Baker, Donald C.
University of Mississippi Studies in English 1 (1960): 97-104.
Argues that "the role of the artist as purveyor of Fame" is the fundamental unifying theme of HF and suggests that Chaucer may have intended to resolve tensions between Dantean and Boethian views of the poet (as teacher and misleader, respectively)…
Griffiths, Gwen.
Papers on Language and Literature 25 (1989): 242-63.
The divergence of critical opinion about MerT attests to Chaucer's success in prompting multiple responses to his text and in allowing no definitive reading. In the tale, "the narrator/narratee relationships are reflected in a multiplicity of…
Boyd, David Lorenzo.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1991): 909A.
On the basis of insights provided by manuscripts (especially Harvard MS English 530), certain works by Hoccleve and Lydgate reveal unifying themes. To fifteenth-century readers, Chaucer's PF treated the relationship of common profit and individual…
Fein, Susanna Greer, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds.
Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991.
This collection of essays by various authors addresses the rivalry and tension among characters, themes, styles, and genres in CT.
For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Rebels and Rivals under Alternative Title.
Troilus ultimately travels to the ninth--not the eighth--sphere at the end of TC, a place ripe with "symbolic valence," reinforcing Chaucer's narrative focus on constant change and the ambiguity that comes with it.
Wimsatt, James I.
Robert R. Edwards and Stephen Spector, eds. The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 201-10, 287-89 (notes).
Examines "the paradigm of consoler-consolation-consolee" in The Consolation of Philosophy, Roman de la Rose, Remede de Fortune, and TC. The Consolation is "sub-text or perhaps super-text." The other texts mediate in Chaucer's adaptation of…
Rosenberg, Bruce Allen.
Dissertation Abstracts International 26.03 (1965): 1654A.
Interprets the Canon of CYP as "one of the men of Antichrist," and examines the sustained opposition of CYPT and SNPT, emphasizing their contrasting depictions of reason and revelation as ways of knowing.
Milosh, Joseph E.,Jr.
Millicent Lenz and Ramona M. Mahood, eds. Young Adult Literature: Background and Criticism (Chicago: American Library Association, 1980), pp. 433-40.
John the cuckolded carpenter in MilT, delights in a simple faith which makes star-gazing unnecessary. The NPT revolves around the problem of translating intuitive knowledge into action. In both modern and medieval images of the universe,searching…
Holley, Linda Tarte.
New York: Palgrave Mcmillan, 2011.
Building on recent studies related to space and epistemology, this study argues that Chaucer, as well as the "Pearl"-poet and author of "The Cloud of Unknowing," take a pedagogical stance in their writing and "proffer a space from which or by means…
Giaccherini, Enrico.
Fausto Ciompi, ed. One of Us: Studi Inglesi e Conradiani Offerti a Mario Curreli (Pisa, Italy: ETS, 2009), pp. 155-66.
Distinguishes between "anti-Judaism" and "anti-Semitism," and reads the former as a motif that combines with other devices to produce the excessive pathos of PrT, a form of late-medieval emotional intensity.
The chaos in HF is partly the result of multiple interpretations of texts and massive disagreement among the characters. Geffrey may curse the individual who "misinterprets" his writing, but he is partly joking. Only those authors whose texts are…
Is PF realist or nominalist? Ultimately, the poem's debate and epistemological investigation of the two positions is more conducive to reader participation than a conclusive ending would have been.
Wimsatt, James I.
Mary Salu, ed. Essays on Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge: Brewer, 1979), pp. 43-56.
Two major sources of the realism in TC are the Platonic cosmic fables (e.g., the "Boece") and the arts of love or handbooks for lovers, particularly the "Pamphilus." The fables would seem far removed from realism; however, their writers' concern…
Nardo, Don, ed.
San Diego, Cal.: Greenhaven, 1997.
Seventeen previously published essays and excerpts, accompanied by an introduction, a biography, a chronology, and a brief bibliography intended for student use. Contributors include Donald Howard (on structure and on social rank), Glending Olson (on…
Cervone, Christina Maria, and D. Vance Smith, eds.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016.
Begins with an introduction to Spearing's place in scholarship and situates him in the wider context of English and American approaches to texts. Follows with a chronological bibliography of Spearing's published work. This collection of essays is…
Johnson, David F., and Elaine Treharne, eds.
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2005.
Twenty-five essays by various contributors, addressing individual works or genres and designed for "students undertaking courses in Old and Middle English." The book includes recurrent references to Chaucer's works. For two essays that pertain to his…
Spearing, A. C.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
By eclectic approaches that borrow techniques from "modern literary theory, film analysis, sociolinguistics, and social anthropology" and that use historical views of medieval ideas and practice, Spearing illuminates a number of medieval poems,…
Meale, Carol M., ed.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994.
Twelve essays, by various authors, from the Third Conference on Romance in England, held March-April 1992 at the University of Bristol. Topics include generic definition; textual transmission; audience reception; romance and emergent nationalism;…
Zieman, Katherine.
Sarah Rees Jones, ed. Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad. Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, no. 3 (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2003), pp. 97-120.
Zieman examines the "liturgical literacy" of medieval nuns, exploring the extent to which they may have understood Latin texts that they performed. PrT presents "singing explicitly characterized as illiterate" as "the purest form of piety"; SNT…
Meale, Carol M.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), pp. 81-101.
Examines the life, tomb, and library of Alice Chaucer--granddaughter of the poet--to suggest how we might reconstruct a women's literary culture of the fifteenth century. Alice's literary taste was influenced by her father, Thomas Chaucer; by the…
Thomas, Alfred.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Explores the influence of Anne of Bohemia, wife and consort of King Richard II, on Chaucer and his contemporaries. Proposes that Anne of Bohemia was a "possible female patron and reader" of Chaucer's texts. Focuses on PrT, SNT, KnT, WBT, and LGW.
Chaucer and Gower distance themselves from French influence in the 1380s and 1390s as a way to criticize Richard's "predilection for French literature" and to train their readers to read and interpret.
