Kinch, Ashby McDalton.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 3988A, 2001.
Central to medieval love poetry is the figure of dying for love--found in works by Marcabru, Bernart de Ventadorn, Dante, Petrarch, Chaucer (BD, TC, complaints), and Alain Chartier, as well as in the Harley lyrics and the Findern manuscript. Donne…
Salemi, Joseph S.
Chaucer Review 15 (1981): 209-23.
Although the frame of TC is Boethian determinism, within it works the playful hand of Fortune (and the word "play" occurs frequently, with a variety of senses). The three major personages represent different attitudes toward freedom of choice and…
Fisher, William Nobles.
Dissertation Abstracts International 36 (1976): 7435A.
Through the game created by the Host and other references to playing, Chaucer created a festive structure for his tales whose movement leads the narrators, their audience, and the modern reader towards an ever-broadening perspective on life.
Pugh, William White Tison.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 2705A, 2001.
Play and game reveal to knightly protagonists human imperfection and divine truth. Pandarus is the "game-master" of TC, and Troilus achieves perspective through the game of courtly love.
The "first survey of medieval English plant names to appear in print," Hunt's work covers 1,800 names, 500 not found in the OED, of interest to botanists and lexicologists as well as nonspecialists.
Smith, D. Vance.
South Atlantic Quarterly 98: 367-414, 1999.
Like Freud and Boethius, Chaucer views tragedy as the temporal transformation of a literal or figurative space. Integral to this understanding of tragedy is the notion of memory as a function of death, a relationship apparent in BD, MkT, and HF.…
Johnson, Ian.
Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen and Lodi Nauta, eds. Boethius in the Middle Ages: Latin and Vernacular Tradition of the 'Consolatio Philosophiae' (Leiden, New York, and Koln: Brill, 1997), pp. 217-42.
Helps clarify the place and meaning of John Walton's translation of Boethius's "Consolatio Philosophiae" (1410) by contrasting it with Chaucer's Bo.
Taavitsainen, Irma, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta, and Matti Rissanen, eds.
Berlin and New York : Gruyter, 2000.
Twenty-seven essays by various authors, addressing issues of linguistic history, dialect, lexicon, syntax, and prosody. Includes an introduction by the editors and a subject index. For six essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Placing Middle…
Wolfe, Matthew C.
Chaucer Review 33: 427-31, 1999.
It is possible that Ret was written as a general work, found among the papers and drafts of CT, and then put at the end of that work by scribes and early editors. If thought to apply to Chaucer's entire corpus, Ret broadens our view of the poet as a…
Knight, Stephen.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 445-61.
Knight calls for a critical confrontation with the semiotics of place in Chaucer, commenting on a number of topographical references in Chaucer's works, suggesting closer examination of implications of places to which Chaucer traveled (especially…
Walling, Amanda.
Studies in Philology 115 (2018): 1-24.
With Albertanus of Brescia's "Liber de consolationis et consilii" as a common source, Mel and MerT both confront issues of counsel, gender, and lordship. MerT offers a skeptical, antifeminist, homosocial reassessment of the relatively optimistic…
Howes, Laura L., ed.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007.
Eleven essays by various authors, with an introduction by the editor and a survey of spatial theory and medieval literature by John M. Ganim. For five essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative under…
Simpson, James.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 95-112.
Compares what PardT and Erasmus's "Pilgrimage of Pure Devotion" reveal about the "locatability" and placelessness of the Church, exclusion from Church locations, and disgust associated with such exclusion.
Discusses "the narrator's rhetoric of pity," alluding to Augustine, Aristotle, Cicero, and others, while arguing that both pity and poetry involve "a kind of authentic inauthenticity" that is unstable, paradoxical, and contingent in LGW.
Lorenz, Lee.
Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1981.
Bowdlerized version of MilT, adapted and illustrated by Lorenz for children. Carpenter John is Alison's grandfather in this version, and Nicholas connives to steal money. Absolon is eliminated.
Bolton, W. F.
Modern Philology 84 (1987): 401-407.
Yearbook law reports and plea-roll law records contain information about members of Chaucer's "legal 'circle'" (p. 402) and Thomas Pynchbeck, Chaucer's prototype for the Man of Law. Legal terminology from these sources informs the portrait in both…
Biebel, Elizabeth M.
Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal, eds. Food and Eating in Medieval Europe (London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1998), pp. 15-26.
Surveys references to food in CT, arguing that they capitalize on traditional associations of the "feminized Christ" and butchered animals.
Anecdotal revisitation of Harbledown, Bobbe-up-and-down, a mile from Canterbury. Chaucer himself likely traveled the Blean in official duties. As a type of Dante's "selva oscura," the Blean may have been in Chaucer mind in BD, TC, KnT, FrT, NPT,…
Historical fiction that reinterprets CT from the points of view of the Wife of Bath and the Prioress, integrating the pilgrimage plot with those of individual tales.
Markland, Murray F.
Research Studies: A Quarterly Publication of Washington State University 33 (1965): 64-77.
Explores how each of the three major characters in TC seeks "happiness in earthly love." Even though they know that such pursuit is misguided, they are in "an unadmitted conspiracy not to recognize" their error, deceiving themselves and each other,…
Suzuki, Masayuki.
English Department Journal (Miyagi Gakuin Women's University) 45 (2017): 27-54.
Analyzes William Blake's "Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims" by paying special attention to its ordering of the pilgrims, and investigates Blake's understanding of Chaucer and his intention in his classification of the pilgrims. In Japanese.
Fitzpatrick, Joan.
In Charlotte Boyce and Joan Fitzpatrick, A History of Food in Literature: From the Fourteenth Century to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 15–62.
Includes discussion of food, drink, abstinence, feasting, gluttony, hunting, etc. in CT (pp. 35-52), observing Chaucer's consistent attention to moral and social implications, and comparing his depictions with those found in "Piers Plowman," "Sir…
Dyas, Dee, ed.
York: University of York; Nottingham: St. John's College, [2007].
Interactive, illustrated exploration of the "multiple meanings of pilgrimage within the Christian tradition," especially as expressed in the Middle Ages, although set in the broader context of worldwide practice. Includes a wide variety of…
