Bushnell, Rebecca, ed.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
Anthologizes a wide variety of selections from classical, biblical, medieval, and early modern literatures in a "companion to literary or cultural study of premodern ecological concerns." Includes two samples from Chaucer: a conflation of portions of…
Observes points of similarity and difference between WBP and Martha Moulsworth's poetic autobiography, "Memorandum" (1632). The Wife serves as Moulsworth's "stylistic and rhetorical precursor."
Dean, James M.
Comparative Literature 41 (1989): 128-40.
Compares Chaucer's treatment of the Mars and Venus fables with Ovid's and with other medieval versions to demonstrate that Chaucer created Mars as a misguided commentator on his own story. Chaucer's audience, familiar with Jean de Meun's "Roman de…
Mouron Figuera, Cristina.
Ana María Hornero and María Pilar Navarro, eds. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of S.E.L.I.M. (Zaragoza: Institucion Fernando el Catolico (CSIC), 2000), pp. 147-57.
Compares views about married women reflected in The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale with late-fourteenth-century social reality.
Moritz, Theresa Anne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1982): 4445A.
Certain twelfth-century mystics, especially Bernard of Clairvaux, interpreted the Song of Songs as figuring the love of God and man not only through heterosexual love but specifically as an ideal of marriage. In Chaucer's works both the concept of…
Cartlidge, Neil.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 218-40.
Cartlidge examines the range of attitudes toward marriage, sexuality, and the family in CT - including questions of marriage as an ordering principle, sexuality as a threat to marriage, and sexuality as a form of aggression outside of marriage. Also…
McSheffrey, Shannon.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 2006.
An introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion study marriage in London in the second half of the fifteenth century. The "fundamental argument is that bonds of marriage and sex were . . . intimate, deeply personal ties and matters of public…
Robertson, Elizabeth.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 175-93.
Robertson considers KnT, WBT, and FranT in the light of contemporary marital law, Christian doctrine, and the question of mutual consent to marriage. Chaucer's profound interest in the legitimacy of the female subject is a subset of his larger…
Galloway, Andrew.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 14 (1992): 3-30.
Demonstrates the relations between WBP and sermons on the marriage at Cana, particularly those by Jacobus de Voragine. The Wife neither parodies traditional antifeminist material nor preaches a "sermon joyeux." Using details and approaches…
Surveys two medieval attitudes toward marriage (pro-matrimonial [Aquinas] and anti-matrimonial [Jerome] and their depictions in various tales of virgin martyrs, analyzing SNT most extensively.
McCarthy explores how marriage is represented in medieval English literary and legal texts and the "relationship of these representations to actual practice." Subjects range from Beowulf and Old English laws to late medieval ecclesiastical statutes…
Jacobs, Kathryn.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2001.
Four chapters explore the influence of contemporary marriage law on Chaucer's imagination, and three investigate similar influences on religious and Renaissance drama. Chaucer did not merely reflect his society's concerns with marriage and its…
Chaucer evinces awareness of marriage law, in particular the necessity of a church ceremony to secure property rights. Wives with a legally unassailable right to property (May in MerT, the Wife of Bath, Alisoun in MilT, Cecilie in SNT) are in a much…
Stapley, Ian Bernard.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1996): 1154A.
Aware that their husbands (as chosen by their families or communities) will determine the nature of their lives, women have sought to choose their own husbands, a daring assumption of sovereignty in a patriarchal society. The Wife of Bath,…
The lack of a defined perspective from which to judge exposes a profound ambivalence in the Merchant, an ambivalence that manifests itself in a series of confusing and disconcerting shifts in narrative viewpoint, suggesting a narrator who is quite…
Seah, Victoria L.
Dissertation Abstracts International 38 (1978): 4151A.
PF, "Temple of Glas," and "Kingis Quair" deal not with courtly love but with marriage. The idea underlying all three works is that one should be free to marry whom one loves.
Glasser, Marc D.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 23 (1978): 1-14.
Contrary to Donald Howard, who found in SNT the church's "highest ideal" of marriage and Chaucer's final answer to the Marriage Group, the tale actually denies the basis of true wedlock as subordinating the wife's personal concern for her husband to…
Goodman, Jennifer R.
James Muldoon, ed. Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997), pp. 115-28.
Examines MLT as one of several historical and literary accounts of princesses who marry husbands of a different religion and either convert themselves or persuade their husbands to convert. In addition to Constance, Goodman considers accounts of…
Dramatic adaptation for the stage of portions of GP, WBPT, MilPT, and RvPT, in a single plot, with Author's Notes and stage directions. The play was "first produced by Theatre Antigonish, Antigonish, Nova Scotia in March 1982."
In a section exploring "epic masculinity" in the age of Marlowe, suggests that Chaucer's depiction of Aeneas in LGW and HF anticipates humanist "rethinking" about the hero, that Chaucer "greatly influenced" Marlowe's depiction of him in "Dido, Queen…
Bradbrook, M. C.
Aspects of Dramatic Form in the English and the Irish Renaissance: The Collected Papers of Muriel Bradbrook (Sussex: Harvester Press, 1983): 3:156-79.
Traces parallels between Marlowe's 'Hero and Leander' and TC 3.
Dubs, Kathleen E.
Tibor Fabiny, ed. "What, Then, Is Time?": Responses in English and American Literature. Pázmány Papers in English and American Studies, no. 1 (Piliscsaba, Hungary: Pázmány Péter Catholic University, 2001), pp. 71-81.
Dubs considers medieval notions of simultaneity; describes Boethius's concept of eternity; explores Chaucer's uses of the zodiac in CT (FranT, MLT, GP, NPT) and Astr; and considers spring as the natural and spiritual season of renewal connected with…
Finke, Laurie, and Martin Shichtman.
Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh, eds. Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the "Canterbury Tales" (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016), pp. 251-65.
Explores the "ghostly presence" of WBPT in the first three episodes of the television show "Mad Men," updating and remediating the "parody of Western misogynist tropes" in WBP, refashioning from WBT the question of what women want, and reframing…
Although Chaucer does not divert from the pattern of Troilus's tragic fall from the top of the wheel of fortune, he employs ironic twists and ambiguities that diffuse the rigidity of the tale. The transitions in TC subvert attention from rigid…
