Browse Items (16035 total)

Fisher, John H.   Medieval Perspectives 1 (1988, for 1986): 1-15.
Medieval comedy is class-based: ridicule of the stupidity of country folk. Modern comedy is psychological: ridicule of the eccentricity of city dwellers. Evolution from class-based to psychological comedy can be traced in the fabliaux and in…

Fradenburg, Louise Olga.   Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Chapter 8 discusses differences between aristocratic and lower-class desire in PF, exploring how endless desire establishes sovereignty in the poem. The essay also assesses the relations of the poem with Scots tradition, especially the version of…

Hsy, Jonathan.   Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 315-29.
Considers cities as a "mode of thought" for critical analysis, describing a walk-through pedestrian perspective and a from-on-high omniscient perspective in late-medieval English works that include "The Stores of the Cities," "St. Erkenwald," and HF,…

Green, Eugene.   AUMLA 108 (2007): 1-32.
Compares "The Owl and the Nightingale" and NPT as the "best beast fables" in Middle English, examining how the diction of each poem helps to create "voice" and thereby engage an audience.

Stiller, Nikki.   Journal of Evolutionary Psychology 6 (1985): 212-23.
Through courtly love, Boethian philosophy, and Godly intervention, Oedipal fantasies of Freud are played out in TC.

Kruger, Steven F.   Exemplaria 6 (1994): 115-39.
Through a historically situated investigation of the Pardoner's possible homeosexuality and its relation to language in PardPT, modern readers can resist Chaucer's (possibly) homophobic intentions, reclaiming and even celebrating the Pardoner's…

Kelly, Henry Ansgar.   Viator 4 (1973): 435-58.
Defines clandestine marriage and describes it as a widespread and well-known phenomenon in fourteenth-century England, even though condemned by the Church. Argues that because the lovers in TC are not Christian, their love is "licit" and not…

Thundy, Zacharias P.   Edelgard E. DuBruck, ed. New Images of Women (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1989), pp. 303-20.
Reviews civil and ecclesiastical thinking on clandestine marriage, which was frequent in the Middle Ages. A pattern of this type appears in TC.

Chamberlain, David.   David Chamberlain, ed. New Readings of Late Medieval Love Poems (Lanham, Md.; New York; and London: University Press of America, 1993), pp. 41-65.
Long considered a work by Chaucer, "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale" is probably by his friend, Sir John Clanvowe. It is a work of considerable wit and subtlety, presenting a "libidinous narrator," a virtuous cuckoo who embodies Christian truth, and…

Stubbs, Estelle.   A. J. Minnis, ed. Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions. Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 17-26.
Names written in manuscripts of CT indicate associations between these manuscripts and a number of Austin friars who were scribes; they also indicate that exemplars of some manuscripts were at Clare Priory. Friars may have copied the manuscripts…

Cable, Thomas.   C. B. McCully and J. J. Anderson, eds. English Historical Metrics (Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 7-29.
Cable traces a pattern of development in English stress "clashing," affected by stress subordination and stress spacing. Chaucer's "alternating metre has frequent stress subordination, but it is less clear that it makes systematic use of stress…

Harwood, Britton J.,and Gillian R. Overing, eds.   Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994.
Although criticism on gender and class has suggested their mutual exclusion, this collection of eight essays focuses on their intersections. Three articles on Old English examine the elegies, "Judith," and the "Exeter Book," while those on Middle…

Brewer, D. S.   Speculum 43 (1968): 290-305.
Contemplates social status and social mobility in Chaucer's works, considering them in light of contemporaneous attitudes. Focuses on Chaucer's uses of "degree" and the ladder of degree as a "symbol of social mobility," inflected by Chaucer's comic…

Davis, Isabel.   Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 285-98.
Explores Middle English nuances of a set of related concepts: class, estate, identity, calling, and "clayme," investigating them in light of Pauline distinctions between use and possession and between old and new, discussed by Giorgio Agamben.…

O'Mara, Lesley, comp.   New York: Arcade, 1991.
An anthology for children of animal tales from Aesop, the Grimm brothers, etc., including a selection from NPT (pp. 51-56; excludes the dream commentary and philosophy), as "retold by" Stephen Corrin. Plates and illustrations by Angel Dominquez.

Liebman, Arthur, ed.
  New York: Richards Rosen, 1975.
An anthology of eighteen examples of short crime fiction, arranged chronologically from Chaucer to Ray Bradbury, with a general Introduction and brief comments introducing the tales. Includes PardT (pp. 3-12) in the prose translation of R. M.…

Morris, Max, ed.   Chichester, U. K.: Summersdale, 2010.
An anthology of lyrics and excerpts, including lines from KnT (1.1074-1122) in Middle English. Earlier versions of the volume were published in 1994, 2001, 2006, and 2008.

Windeatt, Barry.   Piero Boitani, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 111-31.
Drawing on classical and medieval sources, Chaucer's TC incorporates multiple genres, each representing its own view of experience. The resulting masterpiece is neither an epic, a tragedy, a romance, a chronicle, a lyric, nor an allegory but a rich…

Bishop, Kathleen A.   Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4643A.
Explores how classical comedy (especially Plautus and Ovid) and medieval elegiac comedies influenced Chaucer's fabliaux and the fabliau elements of ManT, WBP, TC, and the Prologue to the apocryphal Tale of Beryn.

Spearing, A. C.   Susan J. Ridyard, ed. Chivalry, Knighthood, and War in the Middle Ages (Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South, 1999), pp. 53-73.
Chaucer uses classical, pagan setting as a "screen" on which to "project alternatives to medieval social reality." He capitalizes on the strangeness of presenting classical privacy in TC. In KnT, especially in the temple of Diana, Chaucer explores…

Medcalf, Stephen.   Roger Ellis, ed. The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English. Volume I: To 1550 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 364-90.
Surveys the tradition of medieval translation from Latin into English, commenting on Continental mediators and awareness of Greek literature. Focuses on translations of Boethius (including Chaucer's) and those of Apollonius of Tyre, treating them as…

Green, Richard Hamilton.   Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 110-33.
Summarizes theories and meanings of conventional mythographic images and allusions in medieval literature, derived from classical fables and allegorized in late-classical and medieval commentaries on such fables. Includes comments on the allusion to…

Wejksnora, Louise R.   Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1986): 1317A.
Examination of all references and allusions to the Christian God and pagan gods in TC reveals that Chaucer works within a broad spectrum of tonal variations in the classical and medieval traditions. The poem carries simultaneously two opposing yet…

Fleming, John V.   Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, 1990.
Engages major critics of TC on the matter of interpretation, accepting the Robertsonian definition of TC as a tragedy and viewing Robertson's work as implicit in three decades of critical controversy. Examines textual dilemmas basic to the…

DeMaria, Robert, Jr., and Robert D. Brown, eds.   Malden, Mass.: Blackwell, 2007.
Collects excerpts from various "British, Irish, and Caribbean Writers" (Chaucer to Seamus Heaney) and from various classical writers (Homer to Juvenal) to demonstrate classical influence. Opens (pp. 3-10) with a selection from WBP (ll. 627-822) in…
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