Like Chaucer's pilgrimage, community colleges accept all comers and promise a miraculous transformation of a clientele representing a cross-section of society. The student-pilgrims prefer the spoken to the written word, requiring frequent reading…
Newlyn, Evelyn S.
Jean-Jacques Blanchot and Claude Graf, eds. Actes du 2e Colloque de langue et de litterature ecossaises (moyen age et renaissance) (Universite de Strasbourg, 1978), pp. 268-77.
Whereas Henryson's tale focuses on flattery and pride, and with the relationship of these sins to language, Chaucer's NPT--a likely source for Henryson--emphasizes the rhetoric of heroic poetry and the question of women's opinions. These different…
Boker, Uwe, et al., eds.
Frankfurt am Main : Lang, 2004.
Twenty-one essays by various authors and a bibliography of Goller's publications. The essays focus on medieval romances and their reception in later traditions, German and English. For four essays pertain to Chaucer, search for Of Remembraunce the…
Batkie, Stephanie L.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 245-70.
Assesses speech and silence in the characterizations and functions of the narrators of GP and the Prologue to "Piers Plowman." Both narrator-figures are introduced "through tropological silencing," but the "muted contact" of the GP narrator with the…
The owls and apes of Medieval-Renaissance tradition appear in the Chester "Deluge" and in Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy." The latter may echo Chaucer.
Brown, Emerson,Jr.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 63-84.
The Merchant's comparison of May to "Queene Ester" (MerT 1744) indicates the terror, treachery, and hatred that lie beneath a demure exterior; the Prioress's response to trapped mice (PrT 144-45), which figure Christ ensnaring the devil, reveals a…
Finlayson, John.
Studia Neophilologica 70 (1998): 35-39.
RvP is a psychological study of the bitterness and frustrations of old age, as well as a quiting of the Miller. Chaucer borrowed the leek-old age simile from Boccaccio's Decameron and adapted it to his own purpose. The simile is not proverbial.
Hanawalt, Barbara A.
New York and Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1998.
Eleven essays by the author on establishing social control in late-medieval England, especially in London, considering topics such as class crime, rape, poaching, and family relations. The two essays that relate to Chaucer are printed elsewhere:…
Cohen, Jeffrey Jerome.
Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Argues that giants can represent the lost prehistory of the masculine body and therefore figure its present and dangerous instability. Six chapters and an introduction focus on the English Middle Ages. Chapter 4 (pp. 96-118) discusses Chaucer's Th,…
Condren, Edward I.
Chaucer Review 10 (1975): 87-95.
The 1368 date for the death of Blanche of Lancaster in J. J. N. Palmer's article ChauR 8 (1974) is probably correct, but this does not vitiate the 1377 date proposed by Condren ChauR 5 (1971) for the composition of BD.
Masson, Cynthea.
Dr. Faustroll and Cal Clements, eds. Pataphysica: 2. Pataphysica e Alcimia (New York: iUniverse, 2004), pp. 102-16.
Describes the concept of "the alchemical hermaphrodite" and its sexual associations; then traces the concept and its figurative implications in CYPT, arguing that the relationships between the Canon and the Yeoman and between the canon and the priest…
ABC is not polite praise of the Virgin or gentle expression of filial love: it is a needy, fearful, grasping cry for her protection, evincing the greed, craft, and importunity of a child seeking its mother's reassurance.
The friendship-brotherhood motif plays a significant role in Chaucer's poetry. A survey of this theme suggests that friendship between men, whether genuine or simulated, has a negative and even destructive influence on the characters.
Masciandaro, Nicola.
On the Darkness of the Will ([Italy]: Mimesis, 2018): 37-71.
Studies aspects of "mystical non-mysticism" in Chaucer's poetry. Explores the "nomenclative impotentiality" of the narrator's "non-self-naming" in HF, 1873–82, and his "unknowing" elsewhere in the poem. Comments on the Black Knight's tearless sorrow…
Leicester, H. Marshall,Jr.
Women's Studies 11 (1984): 157-78.
Leicester defines two kinds of feminism: the "public" attitude, an illiberal stance toward the male-dominated world; and the "private" attitude, a more humane form. These two forms, complementary as well as opposed, are illustrated in the tale of…
Blanco, Karen Keiner.
Dissertation Abstracts International 56 (1995): 920A.
Writing for an audience that knew animals and animal lore well (from physical interaction, folklore, and religious tradition), Chaucer appealed to, influenced, and manipulated this lore in HF, PF, PT, and TC.
Harris, Richard L.
Southern Folklore Quarterly 33 (1969): 24-38.
Assumes that the Death and the Old Man in PardT are "one and the same person," and provides evidence from Scandinavian literature that Odin was an analogous figure, perhaps even a distant source, although Christianized.
Barakat, Robert A.
Southern Folklore Quarterly 28 (1964): 210-15.
Cites the folk motif of "burying Death" under an oak tree and identifies "numerous parallels" between the Old Man of PardT and Odin from Norse mythology to argue that Odin is the "prototype" of the Old Man.
Shimomura, Sachi.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Set against the eschatology of the Last Judgment, medieval narratives prompt their audiences to employ complex - often deferred - criteria for interpretation or evaluation. Shimomura considers how audience judgment is engaged and complicated in…
McSparran, Frances, ed.
London: Oxford University Press, 1986.
This edition of the northern version of the Middle English romance "Octovian" complements the editor's earlier edition of the southern version in the MET series (Heidelberg, 1979) and includes a full introduction, apparatus, notes, and glossary. The…
Kimmelman, Burt.
John M. Hill and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds. The Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages: Reconstructive Polyphony. Essays in Honor of Robert O. Payne (Madison, N.J., and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 177-205.
Chaucer's narrative persona is related to the Ockhamist controversy in that his narrator struggles with questions of experience and authoritative knowledge and of whether experience can convey truth. Particularly in Chaucer's dream-vision poems,…
