Finlayson, John.
Studies in Philology 97: 255-75, 2000.
Argues that Chaucer used Boccaccio's version of the Griselda story in addition to Petrarch's. A number of Chaucer's alterations and additions to Petrarch have a "strong, often detailed relationship" to Boccaccio, Petrarch's own source.
Minta, Stephen.
Manchester: Manchester University Press; New York: Barnes & Noble, 1980.
An introduction to Petrarch, his works, and their reception in England and France to the seventeenth century. Observes connections between the end of Petrarch's "Canzoniere" and Chaucer's Ret, and comments on Chaucer's reference to Petrarch in ClP…
Sung,Wei-ko.
EurAmerica: A Journal of European and American Studies 46.1 (2016): 1-44.
Surveys "the idea literary fame" in classical and medieval traditions (Homer, Hesiod, Virgil, Statius, and Dante); analyzes Petrarch's notion more extensively; and examines HF to show that though Chaucer, "like Petrarch, was intimately familiar with…
Grigsby, Bryon Lee.
New York and London: Routledge, 2004.
Grigsby considers leprosy, bubonic plague, and syphilis, focusing on how they were constructed as moral phenomena and how literary depictions contributed to historical developments in our (mis)understandings of them.
Thebes's foundational perversion (Jove's rape of Europa) establishes a recursive pattern of love and violence. Creon's dynastic expectation for Anelida and Arcite results in Anelida's self-deception and leads as well to Arcite's servitude to his new…
Holloway, Julia Bolton.
Julia Bolton Holloway. Jerusalem: Essays on Pilgrimage and Literature (New York: AMS Press, 1998), pp. 173-94.
Assesses the Wife of Bath (in contrast to the Clerk) and the Pardoner (in contrast to the Parson) as "Chaucer's Diptych of Eve and Adam," commenting on their depictions in the Ellesmere manuscript and reading them as inversions of the ideals of…
Hellstrom, Par.
Samlaren: Tidskrift for Svensk Litteraturvetenskaplig Forskning 103 (1982): 90-111.
Reviews criticism and scholarship on Chaucer in Sweden and England, treating backgrounds (social, religious and philosophical, and literary), general works, and new directions in scholarship.
Surveys criticism of Chaucer's works from Hoccleve and Lydgate to Dryden, identifying what it "reveals and contributes to the understanding and appreciation of Chaucer's poetry" rather than his literary reputation or the "state of English criticism…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Chaucer Review 14 (1980): 287-97.
The stylistic device occurs when a noun is given personification by the poet's use of a verb (or occasionally a verb phrase, adjective, or adverb). Chaucer uses few of them: the lyrics have more than do the longer narratives.
Flannery, Mary C.
Literature Compass 13.6 (2016): 351-61.
Includes discussion of Sorrow in Rom, treating the poem as one that maps "an imaginative space in which to represent (and perhaps also elicit) emotion, one that interweaves emotional with embodied, sensory experience," and one that may "reflect the…
Taavitsainen, Irma.
Geoffrey Lester, ed. Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honour of Norman Blake (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 218-34.
Pragmatic analysis of linguistic features that produce "personal affect" in several of the CT. Uses features such as exclamations, oaths, and aspects of proximity and reader involvement to describe characterizations of the Knight, the Prioress, the…
Surveys the uses of personal names of the Canterbury pilgrims and of the major characters in the tales, commenting on names adapted from sources, common names, diminutives and name variants, given names and surnames, name-play, the relative paucity…
Allen, Mark Edward.
Dissertation Abstracts International 43 (1982): 784A.
Assesses character names in works "from 'Beowulf' to Robert Henryson, tracing patterns in onomastic function, language philosophy, and literary form." Includes discussion of names from HF, TC, and CT.
Ono, Hideshi.
Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature 43 (1988): 1-15.
Ono examines Chaucer's personal and impersonal uses of the verbs "meten" and "dremen" to refer to dreams. The personal use emerged in the fourteenth century.
Ellis, Roger.
Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 74 (1992): 121-39.
Examines the "voices" of the narrators of SNT, MerT, and WBP. In understanding voices, it is important to remember two levels: the immediate and the inherited past. The three tales exhibit plain speaking in different ways.
Includes comments on Proserpyna in MerT as equivalent to the Wife of Bath and on the Proserpyna/Pluto exchange as an intertwining of the classics and Christian heritage, particularly "Judeo-Christian antifeminism."
Patterson, Lee.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 15 (1993): 25-57.
Assesses alchemy as a verbal and social practice in Chaucer's day, arguing that alchemical discourse raised with particular intensity the problem of the verbal representation of truth; alchemical study helped undermine the clerical monopoly on…
Scattergood, V. J.
Chaucer Review 19 (1984): 14-23.
The protagonist of CkT has antecedents, from both society and literature, that permit one to extrapolate details the Cook might have used: trickery, age, and criticism of contemporary mores.
Matthews, David.
Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 253-66.
Considers the value and possible necessity of periodization in history and literary history, focusing on particular difficulties in dealing with the use of "middle" in "Middle Ages" and "Middle English," and arguing that treatments of Chaucer, Gower,…
Dean, Paul.
Essays in Criticism 50.2: 125-44, 2000.
Assesses the genre, fictional self-consciousness, and religious elements of "Pericles," suggesting that Chaucer influenced Shakespeare's decision to include the character Gower onstage throughout the play, an aspect of its literary…
