Focusing on the relationship between images of violence in PrT and real history, critics seek to redress history's ills. Recent readings reflect professional and institutional assumptions. While not "de-historicizing" PrT, critics may…
Pigg, Daniel F.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 53-61.
Connects the violence implicit in the performance of the Tale with physical violence and argues that RvT portrays the perversion of masculine power.
Taylor, Candace Hull.
Mark Cruse, ed. Performance and Theatricality in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance ([Turnhout]: Brepols, 2018), pp. 17-34.
Considers the performative aspects of Prudence as an allegorical figure in "Sawles Warde," where she functions as a dramatic "expositor," and in Mel, where she offers "commentary . . . on reading, misreading, and the limits of wisdom when it is…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Turnhout, Belgium : Brepols, 2006.
Collette surveys literary and historical evidence that women in the Anglo-French tradition played the role of mediator, i.e., someone who "negotiates, bridges, and unites differences"--evidence of the "ideology and practice of women's agency" in the…
Kempf, Elisabeth.
Boston, Mass.: De Gruyter, 2017.
Examines questions of autobiography, authorship, legacy, and the "Fürstenspiegel" genre in Thomas Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes," with attention to its manuscript presentations and to its images of Chaucer and of Hoccleve himself, discussing the…
Nolan, Maura.
Susan Yager and Elise E. Morse-Gagné, eds. Interpretation and Performance: Essays for Alan Gaylord (Provo, UT: Chaucer Studio Press, 2013), pp. 97-114.
Lydgate's meter differs from Chaucer's for several reasons, but their differences have been exaggerated by editorial practices. When performed, the "Lydgate" or "broken-backed" line emerges as an aesthetic choice. The broken-backed line characterizes…
Sanok assesses the urban performances of virgin martyr and Marian plays and the "exemplarity" of female saints' legends, examining how authorities sought to contain or appropriate the subversive potential of female piety. Considers SNT and how the…
Beidler, Peter G.
Susan Yager and Elise E. Morse-Gagné, eds. Interpretation and Performance: Essays for Alan Gaylord (Provo, UT: Chaucer Studio Press, 2013), pp. 149-68.
Demonstration and performance, accepted aspects of classroom practice, can make academic conference presentations more memorable. Examples of performative practice include an enacted battle in KnT, created costumes illustrating the Wife of Bath's…
Crocker, Holly A.
Chaucer Review 38 : 178-98, 2003.
The comedy in MerT is produced by May herself, whose "conduct demonstrates that the feminine passivity upon which the masculine performance of agency depends is of course an act." May exposes the ridiculous nature of all claims to masculine…
Blandeau, Agnès.
Sandra Gorgievski and Xavier Leroux, eds. Le Moyen Âge mis en scène: Perspectives contemporaines. Babel, no. 15. [Toulon]: Université du Sud Toulon-Var, Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines, 2007, pp. 17-31.
Blandeau explores how three films capture the spirit if not the letter of CT.
Summerfield, Thea, and Keith Busby, eds.
Amsterdam and New York : Rodopi, 2007.
Fourteen essays by various writers and a bibliography of works published by Erik Kooper, presented to Kooper on the occasion of his sixty-fifth birthday. Topics range widely in English and French medieval traditions, with recurrent focus on romance.…
Horobin, S. C. P.
English Studies 84: 426-30, 2003.
In RvT 3944 and FrT 1614, "panne" can be read as the plural of penny instead of pan or dish. In early fourteenth-century Type II London dialect, "panne" is a common variant of "peni." In this light, Chaucer's authorship of fragments B and C of Rom…
Giot, P.-R.
Bulletin de la Societe Archeologique du Finistere 90 (1973): 117-19.
Addresses the toponymical references to Penmark and Kayrrud in FranT (5.801 and 807), locating them specifically in Brittany, commenting on the local rockiness and military value, and noting an association with the story of Tristan and Iseult.
Ward, Jessica D.
Dissertation Abstracts International A80.01 (2019): n.p.
Addresses the "challenge posed to Christian ethics due to the proliferation of urban markets and increased personal wealth in medieval England," examining various
aspects of avarice in "Piers Plowman"; John Gower's "Confessio Amantis"; and CT,…
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Abigail Firey, ed. A New History of Penance. Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition, no. 14 (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2008), pp. 239-317.
Describes two late medieval penitential treatises--John Burough's "Pupilla oculi" (late fourteenth century) and William Lyndwood's "Provinciale "(early fifteenth century)--discussing their influence on Chaucer's understanding of the sacrament in…
Allen, Mark.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 77-96.
Wrongly used speech and counsels to silence in ManT should be read in terms of fourteenth-century Lenten sermons indicating the necessity of speech for the sacrament of penance. Like SNT and CYT, ManT with its emphasis on transformation prepares…
Ret, an "authorial form of self-elimination," is formally like irony; it is also a penance, which, also like irony, protects the author from adverse judgment. Thus CT irony can be neatly exchanged for Ret penance. Penance, however, a sacrament and…
Wall, John.
Gregory Kratzmann and James Simpson, eds. Medieval English Religious and Ethical Literature (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1986), pp. 179-91.
Examines penance in poems of the "Pearl" MS, "Piers Plowman," and CT. Neither a collection of disparate stories nor an illustration of one theme, CT reflects the "quarternity or reality" in which penance, though not the chief theme, is yet a…
"Pace" Allen's and Sayce's ironies, dramatic and symbolic propriety for ParsT require penance, and predict, by the figure of the supper and the Host's unwitting use of Pauline imagery, an eschatological end.
Laird, Edgar, and Robert Fischer, trans.
Binghamton, N.Y. : Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995.
Facing-page (French-English) translation of the earliest French treatise on the astrolabe (1362), a work that shares the same source as Astr. The introduction assesses the relations among Pélerin's "Practique," Astr, and their source text, John of…
Kelen, Sarah A.
Paul C. Gutjahr and Megan L. Benton, eds. Illuminating Letters: Typography and Literary Interpretation. Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press), pp. 47-67, 2001.
Assesses factors in Thomas Dunham Whitaker's decision to print Piers Plowman in 1813 in blackletter type, even though Chaucer had been printed in roman type nearly one hundred years earlier (by Urry) and anthologists of medieval poetry such as Joseph…
Holsinger, Bruce W.
New Medieval Literatures 1 (1997): 157-92
Both ManT and PrT reflect the violence inherent in medieval teaching of music, especially evident in the role of tactile solmization--through the use of the Guidonian hand--in ecclesiastical tradition. In both, Chaucer suggests that music fuels the…
