Critical introduction to major issues in the study of TC arranged by topic: date, text, sources, genre, structure, themes, style, imitation, and allusion before 1700. Discursive survey of each topic and subtopic, linked by reference to a…
Peed, Michael R.
American Notes and Queries 12.9-10 (1974): 143-46
Reads the narrator of TC as separate from the poet Chaucer and recognizable in two roles that exist in productive tension: an inexperienced servant of love and a fallible recorder of Trojan history.
Adaptation of TC as an opera, with libretto by Christopher Hassell, originally composed in 1954. This revised version was released by EMI on CD (2 discs) in 1995, with a 43 pp. booklet that includes a production history, synopsis, and libretto. Also…
Claims that in reworking TC, Shakespeare "turns it inside out": the work of creating Criseyde's double image shifts from the narrator to Troilus, who also embodies the narrator's "longing and dread of the erotic," and eye-witness testimony fills the…
Troilus' prayer to Mercury is ill-considered. The god's diffident and finally unsuccessful attempt to bed Herse brings disaster to the go-between Aglauros. Further, the reference to this affair draws a pointed contrast between Pandarus and Herse's…
Lombardi, Chiara.
Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2005.
Analysis of the versions of the Troy story by Boccaccio, Chaucer, and Shakespeare, with attention to earlier versions and to the impact of the story and its main characters on western culture. Gauges the importance of ancient stories in shaping…
Simon, Jean Robert, trans.
Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1970.
French translation of selections from TC (Book 1: 155-230, 268-322, 400-504; Book 2: 289-490, 596-812; Book 3: 239-343, 694-798, 841-952, 1065-1148, 1184-1211, 1226-53, 1275-1323; Book 4: 1128-1281, 1534-96, 1640-1701; Book 5: 197-266, 295-321,…
Davies, W. Beynon, ed.
Cardiff: Gwasg Prifysgol Cymru, 1976.
An edition of the Welsh verse drama "Troelus a Chresyd" (c. 1600), with introduction and commentary that explore the play's debt to Chaucer's TC and Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid." Includes a table of correspondences (pp.143-61) between the play…
Musgrave, Thea, composer.
London: J. & W. Chester, 1960.
Sets MerB to orchestral music, sung by tenor; text in Middle English. A Special Oder Edition / Study Score was commissioned by the Saltire Music Group, apparently in 2009.
Offers evidence for the source for the opening of the ShT, connecting it with Gilbertus Minorita's "Dictinctiones" and its quotation of then-contemporary vernacular poetry.
Walts, Dawn Simmons.
Chaucer Review 43 (2009): 400-413.
In MilT, Nicholas's real and reputed knowledge of astrology convinces John of the upcoming Flood, evidence that the clerk has spent his time well in learning the science of reckoning time. Indeed, in contrast to the carpenter, the educated clerk has…
Fifteen essays on topics related to sacred and secular English manuscripts of the late Middle Ages. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott under Alternative Title.
Sturm-Maddox, Sara.
In Jamie C. Fumo, ed. Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess": Contexts and Interpretations (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 119-34.
Argues for the "strong intertextual presence" of Machaut's "Remede de Fortune" in BD, reflective of developments in late medieval francophone and anglophone social history. Both poems combine praise for an idealized lady with an account of the…
Julius, Anthony.
Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2010.
Julius defines anti-Semitism and describes its history and politics in England. Literary anti-Semitism has "distinct tropes and themes, deployed without respect for genre boundaries." The "master trope" of "a well intentioned Christian place in peril…
Taylor, Paul Beekman.
English Language Notes 37.2: 1-13, 1999.
The Host's question of Chaucer-the-pilgrim, "what man artow?" elicits triadic contexts for reading Th, whose prosody, parodic style, and plot are particularly informed by debate structures. These same contexts deconstruct Harry Bailly as adequate…
Perry, Sigrid Pohl.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1981): 2125A.
In Chaucer, as in patristic writings, true marriage proceeds from physical to psychological to spiritual union, even emblematizing the relationship of God to church or soul. Analysis of marriage in CT further reveals sexual politics.
Annunziata, Anthony.
P. E. Szarmach and B. S. Levy, eds. The Fourteenth Century. Acta 4. Binghampton: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, SUNY, Binghampton, 1977), pp. 125-35,
The tree paradigms in MerT are illuminated by the etymological kinship of "tree" and "true," by the tree's biblical and allegorical implications, and by evocations of the Tree of Jesse and trees of virtues and vices.
Roache, Joel.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 64 (1965): 1-6.
Documents "legal aspects" of discovered treasure in late-medieval England, identifying similarities in lexicon and imagery between legal records concerning found hoards and the rioters' descriptions of their treasure in PardT. The similarities…
Herman, Peter C.
Chaucer Review 25 (1991): 318-28.
According to the rules for infidelity in the Middle Ages, Phebus's wife is guilty of both adultery and high treason since she commits adultery with a person of lower birth and social class.
Strohm, Paul.
Paul Strohm, with an Appendix by A. J. Prescott. Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 121-44.
The statutory redefinition of treason in 1352 and a case of domestic treason in 1387 (Elizabeth Wauton) suggest that Chaucer conceived the Wife of Bath to be a household traitor, one whose insurrections against her husbands are analogous to broader…
Bolton, W. F.
Archiv für das Studium der Neueren Sprachen und Literaturen 203 (1966): 255-62.
Describes the concern with treason in TC, identifying references to the "Troy story as a series of betrayals" and allusions to the "Troy legend" where betrayal occurs, connecting them with questions of trust and treason in a pagan world lacking faith…
Wurtele, Douglas J.
Fifteenth-Century Studies 18 (1991): 315-43.
Argues that a "climate" of social and political treachery prevailed in Chaucer's England, considers its effects on Chaucer's work, and surveys the poet's incorporation of the theme of treachery in his major poems.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Noboru Harano et al., eds. Travels Through Space and Time in Medieval Europe. (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 2004), pp. 97-140.
Nakao discusses traveling as physical movement through space and mental movement through time. A dual space-time scheme is central to the structure of CT and contributes to the rise of dualistic interpretations of such words and phrases as "licour"…
