Despres, Denise, L.
Modern Philology 91 (1994): 413-27.
England's implementation of the Fourth Lateran Council's legislation of 1215, two anti-Judaism sermon exempla from medieval manuscripts, and the "child-as-Host" motif suggest how the "ideology of bodily and social purity could become salient for the…
Cook, Megan L.
Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe, and Gareth Griffith, eds. Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 150-67.
Examines E. K.'s commentary on Chaucer in Spenser's "The Shepheardes Calender," arguing that by "associating him with a historically antecedent but culturally current poetic paradigm, E. K. represents Chaucer as a writer who proleptically embraces…
John Urry's 1721 edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer was marketed to support a capital campaign to augment Christ Church, Oxford. Thoughout the 1720s and 1730s, several members of the college were occupied with book sales. Despite poor…
Watson, Nicholas.
English Language Notes 44.1 (2006): 127-37.
This final essay in a forum responds to preceding essays and argues that vernacular writing about religion is a political act subject to study as a "single area of discourse." Literary critics examining this area will find that "the logic that…
Györi, Zsolt.
Agnes Pethö, ed. Words and Images on the Screen Language Literature, Moving Pictures (Newcastle upon Tyne, U.K.: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 284-99.
Assesses the politics and cultural work of British wartime cinema, including assessment of Michael Powell's and Emeric Pressburger's "A Canterbury Tale" of 1944 as "one of the first 'heritage films'," one that capitalizes on the status of CT as the…
Cummings, Brian, and James Simpson, eds.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Thirty-two essays by various individuals and the introduction by the editors exemplify the porous nature of the traditional boundary between medieval and Renaissance in literary history and demonstrate the interpenetration of literature and history.…
Joy, Eileen A., Myra J. Seaman, Kimberly K. Bell, and Mary K. Ramsey, eds.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Ten essays by various authors, along with a foreword, an introduction, an "otherword," and an afterword. Topics range from high to low culture and explore relationships between reality and performance, including comparisons of medieval literature to…
Whereas Robert Henryson rarely uses animals for imagery or metaphoric comparisons (outside the allegory of "Morall Fabillis"), Chaucer "exploits the rich and variegated symbolic dimension" of references to animals, even while he avoids "explicit…
Richardson, Macolm
Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 5.2 (2010): n.p. [Electronic publication]
Recounts the experiences of teaching a British Literature survey at a Louisiana university in the wake of Hurricane Katrina in Fall 2005, exploring why student response to CT was unusually intense at that time, particularly for its concern with…
Aers, David, ed.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992.
Six essays by various hands explore and critique the notion of a steady rise of individualism underlying the traditional historical periodiztion of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Human identities in all times are functions of humans interacting in…
Howes, Laura [L.]
Joyce Salisbury, ed. The Medieval World of Nature: A Book of Essays. Garland Medieval Casebooks, no. 5. (New York and London: Garland, 1993), pp. 187-200.
Examines outdoor space in BD and PF in light of research on medieval constructed gardens, especially the pleasure garden of Elizabeth de Burgh at Clare Castle, Suffolk.
Bellamy, Dodie.
Dodie Bellamy. Cunt Norton (Los Angeles: Les Figues Press, 2013), pp. 8-9.
An erotic prose poem that combines a pastiche of Chaucerian quotations, faux Middle English, and a narrative of sexual activity that alludes recurrently to NPT.
Tinkle, Theresa Lynn.
Dissertation Abstracts International 50 (1990): 3240A-3241A.
Although the medieval Venus and Cupid are usually interpreted interchangeably on the basis of "courtly love" or the Robertsonian concept of "caritas" and "cupiditas," analysis of texts (including HF, PF, KnT, TC, and LGW) indicates otherwise. Venus…
Smith, Sarah Stanbury.
Centerpoint 4 (1981): 95-102.
Implications of clear-sighted love in the Middle Ages lead one to view Cupid in Chaucer's LGW as a symbol of marital, generative love. But because this Cupid is indiscriminate in love (being in favor of it, without regard to circumstances), it is…
Discusses the "amatory fatalism" of KnT as Chaucer's means to explore "problems of chance, destiny, and Providence." Somewhat different from TC in this regard, KnT poses love as analogous to fate. Chaucer uses the analogy to focus on human perception…
Aloni, Gila.
Bulletin des Anglicistes Medievistes 56: 45-57, 1999.
Assesses similarities and differences between the two Prologues to LGW and the portrayal of Cupid in the Dido account, examining the power relations between Cupid and Alceste and, beyond this microstructure, the masculine-feminine relations of the…
Zacher, Christian K.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Investigates the relation between "curiositas" (vice-laden seeking of experience or knowledge) and pilgrimage (symbolic devotional journey) as a tension between desire for the physical and spiritual worlds, examining the theological underpinnings of…
Weston, Lisa M. C.
In Albrecht Classen, ed. Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time: The Occult in Pre-Modern Sciences, Medicine, Literature, Religion, and Astrology (Boston, Mass.: De Gruyter, 2017), pp. 507-22.
Suggests that magic--specifically "image magic"--and poetics were interconnected for Chaucer and his original audience. Focuses on FranT, rhetoric, ekphrasis, and other "conjunctions of magic and rhetoric" in Chaucer's writings to reflect "the…
Newhauser, Richard, and Michael Raby.
ELH 86 (2019): 1-25.
Contends that the confrontation between the carpenter John and the clerk Nicholas in MilT provides dramatic context for the exploration of anti-intellectualism and intellectual curiosity. Claims that in MilT it is the "combination of humor and…
Thompson. Meredith.
Max F. Schulz, William D. Templeton, and Charles R. Metzger, eds. Essays in American and English Literature Presented to Bruce Robert McElderry, Jr. (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1967), pp. 141-64.
Debunks tendencies in Chaucer criticism to read "too much into the text," identifying and exemplifying the "realistic fallacy," the "anachronistic fallacy," the "schematic fallacy," the "ideological fallacy," the "didactic fallacy," the "allegorical…
Hanning, Robert W.
Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds. The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 177-211.
Both The Man of Law's Tale and Decameron 1.1 consider the problematics of mediation inherent in the use of language. MLT is an exercise for the teller to impress the other pilgrims with his authority and wisdom.
Raybin, David.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 12 (1990): 65-84.
In MLT, Chaucer transforms medieval concepts of divine and human time "to formulate a powerful expression regarding the positive use of time in this world." Harry Bailly's introductory focus on time is significant; "Custance's story illustrates a…
Woods, William F.
Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 7: 84-107, 2000.
Reads MLT as an "allegory of will," a Christian response to the "Boethian stoicism" of KnT that transcends mundane mercantilism by dramatizing an "investment of self." As "God's merchant," Custance transforms herself and converts others through a…
Dawson, Robert B.
Chaucer Review 26 (1992): 293-308.
Rather than a pious and sympathetic character, Custance is an egocentric, self-serving individual who depicts herself as a saintly victim. Thus, she is linked to her creator, the Man of Law, whose language is both deceptive and complex.
