Middle English "ragen" acquires meanings within a defined semantic field of sexual activity and then attracts to itself a limited set of further energetic sexual meanings. Among instances illustrating this usage are GP (1.257), MilT (1.3774), and…
Jones, Mike Rodman.
Burlington, Ver.: Ashgate, 2011.
Includes Chaucerian apocrypha, "The Plowman's Tale" and "Jack Upland," in an examination of the figure of the plowman in English early modern imagination, from "Piers Plowman" to the 1590s. Argues that there was a "highly politicized tradition of…
Clarifies medieval understanding of the romance genre by exploring medieval catalogs of romances and applying George Lakoff's theory of "radial" categories. Includes comments on several of Chaucer's works and on several medieval lists that do not…
Whitaker, Cord J.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017.
Treats geography, lineal descent, and "religious and political difference" as racial markers in MLT and its analogues, suggesting that skin color "lurks in the shadows." Designed for pedagogical use, includes several exercises and questions for…
Argues that racial differentiation--generally associated with the early modern period--was not necessarily secondary to religious distinctions in the late medieval period, using MLT and other texts as evidence.
Gordon's translation of "Le Roman de Troie" distorts Benoit by omitting important passages. The most critical omission is one of a moralizing nature which emphasizes the fickleness of Criseyde and all women. Gordon must have been influenced by the…
Skala, Elizabeth.
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, John T. Thompson, and Sarah Baechle, eds. New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), pp. 363-83.
Examines Derek Pearsall's Variorum Edition of NPT and suggests that the Nun's Priest's "self-conscious literary performance transforms" the tales of CT, which are enhanced by Chaucer's quotations, allusions, and references to his own works. In…
Peyton, Henry H. III.
Tennessee Philological Bulletin 29 (1992): 6-13.
Compared to figures in Boethius's "Consolatio," Pandarus appears neither as Philosophia nor as Fortune but rather as an amplification of Fortuna. The leaping and hopping of TC 1-2 echo the upward climb of Fortuna's wheel, while the silence and…
Holford-Strevens, Leofranc.
Notes and Queries 240 (1995): 164-65.
In light of a passage in a Bibliotheque Nationale Paris manuscript, the sense of the phrase "quid iuris questio" in GP is "The question arises of what is the law (upon these facts)."
Examines the history, purpose, and effects of "quick fiction." Royle draws examples from his own writings, as well as the works of past authors, noting how "quick fiction" explores themes of "lifedeath [sic], spectrality, and radical otherness,"…
Ridley, Florence H.
Chaucer Review 16 (1981): 101-106.
Chaucerians should welcome the new critical techniques, which will help them determine what it is in the words that causes us to respond as we do. The application of these methods will transcend cultural differences that separate us from Chaucer.
An electronic text of "Canterbury Tales" can give explicit attention to important philological issues--e.g., metrics, Middle English dialects, pronunciation, etymologies--so that class time can be devoted to the literary, historical, social, and…
Blamires, Alcuin.
Leeds Studies in English 25 (1994): 83-110.
Examining Chaucer's construction of gender roles and role reversals in light of contemporary medieval texts, Blamires argues that Chaucer manipulated gender stereotypes. The poet ingeniously contrived Troilus and Anelida to confound specific…
Partridge, Stephen.
Daniel Pinti, ed. Writing After Chaucer: Essential Reading in Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century (London and New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 2-26.
Focusing on manuscripts of Chaucer's works, Partridge assesses the habits of scribes and book owners in the fifteenth century, showing how variants among texts alter meaning and how fifteenth-century readers, aware of such variants, made…
Smallwood, Richard.
In Jayne Lewis and Lisa Zunshine, eds. Approaches to Teaching the Works of John Dryden (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2013), pp. 164-68.
Advocates teaching John Dryden's "Fables, Ancient and Modern" as "his most accomplished poetical production," discussing the status-resistant view of natural gentility in his translation of WBT and of Boccaccio's tale of Sigismunda and Guiscardo.…
Archibald, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Archibald, and Ad Putter, eds. The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 139-53.
Archibald surveys subversions and satires of Arthurian literature, commenting that Chaucer "seems to be fairly hostile to the Arthurian world," even if implicitly so.
Speed, Diane.
Sydney Studies in English 22 (1996): 3-14.
Comparison of WBT with its analogues reveals Chaucer's manipulation of generic expectations to create a sequence of "evocations and subversions of romance optimism." The hero's conventional quest is supplanted by "a textual quest on the part of the…
Pouzet, Jean-Pascal.
Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres 1 (2004): 169-213
Pouzet surveys the late medieval activities of Augustinian canons in the production of Anglo-Norman and Middle English manuscripts and texts. Considers evidence of the commitment of members of the order to the transmission of Chaucer material.
Dor, Juliette.
Guyonne Leduc, ed. Réalité et représentations des Amazones. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2008, pp. 257-72.
Feminist and postcolonial reconsideration of the figure of Emily that focuses on the Knight's adjustment of traditional material; Emily has not submitted to patriarchal values, despite the Knight's modifications. In French.
Examines Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. 1.6 (the Findern manuscript), which includes extracts from PF and part of LGW, and considers its "taste for writings relating to female desire." Argues that "expression of female same-sex desires must be…
Bowers, John M.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 301-24.
Examines the "same-sex union of adoptive brotherhood" between the Summoner and the Pardoner and assesses the economic underpinnings of sworn brotherhood in FrT and SumT. Chaucer's alignment of homosexual and heterosexual issues in the Marriage Group…
