Dello Bouro, Carmen J.
Darby, Pa.: Norwood Editions, 1981.
Includes essays by Leonhard Schmitz (1881), George Dawson (1886), William Calder (1892), John W. Hales (1893), Frank J. Mather (1899), Henry C. Beeching (1900), Alfred Ainger (1905), George H. Cowling (1934), and "Chaucer at Woodstock" (1882).
Mast, Isabelle.
Katherine J. Lewis, Noël James Menuge, and Kim M. Phillips, eds. Young Medieval Women (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999), pp. 103-32.
In Confessio amantis and his other works, Gower avoids the word "rape," perhaps because of its ambiguity, and he presents forced coitus in ways sympathetic to the victim and cognizant of female repression. Mast includes recurrent comparisons with…
Amsler, Mark.
Elizabeth Robertson and Christine M. Rose, eds. Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 61-96.
Although "mythographers allegorized Ovid's rape narratives as stories of cosmological creation or spiritual desire," Christine de Pizan presents Apollo's assault on Daphne (Épîstre d'Otha) as a disfigurement of the female body; in his tale of…
Saunders, Corinne J.
Cambridge : D. S. Brewer, 2001.
Surveys modern and postmodern theorizing of rape and addresses rape in medieval England. Topics include secular, legal notions of rape; rape in canon law, theology, and confessional manuals (especially vernacular ones); rape motifs in hagiography…
Harris, Carissa M.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Comments on several medieval legal cases involving charges of rape, describes the role of rape in pastourelle tradition, and argues that, even though "no form of justice . . . can fully undo rape's harms," WBT "demonstrates the pressing need for…
Richman, Gerald.
Studia Neophilologica 61 (1989): 161-65.
The rapist-knight's plea to "Tak al my good and let my body go" (WBT 3.1061) highlights his role reversal not only with the raped maiden but also with women bound to legalized rape by the concept of the "marriage debt." Richman suggests that the…
Schleiner, Winfried.
Comparative Literature Studies 9 (1972): 365-75.
Argues that the theme of testing female patience, found in ClT, Chretien's "Erec and Enide," and Robert Greene's "Friar Bacon and Friar Bongay," "demonstrates the interdependence of traditional motif, aesthetic sensibility, and societal structure."…
Bestul, Thomas H.
Medieval Feminist Forum 45.1 (2009): 68-92.
Biographical sketch of Bressie, focusing on her work with John M. Manly, Edith Rickert, and Lilian Redstone on the Chaucer life-records and her unsuccessful competition with Martin Crow to publish works related to Chaucer. Bestul admires Bressie's…
Folch-Pi, Willa Babcock.
Notes and Queries 212 (1967): 10-11.
Translates a passage from Ramon Llull's thirteenth-century "De les Maravalles del Mon" (also known as "Felix" or "Livre de Meravalles") that has "marked similarities" with the account of the first deception in CYT.
Eads, Martha Greene.
Comparative Literature 63.1 (2013): 75-87.
In discussing Denise Giardina's novels set in Appalachia, offers observations regarding the effective portrayal of life in the mountains of the South, and compares this understanding to how the original language of Chaucer enhances the reading and…
Middle English "ragen" acquires meanings within a defined semantic field of sexual activity and then attracts to itself a limited set of further energetic sexual meanings. Among instances illustrating this usage are GP (1.257), MilT (1.3774), and…
Jones, Mike Rodman.
Burlington, Ver.: Ashgate, 2011.
Includes Chaucerian apocrypha, "The Plowman's Tale" and "Jack Upland," in an examination of the figure of the plowman in English early modern imagination, from "Piers Plowman" to the 1590s. Argues that there was a "highly politicized tradition of…
Clarifies medieval understanding of the romance genre by exploring medieval catalogs of romances and applying George Lakoff's theory of "radial" categories. Includes comments on several of Chaucer's works and on several medieval lists that do not…
Whitaker, Cord J.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Treats geography, lineal descent, and "religious and political difference" as racial markers in MLT and its analogues, suggesting that skin color "lurks in the shadows." Designed for pedagogical use, includes several exercises and questions for…
Argues that racial differentiation--generally associated with the early modern period--was not necessarily secondary to religious distinctions in the late medieval period, using MLT and other texts as evidence.
Gordon's translation of "Le Roman de Troie" distorts Benoit by omitting important passages. The most critical omission is one of a moralizing nature which emphasizes the fickleness of Criseyde and all women. Gordon must have been influenced by the…
Skala, Elizabeth.
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, John T. Thompson, and Sarah Baechle, eds. New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), pp. 363-83.
Examines Derek Pearsall's Variorum Edition of NPT and suggests that the Nun's Priest's "self-conscious literary performance transforms" the tales of CT, which are enhanced by Chaucer's quotations, allusions, and references to his own works. In…
Peyton, Henry H. III.
Tennessee Philological Bulletin 29 (1992): 6-13.
Compared to figures in Boethius's "Consolatio," Pandarus appears neither as Philosophia nor as Fortune but rather as an amplification of Fortuna. The leaping and hopping of TC 1-2 echo the upward climb of Fortuna's wheel, while the silence and…
Holford-Strevens, Leofranc.
Notes and Queries 240 (1995): 164-65.
In light of a passage in a Bibliotheque Nationale Paris manuscript, the sense of the phrase "quid iuris questio" in GP is "The question arises of what is the law (upon these facts)."
Examines the history, purpose, and effects of "quick fiction." Royle draws examples from his own writings, as well as the works of past authors, noting how "quick fiction" explores themes of "lifedeath [sic], spectrality, and radical otherness,"…
Ridley, Florence H.
Chaucer Review 16 (1981): 101-106.
Chaucerians should welcome the new critical techniques, which will help them determine what it is in the words that causes us to respond as we do. The application of these methods will transcend cultural differences that separate us from Chaucer.
