The energy of WBP derives from the Wife's "awareness of the tension between her centrality as speaker, and her experiential understanding of her marginality as female," since she voices her woman's feelings toward an overwhelming male audience with…
Mandel, Jerome.
ES Revista de Filología Inglesa 33.1 (2012): 69-79.
Compares the resolutions of conflict in WBT and Gower's "Tale of Florent" and explores their methods of characterization. While Chaucer depicts characters through dialogue, argument, debate, and negotiation with other persons, Gower's characters…
Stretter, Robert Eugene.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 2316A, 2000.
Focusing especially on love and fortune, Chaucer introduces to English literature the theme of male friendship in conflict with heterosexual love. By Shakespeare's time, this theme was treated even more darkly, moving from "guardedly optimistic…
Beichner, Paul E., C.S.C.
Chaucer Review 8 (1974): 198-204
Through line-by-line comparison shows that in the trial scene of SNT Chaucer improves upon the Latin original by compression and emphasis which increase dramatic impact, Cecilia's contentiousness, and Almachius's stupidity.
Pound, Ezra, and Marcella Spann, eds.
New York: New Directions, 1964.
Includes selections from GP (1-27, 118-26 and 150-62 [Prioress], 165-66 and 177-87 [Monk], 270-75 [Merchant], and 309-22 [Sergeant at Law]), MerB, and the "Roundel" from PF. In Middle English, without notes or glosses.
Myles, Robert.
Robert Myles and David Williams, eds. Chaucer and Language: Essays in Honour of Douglas Wurtele (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2001), pp. 107-27 and 205-09.
Myles surveys medieval notions of natural and given signs, arguing that Griselda (and the reader with her) learns from her submission to Walter, insofar as it parallels a realist submission to quasi-nominalist understanding. Unlike Walter, Griselda…
Oliver, Paul.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 65-74.
Both PardP and PardT are "self-exposure" on the part of the Pardoner, although in the latter he is "unaware" of his similarity to the three rioters: "all four are spiritually dead . . . blasphemers and motivated by avarice . . . totally hardened…
Yvernault, Martine.
Tatjana Silec, ed. Voix (et Voies) du Désordre au Moyen Âge. Volume Issu du Colloque du Centre d'Études Médiévales Anglaises de Paris-Sorbonne (22-23 Mars 2012). AMAES, no. 34. (Paris: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2013), pp. 109-24
Explores the ambivalence of the forest in several examples, particularly ones drawn from KnT and BD.
Trigg, Stephanie.
Minneapolis and Londons : University of Minnesota Press, 2002.
Examines critical discourses from the late Middle Ages to the late twentieth century that have constructed Chaucer for, and mediated his poetry to, subsequent readers. Trigg explores "Chaucer's status as an exemplary canonical author for English…
Driver, Martha.
Elisabeth Dutton, with John Hines and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 315-25.
Driver contrasts Shakespeare's limited attention to Chaucer with his lionization of Gower in "Pericles," commenting on representations of Gower in modern stage productions of the play.
Presents debates surrounding intersection of art and paleography and the transmission of Middle English manuscripts. Focuses on CT manuscripts and research devoted to Gower, Langland, Hoccleve, and Chaucer. Argues that "scholars attend to how scribes…
Weisl, Angela Jane.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995.
Explores the relation of gender and the genre of romance in Chaucer's CT, especially the mutually defining and delimiting power of the two categories. Women conform to the particular roles romance carves out for them, while the genre is…
Lettau, Lisa.
Dissertation Abstracts International A69.09 (2009): n.p.
As part of an exploration of medieval efforts to understand a physical/spiritual dichotomy, the dissertation sets BD in conversation with Margery Kempe, with an eye toward development of a "unified selfhood."
Morrison, Susan Signe.
Notes and Queries 266.1 (2021): 45-49.
Contemplates the word "lemman" in Malyne's dawn song of RvT: its connotations elsewhere in Chaucer's corpus indicate that it names her experience the night before as sexual assault.
Turu, Hisao.
Hisao Turu, ed. Reading Chaucer's Book of the Duchess. Medieval English Literature Symposium Series, no. 5 (Tokyo: Gaku Shobo Press, 1991), pp. 201-20 (in Japanese).
The Knight in Black is not John of Gaunt but his young squire, who admired and served his dear duchess.
Schrock, Chad D.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Explores how Abelard, Chaucer, and Langland used consolatory narratives in their writings. Chapter 5 (pp. 107-27) explores Augustinian and Boethian concerns in KnT.
Offers a "partial explanation" for the paucity of fabliaux in Middle English: lack of concern with courtly sentiment in Middle English romance fails to "provide conditions conducive" to "parody and ironization of romance" that is fundamental to the…
Bracken, Christopher.
Critical Matrix: The Princeton Journal of Women, Gender, and Culture 8:1 (1994): 13-39.
Cast as a discussion among four participants (Reductio, Thea, Ceres, and Cassandra), this closet drama explores relations among power, gender, trade, religion, and their representation in MLT. The characters are, loosely, representatives of…
Loomis, Dorothy Bethurum.
Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, ed. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univeristy of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 207-20.
The story of Constance is not especially appropriate to the Man of Law. Chaucer was attracted to it because it is a good piece of fiction and because it gave him the perfect opportunity to set forth and justify his belief in astrology. The story…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
R. F. Yeager, ed. John Gower, Recent Readings (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University), pp. 65-93.
The pattern of sustained allusion to Gower's "Confessio Amantis" provides an important index to the purpose of MLT. Gower communicates the horror of a moral void; the Man of Law inveighs against Canacee's sinfulness. Chaucer's tale ultimately…
Clark, Susan L.,and Julian N. Wasserman.
Rice University Studies 64 (1978): 13-24.
Constance is that rarity, a romance "heroine," who, like the more familiar hero, learns through trials and difficulties. The tale is thus perhaps one of those narratives that marks the transition from matriarchy to patriarchy in European culture. …
Brunt, Andrew
Notes and Queries 214 (1969): 87-88.
Regards the detail of covering the child's eyes in MLT 2.840-41 as a "homely touch" of pathos, perhaps drawn from child-care advice found in Bartholomaeus Anglicus, "De Proprietatibus Rerum."
Jost, Jean E.
Medieval Perspectives 2 (1987): 73-80.
Reads MLT and CYT as opposed tales. Custance of MLT is a "worthy victim" of the broken promises of others and someone who "steadfastly" keeps her own. CYPT, on the other hand, is "marked by changeability, mutability, and vacillation"; its characters…
The Man of Law in his Prologue, in his characterization of Custance, and in his concept of Christ's "prudent purveiaunce" consistently revises his sources, especially Nicholas Trevet, into the materialistic terms of the world governed by Fortune. …
