Examines the contents and provenance of MS Digby 86 (Bodleian); MS Harley 2253 (British Library); MSS fr. 837 and 19182 (Bibliothque Nationale); and Carmina Burana MS (Munich), Bayerische Staatsbibliothek CLM 4460 and 4460a. The literary techniques…
Craig, Hardin.
In MacEdward Leach, ed. Studies in Medieval Literature in Honor of Albert Croll Baugh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1961), pp. 97-106.
Comments on thematic similarities between Plato's "Gorgias," Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," and several of Chaucer's works, observing in TC a particular concern shared by Plato and Boethius: the "futility of earthly existence."
Williams, David
Gary Wihl and David Williams, eds. Literature and Ethics: Essays Presented to A. E. Malloch (Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1988), pp. 77-95.
In FrT, Chaucer satirizes some "excesses of fourteenth-century logical demonstration" and develops a "theory of fiction from the theories of intention current in his day." Intentionality involves the "relation of language to the real," and…
Couch, Julie Nelson.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 3554A, 2001.
Chaucer's representations of the child as pathetic and passive (in Th and PrT) contrasts with images of children in romance ("Havelock the Dane") and miracle tales ("Child Slain by Jews" and "The Jewish Boy"). Chaucer "canonizes" this negative view…
Weber, J. Sherwood, Jules Alan Wein, Arthur Waldhorn, and Arthur Zeiger.
New York: Holt, 1959.
Chapter 12 opens with an introduction to Chaucer's life and works, followed by appreciative commentary on CT as a comedy that is "social, not divine." Includes "Questions for Study and Discussion" on CT generally, and focused questions on KnT, MilT,…
Kennedy, Teresa A.
Helen Fulton, ed. Chaucer and Italian Culture (Cardiff: Unversity of Wales Press, 2021), pp. 217-40.
Argues that the dream vision aspects of HF and NPT can be read "through their shared preoccupations with writing, reading and problematic quest for 'authority' by vernacular texts." Addresses the importance of textual authority, allegory, and parody,…
Storm, Melvin.
Jane Chance, ed. The Mythographic Art: Classical Fable and the Rise of the Vernacular in Early France and England (Gainesville, University of Florida Press, 1990), pp. 215-31.
Examines the role of tone and narratorial voice in Chaucer's manipulations and distortions of the myth of Theseus in HF, Anel, LGW, and KnT. Theseus is vilified in HF and LGW as a betrayer of women; in KnT, he exemplifies mature "martialism…
Yeager, Stephen M.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.
Examines alliterative English writing by focusing on Anglo-Saxon legal-homiletic discourse within vernacular English poetry. Brief mention of FranT, ParsT, MLT, and Mel.
Refers to Chaucer throughout, first by supposing what his early education was like, then by addressing the late-medieval relation between Latin and English as evident in HF, NPT, and ManT. Argues that "the work of Chaucer, Langland, and Gower…
Cannon, Christopher.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Examines the textbook practices of the medieval primary schools--the "grammar schools" or "grammatica"--as underlying the transition from Latin to English as the primary language of "literary" composition in England during the fourteenth century.…
Pidd, Michael,and Estelle Stubbs.
Norman Blake and Peter Robinson, eds. The Canterbury Tales Project Occasional Papers, Volume II (London: King's College, Office for Humanities Communications, 1997), pp. 55-59.
Describes how the difficulties and decisions involved in transcribing manuscripts for the "Canterbury Tales" Project parallel fifteenth-century scribal practice.
Traces the development of English "central government control over local institutions," discussing the emergence of local groups and mentioning the GP Guildsmen.
Sanyal, Jharna.
Supriya Chaudhuri and Sukanta Chaudhuri, eds. Writing Over: Medieval to Renaissance (Calcutta: Allied, in collaboration with the Department of English, Jadavpur University, 1996), pp. 11-22.
Compares Criseyde of TC with her analogues in Henryson's "Testament," Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," and Dryden's "Truth Found Too Late," arguing that in Chaucer's and Shakespeare's versions she is a victim of predatory males and is left open…
Minnis, A. J.
Proceedings of the British Academy 72 (1986): 205-46.
Discusses whether Chaucer is a medieval or a Renaissance poet, examining Chaucer's attitudes toward his world and the process by which Chaucer was inspired.
Phelan, Walter S.
Zvi Malachi, ed. Proceedings of the International Conference on Literary and Linguistic Computing, Israel (Tel Aviv: Katz Research Institute, 1980), pp. 291-316.
The lexical morphemes of Chaucer's poetic tales have been marked in the data base as narrative "verbs" or "adjectives" (Todorov: dynamic v. static predicate formulas). The character and percentage of formula "per lexical unit" provide a more…
Assesses the "most important" poems about animals in English literature, ca. 700-1400 A.D., focusing on three traditions: "Physiologus," bird debates, and beast fable and epic. Considers PF as a bird debate, describing how it transcends the…
Roscow, G. H.
Essays in Poetics 9:1 (1984): 78-94.
Analyzes the "sentence" of BD through its sentence structure. Any idea of "tragic reversal" disintegrates under the pressure of "forward-looking" consecutive sentences.
Ginsberg, Warren.
Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager, eds. Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 145-64.
Ginsberg compares Dante's, Petrarch's, and Chaucer's descriptions of geography in their poems: Dante relied on the landscape of Italy to establish a geographical base; Petrarch allegorized Dante's geography; and Chaucer then "translated Petrarch's…
Beidler, Peter G.
Sandra M. Hordis and Paul Hardwick, eds. Medieval English Comedy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007), pp. 195-208.
Beidler compares and contrasts MilT with its likely source, the Middle Dutch "Hiele van Beersele." Of the two, MilT provokes greater laughter because it is more plausible, a result of more carefully deployed details.
Jost, Jean E.
Fifteenth-Century Studies 21 (1994): 133-48.
"Beryn" lacks several typical Chaucerian characteristics: a "courtly demeanor and value system," idealism, verbal wit, and sophisticated characterization. Neither prologue nor tale rises above slapstick or the "mundane reality of life."
Examines food imagery in MilT, RvT, CkT, and GP. These portions of CT threaten, but do not quite achieve, the collapse of Lévi-Strauss's "culinary triangle."
Sixteenth-century editions of Chaucer's works "reflect a gradual transition from text-based definitions of what constitutes Chaucer to author-focused ones." Bly considers Thynne's edition of 1532, Stowe's of 1561, and Speght's of 1602, discussing…
Reads the Wife of Bath as "Chaucer's construction of the . . . female body as a literal and metaphoric text," and explores how depictions of the Wife in modern films respond to her critical reception as well as his original creation.
Baldwin, Anna.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp.199-212.
By looking at two surviving "Patient Grissel" plays, the prose chapbook, and the ballad on the same subject, Baldwin shows that the popularity of Chaucer's ClT extended into the sixteenth century. Greene loosely modeled his "Pandosto" on the story…
Britton, Dennis Austin.
postmedieval 6.1 (2015): 64–78.
Establishes how Shakespeare and Fletcher used "images of Africanness to link race and class" in "The Two Noble Kinsmen," and claims this differs from Chaucer's concern with the "racial alterity" and "whiteness" of the Amazonian women in KnT.
