Discusses fairies and elves within medieval romances and folklore. Analyzes Chaucer's use of "fayrye" in the MerT, "fairy mistresses" in Th, and the "fairy woman" in the WBT.
Gallacher, Patrick J.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 5:1 (1997): 55-62.
Considers relations among fairness, generosity, and justice as depicted in MilT, ClT, and PardT, discussing them as they might be presented to an audience of high school students.
Jordan, Tracey.
Studies in Short Fiction 21 (1984): 87-93.
Treats antifeminist reversal when Absolon must replace his romantic vision of Alisoun with his experience of her bestiality, but Chaucer ridicules antifeminist themes and celebrates Alisoun's desirable physicality.
In PrT, as in much canonical medieval literature, Jews are largely voiceless and depicted as vile. The lamentations, or "kinot," of Hebrew liturgical poets who mourn the Jewish victims of the crusades record the voices of medieval Jews. The imagery…
Wright argues that the conditional faith and reciprocal acceptance of narrative reception are intrinsic to human communication and that FranT explores similar principles and their relations to love. The love between Dorigen and Aurelius gives way to…
Mroczkowski, Przemyslaw.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the Late Middle Ages in England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 83-100.
In the context of medieval culture from the late eleventh century to Chaucer's time, the author examines Chaucer's faith and orthodoxy in ABC, ParsT, MLT, Mel, ClT, PrT, SNT, and Ret, as opposed to his critical spirit in his portrayals of various…
Explores faith, social and political action, and theology in late-medieval England, focusing on Chaucer, Gower, Langland, the Gawain poet, and Wyclif. Assesses how their ideas reflect Thomas Aquinas, Ockham, and John Ball and how they responded to…
Aers, David.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998): 341-69.
Argues that Griselda of ClT is not a type of Christ, because not all depictions of human suffering imitate Christ's passion. Texts by authors from Aquinas to Wycliffe, Arundel,and William Thorpe indicate that passive suffering is one of many…
Edwards, Robert R.
Robert R. Edwards and Stephen Spector, eds. The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 138-53, 272-76 (notes).
LGWP reflects concern with poetic art, especially the notions of translation and transformation, "making" and "enditing." Cupid's accusations against Rom and TC privilege social over artistic meaning although Chaucer and Alceste subvert this "social…
Hieatt, Constance B.
R. Barton Palmer, ed. Chaucer's French Contemporaries: The Poetry/Poetics of Self and Tradition (New York: AMS Press, 1999), pp. 163-86
Assesses Machaut's knowledge of falconry and his depiction of the falconer/falcon relationship in "Dit de l'Alerion" as an extended metaphor of love. Also explores the influence of Machaut's metaphor, including its impact on Chaucer (TC, LGW, WBP,…
An illustrated guide to raptors in English literature (fourteenth century to seventeenth century), which explains their symbolic value in terms of historical training and hunting practices and rituals. Recurrent references to Chaucer's works,…
Minnis, Alastair.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Studies the Pardoner's and Wife of Bath's "deviancy" in light of late medieval theological and academic discourses, particularly the commentaries and summas of the scholastics, Lollard treatises ,and reactions to Lollard writings and trials. Neither…
Mann, Jill.
Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt, eds. Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Middle English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), pp. 88-110.
Provides a landscape of medieval courtly love, particularly within the French tradition, and evaluates how Chaucer explores intricacies of love in TC.
Bradley, D. R.
Philological Quarterly 39 (1960): 122-25.
Adduces details and emphases in Virgil's "Aeneid" to suggest that Chaucer used it directly in composing his Dido legend in LGW, though perhaps in combination with parallel sources.
Shirley, Peggy Faye.
Dissertation Abstracts International 38 (1977): 1417A-18A.
When King Alfred translated Boethius' "Consolation," he changed some of the materials so that it could be understood by his people whereas Chaucer tried to translate as accurately as his Middle English would allow. The two translations are as…
Patton, Celeste A.
Philological Quarterly 71 (1992): 399-417.
The Manciple evinces linguistic fraud through his digression on language, his shaping of the crow fable, and his impersonation of his mother's voice arguing against speech (a mispresentation of Jean de Meun's discourse of Reason and a foil to the…
Haydock, Nickolas.
Atenea (University of Puerto Rico) 26 (2006): 107-29.
Haydock reads Caxton's spurious ending and epilogue to HF in the 1483 Book of Fame as a "canny as well as sympathetic reaction to the poem's ubiquitous concern with the transmission of literature."
Smith, Kirk L.
Literature and Medicine 27 (2008): 61-81.
PhyT expresses its narrator's concern with "fiduciary" ethics and asserts the principle that "responsible professionals abjure exploitation." Such concerns are part of the late medieval professionalization of medical practice, so the Tale is…
Explores issues of exemplarity and applicability in examples of Middle English literature--"Book of the Knight of the Tower," Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Lydgate's "Fall of Princes," Henryson's "Testment of Cresseid," and CT and TC. Chaucerian…
Osberg, Richard H.
Studies in Medievalism 19 (2010): 204-26.
Defining Neomedievalism(s)
Examines the role of two "false memories" of Chaucer's life in the formation of nineteenth-century attitudes toward the poet and his reputation. The spurious incidents--Chaucer's exile and imprisonment and his "retirement" to a park at…
Although WBP and WBT seem more disparate than similar, they are not. The pairing of the two allows Alison to make a statement about how to love well and how to be happy.
King, Joyce.
Notes and Queries 263 (2018): 533-35.
Argues that Chaucer's "daun Russel the fox" in NPT 7. 3334 belongs to a centuries-long cohort of foxes whose tastes and tendencies Shakespeare applies to his wily Falstaff.
Finke, Laurie A.
Chaucerian Shakespeare (Ann Arbor: Michigan Consortium for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 1983), pp. 7-24.
Falstaff and the Wife of Bath "use remarkably similar grammatical and syntactical strategies to manipulate language," to create "smokescreens" that cover their "nakedness," and "to try to reshape the world in their own image."
Kendrick, Laura.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 135-48.
Examines Froissart's and Christine de Pisan's treatments of fame and the role of the poet in bestowing it. Questioning this tradition in HF, "Chaucer's art is to mask his own opinions and to reveal his readers' to themselves."
Galloway, Andrew.
Isabel Davis and Catherine Nall, eds. Chaucer and Fame: Reputation and Reception (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2015), pp. 103-26.
Argues that fifteenth-century verbal and visual depictions of Chaucer as an "aged penitent" (in Gascoigne, Hoccleve, Gower, Scogan, and the Bedford Hours) reflect the Derridean (and Augustinian) gaps that are evident in Ret and elsewhere in Chaucer's…
