Surveys critical and historical treatments of Philippa Chaucer, showing both the ahistorical nature of much of this work and the common, negative approach in her characterization. Emphasizes that gender plays a significant role in how these judgments…
Tracy, Larissa.
Medieval Feminist Forum 54.2 (2018): 64-108.
Explores the implications of reading the Pardoner as a cross-dressing female, arguing that Chaucer leaves "her" characterization ambiguous, plays on "cultural associations of cross-dressing," and “legitimiz[es] the rhetorical power of female…
Martinez, Ronald L.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 325-50.
Traces the connections between Petrarch and Dante for Chaucer, while simultaneously showing the depth of Petrarch’s influence on Chaucer's verse. Discusses fame and Petrarch in ClT, MkT, and TC.
Donaldson, E. T[albot], ed.
New York: Ronald, 1958.
Edits the majority of Chaucer's verse (no prose included) in normalized spelling and modern punctuation, with bottom-of-page glosses and occasional brief notes. Omits Book 3 of HF, the legends of LGW (but LGWP-G included), several lyrics, and…
Argues that Christian and pagan acts of prayer in Chaucer's works are fundamental to understanding his creative piety. Chaucer’s literary representations of prayer are collaborative and participatory "scripts" that involve the reader in the sacred…
Maffetone, Elizabeth Christine.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Indiana University, 2020.Dissertation Abstracts International A81.12(E). Fully available via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Traces "gendered protocols of violence that have been inherited through literary interpretive practices as they are represented in Chaucer's corpus.” Argues that “acts of reading, writing, and translation can function as forms of violence in…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Jonathan Fruoco, ed. Polyphony and the Modern (New York Routledge, 2021), pp. 169-91.
Offers a technical linguistic analysis of STR (speech and thought representation) in TC, theorizing a hierarchical "structure of subjectivities" to examine samples from the poem, attending to nuances latent in diction, situation, point of view,…
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…
Renoir, Alain.
Modern Language Notes 71.4 (1956): 249-56.
Charts the charactonyms of Lydgate's "Seige of Thebes" with those used in two analogues, possibly sources--the "Roman de Edipus" and the "Ystoire de Thèbes--comparing them with names and spellings used by Chaucer. When Lydgate departs from Chaucer's…
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…
