Breuer, Horst.
Wilhelm G. Busse, ed. Anglistentag 1991 Dusseldorf: Proceedings (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1992), pp. 418-27.
Tallies devices in WBP whereby Chaucer sought to "criticize and belittle his own creation": blasphemy, intrusions of male discourse, contradiction, and various forms of distortion and exaggeration. But the Wife's "loud, polemical voice ... carries…
Carruthers, Leo.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 51-67.
Carruthers examines the framing structure and links of CT, with particular attention to the Host's role. Harry Bailey is both a unifying instrument in the poet's hands and an extension of Chaucer's identity, an alter ego who will ultimately be…
Robinson, Sharon Pattyson.
Dissertation Abstracts International 37 (1977): 4375A-76A.
A reading of Chaucer's dream visions as a genre reveal a controlling tension between the narrator's awareness of the demands of Christian doctrine and his human compassion for those enduring the rigors of life on earth. He is sympathetic to human…
Spearing, A. C.
New Literary History 32: 715-46, 2001.
A survey of selected criticism since Kittredge demonstrates that the idea of a fallible narrative voice has dominated criticism of CT. Spearing examines MLT 2.141-96 to show the difficulty of separating narrational from nonnarrational elements and of…
Bolens explores David Rudrum's notion of "narrative use" (fiction as a speech act that is used for a purpose) and applies it to "The Book of Sindibad," "The Seven Sages of Rome," and especially "The Tale of Beryn." Narrative use is an overt concern…
Hardman, Phillipa.
Modern Language Review 85 (1990): 545-54.
Chaucer employs the Orpheus story from Boethius in KnT and TC as an archetype of the tragedy of love. He relies on the Orpheus myth primarily as a narrative pattern, not as a philosophical fable or moral allegory.
Pinsent, Pat.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 96-103.
Describes the "economy and pace, characterization, style, and plot-form" of PardT, comparing it with folk-tales, and summarizes the narrative functions of the "digression" on vice (6.485-660).
Biggio, Rosemary.
Dissertation Abstracts International 44 (1983): 164A.
Chaucer's work evolved structurally from circular (dream visions) to spiral (TC; CT), developing closure through "thematic resolution" and metaphoric symbols.
Fernandez Garcia, Alfonso,and Gabriela Garcia Teruel.
Teresa Fanego Lema, ed. Papers from the IVth International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1993), pp. 113-24.
Examines narrative structures in "Disciplina clericalis," "Sendebar," "Calila e Dimna," CT, "Decameron," "Auberee et Le Pretre et Alison," and "Dame Siriz," using Bremond's sequential analysis to explore event-linking and deception, and Barthes's…
Describes relations between structure and theme in TC, demonstrating how the poem's pattern of action and verbal parallels induce "classical symmetry" and function as a "metaphor of harmony and order, while an "underlying chaos" of "inverted…
Richardson, Peter Kent.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1992): 2936A.
In medieval verse (e.g., Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, King Horn, and Chaucer's works), tense and aspect of verbs prove more significant than previously recognized. Rather than serving demands of meter and rhyme, Chaucer's verbal…
Harrington, David V.
Chaucer Review 3.1 (1968): 50-59.
Rejects attempts to read PardT as an example of psychological realism and reads it instead as a "rapidly progressing discourse" that results from "special use of rhetorical devices for the impression of speed." The Tale conveys to its audience a…
Anderson, Judith H.
Theresa M. Krier, ed. Refiguring Chaucer in the Renaissance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 87-105.
Chaucer, especially GP, inspired Spenser's poetic identiy in "The Faerie Queene." Through allegory, Spenser manifests Chaucer's ironic doubleness, and he de-centers his dominant narration through various forms of "impersonations," emulating…
Examines HF and other medieval dream-visions from a stand-point of performance theory, while considering the role of the narrator/dreamer as perceiver and creator of meaning, with ramifications for how narrative may be viewed as process, rather than…
Blandeau, Agnès.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 35-50.
Though Pasolini's visualization of CT chooses to emphasize "solaas" rather than "sentence," both the filmmaker and the poet offer metafictional reflections on their art and the "discourse of the narrative."
Vasta, Edward.
David G. Allen and Robert A. White, eds. The Work of Dissimilitude: Essays from the Sixth Citadel Conference on Medieval and Renaissance Literature (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London and Toronto: Associated University Presses, 1992), pp. 35-47.
Contrasts the narrators of BD and HF and their attitudes toward experience and bookish authority, clarifying how the HF narrator is "rendered completely and comprehensively skeptical." Yet, the lack of an ending to HF encourages readers to transcend…
Chaucer uses interjections and exclamations as a means of audience involvement, promoting dramatic suspense in his works. Certain words are so closely associated with certain genres that when Chaucer uses them in another context, they echo the…
Parry, Joseph Douglas.
Dissertation Abstracts International 56 (1995): 945A.
Among the narrative techniques employed to achieve authorial purposes, Chaucer's characterization of Dorigen in FranT shows her postponing her ultimately necessary conformity with male ideologies by contemplating authoritative tales based on those…
Psychoanalytical criticism provides an unsatisfactory view of BD. The structure is rhetorical and Chaucer "leaves the dialectic unresolved, the syllogism of consolation incomplete."
Bowen, Kerri Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International A71.06 (2010): n.p.
Discusses CT as part of a larger consideration of patience--especially female patience--and notes that Chaucer often links patience with epistemological limits.
Treats the narrator-dreamer of BD as the poem's "central character" and a device of unity and dramatic irony. The character does not "develop" psychologically, but his polite good nature—comically limited by his ignorance of courtly idiom—enables…
Brown, James Neil.
Massachusetts Studies in English 2 (1970): 71-79.
Characterizes the narrator of BD as a comic "would-be courtier" who takes pains to "appear courtly and noble and in love." The narrator is also likeable and much in awe of the Black Knight, functioning as a device whereby Chaucer censures excessive…
Griffith, Kelley.
New York: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1994.
Pedagogical anthology designed to demonstrate the range of narrative fiction: ancient and modern; eastern and western; short stories, novels, and their predecessors in myth, epic, romance, tales, and narrative poetry. Includes Theodore Morrison's…
The narrator of TC has two functions: structurally, he acts as a narrative device which, via book and scene division, lends dramatic immmediacy to Chaucer's romantic drama; he also is a "dramatis persona" characterized by his very use of narrative…
Bayer, Gerd, and Ebbe Klitgård, eds.
New York: Routledge, 2010 [2011].
Eleven essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors consider various aspects of narrative technique from Chaucer to Daniel Defoe. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Narrative Developments from Chaucer to Defoe under…
