Prose, Francine.
New York: New York Public Library; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Surveys understandings of and attitudes toward gluttony (especially drunkenness and overeating) from Church fathers to M. F. K. Fisher in theology, literature, art, and popular culture, including a summary of PardT (pp. 15-19).
Robinson, Carol L.
Literature Compass 15.6 (2018): n.p.
Questions the assumptions underlying critical commentary on the Wife of Bath's deafness, exploring potential parallels between authority and experience, literacy and orality, and hearing and deafness. Indicts the "audism" of much of the commentary,…
Dunning, T. P.
Norman Davis and C. L. Wrenn, eds. English and Medieval Studies Presented to J. R. R. Tolkien on the Occasion of his Seventieth Birthday (New York: Humanities; London: Allen and Unwin, 1962), pp. 164-82.
Traces references to Christian, pagan, courtly, and Boethian love throughout TC, aligning them references to fate, Providence, and Fortune, and arguing that they lead in progressive fashion to the realization that Troilus's constancy mirrors divine…
Newman, Barbara.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003.
Considers PF (pp. 111-15) as part of an expansive discussion of medieval depictions of Nature as a goddess, observing Chaucer's modifications of Jean de Meun's Natura and commenting on the political implications of the later poem. Also comments on…
Kolve, V. A.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 19 (1997): 3-59.
Documents the pictorial (24 b&w illus.) and intellectual traditions of the "fool...who says in his heart, There is no God," using the traditions as backdrop for analyzing "Folie de Tristan" and TC. In his love of Criseyde, Troilus is similar to the…
Fanale, James Francis.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1987): 387A.
Fanale examines pertinent materials to construct a portrait of the confessor figure in fourteenth-century English literature, including the God of Love in LGWP, Pilgrim Parson, Gower's Genius, and the Green Knight.
Goodall, John A.
Aldershot; and Burlington, Vt. : Ashgate, 2001.
A visual and verbal history of the institution, community, and architecture of the almshouse attached to St. Mary's Church, Ewelme. Thomas Chaucer, who patronized one of two building campaigns of the church, is buried in the church with his wife,…
Bugbee, John.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019.
Explores the concept of "cooperative" or "conjoint" agency in Chaucer's works to examine ideas "about the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity." Examines the notion of passivity in the works of Chaucer and Bernard of Clairvaux, as well as…
Applies the thought of Bernard of Clairvaux to issues of human action and subjection to God and law, as seen in ClT, MLT, KnT, FrT, and PhyT. Argues that a fuller understanding of Chaucer's "religious background" is essential to interpretation of his…
Dryden's use of the term in the Preface to the "Fables" echoes Chaucer's use in CT I, 3162, "Goddes foyson." Chaucer's use has sexual overtones. Immediately after using it, Dryden explains that he will not translate Chaucer's indecent tales; so he…
Ames, Ruth M.
Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1984.
Written without footnotes for the nonspecialist, the book deals with Chaucer's Catholic-catholic Christian humanism, treating Chaucer as a Christian courtier whose comments on the church and the laity; sex, love, and marriage; the Old Testament and…
Fee, Christopher R., with David E. Leeming.
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2001.
Surveys the multicultural nature of medieval British literature, which combines Celtic, Roman, Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Christian influences. Introduces the myths and heroic figures of pre-Christian cultures through synopses of various narratives and…
Yatzeck, Elena.
Charles Lamb Bulletin 84 (1993): 126-35.
Yatzeck reads Godwin's "Life of Chaucer" as an extension of Godwin's social philosophy, which combines necessity and human perfectibility. Godwin reconstructs Chaucer's life and makes generalizations about medieval life to encourage readers to…
Terry, Michael.
Notes and Queries 246: 110-12, 2001.
Proposes that "A Ghearóid déana mo dhail" (ca. 1338-56) be added to the list of analogues to WBT. It involves an interaction between a human and "fairy" being in which the human is rewarded for appropriate behavior; the outcome of the interaction…
Tallies various instances from GP where Chaucer "shows in his deployment of nonce-words, key-words, status-terms and moral terms, that character and language are inseparable, that words and values change as societies change, that the only true value…
Describes medieval coins referred to in Chaucer and other Middle English literature, particularly the florin, noble, 'écu' or shield, 'mouton d'or,' and ducat. Comments on the designs, values, and usage of these coins and corrects several…
Adams, George R., and Bernard S. Levy.
English Language Notes 3 (1966): 245-48.
Explores the implications of three interrelated allusions in Chaucer's works (TC 2.55ff., KnT 1.1462ff., and NPT 7.3187ff.), observing connections "between Friday, May 3, Venus, the May festival season, and the Invention of the Cross," connections…
Flannery, Mary C.
Chaucer Review 56.4 (2021): 360-77.
Discusses the long-standing view of Chaucer as a fun, perhaps obscene writer, suggesting that readers "are invested in protecting their ability to enjoy Chaucer freely." References Kate Manne's notion of "himpathy," or the "excessive sympathy" felt…
Dinshaw, Carolyn.
Carolyn Dinshaw. Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (Durham, N.C., and London: Duke University Press, 1999), pp. 100-142.
Explores how the Pardoner and his interruption of WBP challenge the heteronormativity of CT. The opening lines of GP and WBT establish a heterosexual norm that the presence of the Pardoner challenges by making clear the constructed and contestable…
Gimenez Bon, Margarita.
Bernardo Santano Moreno, Adrian R. Birtwhistle, and Luis G. Giron Echevarria, eds. Papers from the VIIth International Conference of SELIM (Caceres: Universidad de Extremadura, 1995), pp. 101-06.
Analyzes the medieval features of the characterization in Eilis Ni Dhuibhne's "The Wife of Bath" (Dublin, 1989).
In LGW, Chaucer asks, "Can women be faithful in love?" Christine asks, "Does virtue recognize gender?" Chaucer's "good women" are judged according to their relationships with men; Christine's are considered as separate beings.
Kirschenbaum, Valerie.
New York: Global Renaissance Society, 2005.
Recounts Kirchenbaum's career and thoughts as an innovative teacher who uses creative design to inspire her students, arranged as a series of examples from international history and personal experience. Includes "Measuring the Immeasurable: Chaucer"…
Explains PardT 6.406 to mean "to be damned" in light of the figurative associations of brambles with sins and the picking of fruit with spiritually dangerous activity, corroborated in exegetical commentary and other medieval literature.
Fleming, John V.
David Lyle Jeffrey, ed. Chaucer and Scriptural Tradition (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1984), pp. 183-95.
For his worldly, depraved clerics, Chaucer draws not on the actual world but on "crabbed Latin texts monkish in their aspirations and unworldly in their doctrines," i.e., upon scriptural exegesis and ascetic theology, as in GP's Summoner, Friar,…
Phillips, Susan E.
Paul Strohm, ed. Middle English (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 476-90.
Gossip transgresses the servant-master relationship in CYP, and CYT indicates that gossip underpins the discourse of official culture as well. Gossip is also fundamental to the exemplarity of Robert Mannyng's Handlyng Synne.
