An electronic text of "Canterbury Tales" can give explicit attention to important philological issues--e.g., metrics, Middle English dialects, pronunciation, etymologies--so that class time can be devoted to the literary, historical, social, and…
Blamires, Alcuin.
Leeds Studies in English 25 (1994): 83-110.
Examining Chaucer's construction of gender roles and role reversals in light of contemporary medieval texts, Blamires argues that Chaucer manipulated gender stereotypes. The poet ingeniously contrived Troilus and Anelida to confound specific…
Partridge, Stephen.
Daniel Pinti, ed. Writing After Chaucer: Essential Reading in Chaucer and the Fifteenth Century (London and New York: Garland, 1998), pp. 2-26.
Focusing on manuscripts of Chaucer's works, Partridge assesses the habits of scribes and book owners in the fifteenth century, showing how variants among texts alter meaning and how fifteenth-century readers, aware of such variants, made…
Smallwood, Richard.
In Jayne Lewis and Lisa Zunshine, eds. Approaches to Teaching the Works of John Dryden (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2013), pp. 164-68.
Advocates teaching John Dryden's "Fables, Ancient and Modern" as "his most accomplished poetical production," discussing the status-resistant view of natural gentility in his translation of WBT and of Boccaccio's tale of Sigismunda and Guiscardo.…
Archibald, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Archibald, and Ad Putter, eds. The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 139-53.
Archibald surveys subversions and satires of Arthurian literature, commenting that Chaucer "seems to be fairly hostile to the Arthurian world," even if implicitly so.
Speed, Diane.
Sydney Studies in English 22 (1996): 3-14.
Comparison of WBT with its analogues reveals Chaucer's manipulation of generic expectations to create a sequence of "evocations and subversions of romance optimism." The hero's conventional quest is supplanted by "a textual quest on the part of the…
Pouzet, Jean-Pascal.
Comptes-rendus de l'Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres 1 (2004): 169-213
Pouzet surveys the late medieval activities of Augustinian canons in the production of Anglo-Norman and Middle English manuscripts and texts. Considers evidence of the commitment of members of the order to the transmission of Chaucer material.
Dor, Juliette.
Guyonne Leduc, ed. Réalité et représentations des Amazones. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2008, pp. 257-72.
Feminist and postcolonial reconsideration of the figure of Emily that focuses on the Knight's adjustment of traditional material; Emily has not submitted to patriarchal values, despite the Knight's modifications. In French.
Examines Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. 1.6 (the Findern manuscript), which includes extracts from PF and part of LGW, and considers its "taste for writings relating to female desire." Argues that "expression of female same-sex desires must be…
Bowers, John M.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 301-24.
Examines the "same-sex union of adoptive brotherhood" between the Summoner and the Pardoner and assesses the economic underpinnings of sworn brotherhood in FrT and SumT. Chaucer's alignment of homosexual and heterosexual issues in the Marriage Group…
Burger, Glenn, and Steven Kruger, eds.
Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2001.
Ten essays on queer issues, with responses by Kruger. Includes readings on a selection of medieval texts, including Christine de Pizan and Dante. For an essay and a response that pertain to Chaucer, search for Queering the Middle Ages under…
Pugh assesses the "nonnormative" features of several genres in medieval literature--lyric, fabliau, tragedy, and romance--exploring not only representations and suggestions of homosexual behaviors but also how these behaviors disrupt readers'…
In his initial governance of the carnivalesque "play" of tale-telling, Harry Bailly augments his masculinity by "queering" his fellow pilgrims; by the end of CT, his own masculinity is "undermined" by his inability to control the carnival he set in…
Pugh, Tison.
Journal of Narrative Technique 33: 115-42, 2003.
Reading the Wife of Bath's romance through her fabliau spirit reveals Chaucer's distaste for the Arthurian romance tradition (elsewhere seen in SqT, NPT) and (as seen in SqT, Th, and FranT) his ironic attitude toward male narrative authority, his…
Federico, Sylvia.
Medium Aevum 79.1 (2010): 25-46.
Includes discussion of MilT, arguing that it "participates in the scandalous discourse on the perceived problem of Richard II's deviant sexuality," reading the scene of the hot coulter as an echo of the sodomitical execution of Edward II that engages…
Hsy, Jonathan, and Candace Barrington.
David Hadbawnik, ed. Postmodern Poetics and Queer Medievalisms: Time Mechanics (Boston: De Gruyter, 2022), pp. 159-77.
Explores how the "circular and recursive form" of Agbabi's poetic adaptations of CT in her "Telling Tales" (2015) "showcases" the "queer time of medievalism and the queer form of adaptation." Focuses on Agbabi's versions of Mel ("Unfinished…
Magnani, Roberta.
In Nicole Nyffenegger and Katrin Rupp, eds. Writing on Skin in the Age of Chaucer (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2918), pp. 195-219.
Demonstrates how the Wife of Bath's resistance to "straight" clerical exegesis is reflected in her skin's rejection of violently enforced "cutaneous legibility" and the forced reading of her "seinte Venus seel" as an innate and legible marker of her…
Dinshaw, Carolyn.
Essays in Medieval Studies 16: 79-98, 1999.
Plenary address to the Illinois Medieval Association; adapted from Dinshaw's Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (SAC 23 [2001], no. 184). Discusses late-medieval court records concerning cross-dressing and…
Bishop, Kathleen A.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 16-26.
Asserts several parallels between the window scene in MilT and reports of the sodomitical execution of Edward II.
Sauer, Michelle.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 23.2 (2016): 17-26.
Urges clarification and deployment of queer pedagogy in teaching medieval literature, citing examples of its usefulness in a classroom discussion of production and reproduction in NPT, nuances of "deviance" in Middle English, and the tangibility of…
Although not lovers, Troilus and Pandarus express deep affection for each other, and Pandarus gains Troilus's dependence. In addition, Pandarus's speeches, silences, and gaze (staging sexual scenes for his pleasure), as well as more fluid medieval…
Integrates queer theory and ecocriticism to reassess historical manuscript concepts of Adam, including contemporary print and digital media examples. Examines "medieval homosocial networks of textual production" and applies ecotheoretical viewpoints…
Burger, Glenn, and Steven F. Kruger.
Tanya Agathocleous and Ann C. Dean, eds. Teaching Literature: A Companion (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 31-40.
Argues for an expansion of the notion of queer readings of Chaucer, encouraging a broad concern with questions of identity and its formulations. Comments on possible queer approaches to Chaucer the Pilgrim and the "Marriage Group" of CT.
Burger, Glenn.
English Studies in Canada 20 (1994): 153-70.
Queer theory, by emphasizing provisionality, enables us to think of sexuality and culture differently; it provides a means for gay/lesbian/bi- readers to engage Chaucer. Contemporary constructions of sex, gender, and sexuality can be used as…
Barr, Helen.
Bonnie Lander-Johnson and Eleanor Decamp, eds. Blood Matters: Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400-1700 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), pp. 238-48.
Describes the iconography of Thomas Becket's blood in Canterbury Cathedral and its “Christomimetic” associations, and explores parallels between Becket's blood and the Pardoner's blood in the "Canterbury Interlude" that precedes the "Tale of…
