Heyworth, Gregory.
South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.
Six studies on literature ranging from Marie de France to Milton. In the chapter on Chaucer, Heyworth examines medieval cultural values and suggests that Chaucer complicates those values, particularly marriage. KnT and FranT depict the social…
Paxson, James J.,and Cynthia A. Gravlee, eds.
Selinsgrove, Penn.:
An anthology of essays by various authors on aspects of medieval love literature. The introduction, by Paxson, discusses literary depictions of love in light of postmodern theories of the "psychological, phenomenological, and gendered bases" of…
McLemore, Emily.
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Notre Dame, 2022.
Dissertation Abstracts International A83.11(E).
Studies "representations of women's desire and . . . its intersections with eroticism, pleasure, and power" in WBPT, Robert Henrysons' "Testament of Cresseid," "The Book of Margery Kempe," and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight."
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 10 (1988): 41-70.
Reexamines ClT "from Walter's point of view"--that is, focusing on Walter as the center of the tale--suggesting that Chaucer, like Petrarch, his source, was concerned as much with epistemology or the quest for knowledge as with Griselda's fidelity.
Smith, D. Vance.
Cristina Maria Cervone and D. Vance Smith, eds. Readings in Medieval Textuality: Essays in Honour of A. C. Spearing (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2016), pp. 135-56.
Examines the "unresolved ending" of the "Legend of Philomela" in LGW.
Owen, Charles A.,Jr.
Leeds Studies in English 14 (1983): 116-33.
In GP, Chaucer changed approaches, developed new techniques, and became increasingly critical of society. Increased use of similes suggests that the portraits of the Squire, Monk, Friar, Miller, Manciple, Reeve, Summoner, and Pardoner were added…
Studying SumT with John Gay's 1717 poem "An Answer to the Sompner's Prologue of Chaucer" reveals a continuum of greed in SumT, moving from goods of use value, to coins of exchange value, to excrement and insubstantial air, even as Chaucer satirizes…
Rambuss, Richard.
Lori Hope Lefkovitz, ed. Textual Bodies: Changing Boundaries of Literary Representation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997), pp. 75-99.
The Prioress's identification with the little clergeon of PrT and her elisions of history indicate a "desire for transcendence" rather than sentimentality. The presence of bodily violence and prurience in PrT accords well with some of the…
Shimodao, Makoto.
Yuko Tagaya and Kanno Masahiko eds. Words and Literature: Essays in Honour of Professor Masa Ikegami (Tokyo: Eihosha, 2004), pp. 181-97.
Simpson, James.
Gordon McMullan and David Matthews, eds. Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 17-30.
Whereas fifteenth-century writers such as Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Skelton wrote texts that engaged in "a kind of conversation" with Chaucer, sixteenth-century writers treated Chaucer as a distant topic of philological study. Simpson argues that this…
Jucker, Andreas H., and Irma Taavitsainen.
Journal of Historical Pragmatics 1: 67-95, 2000.
Anatomizes numerous examples of insults in English, from Unferth's challenge of Beowulf to "flaming" in e-mail communication, including examples from SNT, exchanges between the Host and the Cook, and exchanges between the Host and the Pardoner in CT.…
Penhallurick, Robert, and Adrian Willmott.
Robert Penhallurick, ed. Debating Dialect: Essays on the Philosophy of Dialect Study (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp. 5-43.
Locates the earliest efforts to identify Standard English in William of Malmesbury's comments on language and foreignness, arguing that awareness of foreignness (and little more) underlies the ideal of a standard. Comments on various discussions of…
McClellan, William T.
Dissertation Abstracts International 46 (1986): 3361A.
Instead of the single and individual voices that Kittredge found in CT, several voices may appear in a single tale. When analyzed by Bakhtin's discourse theory, ClT reveals not one but three distinct contending voices.
Dor, Juliette.
Robert Clark and Piero Boitani, eds. English Studies in Transition: Papers from the ESSE Inaugural Conference (London and New York: Routledge, 1993), pp. 107-19.
Custance's earnest belief in a Christian deity is reflected in her prayers, while the narrator of MLT presents these prayers in the context of his own skeptical rhetorical questions. The tension between the two establishes the dialogic polyphony of…
Watson, Robert A.
Modern Philology 98: 543-76, 2001.
Watson coins the phrase "Ciceronian Platonism," defined as the "emphasis on the poetics of 'sermo'," suggesting that the earliest evidence of Chaucer's interest in the notion appears in BD, a poem offering "a Socratic therapy as filtered through both…
Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this volume of conference proceedings includes an essay entitled "De la Fée Morgane à la Femme de Bath de Chaucer"; no author indicated.
Spencer, Alice.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 228-55.
Explores tensions among the Boethian, Platonic form of Mel as a didactic dialogue, the Tale's practical Aristotelian subject matter, and its status as a compilation of composite proverbs. Reflecting a literate author, Mel modifies its sources and…
Studies the "Boethian dialogue model in literature concerned with courtly love," treating the literature as examples of dialogue rather than dream vision and examining the relationship between the hierarchical, upward-leading erotics of this…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Marin Leslie, eds. Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses), 1999, pp. 83-96.
PF represents an "oedipal moment"--a psychological suspension between the "male-dominated civilization of Africanus ('culture,' in a word)" and the "female-dominated love-garden of Nature and Venus ('nature')." The narrator stands "on the brink of…
Butterfield, Ardis.
London Review of Books, 27 August 2015, pp. 42-43.
Contemplates the writing of a literary biography of Chaucer, considering the use of archival material, the "arcades" of Walter Benjamin, and psychoanalysis. Comments on the GP description of the Shipman.
Purdie, Rhiannon.
J. A. Burrow and Ian P. Wei, eds. Medieval Futures: Attitudes to the Future in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell, 2000), pp. 167-84.
Surveys the literary and historical context for medieval attitudes toward dicing, mentioning hazardry in PardT and the notion of divine intervention in the chances of trade in CYT.
Tambling, Jeremy.
English 64, no. 244 (2015): 42-64.
Analyzes the influence of Chaucer on several Romantic thinkers and their subsequent influence on Dickens, as well as Dickens's own reference and allusions to CT. Focuses on how "Our Mutual Friend" reflects medievalism in such aspects as the…
