Argues that "gentilesse" is the main concern of SqT, linked to the sub-themes of integrity, mercy, education, truthful rhetoric, youthfulness, and social class.
Duffell, Martin J.
Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018.
Combines "generative" metrical analysis with statistical sampling, synchronic and diachronic comparisons, and attention to the history of metrical criticism to proclaim Chaucer the "father of English poetry’s metrical artistry." Describes native…
Ethel, Garland.
Modern Language Quarterly 20 (1959): 211-27.
Examines the characterization of the Pardoner as the "wretchedest and vilest of the ecclesiastical sinners" among Chaucer's pilgrims in CT, arguing that "not covetousness, but wrath against the Divine was the Pardoner’s prime motivation." Tallies a…
Explores in CT the dynamic between with expansive spaces and narrow ones, especially as they correlate with views of the world that are variously serious or playful. Considers the intertextuality of KnT and the fabliaux of Part 1 of CT as a paradigm…
Medieval and classical notions of space and time cause "pryvetee" to be related to "oiseuse" and "otium." Spatial relationships emphasize that major events, like the little fall which occurs in the carpenter's house in MilT, are arranged around a…
Allman, Wendy West.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 2642A.
Chaucer's uses of political discourse intersect with his concerns about poetic authority. In PF, "commune profyt" represents both an equivocal political ideal and an idealized community of readers. In KnT, just as Theseus aestheticizes his reign,…
Knapp, Peggy A.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Applies Kantian aesthetic principles to "display the interanimation of sensible detail with intelligible order" in TC and CT and considers the two poems in light of Hans-Georg Gadamer (on art of the past), Ludwig Wittgenstein (intellectual play), and…
Gilbert, Gaelen.
Myra Seaman, Eileen A. Joy, and Nicola Masciandaro, eds. Dark Chaucer: An Assortment (Brooklyn, N. Y.: Punctum Books, 2012), pp. 43-57.
Claims that "Chaucer is eschatological" with a recurrent focus on "death, judgment, hell, and heaven," but that he also anticipates in Ret how readers might associate Chaucer the author with Chaucer's texts, thus encouraging "a dynamic of textual…
Robbins, Rossell Hope.
Albert E. Hartung, gen. ed. A Manual of the Writings in Middle English, 1050-1500, Volume 4, Part 11 (Hamden Conn.: Shoe String Press, 1973), pp. 1285-1306.
A bibliography of the resources that pertain to the study of Chaucerian apocrypha (background studies, manuscripts and editions, and critical essays), arranged by the titles of the works.
Chaucer sees joy in Boethian terms as arising form what a man loves. Unlike the Man of Law and the Monk, the Nun's Priest affirms both worldly joy and heavenly bliss; he suggests that lost joy may be recovered if one, like Chauntecleer, actively…
Spearing, A. C.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Literature in Fourteenth-Century England (Tubingen: Gunter Narr; Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 185-202.
Explores relations between literary inheritance and father-child relations in Chaucer's works. Chaucer's "unfavourable attitude toward the power of the father" is reflected in his plots and his attitudes toward his literary ancestry. Of Chaucer's…
Hill, John M.
New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1991.
Chaucer's works explore and promote "cognitive credence"--belief as a way of knowing the truths reflected in fiction. In BD, HF, PF, and LGWP, the narrators' confrontations with various fictions show that belief and emotional involvement are…
Arfin considers WBT as a "demande," written toward the end of the composition of CT as Chaucer's comment on "the collection as a whole" or on the "nature of literature in general" in his work-in-progress.
David, Alfred.
Mary Salu, ed. Essays on Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge: Brewer, 1979), pp. 90-104.
Recently critical emphasis has been upon the sustained irony in the tragic tale of TC. Along with it is a peculiarly Chaucerian kind of comedy that may best be labeled "bodily laughter," because although it laughs "at" the body, it does so out of…
Mehl, Dieter.
Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft West Jahrbuch 120 : 111-27, 1984.
TC inspired both Albert Brooke's The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare's play is a "more serious and comprehensive reading" of TC, particularly its fusion of comedy and tragedy, than is…
Mieszkowski, Gretchen.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Laughter in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: Epistemology of a Fundamental Human Behavior, Its Meaning, and Consequences. Fundamentals of Medieval and Early Modern Culture, no. 5 (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter), 2010, pp. 457-80.
Mieszkowski contrasts the situational comedy of TC and the structural comedic techniques of MilT, MerT, and SumT. Chaucer generates "all the comedy" of TC by means of Pandarus, whose comic counterpoint compels readers to reconceptualize love without…
Patterson, Lee.
Medievalia et Humanistica 7 (1976): 153-73.
Confessional literature illumines the Pardoner's performance by explaining the motives which lie behind it. Parallels with the "false confession" and an analysis of the pitfalls of despair and presumption suggest that the Pardoner is suffering from…
Explores how social division and civic dissent were articulated and addressed in late fourteenth-century literature. As evident in HF, TC, and CT, Chaucer was persistently interested in the slipperiness of truth and in the power of language. Figures…
Veck, Sonya.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 300-313.
Veck comments on recurrent thematic opposition between newfangleness and sufficiency or steadfastness in Wom Unc, Truth, and CT. She suggests that Chaucer complicates the opposition with examples in which "a dash of inconstancy or newfangleness would…
Ridley, Florence H.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 81 (1980): 131-41.
Chaucer's enduring appeal derives from his poetry's visuality,its presentation of unchanging human behavior, its deliberate ambiguity. The broad ranges of psychological criticism are viable as long as they are understood as imaginative constructs of…
Rossiter, William T.
Helen Fulton, ed. Chaucer and Italian Culture (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021), pp. 17-44
Emphasizes Chaucer's diplomatic experience in Italy to "show how Chaucer drew on the work of Petrarch and Boccaccio to experiment with fictionalised
forms of the ambassadorial process."
Symons, Dana M., ed.
Kalamazoo, Mich. : Medieval Institute, 2004.
Edits four works ("The Boke of Cupide, God of Love," "A Complaynte of a Lovers Lyfe," "The Quare of Jelusy," and "La Belle Dame sans Mercy"), all except the "Quare" once attributed to Chaucer.
Investigates character development, language, and motifs of GP, CT, and TC to establish the extent of Chaucer's influence on the sixteenth-century poem "Debate betweene Pride and Lowlines."
Theorizes ecopoetic criticism, considering anthropocentrism, anthropotropism, and the "writability" of voices, whether human or nonhuman. Considers the "turn" to the human that opens GP and how the "impenetrability" of the human in GP is "often…
