Voelker, Sarah Ray.
Piscataway, N. J.: Research & Education Association, 1995.
Study guide to the CT, with character lists, plot summaries and analyses, and study questions and answers for each tale. Also includes introductory backgrounds and suggested essay topics. Illustrated by Karen Pica. Reissued in 2003.
Bloom, Harold, ed.
New York: Bloom's Literary Criticism, 2008.
A summary/introduction to the pilgrims and plots (Part 7 excepted) of CT, with brief excerpts from fourteen critical commentaries written between 1956 and 2007; annotations of twenty-one book-length studies; and an index.
Eleven essays previously published between 1999 and 2004. Includes essays by Fiona Somerset on SumT and on clerical hypocrisy, Colin Wilcockson on GP, Katherine Little on ParsT, Lee Patterson on PrT, Elizabeth Robertson on MLT, Louise M. Bishop on…
The anti-Robertsonian introduction (pp. 1-7) argues that Chaucer's art is realistic rather than a "system of tropes." Given over to the study of "codes, conventions,...and 'language,'" criticism fails Chaucer, and modern critical approaches…
The anti-Robertsonian introduction (pp. 1-10) sees Chaucer's KnT as a "triumph of Chaucer's comic rhetoric, monistic and life-enhancing." A collection of eight previously published articles on KnT by various hands.
Wicher, Andrzej.
Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture 3 (2013): 42-57.
Discusses MerT; Boccaccio's "Decameron," 7.9; and "Sir Orfeo" as "slightly different" varieties of the enchanted-tree motif, emphasizing their structural similarities, their uses of enchantment, and the relative happiness of their endings.
The anti-Robertsonian introduction (pp. 1-7) rejects "systems of codes." If Chaucer had been writing in modern times, he would have written "The TV Evangelist's Tale." Chaucer's Pardoner is "obscenely formidable and a laughable charlatan."
Hernández Pérez, M. Beatriz.
I. Moskowich-Spiegel Fandiño, ed. Re-Interpretations [sic] of English. Essays on Literature, Culture and Film (I) ([La Coruña]: Universidade da Coruña, 2001), pp. 85-101.
Explores issues of persona, authorship, and reception in Th and Mel, focusing on the links between Tales, the Host's role, and the "evolution" of the pilgrim Chaucer.
Study guide to the CT, with synopses, character descriptions, suggestions or research papers and sample tests, backgrounds on Chaucer's life and times, and bibliography.
Cornelius, Michael G.
Jerilyn Fisher and Ellen S. Silber, eds. Women in Literature: Reading Through the Lens of Gender. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 2003, pp. 69-71.
The stereotypes depicted in Cecilia, the Wife of Bath, and Griselda reflect the continuing conflict between women who want to escape submissive roles and those who accommodate abusive relationships. Cornelius encourages classroom discussion of SNT,…
Yıldız, Nazan.
[Yildiz, Nazan]
Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi (Hacettepe University) 32.2 (2015): 299-312.
Explores the social status of the Prioress as someone caught between "her former and present estates, the nobility and the clergy respectively," exploring her "hybrid identity" at this interface Includes an abstract in Turkish and in English.
