Summarizes the Augustinian psychology of memory and its relationship to language, arguing that these concepts underlie the narrator's "'educational' pilgrimage" in HF. The end of the poem reflects the transformation of fiction into reality.
Greetham, D. C.
Modern Philology 86.3 (1989): 242-51.
Analyzes Thomas Hoccleve's narrative persona in his "Regement of Princes" and his "Series" poems, treating it as a development out of "the inherited Chaucerian narrator" toward a psychological portrait marked by the deleterious effects of "thought"…
Pratt, Robert A., ed.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966.
Edits CT (excluding Mel, MkT, SNT, CYT, and Pars), along with Ros, Form Age, Adam, Buk, Purse, and Truth, following the Robinson's edition of 1957, with modification from Manly and Rickert's collations. Marginal glosses and bottom-of-page notes…
King, Francis, and Bruce Steele, eds.
Melbourne: F. W. Cheshire, 1969.
A textbook edition of selections from CT (GP, MilPT, RvP, PardPT, PrPT, Tho, NPT, WBPT, ManPT, ParP, a selection from ParsT, and Ret) in Middle English, with facing-page glosses and end-of-text notes and commentary. Also includes passages from…
Boffey, Julia, and Carol Meale.
Felicity Riddy, ed. Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts: Essays Celebrating the Publication of A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English. York Manuscripts Conferences: Proceedings Series, no. 2 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 143-69.
Rawlinson C.86 contains ClT and portions of PrT and LGW. Analysis of the manuscript reveals interests of the contemporary London audience and suggests that several booklets in the manuscript may have been produced on speculation.
ParsT is the best of the CT to choose for a survey class. It provides a link with ancient and modern literature, reflects the thinking of the major writers in medieval England, and interweaves the previous themes and images of CT.
Includes selections from GP, RvT, and FranT, along with selections from BD, HF, PF, TC, LGWP, and the complete Pity. Texts in Middle English, with occasional end-of-text glosses.
Damon, John.
Sally McKee, ed. Crossing Boundaries: Issues of Cultural and Individual Identity in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1999) pp. 41-56.
Martial imagery in SNT presents Cecilia as a "kind of general in a spiritual army of the steadfast faithful." Seen in light of Th and Mel, SNT idealizes "non-violent resistance, not passive resignation, to abuses of power."
Lee, Brian S.
Children's Literature Association Quarterly 23 (1998): 40-48.
Examines the diverse portrayals of children in medieval literature, commenting on how Chaucer questions the innocence of the "clergeoun" in PrT and how in LGW and MkT his pathos is more restrained than in his sources.
Fisher, Sheila, and Janet E. Halley, eds.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989.
Twelve essays by various hands that stand "at the intersection of Anglo-American empirical historicism and French theories of textuality." Historical women were real in ways that are absent from writings. Essays are grouped under three headings:…
Ortego, James N., II.
Fifteenth-Century Studies 35 (2010): 80-104.
Reviews several late medieval texts to demonstrate the "devolution of knighthood" before Shakespeare's time. Comments on the GP description of the Knight, on MerT, and on Th.
Boyd, David Lorenzo.
Peter S. Baker and Nicholas Howe, eds. Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson (Toronto, Buffalo, and New York: University of Toronto Press, 1998), pp. 243-60.
In medieval tradition, sodomy was associated with misinterpretation. When seen in this light, Absolon's sodomizing of Nicholas in MilT both reinforces heteronormativity and decries the system upon which it is based. The Miller's reference to "Goddes…
Finlayson, John.
Studia Neophilologica 58 (1986): 47-57.
Though the first two sections of HF abound in expressions of personal experience--"I saw," "I heard"--the pattern of use and the shaping force of art and science undermine the trustworthiness of appearance. The switch to third-person narrative in…
Petrina, Alessandra.
Giovanni Iamartino, Maria Luisa Maggioni, and Roberta Facchinetti, eds. Thou sittest at another boke: English Studies in Honour of Domenico Pezzini (Milan: Polimetrica, 2008), pp. 223-35.
RvT differs from its sources and analogues by developing the relationship between sight, desire, and reason, ultimately questioning the function of vision, the most important of the senses.
Adler, Gillian.
Dissertation Abstracts International A77.10 (2016): n.p.
Argues that Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" provides Chaucer with a means of understanding time as a unified and simultaneous whole, and that he deploys this understanding in the dream visions, and especially TC.
Dobbs, Elizabeth Ann
Chaucer Review 32 (1998): 400-22.
TC contains a series of images of windows both open and closed, which are added to (or changed from) Chaucer's sources and which provide a commentary on the relationships between the lovers. Views out of windows are limited views, or "fictions,"…
Akbari, Suzanne Conklin.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004.
Tracks developments in the theory and practice of personification allegory in medieval literature (especially the "Roman de la Rose," works by Dante, and works by Chaucer) in relation to optical theory and epistemology. As confidence in the…
Carruthers, Mary J.
Robert R. Edwards, ed. Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 93-106.
Carruthers explores the role of memory, one of the five divisions of classical rhetoric, in composing and understanding medieval poetry. Works such as "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and Chaucer's KnT are "memory-friendly" because images…
The Prioress's worldly graces and associations with Mary are well-suited to her esteemed position of religious and social power. Frank speculates that Chaucer chose PrT for its associations with the "cult of Notre Dame du Puy."
Stanbury, Sarah.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991.
Argues in detail that the "Gawain"-poet develops a "visually focused descriptive poetic" in his works and, by way of conclusion, asks whether such a poetic is unusual in late-medieval English literature, going on to treat works by Chaucer, "Sir…
Scala, Elizabeth.
Word & Image 26.4 (2010): 381–92.
Shows that the Nun's Priest is often illustrated in manuscripts and books, even though he is not described in the GP, arguing that the illustrations are informed by the Host's comments on the Priest and by the description of the protagonist of NPT,…
The deceptive nature of physical sight in FranT is based on the medieval theory of optics, whereby one's vision--buttressed by "proper" control of the will--aided one in knowing God, while "improper" control made one susceptible to the dangers of…
