Van Dyke, Carolyn, ed.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Sixteen essays by various authors examine animals in Chaucer, with an Introduction and Afterword that describe the grounds for challenging the "anthropocentric perspective" and align this challenge with feminism and the rejection of hierarchical…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, 2014.
Examines LGW within the sociocultural and intellectual contexts of the late fourteenth century, paying especial attention to early humanist and late courtly traditions. LGWP may be juxtaposed with Richard de Bury's "Philobiblon"; and the legends…
Considers PrT and its depiction of premodern antisemitism and relation to premodern race. Ties PrT’s construction of Jews as a cursed monolith to the workings of structural racism. Discusses Agbabi's "Sharps an Flats," which demonstrates "how…
Lazaro, Alberto.
Luminita Frentiu and Loredana Punga, eds. A Journey through Knowledge: Festschrift in Honour of Hortensia Pârlog (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012), pp. 120-29.
Describes the availability in Spain before 1975 of translations for children of CT and Arthurian stories, observing the emphasis on pious, submissive women found in adaptations of FranT, KnT, ClT, and MLT, the only tales allowed by censors.
Analysis of Chaucer's tales (and Arthurian stories) as retold for Spanish children during the Francoist period. Focuses on the first translation of Chaucer (and its subsequent editions) by Manuel Vallvé, who translated J. Kelman's 1914 "Stories…
Barrington, Candace.
Karen A. Ritzenhoff and Katherine A. Hermes, eds. Sex and Sexuality in a Feminist World (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009), pp. 26-51.
Modern adapters of Chaucer interfere with the transmission of Chaucer by infusing their own values. In each era, the versions written for children bear witness to what aspects of feminism have reached popular culture.
Gibson, Gail McMurray.
John P. Hermann and John J. Burke, eds. Signs and Symbols in Chaucer's Poetry (University: University of Alabama Press, 1981), pp. 102-12.
In the Noah's Flood motif of MilT, the audience delightedly and ruefully recognizes the consequences of the perversion of God's order. In addition to visual or other sensory images (the runaway mare in RvT) Chaucer employs also dramatic icons, as in…
The allusion to Thesiphone (TC 1.6) may resonate with passages in Statius and Boccaccio that connect the Fury with "discordant, perverse, sterile, potentially demonic sexuality" (p. 561). The allusion in TC links Criseyde's possible childlessness…
McNamara, John Francis.
DAI 29.09 (1969): 3148-49A.
In TC and "several important" tales of CT, Chaucer expresses more "confidence in human nature" than do Langland or the "Pearl"-poet in their works. He indicates the human need for divine Providence and assurance that "God will not use his absolute…
Butterfield, Ardis.
In Jamie C. Fumo, ed. Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess": Contexts and Interpretations (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 199-212.
Considers how technologies of memory inform reflections on composition, literary relationships, and the elegiac project in BD, engendering a "focused commentary" on the "work of recollection." In this, BD participates in a discursive field shared by…
Buhrer, Eliza.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 44 (2022): 315-16.
Comments on issues of complaint and consent in two essays included in this volume of SAC, linking the medieval past with the present. Includes response to Micah James Goodrich, “The Yeoman's Canon: On Toxic Mentors."
Shutters, Lynn.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 44 (2022): 359-60.
Responds to two essays concerned with sexual consent in medieval literature, including Leah Schwebel, “Chaucer and the Fantasy of Retroactive Consent." SAC 44 (2022): 337–45. Suggests that we might read RvT "as an incel revenge fantasy."
Bradbury, Jill Marie, Geoffrey Clegg, Stephanie L. Kerschbaum,
Pamela Kincheloe, and Tonya Stremlau.
Literature Compass 16.1 (2019): n.p.
A group of "deaf/Deaf/hard of hearing scholars with wide-ranging expertise in literary studies, rhetoric, disability studies, and Deaf Studies" express "deep reservations" about Robinson's essay.
Solberg, Emma Margaret.
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy & Profession 2.2 (2021): 134-53.
Responds to earlier essays in NCSPP, adding comments on the sexual biases of the opening of GP, comparison of the Man in Black of BD and Marie de France’s Guigemar, Chauce'’s (and others') self-deprecation as a form of (sexualized) power, and…
Steiner, Emily.
Mary C. Flannery and Katie C. Walter, eds. The Culture of Inquisition in Medieval England (Cambridge: Brewer, 2013), pp. 164-72.
Responds to the nine essays in this volume, exploring relations among inquisition, innovation, creativity, and imagination. Discusses LGWP as a poem that "seeks its inventiveness in law at the same time that it invites its readers to enjoy the…
Hansen, Elaine Tuttle.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 27 (2005): 277-87.
Expresses concerns about contemporary higher education--from "prevailing careerism to the overall decline in literary reading"--and encourages "Chaucerian values" among university administrators.
Swenson, Haylie.
Will Rogers and Christopher Michael Roman, eds. Medieval Futurity: Essays for the Future of a Queer Medieval Studies (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2020), pp. 189-96.
Reassesses the role and value of the falcon and the mechanical horse in SqT. Demonstrates through these depictions that SqT creates "interspecies and intrasexual relationships of care outside of the gendered human norms of chivalric romance."
Examines feminist and antifeminist readings Criseyde, arguing that--like Chaucer, who appropriates his sources, and like his narrator, who constantly negotiates and repositions himself in relation to Lollius--Criseyde performs, mimes, and parodies…
Palmer, R. Barton.
David Galef, ed. Second Thoughts: A Focus on Rereading (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998), pp. 169-95.
Argues that in reading BD medieval audiences would also have reread Machaut's "Fonteinne Amoureuse" and recalled other works by Chaucer's predecessor. Chaucer's derivative version of the account of Ceyx and Alcyone "thematizes the story as a…
