Diachronic study of how the linguistic stress matches metrical strong positions in spoken poetry and songs of the Middle and early modern English periods, including discussion of Chaucer's works. Prominent mismatches are more frequent in earlier…
From opening sign of Aries to closing sign of Libra, the pilgrimage moves between the termini of Creation and Doomsday, using symbolism of spring and autumn in the day's cycle.
Laird, Edgar (S.)
Richard J. Utz, ed. Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm (Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston, Ont.; Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen, 1995), pp. 101-15.
KnT "participates in a tradition antagonistic to the new nominalism, "based on a "scientific ontology consonant with Boethianism" and understandable in light of the truth-theories of Albumasar, Robert Grosseteste, and John Wyclif.
Discusses the "contrarious juxtaposition" in KnT design as a factor in determinacy. At work in KnT, the familiar medieval "topos" of "concordia discors" and marriage as a mediating device are examined in light of symbol, imagery, and wordplay with…
Edwards, Robert R.
In John M. Ganim and Shayne Aaron Legassie, eds. Cosmopolitanism and the Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 163-80.
Assesses the presence of cosmopolitan thinking in medieval literature, drawing examples from Fulcher of Chartres' "Historia Hierosolymitana," TC, and the medieval Troy story at large. In Chaucer's poem, Criseyde discovers through Diomedes' amorous…
Explores international cultural exchange and openness in the Middle Ages, commenting on scenarios of medieval cosmopolitanism in three modern fictions: Youssef Chahine's film "Destiny," Tariq Ali's novel "Shadows of the Pomegranate Tree," and Milorad…
Hodges, Laura
Susan Yager and Elise E. Morse-Gagné, eds. Interpretation and Performance: Essays for Alan Gaylord (Provo, UT: Chaucer Studio Press, 2013), pp. 171-83.
Alone among Chaucer's knights, Thopas receives a full costume description, but it defies readers' expectations of a top-to-toe effictio. Th also juxtaposes cheap and costly materials, mentions unattractive colors, and omits expected details, all for…
Hodges, Laura F.
Chaucer Review 29 (1995): 274-302.
The multilayered details of the Knight's clothing represent both a realistic and a symbolic knight, whose profession of chivalry in the fourteenth century was far from ideal.
Stock, Lorraine K.
Susan Yager and Elise E. Morse-Gagné, eds. Interpretation and Performance: Essays for Alan Gaylord (Provo, UT: Chaucer Studio Press, 2013), pp. 135-47.
Oral performance of ambiguous lines can illustrate their various possible meanings. Emphasizes how recordings and online materials can supplement student reading and performance, and how films can help readers visualize key moments. Costumes, props,…
Bateson, F. W.
Essays in Criticism 25 (1975): 2-24.
By intention Chaucer like Shakespeare was a phonetic speller, so that manuscript variations in spelling provide clues to his metrics. The text of the LGW Prologue in MS. Gg of the Cambridge University Library is perhaps the nearest to Chaucer's…
Lim, Hyanyang K.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 25.1 (2017): 67-97.
Explores Chaucer's reservations about the reliability of written documents by examining Donegild's counterfeit letters in MLT and Thomas Woodstock, duke of Gloucester's "Confession", written in 1397. Examines problems of written documents implicated…
Miskimin, Alice S.
Studies in Medieval Culture 10 (1977): 133-45.
The "Letter of Dido to Aeneas" in Pynson's "Chaucer" (1526), omitted by Thynne (1532), inspired Wyatt to write "Lyke as the swan..."; for him Chaucer was Pynson's edition. Thynne's omission of Ret was not remedied until Urry (1721). Modern editions…
Scarry, Elaine.
Elaine Scarry, ed. Fins de Siècle: English Poetry in 1590, 1690, 1790, 1890, 1990 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. 1-36.
Explores why the world is "newly alert to its need for poetry" at the end of each century, including comments on Chaucer's writing of CT at the end of the fourteenth.
Chaucer's WBT destabilizes gender roles rather than focusing on the issues of kingship at the core of most of the loathly-lady tales. WBT engages issues of personal power politics as it creates a lively, garrulous character, but the moral lies in the…
Patterson, Lee.
David Aers, ed. Culture and History, 1350-1600: Essays on English Communities, Identities, and Writing (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), pp. 7-41.
During the reign of Richard II, love poetry such as Clanvowe's "Book of Cupid" was a means whereby courtiers could interrogate the "power, patronage and lordship" of the fetishized court. Patterson considers Clanvowe's allusions to Chaucer in this…
Brewer, D. S.
John Lawlor, ed. Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Essays in Memory of C. S. Lewis (London: Edward Arnold, 1966), pp. 54-85.
Examines the meaning and significance of "courtesy" in the works of the "Gawain"-poet, and includes comments on characterization (as a matter of role rather than personality) in Chaucer's works, along with an excursus on "hende" that focuses on…
Examines how the careers of several courtiers-diplomats-poets can help us reconstruct the "nature of literary transmission" from Italy to France to England. Discusses Philippe de Mézières, Honorat Bovet, Jean Muret and Giovanni Moccia, and Richart…
Burnley, David.
London and New York: Longman, 1998.
Historical survey of the language and actions of courtly behavior as evident in Anglo-Norman and Middle English writings, with some corroboration from Latin. Traces the emergence of aristocratic courtliness in the eleventh century through to its…
Canitz, A. E. Christa.
A. E. Christa Canitz and Gernot R. Wieland, eds. From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui on His 75th Birthday (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), pp. 131-53.
Argues that LGW critiques the rigidity of highly conventionalized literary genres for failing to represent human experience adequately. Chaucer's conflation of hagiography, courtly romance, and epic myth reveals the "flaws" in each genre, especially…
In BD, Chaucer, working in a tradition of courtly style, composes a poem of consolation. Within a beautiful poem of human sympathy, Chaucer effects a critique of courtly language and exposes the inability of such language to express profound…
Lerer, Seth.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Assesses various aspects of Tudor political and literary culture (e.g., privacy and voyeurism, theatricality, letter-writing and -reading), discussing Pandarus and the Renaissance reception of TC as tropes for understanding such concerns. Tudor…
Busby, Keith, and Erik Kooper, eds.
Amsterdam : John Benjamins, 1990.
Forty-five selected papers on courtly literature. For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for Courtly Literature: Culture and Context under Alternative Title.
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
Christianity and Literature 59 (2010): 515-30.
Chrétien's "Erec and Enide" does not celebrate courtly love but provides a "model for rightly ordered desire." Chaucer highlights the "social and spiritual value" of marriage in CT, PF, TC, and various lyrics. Henry VIII's own theatrics, however,…
