Mitchell, Susan.
Proceedings of the PMR Conference 1 (1976): 67-72.
Contrasts Dorigen of FranT with the biblical Eve: where Eve falls because of her desire for knowledge, Dorigen nearly falls for lack of knowledge, particularly her lack of self-knowledge as is evident in her complaint against the rocks and her…
Nafde, Aditi.
D.Phil Dissertation. University of Oxford, 2012. Dissertation Abstracts International C73.08 and C81.07(E). Fully accessible at https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b2c67783-b797-494a-b792-368c14d1fe49. Abstract available via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
Includes analysis the "mise-en-page" of twenty-four Chaucer manuscripts, including assessment of "borders, initials, paraphs, rubrics, running titles, speaker markers, glosses and notes," and arguing that--like Gower and Hoccleve manuscripts--they…
Hanning, Robert W.
Modern Language Quarterly 45 (1984): 395-403.
Review article comparing John M. Ganim's discussion of Middle English narrative in TC and other Middle English works with Lynn Staley Johnson's treatment of the subject in the "Pearl" poems.
Ruud, Jay.
Barbara Olive and David Sprunger, eds. Proceedings of the Tenth Annual Northern Plains Conference on Earlier British Literature (Moorhead, Minn.: Concordia College, 2002), pp. 8-21.
Explicates works by three twentieth-century poets who have made Chaucer the subject of their work: Benjamin Brawley's sonnet "Chaucer" (1922), e. e. cummings's untitled sonnet from his collection "Xaipé" (1950), and Ted Hughes's "Chaucer" (1998).…
TC is a drama of "entente," concerned more with why people do things than what they do. Chaucer uses "entente" here much more heavily than in any of his earlier works and evokes its numerous meanings. As the poem progresses, there is a "slippage of…
Surveys uses of primary and secondary interjections (i.e., exclamations and oaths) in Anglo-Saxon through modern English, exploring how the "inventive ability is more marked in some centuries than in others." Comments on oaths based in religion (God,…
Lawler, Traugott.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987), pp. 83-91.
Though deconstruction is a useful tool for breaking down troublesome parts of CT, its "wholesale use" in the interpretation of Chaucer's poetry does great discredit to the author. Deconstructive criticism tends to place any author in a position…
Knapp, Peggy A.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987), pp. 73-81.
Deconstructive readings of CT can reopen the study of historical "particulars," allowing readings from various interpretative communities. Instead of generalized acceptance of "the medieval world view" or of direct historical references suggesting…
Travis, Peter W.
Peter L. Allen and Jeff Rider, ed. Reflections in the Frame: New Perspectives on the Study of Medieval Literature. Special issue of Exemplaria 3 (1991): 135-58.
Ret is an example of a Derridean "parergon," simultaneously marginal to and an important element of CT. It allows for both humanistic and exegetical readings, producing a "hermeneutic double-bind," separated by an aporetic gap that generates new…
D'Arcens addresses Helgeland's film as an entry point for deconstructing medievalist studies. Such studies, she suggests, reflect a latent Platonism that regards the Middle Ages as a stable standard against which to measure texts and contemporary…
Edwards, A. S. G.
Martin Davies, ed. Incunabula: Studies in Fifteenth-Century Books Presented to Lotte Hellinga. (London: British Library, 1999), pp. 493-506
Surveys the quantity and quality of decoration in books printed by Caxton, including works by Chaucer. Speculates why there is less decoration in Caxton's printed books than in those produced on the Continent. Includes four black-and-white…
Patuleanu, Ioana.
Journal of Narrative Technique 44.02 (2014): 159-82.
Refers to Jane Barker's use in an early novel of Dryden's retelling of CT to provide context for her 1723 anti-novel, "A Patch-Work Screen for the Ladies."
Straker, Scott-Morgan.
Review of English Studies 52: 1-21, 2001.
Lydgate appropriates Chaucer not so much to pay tribute as to distance himself from anticlericalism, to redeem the narrative and monastic voice, and to assert its freedom from authority, as represented by Harry Bailly. Lydgate's apparent compliance…
Nisse, Ruth.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005.
Assesses the biblical and theatrical allusions in MilT for the ways that they engage the theme of interpretation, challenge gender categories, and dovetail with contemporary concerns about the dangers of drama and reading. Compares these with similar…
Confused in definition, "romance" designates both a value system and a method of treatment. The presence of the marvelous, courtly love, and chivalric adventure is not enough to form a definition. A parody like Th helps, since it indicates what is…
Romances are distinguished not by the presence of certain features--the erotic, the fabulous, etc.--but by attitudes toward those elements. WBT is "deliberately" not a romance.
Dickson, Lynne.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 15 (1993): 61-90.
Although WBP does not succeed in fictionalizing a discourse community of women, it makes clear the possibility in its struggle with patriarchal authority. WBT poses such a community in a transient, illusory form. Chaucer capitalizes on the…
In TC, Deiphebus serves as an important foil to Troilus. He exposes Troilus not only as weak and inadequate but also as human, something Hector is not.
Sundwall, McKay.
Modern Philology 73 (1975): 151-56.
According to Virgil (Aeneid, VI) Deiphobus became the husband of Helen after Paris' death. Perhaps Pandarus reveals a covert knowledge of this burgeoning romance when, in TC II, he confidently sends Helen and Deiphobus into the garden for an hour,…
Fleming, John V.
Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 182-99.
The rich Virgilian background of TC brings into focus Hector and Deiphoebus--bound to Troilus by brotherly love and manipulated by Pandarus--and the parallel perfidies of Helen and Criseyde. In TC, the betrayal of Deiphoebus is "a feminist…
Lawler, Traugott.
Robert G. Benson and Susan J. Ridyard, eds. New Readings of Chaucer's Poetry (Rochester, N.Y., and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2003), pp. 75-90.
Lawler argues that Chaucer privileged simplicity and disapproved of decadence and over-refinement. Lexical examination demonstrates Chaucer's preference for "delicacy," evident most clearly in Griselda of ClT and supported by evidence from KnT and…
Trigg, Stephanie.
Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 30 (2014): 51-66.
Explores relations between the reception of Chaucer and the "study of the history of emotion," focusing on the "symbolic capital" of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's brief comments on Chaucer in "Table Talk," the "social context" in which the comments were…
Burger, Douglas A.
Chaucer Review 12 (1977): 103-10.
May's final answer is the culmination of "an incongruence between words and truth that is manifest throughout the entire poem." The preamble of antifeminist material is glossed by an old man's fantasy. The Merchant's "inability" to gloss allows him…
Schuurman, Anne.
Craig E. Bertolet and Robert Epstein, eds. Money, Commerce, and Economics in Late Medieval English Literature (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), pp. 77-91.
Examines relations between theology and economics in FrPT and SumPT (with glances at WBP and PardPT), focusing on the polysemous implications of debt, and suggesting that these tales are “key source texts” for modern “economic theology”…
