Camargo, Martin.
New Medieval Literatures 9 (2007): 41-62.
Describes the role of performance, or delivery, in medieval rhetorical and grammatical treatises, and exemplifies the evidence of Chaucer's concern with rhetoric and performance in CT--in the Host's remarks to the Clerk, the role-playing of the…
Surveys rhetorical traditions in fourteenth-century England and assesses the impact of "artes poetriae," "grammaticae," and "praedicandi" on Chaucer's poetry generally and on NPT in particular. Includes appendixes of medieval rhetorical terms (with…
Tuggle, Thomas Terry.
Dissertation Abstracts International 35 (1975): 7882A-83A
Rhetorical devices in Chaucer's early poems aid description, lend emphasis, achieve amplification or brevity, and mark transitions. The figures iintensify the utterances of characters, and characterize persons, concepts, or objects.
Stevenson, Kay Gilliland.
Michel Bitot, ed., with Roberta Mullini and Peter Happe. Divers Toyes Mengled: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Culture in Honour of Andre Lascombes (Tours: Universite Francois Rabelais, 1996), pp. 27-42.
Explores literary and historical contexts that complicate reception of ABC, including works by Jean de Meun, Guillaume de Deguileville, and John Lydgate. Chaucer's stand-alone translation initiates an immediacy with its audience that is not apparent…
Coleman, Janet.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
Deals with verse and prose in Middle English, Latin, and Anglo-Norman as literary evidence of the rise of literacy and social mobility. Most literary works aimed at reform and edification in Christian ethical behavior rather than at entertainment. …
This review article assesses four recent books on how the Middle Ages responded to classical literature: Ralph Hexter's "Ovid and Medieval Schooling," the essay collection "Lectures medievales de Virgile," Jean-Charles Huchet's "Le Roman medieval"…
Fredell, Joel Willis.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1986): 895A.
Both the portraits of GP and the representations of the Deadly Sins in "Piers Plowman" (B text of "Visio") achieve a new form, combining the traditional with "individualized details." Such a pattern is analogous to the development of late-Gothic…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Speaking of Chaucer (New York: Norton, 1970), pp.164-74.
Focuses on the single use of the word "sin" in MilT (1.3589), suggesting that the Tale and, more generally, the "best medieval literature" do not "necessarily have anything to do with sin," but offer "joy to the reader."
Chaganti, Seeta, ed.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.
Essays emphasize the importance of poetry and poetics in the "formation of social structures, actions, and utterances" in this festschrift for Penn R. Szittya. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Medieval Poetics and Social Practice…
Howard, Donald R.
Medievalia et Humanistica 3 (1972): 99-115.
Gauges the value of historicist approaches to medieval literary study, compared with other approaches, suggesting that a phenomenological approach aligned with humanistic awareness of individual consciousness is desirable. Recurrent references to…
Gerber, Amanda J.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Explores the political motivations of Ovid's "frame narratives" and how they appealed to and influenced medieval writers. For a chapter on Chaucer see Chapter 4, "Clerical Expansion and Narrative Diminution in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales."
Holley, Linda Tarte.
Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 26-44.
Optics as expounded by Roger Bacon provided the theory of perspective and radiating lines; architecture and manuscript illumination provided the technique of viewing scenes and personages through a frame. In TC, there are physical, verbal,…
Kirk, Jordan.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2021.
Examines works by Priscian, Boethius, Augustine, Walter Burley, and Chaucer,
to explore how fourteenth-century writers understood "possibilities in language" and "transformed these accounts into new forms, and practices of non-signification."…
Examines connection between "language and cultural identity" and claims that Chaucer mocks "Alexander's 'storie' as 'commune' "in MkT. Analyzes how Latin, French, and English Alexander narratives were read, and rewritten, in medieval literature…
Black, Nancy B.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.
In narratives of falsely accused queens, the queens frequently undergo periods of exile that refine their souls through poverty and suffering. Black compares the Constance narratives by Nicholas Trevet, Gower, and Chaucer, examining each version in…
Barnes, Geraldine.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 241-67.
Barnes contrasts the absence of the city of London in medieval fiction (CkT, CYT, and Athelston) with fictionalized descriptions of medieval London in murder mysteries written in the 1980s and 1990s by P.C. Doherty and Kate Sedley.
Pearsall, Derek.
R. F. Yeager and Toshiyuki Takamiya, eds. The Medieval Python: The Purposive and Provocative Work of Terry Jones (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 59-73.
Describes various depictions of monks and friars in late medieval English vernacular literature, observing that, despite prevalent anti-fraternal satire, friars "retained considerable support" in this literature. Because they were cloistered, monks…
Chaucer abuses authority throughout CT. He refers to so many authorities that they cannot be reduced to anything like unity. Such abuse reflects the farcical potential of the academic procedure of disputation as well as the dilemma of the…
Summarizes the discussions of Chaucer in Lynn
Staley's "The Island Garden" (2012), Jamie K. Taylor's
"Fictions of Evidence" (2013), and Jonathan Hsy's "Trading
Tongues" (2013).
Bloch, R. Howard.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Explores the scriptural roots of medieval attitudes toward women, focusing on how various kinds of abstraction and aestheticizing led to fundamentally misogynistic contradictions. Examines French romances, lays, and lyrics for the ways they elevate…
Urban, William.
London: Greenhill; St. Paul, Minn.: MBI Publishing, 2006.
Surveys relations among mercenary practice, war, and the monetization of war-making in Western Europe. Includes comments on the "traditional" idealized view of the Knight and his Tale, attributing these views to John Aubrey in the seventeenth…
Hines, John.
John Hines. Voices in the Past: English Literature and Archaeology (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), pp. 105-36.
Discusses the use of space and physical objects in TC, arguing that the poem's movements among exterior and interior spaces reveal how characters manipulate such spaces--and even furniture--to negotiate relationships with one another and to chart…
Redresses neglect of medieval views in recent materialism studies, arguing that "that medieval definitions of matter, both hylomorphic and humoral, constitute their own versions of 'materialism,' versions that can help us to historicize later…
Waterhouse, Michael, dir.
Episode Two in "The Beauty of Books." Tern Television Productions. BBC Worldwide, 2011.
Introduces the manuscript of the Luttrell Psalter and the Oxford copy of William Caxton’s second edition of CT (with hand-colored woodcuts), with extensive visual representation of the codices (panning many details) and their library settings,…
