McAlpine, Monica E.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 25: 199-224, 2003.
In her "active suffering," Criseyde reflects a Boethian notion of agency. In her prudential counseling of Troilus, she properly dissuades him from "treasonable elopement in time of war." The article explores how Criseyde's advice to Troilus and her…
The germ of Chaucer's phrase "and by the reyne hire hente" is found in Benoit's "Roman de Troie." Benoit uses a similar phrase four times. This is further evidence that Chaucer was conflating Boccaccio and Benoit.
Considers how "history becomes the unconscious of romance" in TC. Criseyde is pronounced dead at the opening of the work (1.56) but does not die in the story; as a "symptom of the poem's disavowal of history and materiality, she also marks its…
Argues that moral and psychological interpretations of TC--readings that judge the characters and those that empathize with their experiences--are "not as incompatible as their adherents would have us believe." Chaucer's rich depictions of his…
Renoir, Alain.
Orbis Litterarum 16 (1961): 239-55.
Assesses Criseyde's character in light of Carl Jung's theory of the nature of love as a "result of the incomplete human soul seeking its complement"—the "anima" seeking its "animus." Troilus's failure to act disappoints Criseyde's courtly…
Sepherd, Robert K. .
Sederi: Journal of the Spanish Society for English Renaissance Studies 4 : 229-36, 1993.
Considers Shakespeare's Cressida to be a "delicate literary graft" of the ambiguous aloofness of Chaucer's Criseyde and the "frankness personified" of Henryson's Cresseid.
Benson, C. David.
Modern Language Quarterly 53 (1992): 23-40.
Describes the writers' approaches to their source in Chaucer: Lydgate as a "scholarly commentator" and Henryson as a poet who exploits "Chaucer's innovative literary devices" in an original way. …
Boenig, Robert.
Bruce L. Edwards, ed. The Taste of Pineapple: Essays on C. S. Lewis as Reader, Critic, and Imaginative Writer (Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1988), pp. 138-48.
Reads C. S. Lewis's essay on TC, "What Chaucer Really Did to 'Il Filostrato'" (1932), as an index to how Lewis adapted H. G. Wells' novel "The First Men in the Moon" in his own "Out of the Silent Planet." Because of Chaucer's changes to Boccaccio's…
Bethurum, Dorothy, ed.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.
Six essays by various authors and a summary Introduction by the editor. For five essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature under Alternative Title.
Morse, Charlotte C.
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1990), no. 130), pp. 71-83.
Between 1910 and 1952, attitudes toward ClT were overtly hostile. Since 1952, however, criticism has been "apologetic in nature," with teacher-critics constructing "Christian allegorical," philosophical, psychological, and political readings "to…
Edwards, A. S. G.
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 85-94.
Noting that MLT has often been apologized for or ignored, Edwards surveys critical approaches to the tale: the date of its composition, its place in the Canterbury sequence, source study, biography, narrative voice, the problem of Constance,…
Collette, Carolyn (P.)
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), 95-107.
Similar in context and form, SNT and PrT have evoked critical commentary on historical background, sources, and analogues. However, PrT has sparked more consistent and recent interest, in part because of the Prioress's personality, her relationship…
Ferster's and Fradenburg's essays problematize the critical act of reading medieval texts: Ferster's examination of "who speaks" in PrT extends to the critic's own voice; Fradenburg's articulation of medievalists' anxieties concerning the status of…
Rossignol, Rosalyn
New York : Facts on File, 2007.
Revised, expanded version of the author's "Chaucer A to Z. The Essential Reference to His Life and Works" (1999; SAC 23 [2001], no. 5), with a more extensive biographical introduction to Chaucer, critical summaries of each of his works, and a more…
Andrew, Malcolm, ed.
Toronto, and Buffalo, N. Y.: University of Toronto Press, 1991.
Anthologizes twenty-one previously published essays and extracts from longer discussions. The pieces were originally published between 1809 and 1987, although all but one are from the twentieth century. Topics range from dramatic criticism to…
Benson, C. David, ed.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991; Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1991.
Anthologizes previously published essays and extracts from longer discussions of TC, BD, HF, and PF. Originally published between 1915 and 1986, the essays are arranged chronologically by work, with the majority (twelve of nineteen) dedicated to TC.
Eleven essays by various authors. In his introduction, Stillinger characterizes Chaucer studies up to the 1980s as a great debate between New Criticism and exegetical criticism; he says that he selected the essays in the volume for the ways they go…
Cookson, Linda, and Bryan Loughrey, ed.
Harlow: Longman, 1989.
Ten essays concerning GP addressed to a student audience, each essay followed by brief "Afterthoughts," intended for purposes of study and review. The volume also contains a "Practical Guide" on writing student essays (pp. 121-37). For individual…
Cookson, Linda, and Bryan Loughrey, ed.
Harlow: Longman, 1990.
Ten essays on PardPT addressed to a student audience, each essay followed by brief "Afterthoughts," intended for purposes of study and review. The volume also contains a "Practical Guide" on writing student essays. For individual essays, search for…
Describes several ways of addressing modern "experimental poems 'as' criticism," and suggests that, adumbrating such metapoetic practice, the juxtaposition of Th and Mel "constitutes a wondering literary-theoretical response to Boethius'…
Reisman, Rosemary M., ed.
Emmerson, Richard Kenneth.
Pasedena, CA: Salem, 2011.
Illustrated alphabetical encyclopedia. Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate the entry for Geoffrey Chaucer, by Richard Kenneth Emmerson, is in volume 1: Dannie Abse--Sir George Etherege.
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Eileen A. Joy, ed. Still Thriving: On the Importance of Aranye Fradenburg (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Punctum, 2013), pp. 25-31.
Considers the value of retaining the Chaucer Division of the Modern Language Association, maintaining its importance as long as "attention to [Chaucer's] corpus continues to unhinge, transform, and trouble received ideas about being in the world."…
Brewer, Charlotte.
Richard Firth Green and Linne R. Mooney, eds. Interstices: Studies in Middle English and Anglo-Latin Texts in Honour of A. G. Rigg (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 15-43.
Examines several key terms in textual/editorial theory, exploring their application to various editions of Chaucer--Skeat's edition, Pollard's Globe edition, and editions by Zupitza, Koch, Manly and Rickert, and Robinson. The terms are used…
Applies the techniques of "close reading" or "practical criticism" to works of medieval literature, adjusting the method to accord with medieval literary and linguistic conventions, especially oral recitation. Examines passages from "Piers Plowman,"…
Argues that in PardT the Old Man "reveals the Pardoner's real secret, the joylessness of the life he professes to relish so much." The Pardoner is a "young-old man, and the confrontation between the three rioters and the old man in the tale brings to…
