Indraguru, Bhavatosh.
New Delhi: DK Printworld, 2019.
Compares and contrasts early narratives of India and Western Europe, theorizing a “morphology” of relations among characterization and character development, narrative mode, and meaning. Includes discussion of differences between the…
Fisiak, Jacek.
University: University of Alabama Press, 1965.
Describes the morphemic structure of Chaucer's language, "based only on the facts recorded in Chaucer's writing," without considering the work of his contemporaries or inferring data beyond extant forms in his works. Defines morphemes and their…
Amsler, Mark.
Brian Gastle and Erick Kelemen, eds. Later Middle English Literature, Materiality, and Culture: Essays in Honor of James M. Dean (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2018.), pp. 3-24.
Explores the semantic field of "affectus"/"affeccioun" in medieval Latin grammar, Chaucer (MilT and TC), Margery Kempe, and several devotional texts, clarifying its wide "range of meanings and connotations . . . as a feeling category term," positive…
San Souci, Robert D., ed.
New York: Delacorte Press, 1994.
An anthology of the editor's "favorite scary tales," collected for a juvenile audience. Includes a modernized, simplified version of PardT, entitled "Three Who Sought Death" (pp. 75-77).
In the context of the biblical passages alluded to in a couplet evoking "gem-encrusted plows," it is worth noting that in Blake's depiction of the Canterbury Pilgrims, "he represented the Plowman as a medieval version of himself."
Mooney, Linne R.
Chaucer Review 30 (1996): 401-07.
Two recently identified Trinity College manuscripts written by the "Hammond" scribe (who worked in London ca. 1460-85), a prolific copier of Chaucer, contain medical, scientific, and legal materials, indicating that this scribe included among his…
Mosser, Daniel W. and Linne R. Mooney.
ChauR 49.01 (2014): 39-76.
Identifies the Beryn Scribe as the scribe of Princeton University, MS 100, as well as other CT fragments. Maintains that the Beryn Scribe worked with other scribes in a scriptorium based in London to disseminate multiple copies of vernacular…
Although erotic and homosexual elements are undoubtedly evident in SumT, certain words and gestures, particularly the friar's ill-fated grope, do not unambiguously have the homosexual charge that has been claimed.
Henderson, Arnold Clayton.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 2489A.
Fables present a worldlier view than do Christian bestiaries, and neither genre presented a worldview full enough for Chaucer or other writers. Fable became more Christian, developing witty moralization, sharply drawn personae, and more vivid style…
Chapin, Arthur.
Yale Journal of Criticism 8:1 (1995): 7-33.
Compares the comic treatment of sententiousness in NPT with modern philosophical uses of aphorism. Both are "Menippean" in their contrasts of high and low discourse, and both ask us to perceive their points rather than to understand conceptually.
Green, Richard Firth.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 199-217.
Green confronts "the interpretive function of morality in medieval literature" and discusses why Chaucer's "moral horizons" in CT are elusive. Many of the Tales include competing morals; frameworks such as estates satire and the seven deadly sins…
Twycross-Martin, Henrietta.
Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen, eds. Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry. King's College London Medieval Studies, no. 5 (London: King's College Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1991), pp. 30-50.
Considers The Testament of Cresseid as a "parallel text" to TC 5, arguing that although Henryson echoes various Chaucerian collocations, techniques, and structures, his counterpointing of fickle and stable earthly love is unlike Chaucer's opposition…
Argues that the Franklin presents a formula for happiness: living a life of "gentilesse" as opposed to the principle of adhering to a law-based system of morality.
Grady, Frank.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 205-17.
Discusses the "narrowness" of modern views of Chaucer and CT, and argues that this posture hides the range of Chaucer’s verse, which includes not only beast fables and fabliaux, but also saints’ lives and penitential discourse.
Woolf, Rosemary.
Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, eds. J. R. R. Tolkien: Essays in Memoriam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 221-45. Reprinted in Rosemary Woolf, Art and Doctrine (London: Hambledon Press, 1986), pp. 197-218.
The epithets "moral" and "kindly" have for centuries been applied, respectively, to Gower and Chaucer, with a deleterious effect upon critical evaluation of the two poets. The epithets can revealingly be reversed. Gower is seen as kindly in his…
Morgan critiques modern claims for Chaucer's innovation in GP, arguing that Chaucer's methods resulted from the moral and artistic training of his time. We should read the pilgrim Chaucer both as earnest and as effective in displaying the sins of his…
Allen, Mark.
South Central Review 8 (1991): 36-49.
The imagery of falling reinforces CT's penitential motif at the end of PardT, in NPP, in ManP, and in Ret, affectively leading the reader "through art to morality."
Ginsburg, Warren.
John M. Hill, Bonnie Wheeler, and R. F. Yeager, eds. Essays on Aesthetics and Medieval Literature in Honor of Howell Chickering (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2014), pp. 165-76.
Emphasizes Chaucers skillful and "poetic" use of grammar, with special attention to nouns and pronouns in TC. Also addresses Chaucer's focus on rhetoric and logic in GP and ClT.
Robeson, Lisa G.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1997): 451A.
Ancient writings, especially inscriptions in stone, impressed the medieval reader as the most reliable of records of past wisdom, even though they might be paradoxical or, eventually, disregarded. Considers "Queste del Saint Graal," HF, and…
