Miskimin, Alice S.
Studies in Medieval Culture 10 (1977): 133-45.
The "Letter of Dido to Aeneas" in Pynson's "Chaucer" (1526), omitted by Thynne (1532), inspired Wyatt to write "Lyke as the swan..."; for him Chaucer was Pynson's edition. Thynne's omission of Ret was not remedied until Urry (1721). Modern editions…
Scarry, Elaine.
Elaine Scarry, ed. Fins de Siècle: English Poetry in 1590, 1690, 1790, 1890, 1990 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), pp. 1-36.
Explores why the world is "newly alert to its need for poetry" at the end of each century, including comments on Chaucer's writing of CT at the end of the fourteenth.
Chaucer's WBT destabilizes gender roles rather than focusing on the issues of kingship at the core of most of the loathly-lady tales. WBT engages issues of personal power politics as it creates a lively, garrulous character, but the moral lies in the…
Patterson, Lee.
David Aers, ed. Culture and History, 1350-1600: Essays on English Communities, Identities, and Writing (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), pp. 7-41.
During the reign of Richard II, love poetry such as Clanvowe's "Book of Cupid" was a means whereby courtiers could interrogate the "power, patronage and lordship" of the fetishized court. Patterson considers Clanvowe's allusions to Chaucer in this…
Brewer, D. S.
John Lawlor, ed. Patterns of Love and Courtesy: Essays in Memory of C. S. Lewis (London: Edward Arnold, 1966), pp. 54-85.
Examines the meaning and significance of "courtesy" in the works of the "Gawain"-poet, and includes comments on characterization (as a matter of role rather than personality) in Chaucer's works, along with an excursus on "hende" that focuses on…
Examines how the careers of several courtiers-diplomats-poets can help us reconstruct the "nature of literary transmission" from Italy to France to England. Discusses Philippe de Mézières, Honorat Bovet, Jean Muret and Giovanni Moccia, and…
Burnley, David.
London and New York: Longman, 1998.
Historical survey of the language and actions of courtly behavior as evident in Anglo-Norman and Middle English writings, with some corroboration from Latin. Traces the emergence of aristocratic courtliness in the eleventh century through to its…
Canitz, A. E. Christa.
A. E. Christa Canitz and Gernot R. Wieland, eds. From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui on His 75th Birthday (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), pp. 131-53.
Argues that LGW critiques the rigidity of highly conventionalized literary genres for failing to represent human experience adequately. Chaucer's conflation of hagiography, courtly romance, and epic myth reveals the "flaws" in each genre, especially…
In BD, Chaucer, working in a tradition of courtly style, composes a poem of consolation. Within a beautiful poem of human sympathy, Chaucer effects a critique of courtly language and exposes the inability of such language to express profound…
Lerer, Seth.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Assesses various aspects of Tudor political and literary culture (e.g., privacy and voyeurism, theatricality, letter-writing and -reading), discussing Pandarus and the Renaissance reception of TC as tropes for understanding such concerns. Tudor…
Busby, Keith, and Erik Kooper, eds.
Amsterdam : John Benjamins, 1990.
Forty-five selected papers on courtly literature. For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for Courtly Literature: Culture and Context under Alternative Title.
Jeffrey, David Lyle.
Christianity and Literature 59 (2010): 515-30.
Chrétien's "Erec and Enide" does not celebrate courtly love but provides a "model for rightly ordered desire." Chaucer highlights the "social and spiritual value" of marriage in CT, PF, TC, and various lyrics. Henry VIII's own theatrics, however,…
Chism, Christine.
In Robert DeMaria Jr., Heesok Chang, and Samantha Zacher, eds. A Companion to British Literature. Vol. I, Medieval Literature 700–1450 (Chichester: Wiley, 2014), pp. 130-45.
Surveys the meanings, origins, and theories of courtly love, asking how it "works" in medieval texts, what light it can "cast upon medieval cultural practices, and why it comes to matter." Includes discussion of secrecy in TC, a text that animates…
Megna, Paul.
In Russell Sbriglia, ed. Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Literature but Were Afraid to Ask Žižek (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2017), pp. 267-89.
Uses Slavoj Žižek's analysis of privilege and courtly love to assess the major characters of TC: the "servile aggression" of the narrator; Pandarus's "patriarchal privilege"; Crisyede's "ethically heroic" decisions about loving her husband,…
Although courtly love is central to TC, it is parodied or viewed as dangerous in CT. Evidently Chaucer no longer found it a viable way of revealing the human heart.
Bjork, Lennart A.
Mats Ryden and Lennart A. Bjork, eds. Studies in English Philology, Linguistics, and Literature Presented to Alarik Rynell 7 March 1978. Stockholm Studies in English, no. 46 (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International, 1978), pp. 1-20.
The courtly love interpretations of TC are not plausible; TC offers a burlesque of courtly love. In support of the exegetical promotion of "caritas," serious flaws in Troilus's character are revealed in animal imagery.
Burnley, David.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 24 (1986): 16-38.
Discusses the sociomoral and aesthetic qualities that constitute courtly speech, including social attitude, voice quality, brevity, plainness of speech, and sensitivity and understanding. Based on passages spoken "curteisly" in Chaucer, Burnley's…
Windeatt, Barry.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 90-109.
Windeatt examines how the court and elements of courtly writing are represented and function in BD, HF, PF, and LGWP, with some attention to SqT. Comments on Machaut as Chaucer's model and how the dream vision gives Chaucer the liberty to examine…
Brand, Ralph.
Historical Research: The Bulletin of the Institute of Historical Research 60 (1987): 147-65.
The Inns of Court did not serve as places of legal instruction before the fifteenth century. Evidence from legal manuscripts suggests that such instruction was handled not only through attendance at court but also by means of lectures, annotated…
Sell, Jonathan P. A.
Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 48 (2004): 193-204.
Sell identifies "verbal parallels" and "ontological similarities" between Criseyde and Chaucer's version of Boethius's Fortune. Association with Fortune undermines "sentimental views of Criseyde" that Chaucer the narrator may share though Chaucer…
Lochrie, Karma.
Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999.
Explores the implications of secrecy represented in several topics and depicted in medieval texts: confession in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, gossip in WBPT and HF, occulted science in Pseudo-Aristotle's Secret of Secrets and Pseudo-Albert's The…
Bennett, Alastair.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 28 (2014): 29-64.
Shows that the "blered" eye image in CYT (7.730) and "Piers Plowman" indicates covetousness, associated with "unkynde" or unnatural separation from community and knowledge.
Finger, Roland.
Exit 9: The Rutgers Journal of Comparative Literature 5 (2003): 65-74.
Assesses the sexual relations between the Wife of Bath and her husbands in WBP as a dynamic between her sadism and their masochism. Through her sadism the Wife "avenges herself on the medieval patriarchal subordination of women."
