Kennedy, Beverly.
Norman Blake and Peter Robinson, eds. The Canterbury Tales Project Occasional Papers, Volume II (London: King's College, Office for Humanities Communications, 1997), pp. 23-39.
Argues that two distinct scribal attitudes toward the Wife of Bath can be perceived: a misogynous scholarly response typical of one manuscript family, and a more sympathetic popular response typical of another. Considers evidence from WBP,…
Ingham, Patricia Clare.
Patricia Clare Ingham and Michelle R. Warren, eds. Postcolonial Moves: Medieval Through Modern. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, pp. 47-ı70.
Ingham urges a "contrapuntal" postcolonial approach to premodern texts - i.e., an approach that observes differences and distinctions that are oppositional without overdetermining them. She explores how Chaucer's MLT and Conrad's "Heart of Darkness"…
Beidler, Peter G.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 131-42.
Compares ShT with "Decameron" 8.1 to assess the negative and positive characteristics of masculinity portrayed in the monk and merchant of the Tale. The wife is given traits identified with men in the Middle Ages, perhaps because of the Tale's…
Brewer, Derek S.
Michio Kawai, ed. Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honour of Michio Masui. The English Association of Hiroshima (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991), pp. 27-52.
A word list from TC 4 shows that Chaucer invented new meanings by combining previously unconnected root words; however, someone else may have introduced those roots into the language.
William Empson writes of the concentrated imagery and controlled partial confusion in TC. In book 5, Chaucer manipulates the imagery of the voyage, star-steer, sun-son, etc., to bring the poem to its climax, wherein the narrator cannot indict…
Jasper examines Petruchio's use of clothing as a form of gender control in Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew, comparing it with similar uses of clothing in versions of the Griselda story-Boccaccio's, Petrarch's, ClT, and John Phillips's "The…
Gaffney, Paul.
S. Elizabeth Passmore and Susan Carter, eds. The English "Loathly Lady" Tales: Boundaries, Traditions, Motifs (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 146-62.
As an example of popular folk narrative, "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle" is flexibly open to multiple interpretations. Addressed to an elite audience, Gower's "Tale of Florent" and WBT lay claim to authority and function as exempla.
Bowers, John M.
Chaucer Yearbook 5 (1998): 91-115.
Treats "Thebes" and the Prologue to "Beryn" (here called "The Canterbury Interlude") as "efforts to write what Chaucer had left unwritten" and to confront contemporary controversies. Lydgate's work rebukes those who would critique monasticism and…
Freedman, Morris, ed.
Davis, Paul B. ed.
New York: Scribner, 1968.
An introduction to the study of literature for classroom use, arranged by literary mode and focused thematically on social, religious, and literary controversies. Includes a section titled "Medieval and Modern Chaucer" (pp. 457-81) that raises…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 71-81.
Modern critical theory demonstrates the radically traditional closed systems of medieval poetry. In his negative examples and examples of abuse and falsification, especially in TC, Chaucer is also aware of what the classical tradition "is not."
Treats KnT as a traditional, conservative work, elevated in tone and style and dependent on "French and Italian traditions of eloquence." Conversely GP is the "most original of Chaucer's poems," innovative in its "mingling" of "praise and blame"…
Holloway, Julia Bolton.
Julia Bolton Holloway, Constance S. Wright, and Joan Bechtold, eds. Equally in God's Image: Women in the Middle Ages (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), pp. 198-215.
Discusses Chaucer's women and their relations with pilgrimage and learning. The Wife of Bath rebels against her husband's book of wicked wives. The Prioress tells of a boy's eschewing his primer in order to sing a hymn he does not understand from…
Arista, J. Martin, et al., eds.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2012.
Collection of essays presented at the 22nd International Conference of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature (SELIM), seeking new perspectives on medieval language study. For two essays pertaining to Chaucer, search for…
Alias, Simona.
Studies in the History of the English Language, 2006-2009 (Osaka: Osaka Books, 2010), pp. 107-19.
Examines the influence of the frame narrative tradition on CT, particularly on Chaucer's use of the "narratio brevis" genre. Also published in Bulletin of the Japanese Association of the History of the English Language n.v. (2009): 31-43.
Schauber, Ellen,and Ellen Spolsky.
Language and Style 16 (1983): 249-61.
In his shameless self-revelation the Pardoner confuses and angers his audience by mixing boasting and confiding with their contrary expectations of approval and mitigated disapproval.
Bahr, Arthur William.
Dissertation Abstracts International A68.02 (2007): n.p.
Bahr explores parallels between manuscripts as compilations and groups of people as affinities in late medieval London. Chaucer in CT and Gower in Confessio Amantis differ in how they conceive of literary and social organization.
Dane, Joseph A.
Studies in Bibliography 44 (1991): 164-83.
Examines the use and misuse of W. W. Greg's term "copy-text" in recent editions of Chaucer and in the Kane-Donaldson Piers Plowman. Confusions among "copy-text," "base text," and "best text" will be alleviated only when editors use the terms…
Eagleton, Catherine, and Matthew Spencer.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 37 (2006): 237-68.
Applies a technique from evolutionary biology - phylogenetic "neighborhood-joining" - to the witnesses to the text of Astr to produce a stemma, test the fragments and sections of longer versions against the stemma, and discuss the scribal conflation…
Discusses medieval scribal transmission and commercial book production in relation to the surviving copy of "The Tale of Beryn" and the "Beryn-Scribe." Examines the reception and transmission of the "Prick of Conscience" in late medieval England.…
Ames, Ruth M.
Peter Cocozzella, ed. The Late Middle Ages (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1984 (for 1981)), pp. 71-88.
Treats themes of predestination, Lollardy, and priestly celibacy in CT and TC.
Discusses the canon-law tradition and the sources of ParsT 565-69 but concludes that "the question of Chaucer's learning on this subject...must remain unanswered."
In a larger investigation of the philosophical concept of sympathy, Lopez discusses the lack of sympathy, both personal and spatiotemporal, between May and January in MerT.
Bourgne, Florence.
Marie-Claire Rouyer, ed. Le corps dans tous ses etats. (Bordeaux: Universite Michel de Montaigne, 1995), pp. 69-79.
Although the manuscript is a typical instance of "compilatio" and unification (e.g., punctuation of ParsT), the virtues portrayed to illustrate ParsT do not belong to a typical iconographic program. After identifying the three virtues with two…
Kato, Takako.
Margaret Connolly and Linne R. Mooney, eds. Design and Distribution of Late Medieval Manuscripts in England (York: York Medieval Press, 2008), pp. 61-87.
Kato assesses the accuracy of the text of CT that appears in Cambridge University Library MS Gg.4.27. Quantifies and categorizes the scribe's errors, paying particular attention to the mistakes that the scribe himself corrected.
Mosser, Daniel W.
Studies in Bibliography 52: 97-114, 1999.
Proposes quire structures for four paper manuscripts, focusing on watermarks and commenting on implications of the proposed structures. Assesses British Library MS Arundel 140 (Ar); British Library MS Harley 2382 (Hl3); Magdalene College, Cambridge…
