Wilson, William S.
Chaucer Review 1.3 (1967): 181-84.
Suggests that the three books of HF reflect the three medieval "linguistic arts," or trivium, focusing on how book 3 reflects the techniques of logic or dialectic, depicting the pros and cons of fame and "refining it into a philosophic idea." The…
Evans, Ruth.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 238-43.
Discusses public-facing writing about Chaucer and his texts and argues that "this writing's engagement with contemporary politics speaks to our and our students' experiences, and is already changing the direction of both classroom practice and…
Website designed for students, teachers, and school districts, with emphasis on preparation for college study; includes a search engine. Its Learning Guides includes numerous pages that pertain to Chaucer and his works, each with multiple internal…
Utley, Francis Lee.
MacEdward Leach, ed. Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Albert Croll Baugh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), pp. 109-36.
Anatomizes and analyzes "some eighty-three scenes" in TC that "reveal" in the poem "the role of dialogue, the role of visual scene and image, the role of structural contrast, and the role of tempo and movement" and create "skillful ordering" and…
No criticism has dealt satisfactorily with Chaucer's versification. This is because prosody cannot be studied in isolation. It must consider the literary and linguistic effects as well as the specific form and the mode of performance.
Scala, Elizabeth.
Medieval Feminist Forum 30: 27-37, 2000.
Assesses "gossip" about an emotional or sexual relationship between Rickert and John Matthews Manly, co-editors of "The Text of the Canterbury Tales" (1940).
Reads HF as an example of how a literary work constructs "discursive scale," making us self-conscious about how we read and interpret, when we read closely, and when we distance ourselves and see the text in relation to genres and systems, history,…
Uses HF, which sets "archival totality" in an uncertain relation to the experience of reading, to introduce a discussion of how in our reading "discursive systems, rather than particular texts, become objects of knowledge." Aims to theorize a…
Traces the figure of the "sursanure" in FranT, demonstrating that this superficially healed wound is an apt metaphor for Chaucer/s soft or "sunken" sources.
Adamson, Peter.
Medieval Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), pp. 495-501.
Comments on Chaucer's and Langland's engagements with philosophical debates of their age, especially determinism and voluntarism. Includes discussion of the tensions between KnT and MilT as Chaucer's poetic expression of philosophical concerns.
Strohm, Paul.
Paul Strohm, with an appendix by A.J. Prescott. Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 75-94. Also in Barbara Hanawalt, ed. Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), p. 21-40.
Discusses the tenuous nature of Henry's early success in usurping Richard's crown and his program of enlisting writers in support of his cause. The last stanza of Purse reflects the political assumptions that underpinned Henry's claims to the…
Critics' inability to sympathize with Troilus in TC results from their failure to recognize the "medieval practical reasoning that informs Troilus's deliberations and ultimately humanizes him." His philosophising "reflects a withdrawal from the…
Wadiak, Walter.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016.
Traces the evolution of the romance to the start of the sixteenth century, and its repositioning from an aristocratic genre to one that was embraced by the common audience. Claims this move marks a shift from violence in its early stages to one of…
Bryant, Brantley L., et al.
Myra Seaman, Eileen A. Joy, and Nicola Masciandaro, eds. Dark Chaucer: An Assortment (Brooklyn, N. Y.: Punctum Books, 2012), pp. 13-27.
Explores the contrast between Theseus and Saturn in KnT as a metaphor for the lives of modern academic Chaucerians.
Medieval mythographies interpret Saturn in various ways: astrologically, euhemeristically, morally, naturally, and Neoplatonically. Interpretation of Saturn in KnT should entail recognizing this complexity of influences rather than privileging only…
Loomis, Dorothy Bethurum.
Arno Esch, ed. Chaucer und Seine Zeit: Symposion für Walter F. Schirmer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), pp. 149-61.
Describes the neo-Platonic, Chartrian tradition in which astral influence (or determinism) includes Saturn as a figure of wisdom as well as cold, temporal destiny, suggesting that the depiction of the god/planet in "De Universitate Mundi" by Bernard…
Contends that Cresseid's maturation in Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" includes an evolving contemplation of free will, as one finds in Boethius and in Chaucer's depiction of Troilus in TC.
Reale, Nancy M., and Ruth E. Sternglantz, eds.
Donington : Shaun Tyas, 2001.
Fourteen literary studies that range across Old English, Old French, Anglo-Latin, Middle English, and medieval Irish, Spanish, and Italian. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Satura under Alternative Title.
Mann, Jill.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 5 (1983): 17-48.
Both "Pearl" and ClT use comparatives for contrasts with a notion of satisfaction signified by the words "enough" and "suffisaunce." The set of related words in ClT, including "sadness," "suffraunce," "outrely," and other words of degree and…
Vermeule, Blakey
Classical and Modern Literature 22.2: 85-101, 2002
Describes the cognitive condition of "mind blindness," often associated with autism, and argues that a literary version of the condition recurs in satire, where authors use the blind spots of characters to ironically convey unstated information. Uses…
Lall, Rama Rani.
New Delhi: New Statesman Publishing Co., 1979.
The satiric fable, with oral origins among the Orientals and Greeks, is usually characterized by economy, light-heartedness, and singleness of impression. The popularity of the genre continued into the Middle Ages and beyond not only because of its…
Allen, Charles A., and George D. Stephens, eds.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1962.
Anthologizes theoretical essays and illustrative examples of literary satire drawn from the ancients through the moderns. Designed for classroom use, with a glossary of terms, a bibliography of suggestions for further study, and an index. Includes…
Russell, John, and Ashley Brown, eds.
New York: World Publishing, 1967.
Anthologizes samples of satire from classical to modern literature, arranged by genre (Prose and Drama, Verse, Epigrams), including modernizations (by Nevill Coghill) of FrPT and SumP under Verse. The Foreward (pp. xv-xxxiv) describes the…
Kiley, Frederick, and J. M. Shuttleworth, eds.
New York: Odyssey, 1971.
An anthology of examples, arranged chronologically, of literary, social, and political satires; includes a prose translation (by Robert Lumiansky) of PardPT, with a brief introduction.
