Kang, Du-Hyoung.
Journal of English Language and Literature (Korea) 37 (1991): 825-41.
NPT subverts the idea of tragedy reflected in MkT, and KnT counterpoints its tragic view of fate. Diverse and comprehensive in his outlook, Chaucer is not content with a simple formula.
Dane, Joseph A.
Notes and Queries 237 (1992): 276-78.
Line 3164 of NPT includes a pun, for "confusio" is also a technical term referring to the meaning of words. The joke: an apparent mistranslation is not one.
"Glossa Ordinaria" and NPT demonstrate the medieval tendency to accompany a base text with another, more interpretive one, generating further discourse, discouraging closure, and resulting in compound, sometimes conflicting, interpretations or…
In CT, Chaucer "counters authority with the fracturing and multiple perspective of comedy," most clearly seen in NPT, which best represents the structure of the CT as a whole. Chaucer's multiplicity is ultimately, however, like Boethius's leap "to…
Hagen, Susan K.
Medieval Perspectives 4-5 (1989-90): 42-52.
Recent feminist study of the early Christian movement reveals that women enjoyed a high degree of authority and autonomy. Read against this background, SNT exhibits the changed status of women by the late fourteenth century.
Johnson, Lynn Staley.
Studies in Philology 89 (1992): 314-33.
Reads SNT as paralleling Wycliffite dissent, arguing that Chaucer's alterations of his sources emphasize Cecilia's challenges to institutional values and power.
Longsworth, Robert M.
Chaucer Review 27 (1992): 87-96.
Considers transformation "both as a theme and as a methodological problem." In SNT, faith is more "real" than experience, while in CYT, the "real" is not accessible to the Canon. Chaucer experiments with the relationship between the material and…
Patton, Celeste A.
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 399-417.
The Manciple evinces linguistic fraud through his digression on language, his shaping of the crow fable, and his impersonation of his mother's voice arguing against speech (a mispresentation of Jean de Meun's discourse of Reason and a foil to the…
ManT is central to understanding the CT. Its primary theme is a warning against the danger of intentional blindness to sin or vice. Through comparison with Machaut's "Voir dit," we see that the bird in ManT illustrates the folly of self-deception.
ManT expresses ambivalence about verbal signification and asserts the power of poetry. The role of Phoebus (a figure of poetry), imagery of caging, the figure of the crow, and violations of poetic decorum affirm humanist poetics, despite the…
Sadlek, Gregory M.
Klaus Jankofsky, ed. The South English Legendary: A Critical Assessment (Tubingen: A. Francke, 1992), pp. 49-64.
In "St. Michael," the image of the Devil's five fingers is a homiletic, mnemonic device to convey a lesson on sin. Chaucer's version in ParsT has a clear literary quality.
Haines, Victor Yelverton.
Florilegium 10 (1991, for 1988): 127-49.
A close reading of Ret, with attention to medieval meanings of such words as "revoke" and "guilt," suggests that Chaucer takes responsibility not for writing works of vanity but for wrong readings of his poetry made possible by his habits of ironic…
Machan, Tim William.
A. N. Doane and others, eds. Old English and New: Essays in Language and Linguistics in Honor of Frederic G. Cassidy (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 111-24.
Explores Chaucer's lexical and stylistic experimentation in Bo, assessing how its 516 different words reflect the philosophical content of the original and a desire for lexical variety.
Anderson, J. J.
English Studies 73 (1992): 417-30.
Unlike Machaut's knight, Chaucer's Black Knight, when describing his lady, shifts his attention from her outward appearance to her inner nature, as if he gradually comes to realize her value to him--a realization that helps him cope with her death.
The narrator of the dream poems is not a consistent character,as previously thought, but a progressive one, embodying Chaucer's later preoccupation with experience versus authority. The narrator of BD is a doer; that of PF, a reader. Their…
Buckler, Patricia Prandini.
JoAnna Stephens Mink and Janet Doubler Ward, eds. Joinings and Disjoinings: The Significance of Marital Status in Literature (Bowling Green Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1991), pp. 6-18.
Composed in the context of the bubonic plague, BD encourages rejection of despair.
Davis, Stephen Brian.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1992): 1154A.
Both the historical basis for BD and its relation to Machaut's narratives have posed problems, but the dream-vision form can resolve them. Whereas Machaut used it to divide himself from his patrons, Chaucer employed it to indicate their "shared…
Gross, Jeffrey Martin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1992): 3919A-20A.
Chaucer's handling of the dreamer-narrator of BD proves sensitive and subtle in its exploration of genre, irony, tension, and artistic capability; the poem foreshadows Chaucer's later mastery.
Salda, Michael Norman.
Chaucer Review 27 (1992): 111-25.
The inspiration for the text of the painted chamber with its "text and gloss" in BD was St. Stephen's chapel with its lavishly painted walls. Previous efforts to correlate Chaucer's text with particular illuminated manuscripts have been futile.
Benson, Larry D.
English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700 03 (1992): 1-28.
Doubtful of M. L. Samuels's argument that Equat is Chaucer's work, Benson examines dominate and recessive spelling forms to argue that it is not. Compares spelling in Equat with that of various manuscripts of TC and CT.
Partridge, Stephen.
English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700 03 (1992): 29-37.
Compares the vocabulary and style of Equat, Astr, and other contemporary scientific treatises, concluding that variations between Equat and Astr cast doubt on Chaucer's authorship of the former.
Examines late-fourteenth-century English attitudes toward crusading as background for Chaucer's view of the Orient as a form of the "Other." Evident in LGW, Chaucer's views reflect the prejudices of his age, which regarded Orientals as irredeemable.
