Knapp, Ethan.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21 (1999): 247-73, 1999.
Hoccleve's three encomia for Chaucer in "Regement of Princes" praise Chaucer's genius but also pose strategies for "poetic usurpation." In applying them to Chaucer, Hoccleve capitalized on the "polyvocality" of the metaphors of father, master, and…
Most of the objects and language associated with the Pardoner mirror his fragmentation of incompleteness. Significantly, the literary background in the "Roman de la Rose" follows the account of the castration of Saturn and Raison's defense of plain…
Wallace, David, ed.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Surveys the literatures of late medieval Europe (eastern, western, and peripheral) from the onset of the Black Death to the end of the Great Schism at the Council of Constance, describing historical events, cultural conditions, ideological…
Erzgräber, Willi.
H. Maes-Jelinek et al., eds. Multiple Worlds, Multiple Words: Essays in Honour of Irene Simon (Liege: University of Liege, English Department, 1987), pp. 103-21.
Examines Chaucer's fabliaux (MilT and RvT) as designed for a courtly audience and TC as revealing a "subtle interplay between nobility, gentry, and the middle class." Chaucer's work is symptomatic of a general literary development: "the exploration…
Matthews, William.
Modern Language Review 51 (1956): 217-20.
Identifies a ballade by Eustache Deschamps (number 880: "Que diriez vous du froit mois de Janvier") as an analogue, possibly a source, of several details in MerT.
Sinnreich-Levi, Deborah M.,ed.
New York: AMS Press, 1998.
Thirteen essays reexamining Deschamps's work and life. While critics in the first half of the century saw Deschamps as a possible source for Chaucer and as an admirer of Chaucer's work, these essays investigate a wider context for his work, including…
The mother-daughter bond appearing in medieval English poetry and hagiography is analyzed from a modern sociopsychological point of view, especially the surrogate mother-daughter, in which hags and crones advise young women. Deals briefly with WBT,…
Fyler's assertion that Chaucer's ambiguous use of generic and gendered "man" is both self-conscious and consciously feminist assumes a false stability of meaning for the generic masculine and ignores the critical construction of authorial…
Comic novel cast as the first-person memoir of British academic who identifies with Shakespeare's Hamlet (p. 7) and alludes to Chaucer at least once, citing his own feelings as being similar to those of the "ghost of Troilus at the end of Chaucer's…
Houwen, Luuk.
Andrew James Johnston, Ferdinand von Mengden, and Stefan Thim, eds. Language and Text: Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology (Heidelberg: Winter, 2006), pp. 97-111.
Exemplifies text/image relationships by examining a number of misericords depicting scenes from the beast fable tradition of Reynard and other sly foxes. Considers the role of NPT in the development of this visual tradition.
Kennedy, Kathleen E.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017. Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
Introduces the social practices in Chaucer's age; designed for classroom use. Arranged by the cycle of the day, with commentary on food, clothing, shelter, marriage, childhood, days of the week, festivals, and more, with hypertext links (some broken)…
Lockhart, Jessica Jane.
Dissertation Abstracts International A79.07 (2017): n.p.
Examines the use of riddling and the structure of riddles as a means of representing "the wondrous in the everyday." Specifically considers Chaucer's use of this in BD and PF. Additionally suggests that the "Secretum philosophorum" is an intertext in…
DeVries, David N.
Nancy M. Reale and Ruth E. Sternglantz, eds. Satura: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honour of Robert R. Raymo (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2001), 248-62.
Assesses the intertextual relationship of Lydgate's "A Balade in Commendation of Our Lady" with TC and with Alan de Lille's "Anticlaudianus," exploring how aureate diction contributes to the poem's "connection between poetry and redemption in…
Duke, Elizabeth Anne Foster.
DAI 29.11 (1969): 3971A.
Examines "the relationships existing among the printed editions" of CT from Caxton through Tyrwhitt, based on comparisons of their versions of GP and considering their uses of prior texts, emendation policies, and editorial innovations.
Cigman, Gloria.
Leo Carruthers and Adrian Papahagi, eds. Jeunesse et vieillesse: Images médiévales de l'age en littérature anglaise (Paris: Harmatten, 2005), pp. 93-101.
Imaginative re-creation of the Wife of Bath's life and times from childhood onward, expanding on hints in WBP.
D'Arcens, Louise, and Chris Jones.
Representations 121.1 (2013): 85-106.
Refers to P.R. Stephenson's deployment of Chaucer as a descriptor for early twentieth-century Australian poetry, noting his assertion of "Chaucerian" as shorthand for "a golden age of national self-confidence in which cosmopolitan sophistication…
Adams, Jenny.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 (2004): 267-97.
Adams argues that the "discourse of gaming" underlies "Beryn" and its Prologue (a.k.a. "The Canterbury Interlude"), which offer "centralized regulation as a solution to the inequalities inherent in exchange and commerce."
Taavitsainen, Irma.
Jacek Fisiak, ed. Studies in Middle English Linguistics (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), pp. 573-607.
Statistical analysis of Middle English exclamations in several literary modes and genres. Exclamations are a marker of fiction, and interjections are "particularly frequent" in Chaucer's works.
Morrison, Susan Signe.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.
Morrison constructs a cultural poetics of excrement to suggest that Chaucer's treatment of fecal matter, in both its literal and figurative senses, illustrates the ways that the Middle Ages viewed excrement. This cultural poetics enables the modern…
Petrina, Alessandra.
Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead, eds. Lost in Translation? (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2009), pp. 121-31.
Explores the tension between the Chaucerian legacy of French influence and the Lancastrian concern with English in the works of John Lydgate and Thomas Hoccleve. Opens with an explication of details of Eustache Deschamps' praise of Chaucer as "grand…
Identifies "structural similarities" among BD, PF, and HF, arguing that each poem is an "elaborate narrative orchestrating a moral theme from some work of antiquity . . . foreshadowed in [its] preamble." Each is reminiscent of Macrobius's "enigmatic…
Wilson, William S.
English Language Notes 1.4 (1964): 244-48.
Reads Chaucer's summary of Virgil's "Aeneid" in Book 1 of HF as comic—a parody of several practices of "exegetical grammar," including translation, "dictiones ethicae" (soliloquies), paraphrase, and moral interpretation. The purpose of the parody…
Baker, Donald C.
University of Mississippi Studies in English 3 (1962): 35-41.
Explores how exempla and citations of authority--both largely via allusive names--are used by the Friar and the Summoner in order to compete with the Wife of Bath and criticize each other.
Robertson, Kellie.
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed. Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects (Washington, DC: Oliphaunt, 2012), pp. 91-121.
Distinguishes between modern views of rocks as mere objects and medieval understanding of their "virtues," agency, and exemplary value, raising questions about objects in nature and in art. Assesses the tale of the cock and the rock in Robert…
