Morrison, Susan Signe.
Exemplaria 8 (1996): 97-123.
WBPT addresses the relationship between vernacular texts and female audiences. Vernacular translations of authoritative texts allow women to enter the discourse of power, creating a new discourse that validates not only the existence of a different…
Kuczynski, Michael P.
Chaucer Review 37: 315-28, 2003.
Scriptural injunctions underlie Chaucer's apology in MilP 1.3172-81 and his encouraging the audience to be cautious when judging his poetic enterprise.
Hahn, Thomas.
Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, eds. Truth and Tales: Cultural Mobility and Medieval Media (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015), pp. 41-59.
Provides a "newly broadened context for Chaucer's obsession with Dido," and looks at Chaucer's narrators in HF and LGW.
"Working within and yet exploding New Critical terminology," E. Talbot Donaldson's studies of Chaucer's irony--exemplified in his writing on Criseyde--are grounded in his deep understanding of rhetoric. They anticipate Linda Hutcheon's theory of…
In juxtaposition to D. W. Robertson's comprehensive historicist method, E. Talbot Donaldson's "fundamentally rhetorical mode of analysis" also constituted a historicist approach, but one that moved from philological detail "toward some larger whole,"…
Revisiting E. Talbot Donaldson's scholarship provokes nostalgia as well as the recognition that, for Donaldson, "poems of the order of Chaucer's arouse feelings as well as thoughts, feelings based on the critic's own experience."
Goodman, Jennifer [R.]
Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Feminea Medievalia I: Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Academia Press, 1993), pp. 69-90.
The desperation of the falcon in SqT and that of Dorigen in FranT link the two tales. Similar links include three sets of parallel relationships between older and younger men, as well as the notions of "trouthe" and fortitude in each tale's ending.
The riddle at the end of FranT-who is the most "fre"?-distracts the reader from the central issues of the Tale, namely the concept of the "Real" (Pierre Macherey) and questions of gender. Although Dorigen is apparently excluded from the answer to the…
The word "hoom," appearing numerous times in FranT, changes according to the character with whom it is associated. This is especially true of Dorigen, whose "hoom" reflects her most moral self.
Luecke, Janemarie.
Journal of Women's Studies in Literature 1 (1979): 107-21.
FranT, although a declared romance, has been judged almost universally by real-life standards of conduct in marriage. Two real-life women of Chaucer's period, Margaret Paston and Christine de Pizan, provide a standard of conduct in their own…
Friedman, John B.
Chaucer Review 31 (1996): 133-44.
Dorigen's home is in "lower" Brittany around Carnac and the Locmariaquer peninsula, an area replete with menhirs and dolmens. These megalithic pagan structures are the "grisly rokkes blake," and Dorigen's fear of them is both physical and spiritual.
Smith, Warren S.
Chaucer Review 36 : 374-90, 2002.
Far from being rambling, hasty, or incoherent, Dorigen's lament on faithful and faithless wives is a careful working out of the solution to her own dilemma. Starting with stories from Jerome's "Against Jovinian," she develops a favorable, Augustinian…
Arnovick, Leslie K.
Mark C. Amodio, ed. Oral Poetics in Middle English Poetry (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 125-47.
In light of linguistic, legal, and folkloric traditions, Dorigen's speech to Aurelius in the garden--a moment of dialogue within the larger dialogue of the pilgrims--does not constitute a promise. Rashly made promises were not considered legally…
Chaucer's characterization in CT reflects the clash between the dogmatic world view of medieval philosophy and the critical, rational outlook proposed by post-Occamist philosophy. Variations in the "allegorical and/or individual costume" used in…
Double-entry bookkeeping, which Chaucer could have learned in Italy, contains "a system of rhetoric as well as a technique." The plot of ShT can be seen as a series of parallel accounts, with the ending as the "closing of the books" on the final…
Neuss, Paula.
Essays in Criticism 24 (1974): 325-40.
Comments in critics' "pun-hunting" in Chaucer's works and describes two kinds of bawdy puns in MilT (those that carry connotations of subtlety and secrecy and those that connote pleasure and entertainment), tracing their complex interrelations and…
Dane, Joseph A.
Studia Neophilologica 63 (1991): 161-67.
Analyzes Chaucer's exploitation of the potentially contradictory meanings of "trouthe," especially (1) personal loyalty, fidelity; (2) linguistic truth; and (3) factuality.
Grennen, Joseph E.
American Notes and Queries 1 (1963): 131-32.
Suggests that "esy of dispence" in the GP description of the Physician (1.431) means not only "slow to spend money," but also "moderate in prescribing remedies," or perhaps that he prescribes palatable medicines.
Lee, Dong Choon.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 25.1 (2017): 49-66.
Analyzes the architectural constructions (especially walls) in KnT and TC. Claims that the "effect of a wall in Chaucerian narratives is the double-sidedness," because walls can invite and discourage connections between inside and outside spaces.
Fyler, John M.
John M. Hill, Bonnie Wheeler, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Essays on Aesthetics and Medieval Literature in Honor of Howell Chickering (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2014), pp. 129-41.
Examines plot and language repetition and "doublings" in CT. Focuses on irony and ambiguity in Th-MelL and claims that both tales have an "identical sentence" and are "the same story told twice. Also discusses MkT, NPT, and PrT.
Clark, Roy Peter.
Chaucer Review 11 (1976): 164-78.
In SumT Friar John and Thomas parody significant features in the life of St. Thomas the Apostle. The probing of Thomas's body by the friar parodies the "doubting Thomas" legend. The references to St. Thomas provide a foil by which the audience may…
Dor, Juliette, with Guido Latre.
Christine Pagnoulle, ed. Les gens du passage (Liege: Universite de Liege, 1992), pp. 85-91.
Discusses problems of translating medieval texts, especially CT and "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," treating problems of cultural distance and reception as well as linguistic aspects.
