Gaylord, Alan Theodore.
Dissertation Abstracts International 20.09 (1960). Princeton University Dissertation, 1958. 592 pp. Full text available at ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global.
Surveys the intellectual and social backgrounds of medieval understandings of nobility and "gentilesse," and analyzes noble birth and noble action in TC and CT, especially the ironies of failed "noble potential" in TC, the framing noble ideals of the…
O'Brien, Timothy D.
College Literature 28.2: 178-96, 2001.
The Wife of Bath, the Prioress, and the wife in ShT represent themselves as victims of violence to make themselves attractive to men. In doing so, they draw on texts, such as medieval saints' lives and romances, that depict violence as central to the…
When an angry God of Love accuses the narrator of a breach of faith, Alceste rebukes the god for believing false counselors. This action reflects the political situation of Chaucer's time. The Lord's Appellant had attacked Richard II's corrupt…
Conversions in TC are modeled ironically on those of St. Paul and St. Augustine. Like Paul, Troilus cannot escape his fate; he can only accept and serve. Like Augustine, Criseyde vainly tries to master the narrative that is out of her control.
Loomis, Laura Hibbard.
Speculum 33.2 (1958): 242-55.
Identifies the "tregetoures" of FranT 4.1141, not as jugglers or magicians, but as the "actors, craftsmen, 'artisans mécaniques'" who produced spectacular entertainments such as the ones recorded by chroniclers to have taken place at the Royal…
Loomis, Laura Hibbard
Jerome Taylor and Alan H. Nelson, eds. Medieval English Drama: Essays Critical and Contextual (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), pp. 98-115.
Describes the verbal and visual records of Parisian court entertainments which have parallels with Chaucer's description of visual spectacle putatively produced by magicians ("tregetours") in FranT 5.1139-51,
Murton, Megan.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 38 (2016): 75-107.
Describes Chaucer's self-conscious exploration of time in Mars, arguing that in form and content the poem presents an ambivalent, "permeable, and even unstable" view of secularity but also implies the "palpably absent" other of transcendence. More…
Farrell, Thomas J.
Chaucer Review 52.4 (2017): 396-425.
Traces the use of the minuscule "a" in the Latin quotations of the Ellesmere manuscript to support the argument that these annotations derive from the ways Chaucer imagines the form of CT.
Gross, Gregory Walter.
Dissertation Abstracts International 55 (1995): 1945A.
Secrecy about sex cuts across genres and develops its own forms of rhetoric, as seen in works from Petrarch's "Secretum" through the "Roman de Silence," Margery Kempe, and PardPT.
Sharrock, Roger.
Essays in Criticism 8 (1958): 123-37.
Responds to criticism of TC, especially that of C. S. Lewis on courtly love, and examines the poem's emphases on human vulnerability and limitations, reinforced by recurrent colloquialisms, juxtapositions of the sublime and the risible, and concern…
Explores the thematic implications of several verbal ambiguities or double meanings in KnT: "array" (dress and predicament), "hert" (heart and hart), "wele" (joy and wheel), nuances of "turne," "boone" (reward and bone), and "righte way" in…
Tomasch, Sylvia.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 27 (2005)
Characterizes the "scholarly interests" of the more than 150 applicants for a 2003 tenure-track job in medieval studies at Hunter College of the City University of New York.
Suggests that in medieval literature generally the "motif of crossing a body of water was regularly perceived as an epistemological operation of a physical and a spiritual kind," and explores the notion in several narratives, including MLT, examining…
Associates Scudamour of Edmund Spenser's The Fairie Queene IV.x with "Chaucerian" mastery in love, drawing parallels with love in KnT and contrasts with love in FranT, the latter quoted by Spenser in III.i.25, 8-9.
Alford, John A.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 197-203.
On "glosing" and scriptural authority in WBP, WBT, FrT, and SumT. The groping motif of SumT is informed by Gen. 24:1-4 and 47:27, requiring an oath on the genitals.
Brown, George H.
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 285-300.
Medieval uses of the Bible include imitation, satire, and parody. Chaucer's biblical quotations and allusions, which number more than seven hundred, are used to prove a proposition, to reinforce a statement, to enhance some personage, to criticize a…
Terrell, Katherine H.
Columbus: The Ohio State University Press, 2022.
Describes a "widespread nationalistic feeling" in late medieval and early modern Scotland, with particular attention to Latin chroniclers, court poets in the reign of James IV, and their similar uses of Scottish myths of origin in resistance to…
Donavin, Georgiana.
Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 2012.
Investigates "constructions of Mary as Lady Rhetorica, 'magistra' for language studies, muse for poetry, and exemplar of perfected speech in a fallen world." Chapter 4, "Chaucer and Dame School," considers how ABC, PrT, and SNT "depict a hierarchy of…
Thaisen, Jacob, and Hanna Rutkowska, eds.
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011.
Ten essays by various authors on textual concerns of late medieval English manuscripts and early printed books. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Scribes, Printers, and the Accidentals of Their Texts under Alternative Title.
Goldie, Matthew Boyd.
Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2019.
Explores how philosophers, theologians, poets, and other thinkers in late medieval England altered ancient ideas of geographical space. Analyzes medieval science, theology, literature, and maps, and the "relationship between high science and high…
Warner, Lawrence.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015): 55-100.
Critiques the methods and conclusions of various analyses of late medieval English vernacular scribes, challenging the arguments that British Library, MS Royal 17 D.XVIII is Thomas Hoccleve's holograph; that Adam Pinkhurst was "Scribe B" of…
Mooney, Linne R., and Estelle Stubbs.
Rochester, NY: Boydell Press, 2013.
Comprehensive study of scribes from the London Guildhall responsible for copying Chaucer's earliest manuscripts, including Adam Pinkhurst, Guildhall scrivener from 1378-1410.
