Schutz, Andrea.
Jean E. Godsall-Myers, ed. Speaking in the Medieval World (Boston: Brill, 2003), 105-24.
Language itself is important in FranT, but so is the intention of the speaker. Moreover, authorial intention in CT as a whole affects how we use language for our own ends, because we learn from everything we read. Authors must consider consequences…
Patterson, Lee.
Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987.
Considers "political agendas" that governed the development of Chaucer scholarship and textual criticism and analyzes medieval studies in terms of current theories about historicism. CT bears "a privileged relation" to the historic moment. Chapters…
Utz, Richard J.
Richard Utz, ed. Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm (Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston, Ont.; Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen, 1995), pp.1-30.
Surveys the critical application of nominalism to medieval literary texts, suggesting three main approaches: nominalist text as source, as coeval philosophical substratum, and as historical corroboration of modern perceptions.
Reis, Huriye.
Interactions: Ege University Journal of British and American Studies 12.1-2 (2012): 69-78.
Uses Michel Foucault's notions of power, subversion, and discourse to argue that LGWP "illustrates the medieval writer's relationship to hegemonic power" and "presents the potential ways authors are involved in the production and subversion of…
Blum, Martin.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 37-52.
John, Nicholas, and Absolon are, each in his own way, feminized in MilT, while Alison is masculinized and thereby escapes punishment.
Johnson, Valerie B. and Kara L. McShane, eds.
Boston: De Gruyter; Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2022.
Includes fifteen essays on early English, Irish, Scottish, and Robin Hood studies, with an Introduction by the editors, an appreciation of Thomas Hahn’s career by Theresa Coletti, and a comprehensive Index. For five essays that pertain to Chaucer,…
Nevalainen, Terttu.
Journal of English Linguistics 34 (2006): 257-78.
Addresses historical sociolinguistic trends between 1400 and 1800, tracing the disappearance of multiple negative (negative concord) usage to the latter half of the eighteenth century. However, data also suggest that Late Middle English initiated the…
Iyeiri, Yoko.
Merja Kytö, John Scahill, and Harumi Tanabe, eds. Language Change and Variation from Old English to Late Modern English: A Festschrift for Minoji Akimoto (New York: Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 79-101.
Iyeiri analyzes the "various forms of negation" in the fragments of Rom, commenting on their implications for attribution. Fragment C is more like B than like the Chaucerian A in many of its forms of negation; hence, it is unlikely to be by Chaucer.
Iyeiri investigates negative constructions in five versions of Bo, discussing the relative chronology of the witnesses to the text and, more generally, the editing of Middle English texts.
Doob, Penelope B. R.
New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1974.
This study of madness in Middle English literature generally mentions Chaucer only in passing, but includes a brief discussion of a "pedestrian and highly traditional account of Nebuchadnezzer" in MkT. Clearly based on the Book of Daniel, the account…
Jacobs, Nicolas.
In Nicolas Jacobs and Gerald Morgan, eds. "Truth is the beste": A Festschrift in Honour of A. V. C. Schmidt (New York: Lang, 2014), pp. 109-25.
Reads NPT in light of the Nebuchadnezzer account in MkT--the only one of the Monk's tragedies with a "happy ending," the result of a lesson learned. Contrasts MkT as an early work of Chaucer's with NPT as one of his maturity, focusing on the "rival…
Reed, Thomas L.,Jr.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 89 (1988): 44-56.
The fall of Nebuchadnezzar is the only history in MkT that ends favorably for its protagonist; in its tragicomic structure and its transformation of the hero to a birdlike beast, this episode anticipates some main features of NPT.
Tracy, Kisha G.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 24, no. 1 (2017): 45-60.
Exemplifies the utilities of Google Maps in creating instructor-generated and student-generated maps for teaching aspects of undergraduate coursework in medieval literature, with five sample maps and an assignment designed for a course in English…
Pan Sánchez, María Rosa.
Notas y estudios filológicos 10 (1995): 111-24.
Gauges the influence of Navarre on English literature at two crucial junctures: the Norman Conquest and during the march of Edward, the Black Prince, when both Chaucer and John Chandos were involved. Reproduces several archival documents and includes…
Assesses Chaucer's presentation of women in TC, LGW, and CT (especially MLT) for the various ways that he invigorates them as characters to give them voice and dimension.
Birds as the participants in the "demande d'amour" game are comic, as is Nature the judge: her ineptness is both risible and serious, as traditionally she is limited by the Fall.
Havely, Nick.
Seeta Chaganti, ed. Medieval Poetics and Social Practice: Responding to the Work of Penn R. Szittya (New York: Fordham University Press, 2012), pp. 109-23.
Reads the relationship between the formel and Nature in PF in light of late medieval practices of wardship, informed by attention to "yerde" as an emblem of authority. Comments on the formel's decision not to marry and on parallels between the formel…
St. John, Michael.
Michael St. John, ed. Romancing Decay: Ideas of Decadence in European Culture (Aldershot, Hants; and Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 17-26.
Political theory from Alain de Lille and Aristotle underlies PF, and events of the Good Parliament (1376) are reflected in it. Chaucer's Priapus and Venus allude to Edward III and Alice Perrers, while Nature's parliament is Chaucer's political ideal…
White, Hugh.
New York and Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2000.
Questions the notion that Nature was universally considered a positive force in the Middle Ages. Although depicted as God's vicar, Nature was also aligned with sexual impulses, complicating the image. White traces depictions of and attitudes toward…
Phillips, Helen.
Marios Costambeys, Andrew Hamer, and Martin Heale, eds. The Making of the Middle Ages: Liverpool Essays. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2007, pp. 71-92.
Phillips gauges Romantic responses to LGW and the "Flower and the Leaf" (attributed to Chaucer in the Romantic age), indicating that Keats, Tennyson, William Morris, Pre-Raphaelite artists, and others admired the poems for their depictions of Nature…
McMullen, A. Joseph.
A. Joseph McMullen and Erica Weaver, eds. The Legacy of Boethius in Medieval England: The "Consolation" and Its Afterlives (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018.), pp. 143-54.
Identifies Chaucer’s "cosmological additions" to Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" when translating it as "Boece," identifying the sources of these additions in earlier translations and commentaries, and speculating that Chaucer includes…
Robertson, Kellie.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017.
Discusses how Aristotelian natural philosophy--physics--was debated in the Middle Ages, and its influence on the aesthetic practice of Latin and vernacular writers, including Chaucer, Jean de Meun, Guillaume de Deguileville, and John Lydgate. Argues…
