Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 1-26.
Challenges patristic criticism for its claim that medieval literature is univocally concerned with asserting Christian "caritas" allegorically, arguing instead that poetry has a right to "say what it means and mean what it says." Illustrates the…
Kaske, R. E.
In Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 27-60.
Exemplifies the wide-ranging importance of "exegetical tradition" in explicating images and allusions in medieval literature, drawing examples from "Piers Plowman," from the Summoner's taste for garlic, onions, and leeks (GP 1.634), and from various…
Peck, Russell A.
Studies in the Age of Gower: A Festschrift in Honour of R. F. Yeager (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2020.), pp. 59-78.
Examines several stories from Gower's "Confessio Amantis" to investigate the poet's "thoughts about the limitations of patriarchy as an institution." Includes comparison of Gower’s Tale of Constance with Chaucer’s MLT, showing that the latter is…
Griselda's response to Walter at crucial points in the narrative--when he has "killed" her children and when he has banished her from the palace so he can take another "wife"--underscores his appalling behavior and demonstrates the ways outward…
Nixon, Emily Joanna.
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Chicago, 2021,
Dissertation Abstracts International A83.04(E).
“Traces the theme of patience in Middle English verse exempla amid the proliferation of exemplary works in late medieval England to examine the sociality of feeling within narratives of individual virtue,” including a chapter pertaining to ClT.
Walls, Kathryn.
American Notes and Queries 16 (1977): 34.
Dame Patience sitting "upon an hil of sond" (PF, 242-43) may come from the second recension of Deguileville's "Pelerinage de la vie humaine" where the persistence of an ant in reaching the top of a sand hill might be thought of as the active…
Coletti, Theresa.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 1-40.
Coletti compares HF with Christine de Pizan's "Livre du chemin de long estude," exploring their differing comments on and responses to their shared literary culture. Through parallel narrative gestures, the two poets consider textual authority,…
Frank, Robert Worth,Jr.
C. David Benson and Elizabeth Robertson, eds. Chaucer's Religious Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 39-52.
Through pathos, Chaucer evokes the audience's sympathy, thus transforming PrT, MLT, and ClT from mere tales of wonder or religious abstraction into convincing, dramatic treatments of the virtues they celebrate.
Thompson, John J.
Anne Marie D'Arcy and Alan J. Fletcher, eds. Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour of John Scattergood (Dublin: Four Courts, 2005), pp. 353-61.
Considers the omission of ABC from Chaucer's canon and what it reflects about the editorial habits of John Stow and Thomas Speght; religious-political pressures on editors of the time; and the reception of the Marian devotion of ABC in Protestant…
Ingham, Patricia Clare.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 44: 34-46, 2002.
Readers are skeptical of idealized pastoral space, yet it influences their view of the real. WBT begins with an allusion to a past, utopian dream world, a vision in tension with the Wife's mercantile concerns. Such utopian dreams are a resistence…
Butterfield, Ardis.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 16 (1994): 3-27.
Reads BD and Machaut's "Jugement dou Roy de Navarre" as "counter pastorals"--works that both disturb the superficial idealization of pastoral poetry and replicate the social tension latent in the form, a social tension that also reflects contemporary…
Rex, Richard.
Studies in Short Fiction 23 (1986): 1-8.
The Prioress's childishness places her among the "children of a hundred year" who live in folly and are cursed by God. Her tale is a pastiche, its ironies reflecting the teller's false humility and lack of charity even as she extols charity as a…
Dell contends that Brian Helgeland's film A Knight's Tale offers an alternative to capitalistic perpetual accomplishment, the model of desire that critics associate with the film. This alternative is courtly love, a paradigm drawn from the Lancelot…
Meier, Hans H.
Caroline Macafee and Iseabail Macleod, eds. The Nuttis Schell: Essays on Scots Language Presented to A. J. Aitken (Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press, 1987), pp. 116-23.
Describes several literary representations of Older Scots language; includes RvT because Older Scots and Northern English "are not generally considered as distinct" in the late medieval period. Commends Chaucer for his comprehensive "imitation of…
Scott, Kathleen L.
Carol M. Meale and Derek Pearsall, eds. Makers and Users of Medieval Books: Essays in Honour of A. S. G. Edwards (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014), pp. 150-77.
Examines records of medieval book ownership by focusing on inscriptions in manuscripts and early printed books, wills, and other inventories of collections from fifteenth-century merchants and craftsmen. Features two listings of merchants with book…
Nolan, Maura Bridget.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60 (1999): 123A.
The poetry of the age demonstrates the construction and manipulation of history, while popular culture reflects the changing relations of ruler and laws. Thus "Wynnere and Wasture" treats the 1352 Statute of Treasons. Chaucer's MLT,a poetic revision…
Stock, Lorraine Kochanske.
Carmina Philosophiae 2 (1994): 1-37.
Explores the late medieval traditions of the Wild Man and idealized primitivism, arguing that they are useful in understanding and interpreting Chaucer's additions to the Boethian materials in Form Age.
Garrido Anes, Edurne.
Alicia Rodríquez Álvarez, and Francisco Alanso Almeida, eds. Voices on the Past: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature ([Spain]: Netbiblo, 2004), pp. 185-91.
Considers Troilus' lovesickness as a physical disorder and a cause of distorted perception in TC and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida." His condition is due to the "often ambiguous correspondence" of "passions, signs, thoughts and facts."
Schmidt, A. V. C.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2015.
Collection of published and previously unpublished studies of Chaucer and other writers, including the "Pearl"-poet, Hopkins, Yeats, Eliot, Jones, and Auden. Part 1, "Medieval: Chaucer and the Gawain-Poet," includes essays on Bo, Form Age, KnT, and…
Kruger, Steven F.
Chaucer Review 23 (1989): 219-35.
LGWP promises something that the poem itself does not deliver--stories of faithful women and faithless men. LGW is about how stories break out of prescribed patterns, how characters defy stereotypes, and how emotions and impulses escape the forms…
Murray, Kylie.
Mark P. Bruce and Katherine H. Terrell, eds. The Anglo-Scottish Border and the Shaping of Identity, 1300-1600 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 121-39.
Considers the Scottish reception of TC and PF by close study of the annotations in Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden B.24. Sketches a network of Scottish aristocratic readers of Chaucer's work and argues that political and ethical concerns were their…
Blandeau studies Pasolini's cinematic trilogy of medieval tales: The Decameron, CT, and One Thousand and One Nights, focusing on the first two. Argues that Pasolini "puts two semiotic systems in translation with each other, not so much to transmit…
Includes an account of the making and reception of Pier Paolo Pasolini's films "The Decameron" (1971) and "Canterbury Tales" (1972). In the latter, Pasolini plays Chaucer and includes seven "Tales": Merchant's,Franklin's, Cook's, Miller's "Wife of…
Lynch, Kathryn L.
Robert R. Edwards, ed. Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 107-25.
From the dream visions through CT, Chaucer never abandoned his fascination with walls and "enclosed fictions." On the one hand, walls function metaphorically, representing such forces as the rise and fall of civilization. On the other, they create…
