Recounts personal experiences of studying PrT and its reception as a prelude to examining the role and status of medieval studies in twenty-first-century British educational culture, particularly its inequalities, colonialisms, and appropriations,…
Douib, Mohamed Karim.
International Journal of Language and Literary Studies 3.4 (2021): 154-66.
Claims that the "Pardoner's atypical sexuality is subversive of the medieval gender matrix and that his challenge to heteronormativity is ultimately encompassed and disarmed." The descriptions of the Pardoner in GP and PardPT disrupt "the medieval…
Maguire, Laurie.
Rory Loughnane and Andrew J. Power, eds. Early Shakespeare 1588–1594 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 121-46.
Explores relations between Franklin--the tale-telling character of "Arden of Faversham"--and Chaucer’s Franklin as narrator of FranT, concentrating on scenes in the play attributed to Shakespeare, and focusing on the "subject matter and literary…
Contextualizes FranT using Hannah Arendt's "The Human Condition," and argues that the tale represents another moment in CT where journeys end abruptly before the destination is reached. Considers how the tale functions as "a parable of how household…
Walsh, Lora.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 43 (2021): 75–109.
Interprets Griselda of ClT "as the late medieval English Church wedded to a secular power [Walter] that would radically dominate and divest her in the name of reform." Resists "domineering exegetical acts," using "literary and feminist…
Vélez Sainz, Julio.
Dicenda: Estudios de lengua y literatura españolas 37 (2019): 363-76.
Compares versions of the Griselda story: Boccaccio's original; Petrarch's translation; and other rewritings by Bernat Metge, Christine de Pizan, and Chaucer (ClT), as well as the Spanish story in "Castigos y doctrinas que un sabio daba a sus hijas"…
Argues that Chaucer uses philosophical language in describing the fart joke of SumT in order to burlesque the "logical thinking" of scholastic thinkers, particularly the Merton Calculators, showing how literature can "more effectively" work out…
Turner, Marion.
Times Literary Supplement November 19, 2021, pp. 14-15.
Reviews a production of Zadie Smith’s stage play "The Wife of Willesden" (Kiln Theatre), along with the edition of the play (London: Penguin, 2021), describing its relations with WBPT and mentioning other recent adaptations.
Verse-drama adaptation/translation of WBPT and Ret in decasyllabic rhyming couplets and north London dialect, with Jamaican patois, and multiple actors. WBP is set in a contemporary London pub; WBT, in eighteenth-century Maroon Town, Jamaica, under…
Neufeld, Christine M.
Avid Ears: Medieval Gossips, Sound, and the Art of Listening (New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 148-79.
Theorizes the classical figure of Echo as a figure to "think with" in exploring "female vocality" and the topos of the "Philosopher and the Shrew" in WBPT and ClT (especially the Envoy), focusing on issues of deafness, gendered gossip, listening, and…
Hanna, Ralph.
Journal of the Early Book Society 23 (2020): 141-73.
Investigates the "material conditions" that underlie the fictional book of "wikked wyves" described in WBP, 669-73, analyzing extant manuscripts that "most closely resemble Jankyn's volume" and have other Chaucerian and Oxonian associations. Explores…
Cawsey, Kathy.
Ada S. Jaarsma and Kit Dobson, eds. Dissonant Methods: Undoing Discipline in the Humanities Classroom (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 2020), pp. 33-49.
Exemplifies the theory and practice of "evental pedagogy," describing the classroom experience of teaching WBPT in the context of a "scandal" and "media uproar" at Dalhousie University (Halifax) in 2015. Comments on rape, "restorative justice"” and…
Suggests that in medieval literature generally the "motif of crossing a body of water was regularly perceived as an epistemological operation of a physical and a spiritual kind," and explores the notion in several narratives, including MLT, examining…
Morrison, Susan Signe.
Notes and Queries 266.1 (2021): 45-49.
Contemplates the word "lemman" in Malyne's dawn song of RvT: its connotations elsewhere in Chaucer's corpus indicate that it names her experience the night before as sexual assault.
Rodrigues, Leandro Dias Carneiro.
REVELL: Revista de Estudos Literários da UEMS, special issue (2019): 147-58.
Analyzes the aesthetic features--the linguistic, prosodic, and structural form and the aesthetic tradition of MilT--and the vulgar and humorous content of the Tale to emphasize its importance in the canon of popular poetry.
Uses a "political theology of the refugee as neighbor" to explore contiguities between "Refugee Tales" (2016) and CT. Explicates nuances of "tendre/"tender" in the works and examines the absent presence of Theban refugees in KnT. The Knight "edits…
North, Richard.
Carlos Prado-Alonso and Rodrigo Pérez Lorido, eds. Of ye Olde Englisch Langage and Textes: New Perspectives on Old and Middle English Languages and Literature (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2020), pp. 301-22.
Reconstructs a career for the Knight, based on the GP description and details from KnT, MkT, and historical sources. Maintains that Chaucer had met the Knight, perhaps in France, and that the Knight was some fifteen years younger than usually…
Reads aspects of Theseus's stadium, tournament, and funeral arrangements in KnT as "performance of power" in response to the procession of his "regional rivals": Arcite and Palamon of Thebes, Emetreus of India, and Lygurge of Thrace. George…
Vial, Claire.
Jean-Pierre Naugrette and Catherine Lanone, eds. Le temp qu’il fait dans la littérature et les artes du monde anglophone / What’s the Weather Like in Anglophone Literature and Art (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2020), pp. 57-70.
Examines "inner and outer landscapes in relation with the seasons" in three works of medieval literature, including articulation of the aesthetic pleasure evoked at the beginning of GP, effected through Chaucer's thematic range and use of "every…
Thompson, Kenneth J.
Chaucer Review 56.3 (2021): 280-95.
Focuses on the Yeoman of GP, suggesting that the figure may have been based on Richard II's archers of the crown. Examines the life of Thomas Forster of Drybek, one of these archers, catalogues biographical information about him, and suggests he is a…
Stanisoara, Codruta Mirela.
Philologia: Naučno-stručni časopis za jezik, književnost i kulturu/Academic Journal for Language, Literature and Culture 18 (2020): 97-107.
Advocates an "anthropological" approach to reading Chaucer's works, especially CT, in which the reader observes the writer's roles as not only poet, narrator, and social historian, but also an anthropologist who crosses borders and invites us to…
Otaño Gracia, Nahir I.
English Language Notes 58.2 (2020): 35-49.
Includes the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in conceptualizing the global North Atlantic, and argues that in several places in CT (e.g., GP description of Knight, MLT, Pedro in MkT) Chaucer uses paradigms that are similar to those of "settler…
Employs critical race studies and adaptation studies to trace the role and frequency of "somatic brownness" in CT and Rom. Considers brownness as a racial category that is capacious, before tracing "Chaucerian brownness" in several modern…
