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 Instead of generalized acceptance of "the medieval world view" or of direct historical references suggesting…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…
Flannery, Mary.
Review of English Studies 73, no. 310 (2022): 442-58.
Examines Caxton's deletions from his first to his second edition of CT, showing that most of them were "bawdy spurious verse." Argues that the deletions evince Caxton's awareness of Chaucer's own "ribaldry" and that—not concerned with obscenity per…
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" (Weber to…
Minnis, Alastair.
New Medieval Literatures 22 (2022): 114-61.
Assesses the demonic presence in FrT (the Green Yeoman), placing "Chaucerian demonology within a wider intellectual and cultural context" from St. Augustine to the "Malleus maleficarum." Surveys views on demonic/angelic presence as apparition,…
Nicknames for geometric propositions occur in TC ("dulcarnon," "flemyng of wrecches") and one seems to be at play at the end of SumT ("figura demonis"), where the squire's "natural" solution to the problem of dividing the fart opposes the…
Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this volume, concerned with unfinished literature, includes discussion of CT, along with Virgil's "Aeneid," Nikolai Gogol's "Dead Souls," Robert Musil's "Man without a Soul," and other works. In Swedish.
Johnston, Andrew James.
Christoph Kleinschmidt and Uwe Japp, eds. Der Rahmenzyklus in den europäischen Literaturen: Von Boccaccio bis Goethe, von Chaucer bis Gernhardt (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag, 2018), pp. 41–57.
Examines features of CT that make it difficult to fit the work into the modern "frame" of teleological development, medieval to modern. Focuses on "postmodern" features of the work, its tensions between allegory and realism, and its game-like…
Examines the use of whiteness in a variety of medieval works, arguing that being "white" is a mark not merely of ethnicity but also of Christianity, "beauty," and rank. Examples include mystery plays, "Pearl," and BD.
