Burger, Glenn, and Steven Kruger, eds.
Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Ten essays on queer issues, with responses by Kruger. Includes readings on a selection of medieval texts, including Christine de Pizan and Dante. For an essay and a response that pertain to Chaucer, search for Queering the Middle Ages under…
Pugh assesses the "nonnormative" features of several genres in medieval literature--lyric, fabliau, tragedy, and romance--exploring not only representations and suggestions of homosexual behaviors but also how these behaviors disrupt readers'…
In his initial governance of the carnivalesque "play" of tale-telling, Harry Bailly augments his masculinity by "queering" his fellow pilgrims; by the end of CT, his own masculinity is "undermined" by his inability to control the carnival he set in…
Pugh, Tison.
Journal of Narrative Technique 33: 115-42, 2003.
Reading the Wife of Bath's romance through her fabliau spirit reveals Chaucer's distaste for the Arthurian romance tradition (elsewhere seen in SqT, NPT) and (as seen in SqT, Th, and FranT) his ironic attitude toward male narrative authority, his…
Federico, Sylvia.
Medium Aevum 79.1 (2010): 25-46.
Includes discussion of MilT, arguing that it "participates in the scandalous discourse on the perceived problem of Richard II's deviant sexuality," reading the scene of the hot coulter as an echo of the sodomitical execution of Edward II that engages…
Magnani, Roberta.
In Nicole Nyffenegger and Katrin Rupp, eds. Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2918), pp. 195-219.
Demonstrates how the Wife of Bath's resistance to "straight" clerical exegesis is reflected in her skin's rejection of violently enforced "cutaneous legibility" and the forced reading of her "seinte Venus seel" as an innate and legible marker of her…
Dinshaw, Carolyn.
Essays in Medieval Studies 16: 79-98, 1999.
Plenary address to the Illinois Medieval Association; adapted from Dinshaw's Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (SAC 23 [2001], no. 184). Discusses late-medieval court records concerning cross-dressing and…
Bishop, Kathleen A.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 16-26.
Asserts several parallels between the window scene in MilT and reports of the sodomitical execution of Edward II.
Sauer, Michelle.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 23.2 (2016): 17-26.
Urges clarification and deployment of queer pedagogy in teaching medieval literature, citing examples of its usefulness in a classroom discussion of production and reproduction in NPT, nuances of "deviance" in Middle English, and the tangibility of…
Although not lovers, Troilus and Pandarus express deep affection for each other, and Pandarus gains Troilus's dependence. In addition, Pandarus's speeches, silences, and gaze (staging sexual scenes for his pleasure), as well as more fluid medieval…
Integrates queer theory and ecocriticism to reassess historical manuscript concepts of Adam, including contemporary print and digital media examples. Examines "medieval homosocial networks of textual production" and applies ecotheoretical viewpoints…
Burger, Glenn, and Steven F. Kruger.
Tanya Agathocleous and Ann C. Dean, eds. Teaching Literature: A Companion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 31-40.
Argues for an expansion of the notion of queer readings of Chaucer, encouraging a broad concern with questions of identity and its formulations. Comments on possible queer approaches to Chaucer the Pilgrim and the "Marriage Group" of CT.
Burger, Glenn.
English Studies in Canada 20 (1994): 153-70.
Queer theory, by emphasizing provisionality, enables us to think of sexuality and culture differently; it provides a means for gay/lesbian/bi- readers to engage Chaucer. Contemporary constructions of sex, gender, and sexuality can be used as…
Barr, Helen.
Bonnie Lander-Johnson and Eleanor Decamp, eds. Blood Matters: Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400-1700 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), pp. 238-48.
Describes the iconography of Thomas Becket's blood in Canterbury Cathedral and its “Christomimetic” associations, and explores parallels between Becket's blood and the Pardoner's blood in the "Canterbury Interlude" that precedes the "Tale of Beryn,"…
Pavlinich, Elan J.
Dissertation Abstracts International A81.02 (2019): n.p.
Includes discussion of LGW, arguing that its narrator "frustrates love conventions that are constructed around the author's presumed heteronormativity" and "privileges literary learning over lived experience within a gendered hierarchical structure."
Strohm, Paul.
Paul Strohm, with an Appendix by A. J. Prescott. Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 95-119.
Assesses the intercessory roles of Phillippa and Anne in pleading, respectively, for the burghers of Calais and the citizens of London. Analyzes the ideology of intercessory discourse in Chaucer's pleading queens, especially Alceste in LGWP, who…
Veck, Sonya.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 113-22.
Because of the lack of manuscript history, the works of the Gawain-poet must be studied in contexts different from those of Chaucer and his London contemporaries. The seriousness of poetic temperament is pronounced throughout the narrative of the…
Dinshaw, Carolyn.
Juliette Dor, ed. A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens-Fonck (Liege: University of Liege, 1992), pp. 112-22.
The persistent and untrue story of a "quarrel" between Gower and Chaucer can be explained by the notion of rape. Gower's use of the Philomela legend in Confessio Amantis and Chaucer's use of it in TC suggest that in their "interaction with one…
Traces the development of "all" and "quite" in English usage, focusing on Spenser's uses of them as adverbs and adjectives, and investigating Chaucer's usage as precedent. Tabulates the usage of both poets. In French, with an English summary.
Spisak, James W.
Chaucerian Shakespeare (Ann Arbor: Michigan Consortium for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 1983), pp. 81-95.
Inspired by the ironic use of the Pyramus and Thisbe myth in LGW Shakespeare employs the myth to parody the young lovers in "A Midsummer Night's Dream," mocking both Chaucer and his courtly poem.
Lewis, Sean Gordon.
Enarratio: Journal of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 22 (2018): 51-78; 4 illus.
Focuses on Pynson's woodcuts in his 1526 editions of CT, TC, and an anthology headed by HF, assessing them and other paratextual materials (table of contents, incipits, etc.) for the ways they pose a variety of reader strategies. Contrasts Pynson's…
