McColly, William B.
Chaucer Review 20 (1985): 14-27.
The presence and function of the Knight's Yeoman have been neglected: to a contemporary audience he would represent a retainer of great authority and responsibility; hence the Knight's status is high indeed.
Fry, Donald K.
English Language Notes 9 (1971): 81-85.
Proposes that Cicero's "De Inventione" is the source of TC 4.407-13; the subsequent reference (4.414-15) to "Zanzis" is Chaucer's corruption of "Zeuxis."
Chance, Jane.
Jane Chance, ed. The Mythographic Art: Classical Fable and the Rise of the Vernacular in Early France and England (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1990), pp. 177-98.
Examines several mythological winds and traces the use of Zephirus as a "revivifying wind" in Isidore, Bersuire, and Boethius. Chaucer uses the myth of Zephirus and Flora in BD to suggest psychological healing; in TC 5.10, for ironic effect; in…
Argues that CT reflects "astrological schema" and traces the evidence of a single cycle of the twelve signs in GP (Aries and Taurus), KnT (Gemini), MilT (Cancer), RvT (Leo), CkT (Virgo), MLT (Libra), WBPT (Scorpio), FrT (Sagittarius), SumT…
Lawton, David.
Helen Cooper and Robert R. Edwards, eds. Oxford History of Poetry in English. Volume 2, Medieval Poetry, 1100–1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 409-24.
Highlights the enduring role of court poet for Chaucer, including his debts to "The Romance of the Rose" and the complicity of the narrator in TC. Discusses the creation of Alcestis in LGW.
Singh, Devani.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023.
Focuses "on fifteenth-century manuscripts of Chaucer, and . . . how these volumes were read, used, valued, and transformed" in the early modern period, reflecting "conventions which circulated in print and . . . convey prevailing preoccupations about…
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…
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…
