Chism, Christine.
In Robert DeMaria Jr., Heesok Chang, and Samantha Zacher, eds. A Companion to British Literature. Vol. I, Medieval Literature 700–1450 (Chichester: Wiley, 2014), pp. 130-45.
Surveys the meanings, origins, and theories of courtly love, asking how it "works" in medieval texts, what light it can "cast upon medieval cultural practices, and why it comes to matter." Includes discussion of secrecy in TC, a text that animates…
Megna, Paul.
In Russell Sbriglia, ed. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Žižek (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2017), pp. 267-89.
Uses Slavoj Žižek's analysis of privilege and courtly love to assess the major characters of TC: the "servile aggression" of the narrator; Pandarus's "patriarchal privilege"; Crisyede's "ethically heroic" decisions about loving her husband, Troilus,…
Although courtly love is central to TC, it is parodied or viewed as dangerous in CT. Evidently Chaucer no longer found it a viable way of revealing the human heart.
Bjork, Lennart A.
Mats Ryden and Lennart A. Bjork, eds. Studies in English Philology, Linguistics, and Literature Presented to Alarik Rynell 7 March 1978. Stockholm Studies in English, no. 46 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1978), pp. 1-20.
The courtly love interpretations of TC are not plausible; TC offers a burlesque of courtly love. In support of the exegetical promotion of "caritas," serious flaws in Troilus's character are revealed in animal imagery.
Burnley, David.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 24 (1986): 16-38.
Discusses the sociomoral and aesthetic qualities that constitute courtly speech, including social attitude, voice quality, brevity, plainness of speech, and sensitivity and understanding. Based on passages spoken "curteisly" in Chaucer, Burnley's…
Windeatt, Barry.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 90-109.
Windeatt examines how the court and elements of courtly writing are represented and function in BD, HF, PF, and LGWP, with some attention to SqT. Comments on Machaut as Chaucer's model and how the dream vision gives Chaucer the liberty to examine…
Brand, Ralph.
Historical Research: The Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 60 (1987): 147-65.
The Inns of Court did not serve as places of legal instruction before the fifteenth century. Evidence from legal manuscripts suggests that such instruction was handled not only through attendance at court but also by means of lectures, annotated…
Sell, Jonathan P. A.
Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 48 (2004): 193-204.
Sell identifies "verbal parallels" and "ontological similarities" between Criseyde and Chaucer's version of Boethius's Fortune. Association with Fortune undermines "sentimental views of Criseyde" that Chaucer the narrator may share though Chaucer…
Lochrie, Karma.
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Explores the implications of secrecy represented in several topics and depicted in medieval texts: confession in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, gossip in WBPT and HF, occulted science in Pseudo-Aristotle's Secret of Secrets and Pseudo-Albert's The…
Bennett, Alastair.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 28 (2014): 29-64.
Shows that the "blered" eye image in CYT (7.730) and "Piers Plowman" indicates covetousness, associated with "unkynde" or unnatural separation from community and knowledge.
Finger, Roland.
Exit 9: The Rutgers Journal of Comparative Literature 5 (2003): 65-74.
Assesses the sexual relations between the Wife of Bath and her husbands in WBP as a dynamic between her sadism and their masochism. Through her sadism the Wife "avenges herself on the medieval patriarchal subordination of women."
Fields, Peter John.
Lewistown, N.Y. : Edwin Mellen Press, 2001.
Chaucer's interest in craft goes far beyond mere technical process. In CT, the word and its derivations emblematize human efforts to control the world through personal expertise and learned tradition. Fields challenges notions of Chaucer's pluralism,…
Tripp, Raymond P., Jr.
Michio Kawai, ed. Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honour of Michio Masui. The English Association of Hiroshima (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991), pp. 141-58.
Argues that the difference between the mechanical powers of humans and the essential power of God is central to the literary discussion of craft. Concern with craft as natural religion and with faith as the canonical craft provides a strong thread…
Krummel, Miriamne Ara.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Provides postcolonial reading of history of Jewish communities and anti-Semitic discourses in medieval England. Chapter 5, "Text and Context: Tracing Chaucer's moments of Jewishness," discusses Jews in CT, focusing on Th, and PrT.
Cooper, Lisa.
In Holly A. Crocker and D. Vance Smith, eds. Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debates (New York; Routledge, 2014), pp.183-91.
Explores late-medieval literary "intermingling of craft, memory, and loss" in representations of known or knowable facts or truth, arguing that in Adam, HF, KnT, and BD Chaucer, unlike some of his contemporaries, is generally "skeptical" about the…
Rogos, Justyna.
Joanna Kopaczyk and Andrea H. Jucker, eds. Communities of Practice in the History of English (Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2013), pp. 105-21.
Explores the "shared practice" of late-medieval English scribes, particularly their adherence to "a negotiated set of norms and procedures" that constitutes their "community of practice." Exemplifies such practice by describing the orthography and…
Dermond, Donna, and Paul Hogan.
Once and Future Classroom 1.2 (2003): n.p. [Web publication]
Describes an experiment in teaching CT (especially GP) that has students attempt to write their own Chaucerian satiric descriptions and tales, perhaps delivered orally at different campus locations.
Maintains that the silence of the pilgrims at the end of PrT signifies the Prioress's effectiveness in delivering a story of pathos that stuns the audience into silence. Explores how Chaucer uses PrT "to promote cautious, critical analysis" as a…
Vaughan, Míceál F.
Thomas A. Prendergast and Barbara Kline, eds. Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), pp. 45-90.
Examines the relationship of Ret to ParsT and the relation of both to CT, arguing that editors and critics have been mistaken in separating the treatise from the confession and in ascribing one to the Parson and the other to Chaucer. Manuscript…
Nitzsche, Jane Chance.
Papers on Language and Literature 14 (1978): 459-64. Rpt. in Harold Bloom, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (New York: Chelsea, 1988).
In the opening of GP, Chaucer follows the six days of Creation narrated in Genesis. The principles both of "natura naturata," created Nature, and of "natura naturans," renewing Nature, inform this passage.
Cook, Alexandra.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Visual Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), pp. 23-38.
Revisits the significance of the image-based mnemonic system known as artificial memory, especially as conceived in John of Garland's "Parisiana poetria," for Chaucer's poetic project in HF. Argues how "visual mnemonics and creative memory" shape…
Zimbardo, Rose A.
Chaucer Review 11 (1977): 283-98.
The epilogue to TC emphasizes the poem's double perspective of man as an active character in life's drama and of man deliberately separating himself from reality to perceive it objectively. This problem reflects the dilemma of the artist, who is at…
