Knight, Stephen.
London: Angus and Robertson, 1973
A series of five case studies in cloxe reading that demonstrate Chaucer's skill with prosodic and rhetorical devices; includes an appendix that defines and exemplifies "figures of style" (pp. 236-42). Chapter 1 contrasts the stylistic virtuosity of…
Delany, Sheila.
Sheila Delany, Medieval Literary Politics: Shapes of Ideology (University of Manchester Press, 1990), pp. 1-18.
Surveys utopian attitudes, including alchemy. CYT reflects Chaucer's awareness of the "genuinely subversive thrust" of alchemy as an alternative to Pauline-Augustinian orthodoxy.
Hardie, Philip.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012.
Explores the meaning of Middle English "fama," derived from the Latin, in relation to the spoken word. Chapter 15, "Chaucer's 'House of Fame' and Pope's 'Temple of Fame'," analyzes relations between the spoken and written word in these poems, as well…
Cole contends that metrical groupings of works from the "Alliterative Revival" are faulty and that these groupings reflect inappropriate application of phonology common in the "poetic dialects" of Chaucer and Gower.
Storm, Mel.
Enarratio 14 (2010, for 2007): 139-51.
Storm surveys the debt to Chaucer's KnT in Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream," focusing on the works' mutual concern with hierarchy and order. In both works (and elsewhere in the authors' works), the figure of the Minotaur (parodied in…
Sanders, Arnold A.
David G. Allen and Robert A. White, eds. The Work of Dissimilitude: Essays from the Sixth Citadel Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1992), pp. 196-215.
Examines Gower's tale of Canace, the Man of Law's reference to the account, and the narrative treatment of the character Canace in SqT, arguing that Spenser fused them in his Canace. In his second (1596) edition of "The Faerie Queene" Spenser…
Tokunaga, Satoko.
Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 15 (2012): 59-78.
Examines the various kinds of rubrication in copies of books printed by Caxton, 1476-78, including his first edition of CT and his Bo, suggesting that, after printing, the "additional task of rubrication was carried out in an organized manner before…
Discusses historical reliability of witness lists as evidence of magnate activity and relationship to the crown. Provides tabular inventory of witnesses and percentage of charters witnessed by year.
Valdes Miyares, Ruben.
Ana María Hornero and María Pilar Navarro, eds. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of S.E.L.I.M. (Zaragoza: Institucion Fernando el Catolico (CSIC), 2000), pp. 267-75.
The Miller's bagpipe in GP epitomizes MilT, setting the pace for the pilgrimage and offering the rough justice of popular music as a human alternative to God's arbitrary judgment in the combat of KnT. The Miller questions the hegemony of vested…
Jonassen, Frederick B.
Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 229-58.
Briefly surveys the carnivalesque folk tradition of charivari in medieval literature and assesses MerT in light of it, especially the description of the marriage between January and May, the musical imagery, and the inexpressibility topos.
Allman, W. W., and D. Thomas Hanks, Jr.
Chaucer Review 38: 36-65. , 2003.
A "bodily economy of piercing men and pierced women" can be found throughout CT. Lovemaking is associated with cutting, stabbing, bleeding, and dying. The only accounts of lovemaking not connected to stabbing or bloodletting occur in the musical…
Walker, Greg.
Elaine Treharne, ed. Writing Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle English Texts (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), pp. 61-91.
Absolon's rejection of Alison's sexuality in MilT suggests the kind of masculinity invoked by Mariology and by popular representations of the Annunciation.
Edwards, A. S. G., and Ralph Hanna III.
Huntington Library Quarterly 58 (1996): 11-35.
Although Ellesmere ownership in the fifteenth century cannot be proved, a preponderance of evidence indicates association with Bury St. Edmunds and a family circle that included the Pastons, Drurys, and De Veres, suggesting a context within which the…
Brewer critiques Root's explanation of relationships among TC manuscripts, arguing that Root's explanation is inconsistent and commenting on the possibilities of discovering the process of Chaucer's revisions.
Hieatt, A. Kent.
Theresa M. Krier, ed. Refiguring Chaucer in the Renaissance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 147-64.
Books 3-4 of "The Faerie Queene" are a meditation on the nature of sexual passion, deeply influenced by FranT (which Spenser paraphrases in part) and its emphasis on companionship as a brake on sexual passion. Spenser develops the meditation in his…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
New Literary History 50 (2019): 467-71.
Describes the treatment of the rondel in manuscripts of PF as a form of code-switching, identifies resonances of PF and SqT in Charles d’Orléans's Valentine's Day poetry, and explores the implications of describing love-talk or bird-talk as a form of…
Fichte explores Rome in CT, both as an actual place and as a symbol. Focuses on Rome versus Syria in MLT and Christianity versus paganism in SNT, with comments on the Wife of Bath's and the Pardoner's connections with Rome, as well as orientalism in…
McGunnigle, Michael Gerard.
Dissertation Abstracts International 41 (1980): 2616A.
The genres of history and romance in Middle English Troy poems are distinguished by contrasting attitudes towards sources and the historicity of the subject; by a corresponding contrast in attitudes towards the historical distance between past and…
Driver, Martha W.
Helen Cooney, ed. Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 147-62.
Driver explores how the Roman de la Rose was "re-written" for late medieval audiences in various ways: Chaucer advocates contemporary views of the work in his adaptation of La Vieille in WBP, and Pizan criticizes such views in her Book of the Three…
Osborn, Marijane.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.
Anthologizes three Middle English "woman-centered" romances--"Emaré," "Le Bone Florence of Rome" (Part 2), and MLT--in rhymed modern English, and discusses their common theme of castaway queens, their sources and analogues, and modern reflexes of…
Griffith, Gareth
Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe, and Gareth Griffith, eds. Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 137-49.
Focuses on elements of the "popular romance" in the manuscripts of "The Tale of Gamelyn" and "The Tale of "Beryn" and excerpts from Chaucer's works in other manuscripts to show how "the 'Chaucer' presented to early modern readers by the manuscript…
Mitchell, J. Allan.
Comparative Literature 57.2 (2005): 101-16.
Emmanuel Lévinas's "Time and the Other" indicates how Fortune or contingency is constitutive of ethics in Chaucer's TC. In contrast to Boethian readings of TC, a Lévinasian reading shows how Troilus's subjection to love and his passivity before an…
Wadiak, Walter Philip.
Dissertation Abstracts International A69.01 (2008): n.p.
Wadiak considers how Middle English romances focus on "giving and spending" as a questioning of the emergent capitalistic system, examining romances from "King Horn" through KnT and arguing that these works simultaneously shape and reflect the move…
A classroom anthology of sixteen examples of the literary mode of romance, including FranT in Nevill Coghill's modern poetic translation. The volume describes the mode of romance, offers brief biographies of the writers included, and lists discussion…
