Places HF in the intellectual and philosophical contexts of its era, particularly the tradition of Boethius and Wyclif, arguing that Chaucer supports the existence of universals.
Kiser, Lisa J.
Hanover, N. H., and London: University Press of New England, 1991
Chaucer's epistemology is skeptical: he subverts written authority, obscures traditional distinctions between history and fiction, and questions the validity and representability of experience. Formalist analysis of narratorial voices discloses (1)…
Somerset, Fiona, and Nicholas Watson, eds.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015.
Includes essays dedicated to Richard Green Firth that explore a variety of medieval topics. Examines issues related to oral and written cultural networks, book and social history, vernacular studies, and media studies. For three essays that pertain…
Kearney, A. M.
Essays in Criticism 19 (1969): 245-53.
Argues that tensions within FranT indicate that Chaucer was subtly reinforcing the notion that male sovereignty in marriage is, realistically, advisable when combined with mutual trust and cooperation between the partners.
By constantly breaking the dramatic illusion, the Nun's Priest forces his audience to consider the implications not only of his storytelling but of storytelling itself. The interruptions of his narrative, the comparisons of chickens and people, the…
Morse, Ruth.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Medieval notions of historical and literary truth derive from classical rhetorical tradition and differ from modern, empirically based notions of factuality. Basing her argument on a description of education in rhetoric, Morse demonstrates that…
Sayers, William.
Nordic Journal of English Studies 8, no. 3 (2009): 191-201.
Traces the etymology, usage, and implications of the word "trout" and its derivations in medieval literature and later tradition. Includes comments on "Trotula" (WBP 3.677), "trotte" (WBP 3.838), and "virytrate" (FrT 3.1582).
Benson, C. David.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 22-33.
Benson argues against interpreting CT in terms of dramatic theory: the pilgrims are not fully developed human characters, nor are their tales expressions of their individual psychologies. The most developed pilgrims-the Pardoner and the Wife of…
Greenwood, Maria K.
Andre Lascombes, ed. Identites et differences (Paris: Publications de l'Association des Medievistes de l'Enseignement Superieur, no. 17, 1992), pp. 27-43.
The Prioress's duplicity has been constructed. Appealing to one or both of the codes by which we define her as a nun or a lady, she manages to invite excuses and build trust whenever mistrust is possible.
In his account of Katherine in the "Legendys of Hooly Wummen," fifteenth-century poet Osbern Bokenham "rebels" against his poetic fathers, namely Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate. Bokenham allows Katherine to persuade her audience with the Nicene Creed…
Benson, C. David.
Piero Boitani, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 153-70.
After Chaucer's TC, minor writers of the fifteenth, sixteenth,and early seventeenth centuries generally ignore "both the high passion and the tragedy of the lovers." The two type characters appear chiefly in brief allusions, "with none of Chaucer's…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
In R. Barton Palmer and Burt Kimmelman, eds. Machaut's Legacy: The Judgment Poetry Tradition in the Later Middle Ages and Beyond (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2017), pp. 139-64.
Considers Machaut's and Chaucer's uses of blue and green symbolism in relation to late medieval "armorial bearings disputes" to investigate the poets' concern with "issues surrounding the legibility of identity." Comments on color symbolism in SqT,…
Ward, Matthew.
Journal of Medieval History 46 (2020): 133-55.
Outlines "the significance of blue in the medieval period," and "examines this connection between colour and virtue in literature, heraldic treatises and works of art," including brief comments on blue and female fidelity in SqT and Wom Unc.
Bestul, Thomas H.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 82 (1983): 500-14.
Chaucer's close attention to Griselda's and Walter's faces throughout ClT makes allegorical interpretation insufficient. Walter's false faces emphasize his duplicity and cruelty, contradicting his correspondence to a higher beneficent order;…
Balestrini, María Cristina.
V Jornadas de Estudios Clásicos y Medievales "Diálogos Culturales,"La Plata, 5 - 7 de Octubre de 2011 (Buenos Aires: Universidad Nacional de La Plata, 2012), 13 pp.
Assesses the Troy stories in BD and HF, exploring issues of cultural memory, authorization, and Chaucer's visual depiction of the traditional narrative.
Describes the "role Troy played in medieval literary imagination" as a foundation myth, and explores how the "destinies of some of the major figures" in TC are "inextricably" interwoven with that of Troy. Includes an abstract in English and in…
A basketball exposé and coming-of-age novel about a basketball player, Elliott Hersch, and his struggles to find a true life and game, guided by Chaucer's aphorism in FranT, 1479: "Trouthe is the hyeste thyng that man may kepe."
Cadden, Joan.
Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal, eds. The Moral Authority of Nature (Chicago and London : University of Chicago Press, 2004), pp. 207-31.
Cadden traces the "persistent association of nature with moral conduct and social order" in various late medieval texts, from commentaries on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to vernacular poetry. Focuses on PF as an example in which both desire and…
