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…
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…
Schoen, Jenna.
Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, 2021,
Dissertation Abstracts International A83.01(E).
Explores the interplay between romance and religious poetry in late medieval English vernacular literature, and includes discussion of how, as a parody of romance, Th "primes the reader for the prudential lessons" of Mel.
Considers the end of NPT and the Bible verse Romans 15:4. Claims the verse is used to bridge the two opposing views of Chaucer's intent in his writing, attempting to unite the morally serious poet with the subversive poet.
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…
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…
Johnston, Michael.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112 (2013): 433-60.
Argues that many late Middle English romances appeal to the gentry by coded references to the practice of "distraint," whereby gentry landowners were forced to take up knighthood or to pay fines. Concludes by comparing the attitudes expressed in…
Cooper, Helen.
A. S. G. Edwards, ed. Medieval Romance, Arthurian Literature: Essays in Honour of Elizabeth Archibald (Cambridge: Brewer, 2021), pp. 46-60.
Argues that "repetition should be included among the family resemblances that trigger the imaginative response that signals 'romance'." ” Includes discussion of MLT and the analogous accounts in Nicholas Trevet's "Chronicles" and John Gower's…
Fellows, Jennifer, Rosalind Field, Gillian Rogers, and Judith Weiss, eds.
Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996.
Collection of essays on medieval romance that contains recurrent references to FranT, KnT, MLT, MilT, PhyT, and Th. For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for Romance Reading on the Book under Alternative Title.
Yu examines the changing roles of literary rhetoric and dialectic, poesy and logic, from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. Chaucer is cited as a writer whose use of irony reflects changes in the understanding of logic.
Mills, Malwyn, Jennifer Fellows, and Carol M. Meade, eds.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991.
Papers read at the first meeting (1988) of the Society for the Study of Medieval Romance, ranging in chronological concern from the twelfth to the fiftennth centuries. Included are general discussions of MS Ashmole 61 and the Percy Folio. …
Tigges, Wim.
Henk Aertsen and Alasdair A. MacDonald, eds. Companion to Middle English Romance (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1990), 129-51.
Examines eleven texts, dating from the late fourteenth to the early seventeenth century, that are related to the metrical romance by their metatextual commentary on one or more romance characteristics. Includes discussion of CT, particularly KnT,…
Perkins, Nicholas.
Susan Scollay, ed. Love and Devotion from Persia and Beyond (South Varra, Victoria: Macmillan Art Publishing, 2012), pp. 151-56; 3 b&w figs.
Comments on the importance of love as a topic in Chaucer's works, with particular attention to TC, SqT, and PF.
