Shoaf, R[ichard]. Allen.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 183-94.
Shoaf comments on male separation anxiety in TC and Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida," suggesting that the profundity of the poets' realizations underlies their aesthetic power.
Carruthers, Mary [J.]
John M. Hill and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds. The Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages: Reconstructive Polyphony. Essays in Honor of Robert O. Payne (Madison, N.J., and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 67-87.
Medieval memory is inherently social and constructive, playing a central role in the process of composition and thus BD is best understood in the context not of psychology but of rhetoric, as an "act of public mourning, of public remembering."
Hume, Cathy.
Studies in Philology 105 (2008): 284-303.
Chaucer, having established an egalitarian marriage ideal at the beginning of FranT, explores how such an ideal would be tested by real-world circumstances.
In miniature, the structure of NPT is that of CT. It begins and ends with the village and its folks, as CT was to begin and end with the Tabard Inn. The widow and her house are substituted for the Inn and the animals for the Pilgrims.
Bishop, Ian.
Review of English Studies 30 (1979): 257-67.
A framework for the function of the medieval world of learning in NPT can be found in the scheme of the Seven Liberal Arts (grammar, rhetoric, dialectic, astrology, arithmetic, geometry, and music). Although arithmetic and geometry are too abstract…
Kaylor, Noel Harold,Jr.
Uwe Boker, Manfred Markus, and Ranier Schowerling, eds. The Living Middle Ages: Studies in Mediaeval English Literature and Its Tradition (Stuttgart: Belser, 1989), pp. 87-102.
Chaucer's tragedies, e.g. TC, are too complicated to allow easy categorization; likewise, his comedy. The first English author known to use the term, Chaucer uses "tragedy" to establish commonality between TC and MkT, both of which relate to Bo,…
Travis, Peter W.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 81-91.
The elements of NPT--"beast fable, debate, Catonian assertion,Latin translation"--would have evoked in the audience schoolboy memories of Aesop, Cato, and learning exercises.
Smith, Richard.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 18-28.
Reiterates that all of Chaucer's poetry was written to be read aloud, and argues that PardT in particular "cries out for dramatic reading," identifying its several features that invite performance, including its "showy" rhetoric, its "theatrical"…
Frantzen, Allen J.
Britton J. Harwood and Gillian R. Overing, eds. Class and Gender in Early English Literature: Intersections (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), pp. 131-48.
Through his sexual ambiguity and his exposure of the illusory nature of social hierarchy, the Pardoner is a "double threat." Through him, Chaucer "provisionally negates" the model of the three estates and also "demonstrates, through the fates of the…
Cunningham, John E.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 104-12.
Identifies three "sections" of PardT (the "pulpit-thumping," the "story-telling," and the "sales talk," arguing that their apparent disunity is resolved by the character and purpose of the Pardoner.
Ruud, Jay.
Bruce E. Brandt, ed. Proceedings of the Third Dakotas Conference on Earlier British Literature (Brookings, S.D.: English Department, South Dakota State University, 1995), pp. 35-44.
Discusses the Old Man in PardT as a parody of the Resurrection, rather than simply interpreting him allegorically.
Hamer, Douglas
Notes and Queries 214 (1969): 335-36.
Identifies a French prose version (1882) of a West-African tale that is analogous to PardT and perhaps translated first from Arabic into Fula (Peuls) when Moslems entered the area.
Neuss, Paula.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the Late Middle Ages in England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), no. 57), pp. 119-32.
Chaucer's PardT "anticipates, and/or possibly draws on, the techniques and devices of the English moral play." CT is a "play" or game, and PardT is in effect "an early moral play." A "ful 'vicious' man," the Pardoner himself is a vice.
Olson, Paul A.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 2 (1980): 53-69.
The discussion of love between men and women is the vehicle for discussing the nature of society and social love. The parliament itself--a talking together--represents the means provided to fallen man for discovering how to achieve the common…
Cherniss, Michael D.
Chap. 7 in Michael D. Cherniss, Boethian Apocalypse: Studies in Middle English Vision Poetry (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1987), pp. 119-47.
Demonstrates how PF uses the naive Boethian narrator--who, confused about love, turns "Ciceronian virtue and vice into varieties of 'love'." Reader expectation is frequently thwarted: the narrator misperceives his "own relationship to the locus of…
A St. Valentine's Day entertainment, PF emphasizes the inevitable, though unembraced, participation in "kynde" of its audience. The narrator's use and misuse of his authorities frustrate the expectations of his readers, thereby forcing them to…
Rothschild, Victoria.
Review of English Studies 35 (1984): 164-84.
The symbolic structure of PF reinforces meaning; its three sections mirror the divisions of time; allusions to time and nature point toward a natural rather than social hierarchy. As an epithalamium, PF involves the natural world in a…
Hartung, Albert E.
Richard G. Newhauser and John A. Alford, eds. Literature and Religion in the Later Middle Ages: Philological Studies in Honor of Siegfried Wenzel (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995), pp. 61-80
A psychoanalytic reading shows that ParsT and Ret belonged originally to a separate document that was later added to CT through ParsP.
Middle English sermons and manuals of vices and virtues indicate that Chaucer's audience would have understood Jephtha's daughter as a figure of a loose woman. Through allusion to her, Chaucer creates a painfully ironic moment that characterizes…
Masui, Michio.
Chiaki Higashida, ed. Gengo to Buntai: Higashida Chiaki Kyoju Kanreki Kinen Rombunshu. Language and Style: Essays Commemorating the 60th Birthday of Professor C. Higashida (Osaka: Osaka Kyoiku Tosho, 1975), pp. 9-18.
A "multiple approach" to PrT treats the significant inter-relationships between structure, theme, and meaning. For instance, Chaucer's use of prayer heightens the religious mood of this tale and emphasizes the mother/son thematic conflict.
Ikegami, Keiko.
Koichi Kano, ed. Through the Eyes of Chaucer: Essays in Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Society for Chaucer Studies (Kawasaki: Asao Press, 2014), pp. 43-54.
Examines the plot of PrT in relation to the patterns of the saints' legends as well as relevant historical contexts, and discusses Chaucer's intention as well as narrator's and characters' roles. Compares PrT and Marian miracles in Oxford,…
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History, 3rd ser., 3 (2007): 71-129.
Kelly surveys depictions of non-Christians in Chaucer's works and in works familiar to Chaucer: "Speculum historiale" by Vincent of Beauvais, "Legenda aurea" by Jacob of Voragine, English legendaries, miracles of the Virgin, pictorial tradition, and…
