Ryan discusses problems of unity in dream-vision poems, particularly the concepts of beginning and ending. She suggests that Joseph Frank's theory of spatial form may be applicable to analysis of the dream visions and tests this approach on BD.
Lee, Monika H.
Essays in Literature (Macomb, Ill.) 21 (1994): 152-65.
Like many other medieval English poets, Chaucer was much concerned with the nature of truth, especially in FranT and TC. The Late Middle Ages still showed a "vestigial orality" in approaching the subject.
Examines "Sir Gawain" in the context of ideas about chivalry and death in the fourteenth century and conflicts between morality and knighthood. A pessimistic view of knighthood is seen in "Form Age." Clein discusses indeterminancy and audience…
Approaches political, social, and marital sovereignty as prominent concerns of CT: the Host's authority in GP and elsewhere, Theseus as ideal sovereign in KnT in contrast with the tyrants of PhyT and MkT, Mel as an allegory of a ruler's moral…
Treats the Host of CT as a psychological character whose recurrent levity disguises neither his pride nor the fact that he is "hen-pecked" by his wife, Goodelief. Essentially comic and naturalistic, Harry participates significantly in the marriage…
Molencki, Rafał.
Jacek Fisiak, ed. Studies in Middle English Linguistics (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), pp. 351-71.
Anatomizes concessive clauses (those beginning with "yet," "although," "nevertheless," etc.), exploring their syntactic variety and semantic use. The subjunctive mood dominates, although instances of the indicative prefigure Modern English.
Byrd, Forrest M.
Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 10 (1984): 29-43.
Examines the role of conditional language structures--subjunctive, disjunctive, hypothetical, contingent--in irony, ambiguity, and attempts to control the future.
Eyler considers the Pauline concept of "spiritual athleticism" (a means of struggling with temptation) in hagiographic literature and in canonical medieval English texts, including CT. Argues that the spiritual athlete moves from "trope in early…
Burger, Glenn.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018.
Argues that the "invention" of the good wife in discourses of sacramental marriage, private devotion, and personal conduct "reconfigured how female embodiment was understood." Focuses on conduct texts and manuals written by men for women, including…
Interrogates post-Enlightenment understandings of shame, and argues that in FranT shame negotiates continua rather than dichotomies (men/women, courtly love/marriage, and public/private). Read in light of conduct literature, Arveragus's claims and…
Larson, Wendy A.
Maureen B. M. Boulton, ed. Literary Echoes of the Fourth Lateran Council in England and France, 1215–1405 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2019), pp. 229-70.
Surveys the cultural impact of "Omnis utriusque sexus," and shows how Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve used "confessional discourse" to help construct subjectivities in their works. Comments on ParsT as the "best known confessional manual in Middle…
Little, Katherine C.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006.
Centers on medieval self-definition rather than subjectivity and studies examples of Wycliffite lay instruction. The Lollards rejected auricular confession and emphasized personal contrition for sin. Lollard pastoral texts disrupted traditional…
Raskolnikov, Masha.
Literature Compass 2 (2005): 1-20.
Surveys recent discussions of the role of confession in constructing a vernacular sense of self in late medieval English writing, with recurrent references to Chaucer's works.
McCracken, Samuel
Modern Philology 68 (1971): 289-91.
Identifies a tripartite pattern in several of the Canterbury narratives (introduction, confessional prologue, and tale), applying it to CYPT. Comparisons with WBPT, MerPT, and PardPT illuminate the structure of CYPT.
Turner, Marion.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 258-73.
Turner asks whether "literary practice and socio-political conflict" were "mutually dependent" in Ricardian England, arguing that writers and scribes--including Chaucer and Adam Pinkhurst--worked for "politically active and volatile guilds" and…
The energy of WBP derives from the Wife's "awareness of the tension between her centrality as speaker, and her experiential understanding of her marginality as female," since she voices her woman's feelings toward an overwhelming male audience with…
Mandel, Jerome.
ES Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012): 69-79.
Compares the resolutions of conflict in WBT and Gower's "Tale of Florent" and explores their methods of characterization. While Chaucer depicts characters through dialogue, argument, debate, and negotiation with other persons, Gower's characters…
Stretter, Robert Eugene.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 2316A, 2000.
Focusing especially on love and fortune, Chaucer introduces to English literature the theme of male friendship in conflict with heterosexual love. By Shakespeare's time, this theme was treated even more darkly, moving from "guardedly optimistic…
Beichner, Paul E., C.S.C.
Chaucer Review 8 (1974): 198-204
Through line-by-line comparison shows that in the trial scene of SNT Chaucer improves upon the Latin original by compression and emphasis which increase dramatic impact, Cecilia's contentiousness, and Almachius's stupidity.
Pound, Ezra, and Marcella Spann, eds.
New York: New Directions, 1964.
Includes selections from GP (1-27, 118-26 and 150-62 [Prioress], 165-66 and 177-87 [Monk], 270-75 [Merchant], and 309-22 [Sergeant at Law]), MerB, and the "Roundel" from PF. In Middle English, without notes or glosses.
Myles, Robert.
Robert Myles and David Williams, eds. Chaucer and Language: Essays in Honour of Douglas Wurtele (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), pp. 107-27 and 205-09.
Myles surveys medieval notions of natural and given signs, arguing that Griselda (and the reader with her) learns from her submission to Walter, insofar as it parallels a realist submission to quasi-nominalist understanding. Unlike Walter, Griselda…
Oliver, Paul.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 65-74.
Both PardP and PardT are "self-exposure" on the part of the Pardoner, although in the latter he is "unaware" of his similarity to the three rioters: "all four are spiritually dead . . . blasphemers and motivated by avarice . . . totally hardened…
Yvernault, Martine.
Tatjana Silec, ed. Voix (et Voies) du Désordre au Moyen Âge. Volume Issu du Colloque du Centre d'Études Médiévales Anglaises de Paris-Sorbonne (22-23 Mars 2012). AMAES, no. 34. (Paris: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2013), pp. 109-24
Explores the ambivalence of the forest in several examples, particularly ones drawn from KnT and BD.
Trigg, Stephanie.
Minneapolis and Londons : University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
Examines critical discourses from the late Middle Ages to the late twentieth century that have constructed Chaucer for, and mediated his poetry to, subsequent readers. Trigg explores "Chaucer's status as an exemplary canonical author for English…
