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 glosses…
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…
Steadman, John M.
Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1979.
In a section called "Chaucer and Medieval Tradition" (pp. 67-114), reprints (with revisions and expansions) several previously published essays by Steadman, all of which explore iconographical or allegorical aspects of Chaucer's works. Includes the…
Burrow, J. A.
Review of English Studies 66, no. 276 (2015): 624-33.
Considers how Nature brings forces to bear that "incline" Hart to feel and behave the way he does in "King Hart." Argues that Chaucer's Wife of Bath uses the same technical term when she says "I folwed at myn inclinacioun / By vertu of my…
Aristotelian natural philosophy, specifically the doctrines of natural place and natural motion, lie at the heart of the structure and meaning of TC. Troilus and Criseyde are bodies in motion toward their natural resting places; their natures--her…
Asakawa, Junko.
Koichi Kano, ed. Through the Eyes of Chaucer: Essays in Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Society for Chaucer Studies (Kawasaki: Asao Press, 2014), pp. 81-99.
Examines the notions of nature and chance represented in TC in light of medieval philosophical and cosmological theories. In Japanese.
Discusses what naturalism is and how it links a set of normative intuitions about gender and desire to a broader theory of what it means for humans to be a law to themselves. Central to MilT is Alisoun, the "single most compelling instance of a…
The prologue of LGW is a kind of "ars poetica" that contrasts seasonal renewal with eternal regeneration in order to show that poetry can mediate between them and serve as a true guide to love.
Houwen, L. A. J. R.
Geoffrey Lester, ed. Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honour of Norman Blake (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 100-17.
Derived from Boethius's Consolation and from the Roman de la Rose, the exemplary image of the caged bird invoked for the audience of ManT and SqT the "natural law" of sexual drive and the requirement that human beings, unlike birds, curb this drive.…
Wilkinson, Anouska.
Seventeenth Century 29 (2014): 381-402.
Discloses John Dryden's "profound interest in the rich cultural history of natural law philosophy" through close comparisons of his translations/adaptations of KnT and WBT with their Chaucerian originals, as well as through similar examinations of…
Dunleavy, Gareth W.
Transactions of the Wisconsin Academy of Sciences, Arts, and Letters 52 (1963): 177-87.
Identifies references in Chaucer's works to "natural law," or "law of kynde," describing its status in medieval legal theory and philosophy, including Boethius, and exploring Chaucer's possible experiences with the practices of "law merchant" and…
Demonstrates that PF reflects a movement from natural law to a more subjective interpretation of individual rights and ties this transition to the crisis of "commonalty" in the late fourteenth century.
Ruud, Jay.
Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 9 (1988): 29-45.
Behind the grotesque circumstances of PhyT, Chaucer presents an ironic view of natural law: Nature gloats as she forms Virginia to glorify God in purity; yet, the Physician mocks the sheltering of perfection since natural law will soon corrupt her.
Krug, Rebecca.
Jane Tolmie and M. J. Toswell, eds. Laments for the Lost in Medieval Literature (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2010), pp. 225-41.
Explores the depictions of grief over lost children in the Wakefield mystery play "Slaughter of the Innocents"; a Middle English life of Saint Bridget; and ClT. The depictions present grief as variously natural, unnatural, and a response to conflict;…
Fleming, John V.
Susan J. Ridyard and Robert G. Benson, eds. Man and Nature in the Middle Ages (Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South Press, 1995), pp. 19-35.
Assesses various medieval depictions of personified Nature lamenting human error, and comments on Prioress's "ambiguous" motto (Amor Vincit Omnia) as a "reordering" of the phrase "omnia vincit Amor" from Virgil's tenth "Eclogue," modified by the…
Butterfield, Ardis.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 33-54.
Comments on Chaucer's address to his book at the end of TC as an example of the poet's awareness of linguistic and cultural diversity.
Cooney, Helen, ed.
Dublin and Portland, Ore. : Four Courts Press, 2001.
Ten essays by various authors on the role of language and literature in fifteenth-century England, Chaucer's influence at the time, and the relations of fifteenth-century literature to earlier and later tradition. Mention of Chaucer recurs…
Reads LGW as a "double palinode" in which Chaucer explores the "variety and complexity of the feminine psyche" as expressed in his sources, Ovid and Boccaccio, and his own TC. Compares LGWP-F and LGWP-G to show that Chaucer increases the comedy and…
