Reads the manuscript glosses to TC in Cambridge, St. John's College, MS L.i and Cambridge, University Library, MS Gg.IV.27 as an "experimental early step toward the more elaborate marginal apparatus" in CT manuscripts. The TC glosses reflect a…
"Wyn ape" in ManT (9.44) should be taken as "fool's wine." The Manciple had drugged the Cook in order to prevent him from betraying his (the Manciple's) chicanery, and in the Headlink, he serves him with an antidote.
Fleissner, Robert F.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 92 (1991): 75-81.
Verbal echoes, connections of character, and other allusive possibilities suggest relationships between Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and TC and parts of CT.
Treats contents and history of the volume bequeathed to Magdalene College by Samuel Pepys. The first of the two manuscripts in the volume preserves texts of LGW, ABC, HF, Mars, Ven, For, PF, and several non-Chaucerian works.
Jones, Alex I.
English Language Notes 23 (1985): 9-15.
The Harley scribe preserved the structure of Chaucer's original, revealing Chaucer's intent to structure CT according to a numerical series that the thirteenth-century Lombard mathematician Fibonacci used to describe the geometrical increase of a…
Lainé, Ariane.
Colette Stévanovitch, ed. L'Articulation langue-littérature dans les textes médiévaux anglais, II. Actes du colloque des 25 et 26 juin 1999 á l'Université de Nancy II. Collection GRENDEL, no. 3. (Nancy: Publications de l'Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 1999), pp. 193-208
Explores whether there is a distinctive Lollard vocabulary. While the usual method is to identify words in Lollard writings that would not be used in orthodox literature, the author highlights the absence of some orthodox words and sees what words…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Masahiko Kanno and others, eds. Medieval Heritage: Essays in Honour of Tadahiro Ikegami (Tokyo: Yushodo, 1997), pp. 441-54.
Discusses the fusion of the root and epistemic senses of modal auxiliaries such as "mot" / "moste," "may" / "myghte," "shal" / "sholde," and "wol" / "wolde" in TC.
Fowler, Rebekah M.
Dissertation Abstracts International A72.09 (2012): n.p.
Studies "male bereavement in medieval literature," particularly "the authenticity and affective nature of grief among aristocratic males" in Chretién's "Yvain," "Trewe Man," "Sir Orfeo," "Pearl," and BD. In the latter, Chaucer expresses "not…
Medcalf, Stephen.
Nicholas Rogers, ed. England in the Fourteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1991 Harlaxton Symposium (Stamford, Conn.: Paul Watkins, 1993), pp. 97-108.
Explores the motives for pilgrimage implied in Beryn and CT, comparing them with the urge to "darshan" ("seek the deity") in Hindu tradition. The motives of the fictional pilgrims are more genuinely spiritual than has been argued by some critics.
Cormican, John D.
USF Language Quarterly 18 (1980): 43-48.
Whatever his name may suggest, Pandarus was himself a true lover, holding love and friendship, though subject to the vicissitudes of Fortune, as the highest human values. Endowed with social grace and committed to friendship, Pandarus pretends not…
The complex relationships of Pardoner, audiences, and the Host reveal a character who simultaneously believes in the efficacy of pardon and in the foolishness of those who believe in it. The pilgrims laugh at him rather than being outraged, and he…
Schneider, Thomas R.
Dissertation Abstracts International A75.05 (2014): n.p.
Studies physical motion, readerly motion, and other motions related to texts in late medieval English literature, including a chapter on Chaucer's "engagement with motion as a concept in natural philosophy" in HF and PF, connecting it with the…
Surveys "some of the many roles played and influences exerted by women in the practice of medieval pilgrimage," considering literary texts and cultural contexts from the fall of Rome until Margery Kempe and the Paston women in the fifteenth century.…
Rivera, Alison Bucket.
SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature 6 (1996): 103-16.
Considers medieval family structures, attitudes toward sexuality, and marital practices to argue that the Wife of Bath "almost definitely had no children." Unlike Margery of Kempe, she may have been sterile.
Weissberger, Barbara F.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39 (2009): 703-25.
Contrasts PrT with Damián de Vegas's "Memoria del Santo Niño de La Guardia" (1544), exploring mother figures in the works and arguing that the latter work (like Spanish tradition more generally) reflects the influence of the "converso," a hybrid…
Michael, Nancy Margaret Furey.
Dissertation Abstracts International A81.12(E) (2020): n.p.
Explores "the complex role of maternal power as it relates to male aristocratic identity" in several romances in Middle English, including MLT and ClT.
Examines manuscript evidence and compares the verse of TC with that of Boccaccio's "Filostrato," arguing that Chaucer's decasyllabic lines, adapted to rhyme-royal stanzas, are characterized by greater flexibility of caesura than in English…
Chaucer employs scriptural allusions in Thomas's gift and its codicil; typological exegesis demonstrates that, if Jankin's division of the fart suggests Pentecost, Thomas's first gift recalls the events in the lives of Moses and Elijah that Pentecost…
Leach, Eleanor Winsor.
Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, eds. Acts of Interpretation (Norman, Okla., Pilgrim Books, 1982), pp. 299-310.
In KnT, May symbolizes the future promise of Emelye's love. In LGW strong emphasis on women and love is tied to men's ability to judge them. May, the season most likely to obscure these judgments, is a metaphor for fulfillment of love's promise.
Explores the "literary negotiation of the macabre aesthetic in Middle English literature." Chapter 2, "The Progress of the Dead: From Body to Revenant," discusses "'physical' return of the dead" in BD and PrT.
Faulkner, Peter
Peter Lewis, ed. William Morris: Aspects of The Man and His Work (Loughborough, Leicestershire: Loughborough University of Technology, 1978), pp. 28-49.
Gauges the originality and success of William Morris's poetry, commenting in passing that "The Lovers of Gudrun" is written "in the rather casual couplet form which Morris derived from Chaucer" (37), even though he fails to exploit the "variety" of…
LaPorte, Charles.
David Latham, ed. Writing on the Image: Reading William Morris (Toronto and Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 209-19.
Morris's decision to present Chaucer's works in "clear-text" format (without editorial apparatus) conflicts with Victorian theories of editing. Yet, his presentations of Ret and the envoy to TC belie his efforts to imitate medieval traditions.
