impetuosity demonstrates the effects of herbs he mentions in lines 760-65.
Considers the alternation between the pedagogy of argument (prose sections) and pleasure (metrical sections) in "prosimetrum," arguing that the form of Boethius's "Consolation" was as essential as its content for writers such as Chaucer, Usk,…
Johnson, Eleanor.
A. Joseph McMullen and Erica Weaver, eds. The Legacy of Boethius in Medieval England: The "Consolation" and Its Afterlives (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018.), pp. 125-42.
Explores the rational power of prose and the affective power of poetry to effect ethical transformation in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," linking the work's prosimetric alteration with its theme of providential causation, and arguing that…
Gallacher, Patrick J.
Robert Myles and David Williams, eds. Chaucer and Language: Essays in Honour of Douglas Wurtele (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), pp. 126-42 and 209-18.
Reads MerT for the ways it confronts and rejects skeptical nominalism. The Merchant considers the possibility that language "has sense but no reference"--that it is only games--but the absurdity of January's decision to marry undercuts this notion,…
Introduces and anthologizes examples of humor in English literature, and critical analyses of it, arranged topically by humorous technique; includes Nevill Coghill's modern translation of the GP descriptions of the Wife of Bath and the Pardoner under…
