Examines the allusion to Constantinus Africanus's "De Coitu" in MerT 4.1810-11, suggesting that knowledge of the treatise helps us to understand that January's consumption of aphrodisiacs is "manically compulsive" and sinful.
Zonneveld, Wim.
Paula Fikkert and Haike Jacobs, eds. Development in Prosodic Systems. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 2003, pp. 197-247.
Zonneveld examines factors associated with iambic stress in the octosyllabic Dutch poem "Het Leven van St. Lutgart" [Life of St. Lutgart], comparing them with conditions in early English. Considers the "uncertain status of schwa syllables" in…
Reis, Huriye.
Evrim Doğan Adanur, ed. IDEA: Studies in English (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011), pp. 261-71.
Examines the "construction of parenthood" in medieval literature and criticism, focusing on Chaucer's role as "father" of English literature, which lacks a parallel "mother" figure.
The Second Nun's voice is undefined by Chaucer, yet it is intriguing since it probes the nature of "agency, voice, and reappropriation." The voice of the Nun becomes more clear as her character develops, and SNT "becomes a product of the voice."
Knutson, Karla.
Bruce E. Brandt and Michael S. Nagy, eds. Proceedings of the 14th Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literature, April 7-8, 2006 (Brookings, S.Dak.: English Department, South Dakota State University, 2006), pp. 95-106.
Knutson argues that fifteenth-century imitators of Chaucer identified themselves as descendants of Chaucer, whom they constructed as father, to promote a conservative agenda, simultaneously antifeminist, hierarchical, and heteronormative.
Gust, Geoffrey W.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Gust seeks to "reenergize persona theory" for future Chaucer scholarship, arguing that Chaucer's "autofictional" persona should be regarded as the central topic not only of Chaucer's works but also of studies of his reception and literary history at…
Gust, Geoffrey William.
Dissertation Abstacts International C67.02 (2006): 496.
Examines the "many ways in which the I-speaker has been deployed by both Chaucer and Chaucerians," considering concepts of the persona, influences from Chaucer's biographies, and representations of the poet in his short poems and CT.
Otaño Gracia, Nahir I., and Daniel Armenti.
Medieval Feminist Forum 53.1 (2017): 176-201.
Includes comments on MLT, arguing that it "demonstrates the belief that not everyone can become a true Christian and that true Christianity can only be acquired by the right kind of pagans, such as the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings," but not Muslims.
Mowat, Barbara A.
R. B. Parker and S. P. Sitner, eds. Elizabethan Theater: Essays in Honor of S. Schoenbaum (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1996), pp. 93-110.
Assesses how the sixteenth-century editions of Chaucer by Thynne and Speght helped to create and monumentalize a view of the writer. Renaissance notions of authors, evident in Speght's Chaucer, Holland's Livy, and Harrington's Ariosto, are not the…
Wolfe, Matthew Clarke.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1996): 2499A.
Argues that Gg is the earliest surviving effort to create a corpus of Chaucer's poetry and that codicological analysis of the manuscript reveals much about the reception of Chaucer in the fifteenth century.
Carlson, Cindy L.,and Angela Jane Weisl,eds.
New York : St. Martin's Press, 1999.
Eleven essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors. Topics include depictions of virginity, widowhood, and their intersections in medieval romance, hagiography, and drama, with recurrent references to other literary genres and…
McAvoy, Elizabeth Herbert, and Teresa Walters, eds.
Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2002.
Seventeen essays by various authors. The book is divided into three sections: Sexual/Textual Consumption; Monstrous Bodies; and Consuming Genders, Races, and Nations. Includes an introduction by the editors, a select bibliography, and an index. For…
Kerr, John.
Bruce E. Brandt and Michael S. Nagy, eds. Proceedings of the 14th Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literature, April 7-8, 2006 (Brookings, S.Dak.: English Department, South Dakota State University, 2006), pp. 77-93.
Kerr argues that the sixth canto of Dante's Inferno was the model for Chaucer's use of gluttony and alimentary metaphors in PF, particularly the latter's concern with literary transmission and the birds' debate.
Friedman, Sarah.
Essays in Medieval Studies 37 (2022): 65-79.
Focuses on two texts that feature violence against women to examine how the violated woman functions as a tool for political change. Both Chaucer and Gower foreground the suffering that men experience in response to the violated female body, leading…
Roman, Christopher.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 143-55.
Animals figure prominently in BD but are more than mere symbols. Ceyx's dead body is also an "unnatural animal." The birds, horse, whelp, and hart invite, but also resist, interpretation. The juxtaposition of death and animalistic vitality evokes…
Hickey, Helen M., Anne McKendry, and Melissa Raine, eds.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018.
Fourteen essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors, all inspired by or in response to the critical studies of Stephanie Trigg. The introduction describes the "affective" criticism underlying Trigg’s "Congenial Souls," "Shame and…
Rowland, Beryl.
English: The Journal of the English Association 22 (1973): 3-10.
Surveys major works of Chaucer criticism, focusing on works published between ca.1960-1970 and identifying trends. The bibliography lists some 40 works.
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Donald M. Rose, ed. New Perspectives in Chaucer Criticism (Norman Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1981), pp. 23-36.
We need an "over-all metaphysics" such as the fourteenth-century "Aristotelian ontology and psychology," or such modern systems as "phenomenology, Marxism, Heideggarian ontology, positivism,...existentialism, and Chomskyean rationalism" as approaches…
Vance, Sidney.
Sandra Ward Lott, S. G. Hawkins, and Norman McMillan, eds. Global Perspectives on Teaching Literature: Shared Visions and Distinctive Visions. (Urbana, Ill.: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993), pp. 101-108.
Observes parallels between WBT and the narrative of the matriarch Sogolon in the African (Mandingo) epic "Sundiata." Each includes a quest, a knowledgeable old hag, shape-shifting, and a version of rape. Such parallels enable us to "engage in a…
Begins with a discussion of "Chaucerian meanings" to investigate medieval textual production and verse translations from French to English, and considers how the "boundaries of the Chaucer canon have been established and defined by the inclusion and…
Both Jerome and Chaucer follow Paul in deploying "provocative women" to dramatize contemporary controversies over who may interpret scripture. The Wife of Bath performs exegesis even as she effectively likens her husbands to "exegetes whose sins…
Explores how Chaucer's characters in CT challenge the medieval social norm of community over "pryvetee" by telling tales that expose others' "pryvetee and obscure their own; by profession as a means of asserting individual power over one's pryvetee;…
