Ericson, Eston Everett.
English Studies 42 (1961): 306.
Offers evidence from Thomas Dekker's "The Bel-man of London" (1608) that supports reading "to pull a finch" as "having to do with extortion based upon a trumped-up charge of fornication," hence an accusation against the Summoner (GP 1.652) for…
Contextualizes FranT using Hannah Arendt's "The Human Condition," and argues that the tale represents another moment in CT where journeys end abruptly before the destination is reached. Considers how the tale functions as "a parable of how household…
Argues that public reading was popular because people enjoyed listening to books in company. Aural audiences included literate upper-middle-class and upper-class readers well into the Renaissance, when aural reading changed. Elite audiences…
Lawton, David.
Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 93-107.
Theorizes "public interiorities" in terms of literary voice, Augustinian self-awareness, and Jürgen Habermus's conceptualization of the "public sphere," discussing them as expressions or perceptions of stances or outlooks that are neither universal…
Because violated virginity must be read as a violation of social cohesion, the so-called digressions on guardianship in PhyT are central to the theme of guarding the public good.
Compares relations between cosmology and psychology in medieval and modern understandings of poetry, emphasizing the concentric and expanding perspectives prompted by Middle English imagery and world views, exemplified in several lyrics. Includes…
To understand Chaucer as a political court poet and a philosophical poet, we must read his prose as well as his poetry. Wong considers variations between Bo and its Boethian source, Mel as a model for how Chaucer treats his sources, Astr as a source…
Robertson, Elizabeth.
Elizabeth Robertson and Christine M. Rose, eds. Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 281-310.
Examines "the role rape plays in the formation of Criseyde's character," contrasting Criseyde with Helen of Troy and Lucretia. Criseyde is a "choosing subject," and the language of rape helps to define the ambiguities of choice she faces.
Matthews, David.
Gordon McMullan and David Matthews, eds. Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 74-88.
Matthews focuses on Thomas Speght's 1598 and 1602 editions of Chaucer and their role in re-imagining Chaucer as an Early Modern rather than a medieval author. The prefatory poem, "The Reader to Geffrey Chaucer," suggests that early editions had…
Ebi, Hisato.
Hisao Turu, ed. Reading Chaucer's Book of the Duchess. Medieval English Literature Symposium Series, no. 5 (Tokyo: Gaku Shobo Press, 1991), pp. 171-200 (in Japanese).
Allegorical elements of BD are closely connected with the theory of melancholy in the late-medieval period. Emphasizes parallelism between mental diseases (melancholy) and the creative mind.
Harwood, Britton J.
English Literary History 68: 1-27, 2001.
Examines the "unconscious content" of RvT through a number of Chaucer's own "identifications": with Sir Edmund de la Pole, owner of the mill at Trumpington and brother of Sir Roger de la Pole; with Symkyn and the exorbitance of his social…
Zhang, Lian.
American Notes and Queries 32, no. 2 (2019): 78–79.
Reports that two Taiwanese "translations" of CT (by fabricated translators) were actually reprints/adaptations of Fang Zhong's translation from mainland China.
De Looze, Laurence.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997.
Defines a genre that "plays with questions of truth, authority, and the relationship between the life 'in' a book and life 'outside' a book," a genre that both asserts autobiographical verity and calls "into question the possibility that the…
Mel resembles several other late-fourteenth-century retellings of this story as a proper model for wifely imitation. In using the form of the scholastic arts lecture, however, Prudence co-opts a masculine discursive style and its authoritative…
Pakkala-Weckström, Mari.
Chaucer Review 35: 399-411, 2001.
The debate between Prudence and Melibee is the struggle for "maistrie" between husband and wife. Learned and sophisticated, Prudence exhibits "feminine powers of persuasion." She changes from being "humble and respectful" to being "impatient,"…
The vivid association of the dramatic action of TC with its physical settings reflects a medieval rhetorical technique whereby architectural images ("loci") were employed as aids to organization and memory. The perception of the significance of…
Brewer, Derek.
Danielle Buschinger and Arlette Sancery, eds. Mélanges de langue, littérature et civilisation offerts à André Crépin à l'occasion de son quatre-vingtième anniversaire (Amiens: Presses du Centre d'Études Médiévales, Université de Picardie-Jules Verne, 2008), pp. 59-62.
Considers friendly and hostile relationships, commenting on GP and TC.
Landman, James [H.]
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 20 (1998): 1-39.
In MLT, the torment of Constance is explicitly linked with the judicial torture of Alla's messenger. A notion of a "single, certain truth" underlies the concern with torture in the Tale, also reflected in the attitude toward fiction expressed in MLP…
Park, Youngwon.
Medieval English Studies 06 (1998): 163-95.
KnT reveals a providential pattern that is both Boethian and Pauline--"all things work together for the good." The gods of the Tale are pagan, but the outcome of the story shows Christian Providence.
Pelen, Marc M.
Papers on Language and Literature 30 (1994): 132-56.
The narratives of Trevet and Gower turn the story of Constance into a secular moral fable. Similarly, "the Man of Law exposes himself to Chaucer's irony ...: it is this transcendent freedom from the moral content of the legend that the Man of Law…
Whiting, Bartlett Jere, with the collaboration of Helen Wescott Whiting
Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1968.
Lists proverbs, proverbial phrases, and sententia from early English writings, arranged alphabetically by topic, with quotations and citations of multiple occurrences in chronological order and indexes of important words and proper nouns. Chaucer is…
Illustrates Chaucer's "comic misapplication" of "monitory elements" as a device of characterization in CT, discussing how the misapplied expressions of traditional wisdom can be used cleverly (as with Nicholas in MilT), foolishly (John in MilT and…
