Browse Items (16012 total)

Otsuki, Hiroshi.   Baika Literary Bulletin (Baika Women's University) 34: 1-27, 2000.
Identifies and discusses the implications of ninety-four proverbs in CT, most of which concern human relationships.

Cannon, Christopher.   Textual Practice 24 (2010): 407-34.
Explores medieval definitions and aesthetic responses to proverbs by examining "The Proverbs of Alfred" and Mel, exploring how each depends upon "acts of recognition that are produced by the repetition of well-worn truths." Both works are examples of…

Taylor, Karla.   Stephen A. Barney, ed. Chaucer's Troilus: Essays in Criticism (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1980), pp. 277-96.
In conflating love and poetics in TC, Chaucer uses proverbs both to validate truth and to express the limitations of traditional language. The attempt to secure stability through this language and the failure of the attempt are part of Chaucer's…

Mieder, Wolfgang.   Westport, Conn. : Greenwood, 2004.
An introduction to the study of proverbs (paremiology), covering definition and classification, several examples over time, scholarly approaches, and analyses of the contexts in which proverbs appear (e.g., song, advertising, cartoons, and…

Kramer, Johanna.   Chaucer Review 57 (2022): 68-100.
Highlights the utility of proverbs and offers them as a solution to the problem of knowledge in SqT. Emphasizes that proverbs provide new insights for late medieval textual cultures as a microgenre that transcends social and economic boundaries in…

Winick, Stephen D.   Proverbium: Yearbook of International Proverb Scholarship 11 (1994): 259-81.
Challenges B. J. Whiting's (1934) intuitive definition of proverbs and offers an ethnographic definition, focusing on "strategies" of performance of the proverbs in CT and TC and the utility of proverbs in effecting "normalization, valorization, and…

Boffey, Julia.   Huntington Library Quarterly 58 (1996): 37-47
Unique Scottish attribution of "Walton's Prosperity" (a copy of "Index" 2820) to Chaucer in British Library MS Cotton Vitellius E. xi suggests fifteenth-century reception of Chaucer as "fount of proverbial wisdom."

Stanley, E. G.   Notes and Queries 260 (2015): 358-60.
Given his "frequent equivocalness" on matters of high seriousness, there is good reason to believe that Prov, a "riddling poem" (NIMEV 3914), is Chaucer's work, philologists' objections on the basis of its inaccurate "compace"/"embrace" rhyme…

Bradbury, Nancy Mason.   Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 237-42.
Bradbury addresses Chaucer's uses of proverbs as a "crucial" form of "quoting behavior"--a form of "soft source" important to Chaucer's art and its reception in manuscripts and early editions. Draws examples from KnT and refers to uses of proverbs in…

Burnley, J. D.   Notes and Queries 221 (1976): 148-52.
The literary history of the horse Bayard suggests that Chaucer's point in the reference is to underscore "a lack of providence" in Troilus conduct.

Ames, Ruth M.   Paul E. Szarmach and Bernard S. Levy, eds. The Fourteenth Century. Acta 4. (Binghampton: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, SUNY Binghampton, 1977), pp. 87-105.
Drawing on exegetical tradition, Chaucer effectively combines piety and irreverence in his handling of biblical themes and characters. In Mel and MLT he presents Old Testament platitudes and stereotypes as practical moral guides, while in MilT and…

Dwyer, June.   Studies in Short Fiction 35: 307-18, 1998.
Two possible versions of women's attitudes toward violence appear in WBPT: WBT idealizes women as a civilizing force working to curb male violence; WBP portrays a woman who uses violence when other means of control fail. Both constructs of female…

Yeager, Stephen M.   Critical Inquiry 45 (2019): 747-61.
Focuses on how protocol, a term for systems of rules allowing communication and behavior, is frequently used in digital environments, and builds on Alexander Galloway’s comparison of internet protocol to chivalry in "Protocol: How Control Exists…

Lavezzo, Kathy.   In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Describes the concern with the "embodiment" of peasants in medieval estates theory, explores physicality in the GP description of the Miller, and examines rebelliousness and animal imagery in MilPT, aligning them with "peasant poetics" and the…

Guthrie, Steven R.   Chaucer Review 23 (1988): 30-49.
While Chaucer's line is iambic pentameter, it differs from Renaissance pentameter by virtue of a French Romance presence so strong as to constitute a motive rhythmic force in the poetry.

Otten, Charlotte F.   Chaucer Review 5.4 (1971): 277-87.
Analyzes the "comic unity" of the Pluto-Proserpine episode of MerT with the four biblical accounts women to: Rebecca, Judith, Abigail, and Esther (4.1362-74), all figures of deliverance rather than deception. By association, Proserpine should be read…

Kerr, John M.   Dissertation Abstracts International 62: 163A, 2001.
Dante and Chaucer elaborate on the three aspects of the classical goddess who appears as "Proserpina in hell, Diana on earth, and Luna" in heaven. Medieval commentary associates her with memory. Chaucer treats her recurrently, sometimes parodically,…

Bravo [García], Antonio, ed.   [Oviedo]: Universidad de Oviedo, Servicio de Publicaciones, 1998.
This anthology of Middle English writing includes MilT and PardT(edited from the Ellesmere manuacript), with facing-page glosses and a brief introduction.

Kuczynski, Michael P.   Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995.
Studies the influence of the book of Psalms on moral discourse in late-medieval England.

Teramura, Misha.   Postmedieval 10 (2019): 50-67.
Summarizes the attribution and reception of Anel in the early modern period and views the six-line poem appended to Caxton’s edition of Anel, known as
"Chaucer’s Prophecy," as a source for the Fool's speech in Shakespeare's "King Lear."

Berry, Craig A.   Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe, and Gareth Griffith, eds. Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 212-23.
Explores the thematic concern with poetic tradition in the narrator-Africanus exchange of PF and in Spenser's "Mutabilitie Cantos," arguing that Chaucer and Spenser share an "interest in rhetorically linking the earth-bound poet with a community of…

Nohara, Yasuhiro.   English Review (Momoyama Gakuin University) 13 (1998): 35-49.
Surveys Chaucer's uses of ye and thou forms in CT, discussing plurality, formality, and other usage. In Japanese, with English abstract.

Nathan, Norman.   Modern Language Quarterly 17 (1956): 39-42.
Records Chaucer's consistent and conventional usage of "ye" and "thou" in FrT, showing how it achieves "irony and humor." Attends to manuscript variants and opines that "that the English language lost something by the abandonment of the singular form…

Mediaeval Studies 21 (1959): 193-201.  
Tabulates and assesses the uses of singular "ye" and "thou" in CT, considering usage norms, rhyme patterns, and scribal variants, and identifying patterns of high incidence of "incorrect" usage in CYPT, KnT, WBP, and Mel, while ParsT is also highly…

Kolinsky, Muriel.   Papers on Language and Literature 3, supplement (1967): 40-49.
Tabulates the uses of second-person singular pronouns ("ye" and "thou") in speeches between pilgrims in CT, and focuses on instances in which the Host uses these pronouns to address his fellow pilgrims, observing a concern with rank.
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