Morse, Ruth.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Medieval notions of historical and literary truth derive from classical rhetorical tradition and differ from modern, empirically based notions of factuality. Basing her argument on a description of education in rhetoric, Morse demonstrates that…
Benson, C. David.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 22-33.
Benson argues against interpreting CT in terms of dramatic theory: the pilgrims are not fully developed human characters, nor are their tales expressions of their individual psychologies. The most developed pilgrims-the Pardoner and the Wife of…
Greenwood, Maria K.
Andre Lascombes, ed. Identites et differences (Paris: Publications de l'Association des Medievistes de l'Enseignement Superieur, no. 17, 1992), pp. 27-43.
The Prioress's duplicity has been constructed. Appealing to one or both of the codes by which we define her as a nun or a lady, she manages to invite excuses and build trust whenever mistrust is possible.
In his account of Katherine in the "Legendys of Hooly Wummen," fifteenth-century poet Osbern Bokenham "rebels" against his poetic fathers, namely Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate. Bokenham allows Katherine to persuade her audience with the Nicene Creed…
Benson, C. David.
Piero Boitani, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 153-70.
After Chaucer's TC, minor writers of the fifteenth, sixteenth,and early seventeenth centuries generally ignore "both the high passion and the tragedy of the lovers." The two type characters appear chiefly in brief allusions, "with none of Chaucer's…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
In R. Barton Palmer and Burt Kimmelman, eds. Machaut's Legacy: The Judgment Poetry Tradition in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017), pp. 139-64.
Considers Machaut's and Chaucer's uses of blue and green symbolism in relation to late medieval "armorial bearings disputes" to investigate the poets' concern with "issues surrounding the legibility of identity." Comments on color symbolism in SqT,…
Bestul, Thomas H.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 82 (1983): 500-14.
Chaucer's close attention to Griselda's and Walter's faces throughout ClT makes allegorical interpretation insufficient. Walter's false faces emphasize his duplicity and cruelty, contradicting his correspondence to a higher beneficent order;…
Balestrini, María Cristina.
V Jornadas de Estudios Clásicos y Medievales "Diálogos Culturales,"La Plata, 5 - 7 de Octubre de 2011 (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 2012), 13 pp.
Assesses the Troy stories in BD and HF, exploring issues of cultural memory, authorization, and Chaucer's visual depiction of the traditional narrative.
Describes the "role Troy played in medieval literary imagination" as a foundation myth, and explores how the "destinies of some of the major figures" in TC are "inextricably" interwoven with that of Troy. Includes an abstract in English and in…
A basketball exposé and coming-of-age novel about a basketball player, Elliott Hersch, and his struggles to find a true life and game, guided by Chaucer’s aphorism in FranT, 1479: "Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe."
Cadden, Joan.
Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal, eds. The Moral Authority of Nature (Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 207-31.
Cadden traces the "persistent association of nature with moral conduct and social order" in various late medieval texts, from commentaries on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to vernacular poetry. Focuses on PF as an example in which both desire and…
Baird-Lange, Lorrayne Y.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 245-66.
The slandered Trotula as Dame Trote, or as a "trot," serves as a "type" of the Wife of Bath, personification of medieval misogyny, both medical and clerical.
McDermott, Ryan.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016.
Studies the medieval and early modern theory of tropological, or moral, sense of Scripture. Argues that tropology can be "theory of literary and ethical invention" as a way to interpret the Bible. Includes brief discussions of Langland's and…
Heinrichs, Katherine.
English Studies 76 (1995): 209-14.
Allusions to the Fall appear in at least half of the tales in CT, but a full tropological reading occurs only in ParsT (10.330), where the allegory explains that "the image of God in man guarantees our ability to rise after a fall."
Compares Chaucer's and Boccaccio's treatments of Troilus's looking at Criseyde in the temple. Governed by the laws of medieval optics, Troilus's gaze imprints Criseyde's image in his heart. In the image of the mirror, Chaucer portrays Troilus's…
Martin, Molly A.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec,eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 132-47.
In medieval optical theory of intromission and in medieval romances, gazed-upon objects are understood to be more active than they are in modern theorizing of scopophilia. Tracing interdependencies of the romance genre and the masculine gaze in TC,…
Explores the "temporal perspectives" of futurity in TC, combining an Augustinian conceptualization of time with Michel de Certeau's spatial notion of "strategy," looking closely at three perspectives that are posed in the poem and undermined in Book…
Brewer, Derek.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the 'Canterbury Tales' and 'Troilus and Criseyde' (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 237-52.
According to Chaucer's conception of "manhood," as distinct from the somewhat anachronistic term "masculinity," Troilus is to be seen as "manly" and virtuous in his behavior, as well as worthy of the reader's sympathy. He is an "idealized and…
Taylor, Ann M.
Papers on Language and Literature 15 (1979): 357-69.
Chaucer presents Troilus' appeal to Criseyde as ominous in its accuracy, sincere in its passions, yet faulty in its rhetoric. Troilus fails to appear confident, to inspire Criseyde's good will; through faulty emphasis he loses the effect of his plan…
