Vance's concept of "power semantics" articulates how Chaucer uses transgressive exempla--"meta-examples which confound expectations"--to pit the discourse of medieval history against itself in PardT, predicating a literal critique of medieval culture…
Crafton, John Micheal.
Richard J. Utz, ed. Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm (Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston, Ont.; Lampeter, Wales: Eswin Mellen, 1995), pp. 117-34.
Chaucer's works reflect a pattern of concern with the realist-nominalist issues of language. Early on, Chaucer critiques realism, and, later on, nominalism, while TC and especially CT pose the two views in dialogic debate. Fragment 6 (Phyt and PardT)…
Céspedes [Benitez], Irma.
Revista Chilena de Literatura 7 (1976): 5-26.
Explores the vibrant language of CT (and the difficulties of translation), its relations with oral tradition, and the constraints and possibilities of traditional medieval narrative set in tension with a competitive tale-telling contest among diverse…
Staley, Lynn.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 113-33.
Explores the trope of England as an idealized garden/island in imagery of homes in various medieval and Renaissance works, including NPT.
Cooper, Helen.
Heather Hirschfeld, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Shakespearean Comedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 55-68.
Surveys theatrical genre labels ("comedy," "tragedy," "play," "drama") in early English, including Chaucer's uses of them. Then surveys the ways in which Chaucer's plots, motifs, and emphases influenced Shakespeare, with comments also on the…
Snodgrass, Mary Ellen.
Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 1998.
An alphabetical dictionary of the "world fable," i.e., the beast fable and related narratives in various international traditions, both as stand-alone narratives and as exempla in larger works.
Lambdin, Robert Thomas, and Laura Cooner Lambdin,eds.
Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 2000.
An alphabetical one-volume encyclopedia of medieval "literary works, authors, historical figures, events, themes, and genres," with a general emphasis on "early British literature" and individual entries for Continental literatures. Many entries are…
An alphabetical one-volume encyclopedia of international medieval writers, their works, anonymous works, literary genres, and major cultural contexts, with entries by a dozen contributing authors, a time line of writers, a bibliography, and an index.…
Koff, Leonard Michael.
R. A. Shoaf, ed. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, "Subgit to alle Poesye": Essays in Criticism. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, no. 104. Pegasus Paperbacks, no. 10 (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992), pp. 161-78.
In TC 1, the narrator's initial confidence that Troilus is an exemplary figure conflicts with the reader's growing awareness of the narrator's limited knowledge of love and its conventions, paralleling Troilus's own movement from confidence to…
Beal, Rebecca S.
Annali d'Italianistica 18: 175-98, 2000.
Concerned with issues of closure in texts of Guillaume de Lorris, Dante, and Boccaccio. Introduction notes recent criticism treating Chaucer's "open endings."
Simonin, Olivier.
Bulletin des Anglicistes Medievistes 87 (2015): 123–44.
Explores the notion of commitment in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and briefly mentions MilT in relation to the several meanings of the term "hend(e)."
Moseley, C. W. R. D., ed.
New York: Berghahn, 2020.
Reprints ten essays on Chaucer by various authors, each previously edited by Moseley for two issues of the journal Critical Survey: 29, no. 3 (2017) and 30, no. 2 (2018). The volume includes an introductory essay by Moseley and a comprehensive index.
Amtower, Laurel.
New York and Houndsmill, Basingstoke : Palgrave, 2000.
Analyzes depictions of reading in books of hours and assesses the theme of reading in Dante, Petrarch, Chaucer, and Christine de Pizan, examining a new "reflexive relationship" between "reading habits and the shaping of identity" in the late Middle…
Bullon-Fernandez, Maria.
R. F. Yeager, ed. Re-Visioning Gower (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 1998), pp. 129-46.
In Gower's version of the Constance story, incest is a metaphor for the relationship between the Church and the crown, a means to critique the two. In contrast, MLT "tries to avoid suggesting any tension between lay and clerical power."
Stretter, Robert.
Albrecht Classen and Marilyn Sandidge, eds. Friendship in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age: Explorations of a Fundamental Ethical Discourse (New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2010), pp. 501-24.
Stretter comments on various romances and includes discussion of how, in KnT, Palamon and Arcite's mutual love for Emily disrupts their sworn brotherhood, a powerful bond of obligation and friendship. Chaucer alters a long cultural and literary…
Riddy, Felicity.
Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 54-71.
Examines the sexual politics of FranT, arguing that its fundamental ideas of "gentilesse" and "pitee" reflect an aristocratic, masculinist hierarchy. The courtly setting entails this hierarchy, which dominates the tale, but Dorigen's complaint and…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 47-64.
Traces recent critical engagement with the "problem" of late medieval English national identity in Chaucer, especially as it reflects anxieties about political upheaval, linguistic variety, cultural "hybridity," and English geographical isolation.…
Comments on the GP sketch of the Knight, Gower's "To King Henry the Fourth," and the Wilton Diptych as evidence of English support for Philippe de Mezieres's promotion of the 1396 crusade against the Turks, perhaps evidence of English participation…
Heng, Geraldine.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2019.
Includes comparison of PrT with sources and analogues: the Anglo-Norman Hughes de Lincoln and two accounts--"The Child Slain by Jews" and "The Jewish Boy"--found in the Vernon manuscript. Analyzes the stories' various contributions to the…
Social history of England, particularly London, in the late fourteenth century, focusing on the laboring class and the Uprising of 1381 (Peasants' Revolt). Concentrates on economic conditions, legal practice, sanitation and medicine, plague, urban…
Rogers, Nicholas, ed.
Stamford, Conn.: Paul Watkins, 1993.
Includes five essays on relations between image and text, three on literature, and three on the church and society. For one essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for England in the Fourteenth Century under Alternative Title.
Waugh, Scott L.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
A descriptive political history of Edward's reign that explores how his personality and style of ruling were crucial to the development of political order and various domestic institutions. Pt. 1 surveys major events of Edward's reign; pts. 2 and 3…
Rigby, Stephen H.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed. A Companion to Britain in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003), pp. 497-520.
Rigby explores how a variety of Middle English texts reflect and reinforce the normative ideologies of class and gender in late medieval England. Contempt for the world helped to assert social hierarchies, justify inequalities, and quell tensions.…
