Turner, Marion.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 40 (2018): 423-34.
Maintains that Chaucer's works indicate his reliance upon social interaction and collaboration as spurs to creativity, commenting on HF (a "poem about writer's block"), and on public space and creativity in NPT, TC, and ClP. Also describes the…
In the fourteenth century, rape was perceived as "natural," a relatively minor social infraction. In WBT, the ladies of the court do not dispute the verdict assigned the rapist-knight; they dispute only the penalty. The knight is socially…
Gillespie, Alexandra.
Andrew King and Matthew Woodcock, eds. Medieval into Renaissance: Essays for Helen Cooper (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016), pp. 15-30.
Poses questions about the "realities and complexities of authorship and literary tradition" in Gower, the "pseudo-Chaucerian" "Plowman's Tale," Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender,: and Milton's poetry. Addresses Chaucer's reception in the sixteenth…
Analyzes Chaucer's "universalizing doublets," such as "up and doun," with those appearing in the Auchinleck Manuscript to suggest that Chaucer was not simply
imitating the diction of medieval romance: his usage mirrors that of Middle English…
Zimbardo, Rose A.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 11 (1966): 11-18.
Reads WBPT as concerned with the "reconciliation of opposites that to human perception seem irreconcilable." WBP poses a range of oppositions dialectically (experience and authority, female and male, physical and metaphysical), resolving them through…
Ruffolo, Lara.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1993): 2364A.
With the fourteenth-century philosophical division between faith and reason, or single and multiple authorities, English poetry reveals new tensions, as shown in "Pearl," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," and "Piers Plowman." HF,with its many…
Reads CT as a unified, encyclopedic "symposium on what men should seek, and what they should avoid," focusing on variety in the GP, the pilgrimage motif, and the "three longest tales": KnT, Mel, and ParsT.
Diamond, Arlyn.
Carol M. Meale, ed. Readings in Medieval English Romance (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 65-81.
Examines the intersection of gender, genre, and history in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and KnT to argue that "the inversion or refusal of generic conventions, enabled by the self-conscious use of a rich tradition of courtly narratives, points…
Considers Chaucer's extensive and subtle use of "the full vocabulary of 'chance' and 'mischance'." Shows how his use of privatives and negative prefixes with these words "inflect[s] his larger concerns with Fortune (usually personified as an agent)…
In view of Chaucer's resistance to the "finality of closure," allusions to CkT in Fragment 9 suggest that CkT "may be complete for Chaucer, although not completed by the Cook." Perhaps the Tale's "unfinished business" is an interruption by one of the…
Binkley, Peter.
Scintilla: A Student Journal for Medievalists 2-3 (1985-1986): 66-100.
Cotton Titus A. XX, an anthology of fourteenth-century Latin poems, contains no. 19, "Proprietaties multorum animalium et aliarorum," some antimedical satires and bestiary poems. One of the latter, a poem on the sparrowhawk, may be the source of the…
Mertens-Fonck, Paule.
Catherine Bel, Pascale Dumont, and Frank Willaert, eds. Contez me tout: Mélanges de langue et de littérature médiévales offerts à Herman Braet (Paris: Dudley, 2006), pp. 281-96.
The structure of the Clerk-Knight debates, based on the rivalry between a clerk and a knight, underlies most Tales in CT and can be used to reveal unsuspected meanings.
Surveys the roots of analogical thinking and late-medieval critiques of its methods and assumptions, exploring the background to understanding "Chaucer's curious neglect of the allegorical mode." As with nominalists, Chaucer is consistently concerned…
Rajendran, Shyama.
Literature Compass 16, nos. 9-10 (2019): n.p.
Challenges the uses and meanings of "vernacular" and "vernacularity" in literary and linguistic studies on the grounds that the terms are historically and intrinsically racist, colonialist, and/or supremacist. Using the "paradigm of metrolingualism,"…
Considers the frontispiece to TC found in Corpus Christi College MS 61 (which depicts Chaucer addressing a court audience, particularly the court of Richard II). The frontispiece shows that literature was delivered orally (by "prelection") and…
Chaucer's audience would not have come to BD with our preconceptions (that the Man is John of Gaunt and that his song is personal). Rather, they would have experienced the gradual revelations as they are unfolded and would have concerned themselves…
Study guide that describes Chaucer's life and historical context, and surveys the characters, plots, themes, and literary devices of CT. Designed for young adult readers; includes suggestions for essays and excerpts from critical studies.
Defines medieval romance as a narrative (usually poetic) that follows a hero's encounters with "love, ladies, and adventures, culminating in a happy ending." Whetter explores these features in Middle English romances, particularly Malory's "Morte…
Brewer, Derek.
Nikolaus Ritt and Herbert Schendl, eds. Rethinking Middle English: Linguistic and Literary Approaches (New York and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2005), pp. 1-16.
Some scholars harbor a Golden-Age notion of chivalry not unlike that expressed in ParsT. Others, operating within a post-Freudian context, presume that the chivalric emphasis on ceremony must conceal inward anxiety or repression: hence, the…
Foster, Edward E.
Lewiston : N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999.
Chaucer's fictions are opaque and self-conscious. Neither ordinary ironist nor allegorist, Chaucer is a nominalist "philosophical poet" for whom "divine truth is stable; human knowledge is provisional; and fiction is the means by which nominalist…
Owen, Charles A.,Jr.
Chaucer Newsletter 2.2 (1980): 7-10.
Provides a broad outline for an undergraduate course in Chaucer and a complete syllabus for a graduate course, the latter based on the author's conception of the development of CT.
Identifies a "number of medieval commonplaces" in KnT that support the notion that "greater idealism" is what distinguishes Palamon from Arcite, i.e., a "loftier" view, more a matter of theodicy than determinism.
