Silar, Theodore Irvin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4283A.
Legal terminology pertaining to land law is dense in fragments 1 and 2 of CT and in TC. Chaucer used the terms in informed ways and expected his audience to be familiar with their implications.
Josipovici, G. D.
Critical Quarterly 7 (1965): 185-97.
Explores the strategies and effects of Chaucer's self-aware affirmations in CT of the work's "status as fiction," commenting on the first-person narrator's functions (in contrast with those in Dante) and tracing the ironies generated by tensions…
Howard, Donald R.
Journal of the American Academy of Religion 47.2, Supplement : 307-28, 1979.
Howard compares TC with Il Filostrato and CT with Decameron, focusing on how Chaucer adapts Boccaccio's uses of conventions to engage his audience. In Boccaccio, fiction enables the audience to escape from a contemptible world, whereas Chaucer--more…
Eleven Japanese essays, three English essays, and one translation in Japanese. Focusing on literary and philological traditions, the essays contribute to study of Chaucer, Langland, and Gower. The Japanese translation is of De descriptione temporum,…
Halliday, Stephen.
Cheltenham: History Press, 2020.
Arranged in districts; includes brief references to Chaucer and his works, e.g., Cheapside (CkT), south of the Thames (CT), Aldgate (Chaucer's residence), etc.
Spencer, Jaime.
New Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, 2011.
Discusses how authors, from Chaucer to C. S. Lewis, are influenced by the "flexible tradition" of religious stories. Chapter 1 analyzes how Chaucer reveals understanding of Christian doctrine in WBT.
Indictor, Rina M.
Dissertation Abstracts International 37 (1976): 1531A.
TC is used (along with later works) to draw conclusions about authorial self-consciousness. There are applications to the "persona" and the author's fictionalization of his audience.
Owen, Charles A., Jr.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval English Literature (Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 37-55.
The various fictional levels in CT result in a dialectic relationship between voice and genre, especially pronounced in Fragment D.
Considers TC, MLT, and LGW in the larger context of the idea of "raptus" (rape or abduction) and its implications for national and other borders and for female status.
Ferster, Judith.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996.
Outlines the mixture of authorial deference and criticism within a mostly English mirror-for-princes tradition, from the "Secretum secretorum" to Machiavelli. Historicizes the works of James Yonge, John Gower, and Thomas Hoccleve within particular…
Bergquist, Carolyn Jane.
Dissertation Abstracts International 64 (2004): 2898A
As in the worlds of Sidney's "Arcadia" and Milton's "Paradise Lost," the fictive world of TC is grounded in a key ethical concept. According to Bergquist, "Kynde or nature is the making and undoing of both Criseyde and the fiction that contains her."
Brawer, Robert A.
New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998.
Chapter two, "Selling on a Grand Scale, Playing to an Image-Conscious Society" (pp. 35-59), includes discussion of the Merchant as a "self-made man" who relies on his image of success. Assesses the GP description and compares the character to Horatio…
Yeager, Suzanne M.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 197-215.
Argues that Chaucer’s critique of "curiositas" as "the prevailing failure and motivation of medieval travel" is "successfully negotiated" by several late medieval travel authors. Concentrates on readings from travel accounts by Simon Simeonis and…
Taylor, Jamie K.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013.
Focuses on devotional and legal "witnessing practices" of the late Middle Ages. Chapter 2, "The Face of a Saint and the Seal of a King," reveals how the Man of Law presents "episodes of false witness" in MLT.
Contrasts Custance of MLT with her source in Trevet's "Cronicles," exploring the depictions of the sea in the two poems as well, arguing that women and water are tamed by "providential control" in Chaucer, especially when seen in light of Alatiel of…
Galloway, Andrew.
Andrew J. Power, ed. The Birth and Death of the Author: A Multi-Authored History of Authorship in Print (New York: Routledge, 2020), pp. 32–53; 2 illus.
Explores nuances in the tradition of attributing paternal authority to Chaucer as a poet, focusing on Thoreau, Hoccleve, and Lydgate, and disclosing differing ways in which they represent his authority and appropriate it to assert their own…
Putter, Ad.
Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, ed. A Companion to Fifteenth-Century English Poetry (Brewer, 2013), pp. 143-55.
Clarifies why "The Flower and the Leaf,” “The Assembly of Ladies,” “La Belle Dame sans Mercy” and “The Isle of Ladies” are described as “Chaucerian,” noting their attribution to Chaucer in manuscripts and early printed editions, describing their…
Compares the contents of Cambridge University Library MS Additional 4122 with similar contemporary compilations, encouraging further study of such devotional collections. The presence of Chaucer's SNT in such anthologies may indicate his shaping…
Davenport, Tony.
Helen Cooney, ed. Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century English Poetry (Dublin and Portland, Ore.: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 129-51.
Examines two mid-fifteenth-century complaints that reflect public distrust of Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, arguing that these complaints are more Lydgatian than Chaucerian, since Chaucer's own complaints had little influence at the time. An appendix…
Tragedy, comedy, debate, mask, and theatrical "epic" are found in fifteenth-century drama. Davenport explores factors to explain the scope, style, and variety.
Boffey, Julia, ed.
New York and Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2003.
Texts, notes, and introductions to Lydgate's "Temple of Glass"; James I of Scotland's "The Kingis Quair"; Charles of Orleans's "Love's Renewal"; "The Assembly of Ladies"; and Skelton's "The Bouge of Court". The general introduction and the…
Edwards, A. S. G.
A. S. G. Edwards, Vincent Gillespie, and Ralph Hanna, eds. The English Medieval Book: Studies in Memory of Jeremy Griffiths (London: British Library, 2000), 101-12.
Evidence from late-medieval English verse collections indicates that the conception of an individual author's corpus was slow developing, not crystalizing until the 1532 printing of Chaucer's Works. Earlier manuscript collections of Chaucer (and…
Pepys MS 2006 contains a unique grouping of Mel, ParsT, Truth, and Scog. Written by two scribes, it displays the names of John Kyriell (gentry) and William Fettyplace (London mercer). The two social classes of Kyriell and Fettyplace indicate either a…
Cable, Thomas.
Yoko Iyeiri and Margaret Connolly, eds. And Gladly Wolde He Lerne and Gladly Teche: Essays on Medieval English Presented to Professor Matsuji Tajima on His Sixtieth Birthday (Tokyo: Kaibunsha, 2002), pp. 109-25.
Cable laments deterioration in the understanding of Chaucer's meter. He argues that too little attention has been paid to the loss of final -e in the fifteenth century, leading to misreading the poetry of Lydgate, Hoccleve, Barclay, and Hawes.
