Argues that the unity of PF is anchored in the principle of the hierarchy of love, an aspect of the Great Chain of Being. By exploring a wide and interconnected range of kinds of love, Chaucer achieves humor and thematic richness.
Olson, Donald W., Edgar S. Laird, and Thomas E. Lytle.
Sky and Telescope 99.4: 44-49, 2000.
Correlates the disappearance of the rocks in FranT to an extremely high tide that occurred on December 19, 1340, perhaps the year of Chaucer's birth. Calculates the date using the Toledan or Alfonsine Tables known to Chaucer. The clerk in FranT knows…
First-person fiction featuring Eugenia Panisporchi, who teaches Chaucer, and who remembers all of her past lives, which connect with her present one. Includes trans-temporal recollections of when she met "Mr. Chaucer" and encountered models for…
Lambdin, Robert T., and Laura C. Lambdin.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales" (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 357-68
Characterizes the Canon's Yeoman as a "personal servant of a religious officer," although details of CYP indicate that he might more accurately be described as an alchemist's fire-tender or "puffer." The essay examines the importance of fire and…
Crepin, Andre,and Helene Taurinya Dauby.
Paris: Nathan, 1993.
An introduction to literature written in England from Gildas's Latin chronicle to Sir Thomas Malory, including, among others, separate chapters on Chaucer (pp. 148-61) and Chaucer's influence and apocrypha (pp. 187-201).
Rigby, Stephen H., ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
Interdisciplinary collection of essays by medieval historians showcasing how application of social, economic, political, religious, and historical frameworks illuminates interpretation of CT. Surveys current debates over social meaning of Chaucer's…
Rigby, Stephen H., ed., with Siân Echard
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2019.
Consists of fourteen essays and a calendar of life records by various authors, clarifying Gower's life and works in relation to the “intellectual culture of the social, religious, and political controversies of his day." No single essay focuses on…
An anthology of four tales of cuckoldry, with a brief Introduction. Includes a version of ShT in Spanish, here titled "Vestida de Pecado: Versión Libre Sobre un Cuento de Geoffrey Chaucer" (pp. 37-65).
Arn, Mary-Jo, and Hanneke Wirtjes, eds.
Groningen: Wolters-Nordhoff, 1985.
Fifteen essays by various hands. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Historical and Editorial Studies in Medieval and Early Modern English under Alternative Title.
Fisher, John H.
Text: Transactions of the Society for Textual Scholarship 6 (1994): 165-80.
Since no authorial text of CT or TC is available for a best-text edition, a combination of the habits or "uses" of the earliest scribes, with spelling normalized to accord with Equat, should be used to produce an edition. Fisher exemplifies such an…
Amano, Masachiyo, and others, eds.
New York and Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2008.
Twenty-eight essays by various authors on linguistic aspects of Old and Middle English. For three that pertain to Chaucer; search for Historical Englishes in Varieties of Texts and Contexts under Alternative Title.
Snyder, Matthew J.
Christine Devine and Marie Hendry, eds. Turning Points and Transformations: Essays on Language, Literature and Culture (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2011), pp. 3-15.
Contrasts the ending of PrT with Latin analogues to argue that the Tale is less concerned with miracles than with martyrdom--Jewish martyrdom as well as Christian--whereby Chaucer suggests the need for mourning human death.
Assesses the debate between psychoanalytic and historicist critics, arguing that psychoanalytic assumptions and interpretations are embedded in historicist analysis, despite historicist claims of rejecting psychoanalysis. Considers works by major…
Reprinted in Gayle Margherita. The Romance of Origins: Language and Sexual Difference in Middle English Literature (Philadelaphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), pp. 100-28.
Semenza, Gregory M. Colón.
Chaucer Review 38: 66-82, 2003.
Members of the aristocracy and the middle class engaged in wrestling. Thus, Chaucer's reference to the Miller as a wrestler cannot be dismissed as a reference to the lower class.
Tambling, Jeremy.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
In a chapter entitled "Medieval and Early Modern Devils: Names and Images" (pp. 45–74), assesses the devil-dressed-in-green of FrT and its associations with the fairies in WBT; also comments on the characters in PardT and CYT "who are already…
Akbari, Suzanne Conklin.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 368-85.
Considers Nicholas Trevet’s Anglo-Norman chronicle and discusses "the ways in which Trevet’s larger vision of history is reflected in Chaucer's writing." Catalogues the various models for history available to and used by Chaucer, including Geoffrey…
Explores the functions and nuances of the historical present verb tense, focusing on epic scenes in CT (especially KnT and MLT), TC, LGW, and Anel, and assessing how Chaucer's uses of the tense help with vividness, immediacy, and "visualization" of…
The form of GP is descended from the genre of the rhetorical catalogue of types, represented in simpler form by the lists of trees and birds in PF. In PF, the garden represents the world of timeless values and the catalogs the earth-bound realities;…
Douib, Mohamed Karim.
SLOAP International Journal of Linguistics, Literature and Culture 7.2 (2021): 70-81.
Argues that "the discarded historical event" of the Peasants' Revolt "surfaces" in NPT "not to record the cracks and crevices in the dwindling feudal system, but to participate in the bestialization and grotesquing of the 1381 insurgents and the…
Goldberg, Catherine L.
WVUPP 44: 34-41, 1998, 1999.
In TC, the layering of sources, authors, characters, and language produces a text that "seeks consciously to exist in the present each time it is read." The complex acts of memory among the characters suggest that time is chaotic, yet a "kind of…
Benoit-Dusausoy, Annick, and Guy Fontaine, ed. Trans. Michael Wooff.
New York and London : Routledge, 2000.
Comprehensive survey of European literatures, writers, genres, motifs, and themes, from Homer to contemporary figures and trends. J. Smith, "Chaucer (c.1340-c.1400)," pp. 142-46, describes Chaucer and his works, discussing him as a humanist and a man…
