The complex relationships of Pardoner, audiences, and the Host reveal a character who simultaneously believes in the efficacy of pardon and in the foolishness of those who believe in it. The pilgrims laugh at him rather than being outraged, and he…
Schneider, Thomas R.
Dissertation Abstracts International A75.05 (2014): n.p.
Studies physical motion, readerly motion, and other motions related to texts in late medieval English literature, including a chapter on Chaucer's "engagement with motion as a concept in natural philosophy" in HF and PF, connecting it with the…
Surveys "some of the many roles played and influences exerted by women in the practice of medieval pilgrimage," considering literary texts and cultural contexts from the fall of Rome until Margery Kempe and the Paston women in the fifteenth century.…
Rivera, Alison Bucket.
SELIM: Journal of the Spanish Society for Mediaeval English Language and Literature 6 (1996): 103-16.
Considers medieval family structures, attitudes toward sexuality, and marital practices to argue that the Wife of Bath "almost definitely had no children." Unlike Margery of Kempe, she may have been sterile.
Weissberger, Barbara F.
Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39 (2009): 703-25.
Contrasts PrT with Damián de Vegas's "Memoria del Santo Niño de La Guardia" (1544), exploring mother figures in the works and arguing that the latter work (like Spanish tradition more generally) reflects the influence of the "converso," a hybrid…
Michael, Nancy Margaret Furey.
Dissertation Abstracts International A81.12(E) (2020): n.p.
Explores "the complex role of maternal power as it relates to male aristocratic identity" in several romances in Middle English, including MLT and ClT.
Examines manuscript evidence and compares the verse of TC with that of Boccaccio's "Filostrato," arguing that Chaucer's decasyllabic lines, adapted to rhyme-royal stanzas, are characterized by greater flexibility of caesura than in English…
Chaucer employs scriptural allusions in Thomas's gift and its codicil; typological exegesis demonstrates that, if Jankin's division of the fart suggests Pentecost, Thomas's first gift recalls the events in the lives of Moses and Elijah that Pentecost…
Leach, Eleanor Winsor.
Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth D. Kirk, eds. Acts of Interpretation (Norman, Okla., Pilgrim Books, 1982), pp. 299-310.
In KnT, May symbolizes the future promise of Emelye's love. In LGW strong emphasis on women and love is tied to men's ability to judge them. May, the season most likely to obscure these judgments, is a metaphor for fulfillment of love's promise.
Explores the "literary negotiation of the macabre aesthetic in Middle English literature." Chapter 2, "The Progress of the Dead: From Body to Revenant," discusses "'physical' return of the dead" in BD and PrT.
Faulkner, Peter
Peter Lewis, ed. William Morris: Aspects of The Man and His Work (Loughborough, Leicestershire: Loughborough University of Technology, 1978), pp. 28-49.
Gauges the originality and success of William Morris's poetry, commenting in passing that "The Lovers of Gudrun" is written "in the rather casual couplet form which Morris derived from Chaucer" (37), even though he fails to exploit the "variety" of…
LaPorte, Charles.
David Latham, ed. Writing on the Image: Reading William Morris (Toronto and Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 209-19.
Morris's decision to present Chaucer's works in "clear-text" format (without editorial apparatus) conflicts with Victorian theories of editing. Yet, his presentations of Ret and the envoy to TC belie his efforts to imitate medieval traditions.
Indraguru, Bhavatosh.
New Delhi: DK Printworld, 2019.
Compares and contrasts early narratives of India and Western Europe, theorizing a “morphology” of relations among characterization and character development, narrative mode, and meaning. Includes discussion of differences between the…
Fisiak, Jacek.
University: University of Alabama Press, 1965.
Describes the morphemic structure of Chaucer's language, "based only on the facts recorded in Chaucer's writing," without considering the work of his contemporaries or inferring data beyond extant forms in his works. Defines morphemes and their…
Amsler, Mark.
Brian Gastle and Erick Kelemen, eds. Later Middle English Literature, Materiality, and Culture: Essays in Honor of James M. Dean (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2018.), pp. 3-24.
Explores the semantic field of "affectus"/"affeccioun" in medieval Latin grammar, Chaucer (MilT and TC), Margery Kempe, and several devotional texts, clarifying its wide "range of meanings and connotations . . . as a feeling category term," positive…
San Souci, Robert D., ed.
New York: Delacorte Press, 1994.
An anthology of the editor's "favorite scary tales," collected for a juvenile audience. Includes a modernized, simplified version of PardT, entitled "Three Who Sought Death" (pp. 75-77).
In the context of the biblical passages alluded to in a couplet evoking "gem-encrusted plows," it is worth noting that in Blake's depiction of the Canterbury Pilgrims, "he represented the Plowman as a medieval version of himself."
Mooney, Linne R.
Chaucer Review 30 (1996): 401-07.
Two recently identified Trinity College manuscripts written by the "Hammond" scribe (who worked in London ca. 1460-85), a prolific copier of Chaucer, contain medical, scientific, and legal materials, indicating that this scribe included among his…
Mosser, Daniel W. and Linne R. Mooney.
ChauR 49.01 (2014): 39-76.
Identifies the Beryn Scribe as the scribe of Princeton University, MS 100, as well as other CT fragments. Maintains that the Beryn Scribe worked with other scribes in a scriptorium based in London to disseminate multiple copies of vernacular…
Although erotic and homosexual elements are undoubtedly evident in SumT, certain words and gestures, particularly the friar's ill-fated grope, do not unambiguously have the homosexual charge that has been claimed.
Henderson, Arnold Clayton.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1999): 2489A.
Fables present a worldlier view than do Christian bestiaries, and neither genre presented a worldview full enough for Chaucer or other writers. Fable became more Christian, developing witty moralization, sharply drawn personae, and more vivid style…
