Nohara, Yasuhiro.
English Review (Momoyama Gakuin University) 8 (1993): 71-87.
Argues that function shifts and the development of impersonal constructions reduced the nouns and verbs associated with dreaming in the development of English. Nohara focuses on the loss of forms of "sweven" and "meten" from Middle English, drawing…
Lee, Brian S.
Philological Quarterly 74 (1995): 17-35.
The rape victim in WBT quickly vanishes from the text because she is "excommunicated," or denied access to the privileges of the knight who exploits her.
McDonald, Richard.
In-Between: Essays and Studies in Literary Criticism 7 (1998): 31-48.
Shows that throughout his career Chaucer "attempts to stike a balance between apologizing for the instability of his meaning and open acceptance of the capricious nature of language." Comments on Chaucer's attitudes toward language, interpretation,…
Aers, David, and Thomas Pfau.
Christianity and Literature 70.3 (2021): 263-75.
Argues that theological modes of inquiry are needed in interdisciplinary approaches to literature that have tended toward secular and "reductive" methodologies. Notes the difficulty of teaching theological modes of inquiry through Chaucer when few…
Davis, Isabel.
Literature Compass 6 (2009): 842-63.
Davis assesses late medieval, first-person narration in English literature as a rhetorical and allegorical device and as an autobiographical stance. She comments on the influence of Augustine and Boethius and explores a range of Middle English…
Davis, Isabel.
Literature Compass 6.4 (2009): 842-63.
Surveys uses of first-person narrative in late medieval English literary texts, agreeing with and extending earlier critics' arguments that find in this literature notions of selfhood often attributed to the early modern period. Observes how and…
Walker, Warren S.
Chaucer Review 33: 432-37, 1999.
Turkish tales that parallel the folkloric formula at the end of FranT-"Which was the noblest act?"-generally treat who is the most ignoble. So many Turkish stories fall into this category that Chaucer's Knight may have "previewed a performance"…
The relation between public and private in MilT may be understood as the condition of "extimacy": "the presence of the Other at the place thought to be most intimate." The "structure of extimacy" frustrates masculine attempts to control or acquire…
Jacobs, Kathryn.
Publications of the Medieval Association of the Midwest 6: 25-33, 1999.
Identifies the legal features of the lovers' pacts in CT. Legal diction (e.g., "accord"), careful preparation, and various kinds of delay connect the illicit relations in MilT, WBPT, ShT, MerT, RvT, and others with the legal contract of marriage.
Argues that TC "dramatizes" the relations among vision, imagination, reason, and intellect found in Bo, tracing the effects of the lovers' "faulty reasoning" in failing to progress from sight-based earthly pleasure to eternal good, emphasized in…
Contextualizes MerT by looking at medieval scientific writings on "pica" ("deviant pregnancy cravings") and the medieval "pathology of pregnancy," assessing May's pregnancy and her "sexual longings."
Gugelberger, Georg M.
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1978
Surveys the influence of Provençal and Italian poets on the works of Ezra Pound, and examines Pound's critical commentary about Chaucer (in his "ABC of Reading"), comparing passages from the two poets and exploring the extent to which the "three…
Spencer, H. L.
Review of English Studies 65, no. 272 (2014): 790 -811.
F. J. Furnivall founded seven literary and publishing societies (including the Chaucer and New Shakespeare Societies). Furnivall describes Wyclif "as the first translator of our Bible and THE FATHER OF ENGLISH PROSE" in an attempt "to foist prose…
Spencer, H. L.
Review of English Studies 66, no. 276 (2015): 601-23
Details Furnivall's founding of the Chaucer Society in 1868, and argues that his greatest contribution was his parallel text edition of CT, a publication that has far-reaching consequences for the later editing of Chaucer. Brief references to Astr,…
Ramsey, Roy Vance.
Studies in Bibliography 42 (1989): 134-52.
Robinson's first edition (1933) is founded on unsound editorial practices, most notably an overreliance on Skeat (Robinson's true base text, not Ellesmere as usually claimed). Even in his second edition (1957), Robinson failed to profit from the…
Reinecke, George F.
Paul Ruggiers, ed. Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1984), pp. 231-51.
Describes the "elephantine gestation" of Robinson's edition of Chaucer's "Works," summarizes its early reception and progress to becoming a "standard edition," and assesses the text as "conservative, highly informed, and eclectic, though arrived at…
Plummer, John F.
T. L. Burton and John F. Plummer, eds. "Seyd in Forme and Reverenceœ": Essays on Chaucer and Chaucerians in Memory of Emerson Brown, Jr. (Provo, Utah: Chaucer Studio Press, 2005), pp. 237-45.
Considers citations of Paul's epistles to Timothy in WBPT, PardPT, and ParsPT, reading them in light of late fourteenth-century concern with preaching and pastoral care--Lollard and anti-Lollard, mendicant and antimendicant. Chaucer was concerned…
Kordecki, Lesley.
Robert Graybill, John Hallwas, Judy Hample, Robert Kindrick, and Robert Lovell, eds. Teaching the Middle Ages II. (Warrensburg: Central Missouri State University, 1985): pp. 121-30.
Works by Henryson and Chaucer's NPT can be used to teach the nature of fable literature. NPT develops contrasting meanings in both explicit and implicit morals.
Pearcy's structural approach enables us to recognize the generic markers of fabliau in nonfabliau tales by identifying dupers, dupes, and misinterpretations of signs. Two episodes in KnT reflect fabliau structures: Arcite's reading of Palamon's…
Blake, N. F.
Hans-Jürgen Diller and Manfred Gorlach, eds. Towards a History of English as a History of Genres. Anglistiche Forschungen, no. 298. (Heidelberg: Winter, 2001), pp. 145-57.
The realism of fabliaux (and some drama) makes them valuable in studying the history of colloquial language, especially sexual colloquialisms. Blake draws examples from "Dame Sirith," MilT, RvT, WBP, and MerT, remarking on Chaucer's…
DuVal, John, trans. Intro. and notes by Raymond Eichmann.
Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1992.
An anthology of twenty French fabliaux, translated into English verse. Includes historical introduction, brief headnotes to each tale, and a selective bibliography of fabliau materials.
