Brown, Murray.
R. Barton Palmer, ed. Chaucer's French Contemporaries: The Poetry/Poetics of Self and Tradition (New York: AMS Press, 1999), pp. 187-215
Deschamps's "Ballade" dates from Sir Lewis Clifford's diplomatic mission to the French court in 1391, when France and England were closer to peace than they had been in almost a decade. Both Chaucer and Deschamps were associated with the Order of the…
Scanlon, Larry.
Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, eds. The Vulgar Tongue: Medieval and Postmedieval Vernacularity (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), pp. 220-56.
Scanlon considers contemporary ideas of vernacular literature and its potential for "subversiveness" through incompleteness, focusing on the concept of "poet laureate" as introduced into English by Chaucer in ClT and on the interdependence of…
Ransom, Daniel J.
Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1985.
Ransom demonstrates "the ironic tone of four Harley poems," reveals "the parodic intention (ambiguities, incongruities, exaggerations) that underlies that tone," and discovers irony in other Harley lyrics. Includes various references to and…
Kane, George.
Daniel Donoghue, James Simpson, and Nicholas Watson, eds. The Morton W. Bloomfield Lectures, 1989-2005 (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2010), pp. 1-19.
The first of the Bloomfield lectures. Traces the impact of "hamartiology" (the study of sin and crisis) in Langland's "Piers Plowman" and Chaucer's CT, especially in GP and the fabliaux. Estates satire, penitential handbooks, and other examples of…
Green, Richard Firth.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980.
Treats the modus vivendi of medieval poet in the context of the king's intimate circle, the literate court, the court of love, the writer as adviser or court apologist.
Meyer-Lee, Robert J.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007.
Many causes contributed to the change in climate, particularly Bolingbroke's seizure of the throne from Richard II in 1399 and the concomitant changes in relationships between princes and poets, between poets and audiences, and between audiences and…
Forhan, Kate L.
Henrik Syse and Gregory M. Reichberg, eds. Ethics, Nationalism, and Just War: Medieval and Contemporary Perspectives (Washington, D.C.: Catholic University Press, 2007), pp. 99-116.
Forhan summarizes the "dynastic quarrel" of the Hundred Years' War and describes the pacifist recommendations as prudent in Chaucer's Mel and in several works by Christine de Pizan. Treats the two writers as "catalysts" in the late medieval…
Edwards, David L.
London : Darton, Longman, and Todd, 2005.
Appreciative criticism of seven major poets, aware of academic theory (formalist, psychoanalytic, feminist) but addressed to a nonacademic audience. Chapter 1, "Chaucer" (pp. 1-33), considers Chaucer's characterization, moral tolerance, comedy,…
Grahame, Lucia, and Bob Taylor.
Wheeling, Ill.: Film Ideas, 2008.
Includes biographies of Homer, John Milton, Omar Khayyám, and Chaucer. The latter (approximately seven minutes) comments on Chaucer's life and works, accompanied by visual materials.
Includes comments on Chaucer's use of "deliberate space" in MerB and rhyme royal in TC, along with more extended discussion of the variety of voices and registers in CT, in which Chaucer "makes the pleasure and purpose of story-telling the very…
Kader, David, and Michael Stanford, eds.
Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2010.
Includes the GP description of the Sergeant of the Law (ll. 309-30) in an anthology of 100 lyrics and poetic excerpts that pertain to lawyers and legal practice. Brief notes at the end of the work.
Spearing, A. C., and J. E. Spearing, eds.
London: Edward Arnold, 1974.
An anthology of Middle English verse, with individual introductions and facing-page glosses and notes. The General Introduction (pp. 1-40) considers prosody and poetic techniques, genres, and various linguistic concerns. Includes FrT (discussed as…
Lomperis, Linda Susan.
Dissertation Abstracts International 46 (1986): 2688A.
CT is read as an experiment in allegory in the sense of Isidore of Seville's "alieniloquium." The School of Chartres, the "Cosmographia" of Bernardus Silvestris, and Guillaume de Lorris contribute to the techniques of tension between rhetoric and…
Includes links to verse modernizations of CT (Mel and ParsT excerpted in prose) TC, the Dream Poems, and various lyrics, imitating Chaucer's meter and rhyme schemes; translated and uploaded 2007-2008.
Hacht, Anne Marie, and David Kelly, eds.
Detroit: Gale, 2002.
Includes a brief biography of Chaucer, plot summaries of the frame and the tales of CT, discussion of themes and style, a description of historical context, a critical overview, a selection of sixteen critical essays or excerpts, and suggestions for…
Rhodes, Jim.
Notre Dame, Ind. : University of Notre Dame Press, 2001.
Surveys the relationships between theology and poetry in late-medieval writing, assessing how Robert Grosseteste, the Pearl poet, and Chaucer communicate a proto-humanistic perspective, "characterized by a semi-Pelagian, anthropocentric theology"…
FranT and the "Tempest" share not only similarities in plot, character, and theme but also an engagement with the "status of poetry as allusion and conjuring act." The sense of "fiction dissolving into real life, and the voice of the narrator…
Terry, Richard.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.
A history of the idea of English literature and the development of an English literary canon, focusing on the long eighteenth century, but hearkening back to the early modern period. Recurrent attention to the role of Chaucer and his works, including…
Kordecki, Lesley.
ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment 29 (2022): 570-82.
Argues that the eagle in HF "represents poetry," manifest in its "uncanny perception," its ability to "uplift" the narrator, and its concern with sound and transformative power.
Studies Ovid's "Tristia" and LGW and argues that "Ovid's literary autobiography" revealed in the "Tristia" is "assimilated and elaborated" by Chaucer in LGWP. This connection not only allows Chaucer "to convey . . . a sense of his own Ricardian,…
Raybin, David.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 213-26.
Raybin interrogates challenges to the dramatic approach to CT, concentrating on the personalities of the narrators of NPT and PardT. The Pardoner and Chauntecleer share a number of characteristics and artfully mix sentence and solace. Their voices…
Eldredge, Laurence.
Revue de l'Université de Ottawa 40 (1970): 441-59.
Describes three positions on the topic of universals versus individuals (ultra-realism, moderate realism, nominalism), and argues that the depictions of nature, love, common profit, and fortune in PF align approximately with moderate realism, and…
Haines, Simon.
New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Haines surveys interactions between realist and romantic thought in Western literary and philosophical discourse, commenting on a range of writers but focusing on Homer, Sophocles, Plato and Aristotle, Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Shakespeare, and…
Pangilinan, Maria Cristina Santos.
DAI A70.10 (2010): n.p.
Various Middle English authors succeeded in making London an urban, laicized intellectual center that balanced the clerical legacies of Cambridge and Oxford. These authors explored various academic disciplines (e.g., alchemy for Chaucer) in a manner…
