Leon Sendra, Antonio R.
Cordoba: Universidad de Cordoba, 1996.
Includes six essays about Chaucer by Leon Sendra and a summary-introduction by Jesus L. Serrano Reyes. The first essay proposes a sociolinguistic approach to Chaucer's works, based on the textual-linguistic theory of M. A. K. Halliday, and the other…
Cullen, Dolores L.
McKinleyville, Calif.: Fithian, 2008.
Narrative autobiography of the author's fascination with Chaucer, recounting the writing and publishing of three books on allegory in CT. Includes Cullen's thoughts about the reception of Chaucer among academic and popular audiences.
Yvernault, Martine.
Cercles 32 (2014): 90-107. Open access journal; available at http://www.cercles.com/n32/yvernault.pdf. Accessed February 10, 2022.
Explores relations among voice, genre, music, orality, and memorial transmission in "Lay le Freine," "Sir Orfeo," and FranT, including assessment of the ambiguities and Bahktinian polyphony of voices in the GP description of the Franklin's oral…
Leitch, Megan G.
Amanda Hopkins, Robert Allen Rouse, and Cory James Rushton, eds. Sexual Culture in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2014), pp. 39-53.
Includes brief consideration of sexuality in Chaucer's work, with specific mention of MilT, RvT, and TC.
Rodrıguez Mesa, Francisco Jose.
Elisa Borsari, ed. En lengua vulgar castellana traduzido: Ensayos sobre la actividad traductora durante la Edad Media (San Millan de la Cogolla: Cilengua, 2015), pp. 121–33.
Evaluates Chaucer's strategies of adapting his Italian sources in ClT. He uses three paratexts to adjust the original story to the specific narratological and structural microcosm of CT: ClP, the conclusion explaining what Petrarch meant in…
Estes, Heidi.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017.
Explores the "complications" involved in defining "environment," "landscape," and "nature" in MerT, and views the narrative through an "ecocritical" lens, describing the critical method and showing that in the Tale "literary devices revolving around…
Coppola, Nancy, Norbert Elliot, David Geithman, Nancy Jackson, Eric Katz, and Burt Kimmelman.
Dubuque, Iowa: Kendall/Hunt, 1997.
College textbook designed to introduce undergraduate students to the "ways that specialists in the social sciences and the humanities analyze environmental problems." Chapter 4, "Literature and the Environment," opens with a description of LGWP and…
Rosenfeld, Jessica.
Holly A. Crocker and D. Vance Smith, eds. Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debates (New York; Routledge, 2014), pp. 97-113.
Emphasizes an ironic view of Parson's "exploration of 'lawful pleasure'" and contends that ParsT can be viewed as a "psychological experience of delight."
Though similarities have been found, Mercury's appearance to Arcite in KnT cannot be traced to a single specific source. One should view the scene in the broad context of the theme of epic descent from which Chaucer draws several effects.
The two descent scenes in the tale of Ceyx and Alcyone are similar to epic descents. The descent of Ceyx is typical and traditional; that of Alcyone, nontraditional and unheroic.
Traces the epic from classical roots to postmodern versions in various media; includes brief comments on KnT as epic with elements of romance, the latter challenged by MilT.
Holley, Linda Tarte.
David Raybin and Linda Tarte Holley, eds. Closure in The Canterbury Tales: The Role of The Parson's Tale (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000), pp. 198-208.
As a reckoning or quantification of sin, ParsT rationalizes the "complexities of the human will." By making human options clear, it can serve as either a beginning or an end.
Saunders, Corinne.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 647-60.
Discusses the "living tradition" of Middle English poetry in later English culture, commenting on continuities, revivals, and imitations, with recurrent references to the status of Chaucer.
Medcalf, Stephen.
Stephen Medcalf, ed. The Later Middle Ages (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981), pp. 291-303.
The word "uncircumscript" near the end of TC suggests Chaucer's Boethianism. Chaucer's TC differs from Boccaccio's "Filostrato" in telling the story of a man who lives by "love's heigh service" in a universe where love holds the world together.
Bruhn, Mark Joseph.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1996): 690A.
Study based on theories of Fowler (genre) and Jakobson (metaphor and metonymy) reveals that English verse romance from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries is typically episodic, with variations attuned to changing intent.
Episodes in the first part of WBT parallel events in the second. This "step parallelism structure" reveals a "pattern of attenuation" that emphasizes the development of the knight, who becomes less impulsive and more reflective through the course of…
Holloway, Julia Bolton; Constance S. Wright; and Joan Bechtold, eds.
New York: Peter Lang, 1990.
To attain equality, woman have historically had to resist hierarchy, to quest liminality, and to exercise holy disobedience. Women in earlier Christianity, especially in the Romanesque period, exercised that disobedience; but in the paradigm shift…
Chaucer's choice of this version of the saint's life allows him to portray the interests of a female teller and to fuse masculine and feminine ideals. We hear Cecilia's strident voice and experience her powers of articulation. Further, the hair shirt…
Pitcher, John Austin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 3582A, 2001.
Examines the "interrelation of equivocation and desire" in PhyT, ClT, FranT, and WBPT, not in what the narrators and characters say, but through a "movement or oscillation between opposed interests." In CT, sexual politics can be found in the…
Boitani, Piero.
Piero Boitani, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 281-305.
Summarizes the treatment and evolution of the Troilus myth from antiquity to the modern age, focusing on plot, the ending, and themes of love and death.
Kaufman, Amy S.
Amanda Hopkins, Robert Allen Rouse, and Cory James Rushton, eds. Sexual Culture in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2014), pp. 27-37.
Discusses scholarly interpretations of May and Damyan's sexual encounter in MerT, comparing the ideas that it could be categorized as rape/"rough love," an erotic tryst, or an act of female empowerment.
Sigal, Gale.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 1996.
Examines the active role of women in medieval albas, or dawn-songs, as indications of women in society. Defines the lyric genre and its history, exploring its relations with courtly tradition, the fantasies reflected in the genre, and the sexual…
