Noting the heritage of critical commentary about the Pardoner's sexuality, Minnis calls for refocusing attention on the central issue: the Pardoner's immorality. The Pardoner, probably a lay person, is placed within the context of medieval indulgence…
Doyle, Laura.
Literature Compass 15.6 (2018): n.p.
Places the cluster of Chaucer essays in this special issue of "Literature Compass"--entitled "Chaucer's Global Compaignye"--in the context of the journal's "Global Circulation Project," and comments on each of the included essays. For individual…
Lerer, Seth.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 83-95.
Lerer comments on the recent study of Chaucer reception and exemplifies the "status of Chaucer's authority" in a letter of Alice Paston to her son, a version of Truth in Tottel's "Miscellany," and an allusion to KnT in "The Two Noble Kinsmen." Each…
Schildgen, Brenda Deen.
Comparative Literature 65.1 (2013): 85-100.
Focuses on the episode of "wood-stripping" that occurs in Statius' :Thebaid" (6.84-117), Boccaccio's "Teseida" (11), and KnT (4.2919-62). While Statius' account is the major model for the others, all versions imply social-political criticism,…
Zissos, Andrew.
International Journal of the Classical Tradition 13.2 (2006): 165-85.
Zissos surveys the reception of Valerius Flaccus's "Argonautica," briefly discussing Chaucer's references to the author and the work in LGW, identified by E. F. Shannon in 1929. Chaucer was the first to refer to the poem after the postclassical…
Boffey, Julia.
Helen Cooper and Robert R. Edwards, eds. Oxford History of Poetry in English. Volume 2, Medieval Poetry, 1100–1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 457-69.
Examines the legacy and survival of fourteenth-century poetry and poetic innovations in the fifteenth century, emphasizing the influence of Chaucer and Gower, especially with regard to their shaping of the role of the poet.
Jankowski, Eileen S.
Chaucer Review 30 (1996): 306-18.
Lexical similarities and broad organizational strategies in Bokenham's legend suggest that his sources were SNT, the "Legenda," and the "Passio." Bokenham reveals an early fifteenth-century appreciation of Chaucer's skill as author and translator.
Fisiak, Jacek, and Hye-Kyung Kang, eds.
Seoul, South Korea: Thaehaksa, 2005.
Twenty essays by various authors on topics in theoretical linguistics and in Old and Middle English linguistics and literature. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Recent Trends in Medieval English Language and Literature under…
Baker, Donald C.
University of Mississippi Studies in English 1 (1960): 97-104.
Argues that "the role of the artist as purveyor of Fame" is the fundamental unifying theme of HF and suggests that Chaucer may have intended to resolve tensions between Dantean and Boethian views of the poet (as teacher and misleader, respectively)…
Griffiths, Gwen.
Papers on Language and Literature 25 (1989): 242-63.
The divergence of critical opinion about MerT attests to Chaucer's success in prompting multiple responses to his text and in allowing no definitive reading. In the tale, "the narrator/narratee relationships are reflected in a multiplicity of…
Boyd, David Lorenzo.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1991): 909A.
On the basis of insights provided by manuscripts (especially Harvard MS English 530), certain works by Hoccleve and Lydgate reveal unifying themes. To fifteenth-century readers, Chaucer's PF treated the relationship of common profit and individual…
Fein, Susanna Greer, David Raybin, and Peter C. Braeger, eds.
Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1991.
This collection of essays by various authors addresses the rivalry and tension among characters, themes, styles, and genres in CT.
For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Rebels and Rivals under Alternative Title.
Warren, Nancy Bradley.
Yearbook of English Studies 53 (2024, for 2023): 101-14.
Argues that the widow Ranter of Aphra Behn's "The Widow Ranter; or, The History of Bacon in Virginia" is "a 'reincarnation' of Chaucer's Wife of Bath in the New [W]orld." Behn's play "translates the wife . . . to colonial Virginia to negotiate both…
Troilus ultimately travels to the ninth--not the eighth--sphere at the end of TC, a place ripe with "symbolic valence," reinforcing Chaucer's narrative focus on constant change and the ambiguity that comes with it.
Fry, Chandler Thomas.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Duke University, 2021
Dissertation Abstracts International A82.11(E). Open access at https://dukespace.lib.duke.edu/items/d005dd73-6232-43ef-94ce-537d1d9a7767 (accessed December 19, 2024).
Clarifies the "centrality and complexities" of political and ethical law discourse in late medieval England, showing how it is used in works by Thomas Usk and how in TC and KnT Chaucer "questions the view that the natural law is an unshakeable…
Wimsatt, James I.
Robert R. Edwards and Stephen Spector, eds. The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 201-10, 287-89 (notes).
Examines "the paradigm of consoler-consolation-consolee" in The Consolation of Philosophy, Roman de la Rose, Remede de Fortune, and TC. The Consolation is "sub-text or perhaps super-text." The other texts mediate in Chaucer's adaptation of…
Rosenberg, Bruce Allen.
Dissertation Abstracts International 26.03 (1965): 1654A.
Interprets the Canon of CYP as "one of the men of Antichrist," and examines the sustained opposition of CYPT and SNPT, emphasizing their contrasting depictions of reason and revelation as ways of knowing.
Milosh, Joseph E.,Jr.
Millicent Lenz and Ramona M. Mahood, eds. Young Adult Literature: Background and Criticism (Chicago: American Library Association, 1980), pp. 433-40.
John the cuckolded carpenter in MilT, delights in a simple faith which makes star-gazing unnecessary. The NPT revolves around the problem of translating intuitive knowledge into action. In both modern and medieval images of the universe,searching…
Holley, Linda Tarte.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Building on recent studies related to space and epistemology, this study argues that Chaucer, as well as the "Pearl"-poet and author of "The Cloud of Unknowing," take a pedagogical stance in their writing and "proffer a space from which or by means…
Giaccherini, Enrico.
Fausto Ciompi, ed. One of Us: Studi Inglesi e Conradiani Offerti a Mario Curreli (Pisa, Italy: ETS, 2009), pp. 155-66.
Distinguishes between "anti-Judaism" and "anti-Semitism," and reads the former as a motif that combines with other devices to produce the excessive pathos of PrT, a form of late-medieval emotional intensity.
The chaos in HF is partly the result of multiple interpretations of texts and massive disagreement among the characters. Geffrey may curse the individual who "misinterprets" his writing, but he is partly joking. Only those authors whose texts are…
