Like the fifth "passus" in the C-text of "Piers Plowman," ParsT and Ret use confession as a means of inscribing the author's identity within the poem. Langland's "autobiographical" passage--part confession, part "apologia"--integrates his…
Reads the Miller (whose mouth is compared to "a greet forneys" in GP) in the context of representations of rebel peasants in the chronicles of Thomas Walsingham, Henry Knighton, Jean Froissart, and the Anonimalle chronicler, as well as in Gower's…
Johnston, Andrew James.
Thomas Honegger, ed. Riddles, Knights and Cross-dressing Saints: Essays on Medieval English Language and Literature (Bern: Lang, 2004), pp. 1-32.
Johnston compares uses of medieval details, anachronisms, and hermeneutic concerns in two films (Brian Helgeland's "A Knight's Tale" and David Fincher's "Seven") and Umberto Eco's novel, "The Name of the Rose." Includes attention to Chaucer…
Examines all fifteenth-century witnesses of WBP, which are available on CD-Rom (SAC 20 [1998], no.11). Some scribes still had a system for the use of final -e, here studied in strong and weak adjectives in early, mid-, and late-fifteenth-century…
Werthmuller, Gyongyi.
South Atlantic Review 79.3-4 (2015): 6-19.
Tabulates evidence of the greater regularity of stress in Gower's verse than in Chaucer's, particularly in nouns and adjectives that feature the apocope of final unstressed -e. Attributes this regularity to the influence of Gower having written…
Werthmuller, Gyongyi.
Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre and Javier Calle Martı ´n, eds. Approaches to Middle English: Variation, Contact and Change (New York: Peter Land, 2015), pp. 179-97
Considers several factors (apocope, compounding, etymology, and metrical environment) in the presence or absence of final "-e" in Gower's and Chaucer's monosyllabic adjectives, clarifying Gower's relative regularity by identifying the paucity of…
Farris, R. S.
Essays in Medieval Studies 32 (2016): 57-63.
Focuses on the relationship between WBT and its analogue, "The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle," to show how such a study traces cultural shifts.
Kaempfer, Lucie.
Dissertation Abstracts International C81.04 (2019): n.p.
Considers joy to be the "climactic centre" of TC, addressing the presence and forms of joy “in the poem's construction of language, themes, and characters" and assessing "whether joy, in medieval culture, is a physical emotion, an affective state,…
Green, Eugene.
Michael Bilynsky, ed. Studies in Middle English: Words, Forms, Senses and Texts (New York: Peter Lang, 2014), pp. 165-83.
Explores the pragmatic linguistic devices Chaucer uses to establish a common ground of communication and "create convincing exchanges" between the Dreamer and the Eagle in HF, identifying and analyzing various concerns: "back-channel," lexicon,…
Schmerling, Hilda L.
New York: Gordon Presss, 1977.
In a section called "Springtime in the Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's Inheritance of the Sacred and the Profane" (pp. 1-26), tallies a number of classical and medieval attitudes toward spring and comments on Chaucer's various allusions to and images of…
Kohl, Stephan.
Willi Erzgraber and Sabine Volk, eds. Mundlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im englischen Mittelalter. Script Oralia, vol. 5 (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1988), pp. 133-46.
Kohl examines conscious "orality" and appeals to the reader by narrators in the poetry of Ricardian authors: Gower, the "Gawain" poet, and others, including Chaucer (CT, TC, PF, LGW, and HF). With the introduction of unreliable narrators, the…
Le Saux, Francoise.
Europe: A Literary History, 1348-1418 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 20168), 1:465-77.
Describes late-medieval Breton political status and summarizes the region's literary production in Breton and in French, commenting on drama, Arthurian materials, and religious literature. Includes discussion of the setting of FranT in Brittany as…
O'Brien, Timothy D.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 157-67.
In KnT, Chaucer's use of the word "queynte," the dying and quickening fires in the temple, and the spurting and spewing of the flames to "suggest parturition, life's uncertainty and tenuousness and even menstruation." Emelye's tears at the sight of…
Emerson's allusion in "The Poet" to the lecture on gentility in WBT attributes the sentiment to Chaucer (rather than to the Wife), concentrates on the fire's brightness, and suggests that the passage refers to "good blood in mean condition." Since…
Robertson, Elizabeth.
Helen M. Hickey, Anne McKendry, and Melissa Raine, eds. Contemporary Chaucer across the Centuries (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), pp. 25-41.
Assesses Troilus's and Criseyde's first looks at one another in TC as examples of physiological sense perception, rather than as mental or emotional processes or stages. Resists feminist and patristic readings of these gazes, and reads them in light…
Dane, Joseph A.
Studies in Bibliography 51 (1998): 48-62.
Argues that the printer's copy for most of Thomas Speght's 1602 edition of Chaucer's works was not only a copy of the 1561 edition but "the same copy as was previously marked up to serve as printer's copy for the 1598 edition."
Bowler, Bill.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
Pedagogical workbook for language learners of modern English, centered on modern prose adaptations of selections from CT (GP, KnT, MerT, ClT, FranT, WBT), with accompanying vocabulary exercises and comprehension activities. Illustrated by Natalia…
Utley, Francis Lee.
Chaucer Review 6.3 (1972): 198-228.
Explores how and where features of various genres inform the characterization, tone, atmosphere, and meaning of ClT, treating it as a scene in the "Canterbury drama," an exemplum of worldly and cosmic obedience, a fairy tale, a realistic novella, and…
Lloyd-Evans, Barbara, ed.
New York: Peter Bedrick, 1989.
Selections from the works of twenty-two English poets, accompanied by brief introductions and notes, with a glossary of poetic terms and first-line index. The section pertaining to Chaucer (pp. 17-104) includes GP, WBPT, PardPT, and NPPT.
Macaulay, Richard.
Cardiff: Drama Association of Wales, 2007
Includes "A Canterbury Tale" (pp. 91-113), a play that presents a fictional account of events that inspired Chaucer to write the CT, framed as a meeting between Chaucer and Simon Burley on the occasion of Burley's arrest. Also published as a…
McCall, John P.
Modern Language Quarterly 23 (1962): 297-308.
Argues that the "formal and thematic design" of TC--particularly its five-book structure--reflects the "ordered argument of Lady Philosophy" in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" and "reveals a new facet of Chaucer's concept of tragedy." Altering…
Observes that NPT differs from most of its cock-and-fox analogues "in its explicit, reiterated warning against flattery," a traditional feature of, instead, "fox-and-crow" tales. Also, the explicitness of the moral in NPT is a "convention…
Houwen, L. A. J. R.
L. A. J. R. Houwen, ed. Animals and the Symbolic in Mediaeval Art and Literature. Mediaevalia Groningana, no. 20 (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1997), pp. 77-92.
Assesses references to mermaids' singing in medieval tradition to argue that Chaucer's reference (NPT 7.3270) suggests flattery and thereby anticipates Chauntecleer's fall.
