Traces the epic from classical roots to postmodern versions in various media; includes brief comments on KnT as epic with elements of romance, the latter challenged by MilT.
Holley, Linda Tarte.
David Raybin and Linda Tarte Holley, eds. Closure in The Canterbury Tales: The Role of The Parson's Tale (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000), pp. 198-208.
As a reckoning or quantification of sin, ParsT rationalizes the "complexities of the human will." By making human options clear, it can serve as either a beginning or an end.
Saunders, Corinne.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 647-60.
Discusses the "living tradition" of Middle English poetry in later English culture, commenting on continuities, revivals, and imitations, with recurrent references to the status of Chaucer.
Medcalf, Stephen.
Stephen Medcalf, ed. The Later Middle Ages (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1981), pp. 291-303.
The word "uncircumscript" near the end of TC suggests Chaucer's Boethianism. Chaucer's TC differs from Boccaccio's "Filostrato" in telling the story of a man who lives by "love's heigh service" in a universe where love holds the world together.
Bruhn, Mark Joseph.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1996): 690A.
Study based on theories of Fowler (genre) and Jakobson (metaphor and metonymy) reveals that English verse romance from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries is typically episodic, with variations attuned to changing intent.
Episodes in the first part of WBT parallel events in the second. This "step parallelism structure" reveals a "pattern of attenuation" that emphasizes the development of the knight, who becomes less impulsive and more reflective through the course of…
Holloway, Julia Bolton; Constance S. Wright; and Joan Bechtold, eds.
New York: Peter Lang, 1990.
To attain equality, woman have historically had to resist hierarchy, to quest liminality, and to exercise holy disobedience. Women in earlier Christianity, especially in the Romanesque period, exercised that disobedience; but in the paradigm shift…
Chaucer's choice of this version of the saint's life allows him to portray the interests of a female teller and to fuse masculine and feminine ideals. We hear Cecilia's strident voice and experience her powers of articulation. Further, the hair shirt…
Pitcher, John Austin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 3582A, 2001.
Examines the "interrelation of equivocation and desire" in PhyT, ClT, FranT, and WBPT, not in what the narrators and characters say, but through a "movement or oscillation between opposed interests." In CT, sexual politics can be found in the…
Boitani, Piero.
Piero Boitani, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 281-305.
Summarizes the treatment and evolution of the Troilus myth from antiquity to the modern age, focusing on plot, the ending, and themes of love and death.
Kaufman, Amy S.
Amanda Hopkins, Robert Allen Rouse, and Cory James Rushton, eds. Sexual Culture in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2014), pp. 27-37.
Discusses scholarly interpretations of May and Damyan's sexual encounter in MerT, comparing the ideas that it could be categorized as rape/"rough love," an erotic tryst, or an act of female empowerment.
Sigal, Gale.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 1996.
Examines the active role of women in medieval albas, or dawn-songs, as indications of women in society. Defines the lyric genre and its history, exploring its relations with courtly tradition, the fantasies reflected in the genre, and the sexual…
Burger, Glenn.
Jeffrey Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York and London: Garland, 1997), pp. 480-99.
MilT reproduces the "sadism" of KnT in its assertion of heteronormativity but simultaneously resists this sadism. In the bedroom-window scene, gender is loosened and "queered," enabling readers to escape from the hegemony of masculinist and…
Saunders, Corinne [J.]
Amanda Hopkins and Cory James Rushton, eds. The Erotic in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.; and Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2007), pp. 38-52.
Through otherworldly female characters, a number of Middle English romances and their French ancestors "interweave" heterosexual, romantic desire with magic and the supernatural. WBT, however, "subverts" this convention by reproving the violence of…
Pavlinich, Elan Justice.
New York: Routledge, 2023.
Explores how various texts of medievalism (graphic novels, retellings, rap music, performance art, etc.) "represent radical, nontraditional sex acts enjoyed by people who are typically excluded from both popular culture and medieval narratives" and…
Singer, Irving.
Modern Language Notes 90. 6 (1975): 767-83.
Assesses the attitudes toward love and internality reflected in various accounts of the Dido and Aeneas story: Virgil's "Aeneid," Ovid's "Heroides," the "Roman d'Enéas," Chaucer's LGW, and Marlowe's "Dido Queen of Carthage." Chaucer derives his…
Item not seen; the WorldCat record indicates that the volume includes "La confesión de una viuda. El estudiante, la patrona y el sacrestán. Por G. Chaucer."
Boon, James A.
James A. Boon. Verging on Extra-Vagance: Anthropology, History, Religion, Literature, Arts . . . Showbiz (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), pp. 191-97.
Tallies several similarities of topic and method between cultural anthropology, on the one hand, and Chaucer's works and Chaucer studies, on the other.
Proposes punctuation for CkT 1.4394-96 that renders Perkyn's "sober-living master" as "not altogether above reproach," offering the reading as "yet another token of Chaucer's sophisticated art."
Mehl, Dieter.
Arno Esch, ed. Chaucer und Seine Zeit: Symposion für Walter F. Schirmer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), pp. 189-206.
Illustrates the riches of Chaucer's narratorial techniques by considering the presence of the narrator in GP (focusing on the descriptions of the Prioress, Monk, and Friar), the assignment to him of Tho, the ironies of PardP and WBP, and the ways…
Zieman, Katherine.
Frank Grady and Andrew Galloway, eds. Answerable Style: The Idea of the Literary in Medieval England (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2013), pp. 75-94.
Addresses "excesses of Chaucerian literary language" to reveal Chaucer's narrative voice within a literary and historical construct. Discusses the "complex range of intention and desire" in MLT. Also refers to HF.
Kiser, Lisa (J.)
Modern Language Quarterly 49 (1990, for 1988): 99-119.
Analyzes HF as an antivision, a highly comic parody of "solemn medieval attempts to describe the otherworld." Rather than writing about human lives earthly or otherworldly, Chaucer restricts his theme to "the nature and destiny of human narratives,"…
