Quinn, William A.
Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2013.
Recovers clues to Chaucer's own authorial recital by searching for evidence of tonal intentions in TC. Provides a performance-based reading of the poem that begins with "the premise that Chaucer himself once recited TC aloud," thus allowing "evidence…
Arai, Teruki.
Sophia English Studies 15 (1990): 29-44.
Statistical exploration of words attributed to Chaucer, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton. In the fourth edition of Bailey's dictionary (1728), the classifications "Chaucerian" and "old" are not distinct.
Surveys the tradition of English "old word" and "hard word" dictionary- and glossary-making, locating Chaucerian compilations (e.g., Greaves, Speght, Urry, etc.) at the beginning of the tradition and tracing developments in practice into the…
Ziolkowski, Jan.
Journal of Medieval Latin 12 (2002): 90-113
Traces the tradition of characterizing stories as "old wives' tales" from Plato through Apuleius and Jerome to Chaucer's WBT, showing how the genre draws power from the paradox that "old women were the least powerful members of society and yet the…
Reeves traces the evolution of old wives' tales (including WBT) and assesses how such tales represent fancy and superstition in early scientific theories of the Copernican system. However, the tales also promote the theory of extraterrestrial life,…
Hahn, Thomas.
Thomas Hahn and Alan Lupack, eds. Retelling Tales: Essays in Honor of Russell Peck (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1997.), pp. 91-108.
In drafting learned sources (Ovid, Boethius, Dante) onto the core of a popular story, WBT generates a form of romance with appeal for "serious" readers; the appeal of this genre rests not on marvels and adventure but on individual fulfillment through…
Pirie, David B.
Michael O'Neill, ed. Keats: Bicentenary Readings (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press for the University of Durham, 1997), pp. 48-70.
Comments briefly on Cecilia of SNT as background to an allusion to her in "Eve of St. Mark" and on the "quaintly Chaucerian lines" in Keats's poem.
Botelho, José Francisco.
Literature Compass 15.6 (2018): n.p.
Explores cultural, stylistic, and personal aspects of translating CT into Portuguese verse, focused on making the work "readable . . . to the Brazilian readership" in detail and idiom, but also a "bit old-fashioned" and "familiar in a strange way."
Rex, Richard.
Massachusetts Studies in English 10 (1985): 132-37.
Explicating WBP 418, Rex rejects Skeats's interpretation ("the common food of rustics") and Hoffman's ("harmony in marriage") and decides, on the basis of Old and Middle French slang meanings attested to in riddles and fabliaux, that the obscene…
Pearsall, Derek.
London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977.
Covers the first nine hundred years of English poetry. Includes treatments of Chaucer, his circle of friends, his choice of English as a literary language, his foreign influence.
Boitani, Piero.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 39-57.
Literature is both source and subject matter for Chaucer. In BD, PF, and HF, he transforms source material ("old books") into "new" Chaucerian texts with their own structures and themes.
Higgins, Iain Macleod.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 620-35.
Examines "The Kingis Quair" and "The Testament of Cresseid," the 'two Scottish works that respond most fully' to Chaucer’s corpus, demonstrating how these poems rework Chaucerian verse and its framings for new and possibly subversive ends. Compares…
Edits GP and WBPT from the Ellesmere manuscript, with glosses, notes, and brief introductions. The first edition of the volume (2000) includes no works by Chaucer; the third (2010) includes no additional material by him.
Vantuono, William, ed.
New York: Peter Lang, 1994.
A pedagogical anthology designed for use in classes on the History of the English Language. The materials that pertain to Chaucer (pp. 81-115) include Bo 2m5 ("The Former Age"), a guide to pronunciation, lines 1-42 of GP, and PardPT.
Burrow, J. A.
Pat Rogers, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 1-58.
Illustrated survey of Old and Middle English literature, with recurrent attention to linguistic conditions and the development of literary genres and conventions. Includes many comparative references to Chaucer in the discussion of Middle English…
Explains the different strands in Scog partly through elements taken from Cicero's De amicitia and partly through its nature as a begging poem for Michaelmas, when annuities were renewed.
Mehl, Dieter.
Christa Jansohn, ed. Old Age and Ageing in British and American Culture and Literature. Studien zur englischen Literatur, no 16 (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004), pp. 29-38.
Explores the representation of old age in WBPT, MerT, PardT, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Confessio Amantis, and the Book of Margery Kempe, arguing that the motif of old age falls into three distinct categories: "the comical figure…
Steadman, John M.
Medium Aevum 33.2 (1964): 121-30.
Argues that the old man of PardT is neither a Messenger of Death nor Old Age personified, but a figure of the exemplary wisdom and virtue of the aged, set in contrast the youthful rioters and their foolish avarice. Compares Chaucer's "aged stranger"…
Comments on differences and similarities among these characters: the Wife of Bath as depicted in WBP, La Vieille of "Roman de la Rose," and old women who take young lovers in two medieval Japanese narratives.
Federico, Sylvia.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 3125A.
Examines fictional representations of Troy as England's mythic ancestor in TC, HF, Gower's Vox Clamantis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and other works. Since Troy was thought to have led to later empires only through its fall, the city is an…
Considers medieval knowledge of tidal patterns and details about astrology and the seasons in FranT to support the argument that the clerk of Orleans predicts rather than magically causes the rise of the sea, disguising the presence of the coastal…
Stanley comments on the inconclusive endings of several Chaucerian narratives and argues that CkT is complete as it is, developing the theme of herbergage (taking in lodgers) that runs throughout Part 1 of CT.
Chaucer completed CkT in approximately seven hundred lines, but since the final quire of the booklet containing the tales of the Miller, Reeve, and Cook was lost very early in the manuscript tradition, the Hengwrt scribe--writing in London or…
Twelve essays by various authors, a celebratory introduction of testimonials, and a bibliography of publications of M. B. Parkes. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer search for Of the Making of Books under Alternative Title.
