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…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 15 (1981): 138-50.
The Prioress' preoccupation with emotion and the diminutive reflects the 14th century's concern for a particularized and emotional style in the arts. Though her tale seems odd and inconsistent, it has a consistent sensibility which uses the…
Dauby, Helene.
Danielle Buschinger, ed. Sammlung--Deutung--Wertung: Ergebnisse, Probleme, Tendenzen und Perspektiven philologischer Arbeit. Melanges de litterature medievale et de linguistique allemande offerts a Wolfgang Spiewok a l'occasion de son soixantieme anniversaire par ses collegues et amies (Amiens): Universite de Picardie, Centre d'Etudes Medievales, 1988), pp. 57-62.
Examines the pace of WBT as an example of the loathly hag story and reads in it echoes of several other Canterbury narratives.
Serrano Reyes, Jesus L.,Antonio Leon Sendra, and Mercedes Robles Escobedo.
Cordoba: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Cordoba, 1996.
Demonstrates the influence of Seneca's moral philosophy on CT by assessing Chaucer's quotations of Seneca. Translates Latin and Middle English quotations into both Spanish and modern English.
Ahl, Frederick.
George W. M. Harrison, ed. Seneca in Performance (London: Duckworth, 2000), pp. 151-71.
Laments the difficulties of translating wordplay, drawing examples from Chaucer to clarify examples from Seneca and other classical drama. Shows where modern translations of Chaucer's works lose puns, audio echoes, "syllabic play," and anagrams
Smith, Marcus A. J., and Julian N. Wasserman.
Parentheses: Papers in Medieval Studies 1 (1999): 145-86. [Web publication.]
Considers strategies that have been used to accuse and excuse Chaucer (and others) of prejudice against women, homosexuals, and Jews, suggesting that medieval language theory and Chaucer's awareness of the semiotic gap between sign and signified…
In TC, Chaucer shows the "inter-relatedness of the moral and the aesthetic" by demonstrating the "corruption and debasement" of key concepts: "honour," "worthiness," "gentilesse," "manhood," and "trouthe." Such debasement reflects the inevitable…
Keller traces the medieval tradition of Troy narratives from Benoît de Saint-Maure and Guido delle Colonne through various Middle English adaptations, including TC. Focuses on the literary interplay of imperial ambition--with its tendency to…
Ladd, Roger A.
James M. Dean, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer (Ipswich, Mass.: Salem Press, 2017), pp. 81-96.
Examines how Chaucer and Gower handled the genre of "estates satire," and speculates how "their social critique moves away from an estates satire framework." Addresses mercantile practice in MerT, MLT, and WBT, and claims that Chaucer, like Gower,…
Explores Chaucer's strategy of satire in WBPT, arguing that in its concern with interpretation and discursive insensibility it is fundamentally similar to the anti-mercantile satire of MerT, ShT, and MLT. Reads the Wife in "a London context,"…
