Haines, R. Michael.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 220-35.
That the Fortune-Nature-Grace topos is the unifying theme of Fragment C is supported by Chaucer's additions to its sources and by his probable revision of the link. PhyT shows the gifts of Grace overcoming Fortune and Nature; PardT shows the abuse…
Harrington, Norman T.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 187-200.
CT is the last formulation of one of Chaucer's strongest literary preoccupations: the dynamic interaction of experience and art. The links present reality as it is immediately perceived: chaotic but vital. The tales present reality as it is…
Howard, Donald R.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976.
Although CT is unfinished, it is aesthetically complete. The GP is structured to reveal typifying groups. The tales are ordered into thematic clusters. The ParsT provides a satisfying closure. The structure of the poem is the interlace or…
Owen, Charles A..Jr.
Rossell Hope Robbins, ed. Chaucer at Albany (New York: Franklin, 1975) pp. 125-46.
CT is a storytelling contest involving a drama of contrasting visions. It was intended to end not with ParsT but with a feast of celebration and judgment.
Internal evidence about Harry Bailly's literary aesthetic suggests that he would have chosen the Nun's Priest as the winner of the "soper" at the Tabard. The priest's "sentence," "solaas," conviviality, and obvious masculinity are the deciding…
Though he probably knew nothing of the theatre, Chaucer displays the essence of dramatic technique--the ability to create the persons of his characters objectively in CT.
Deligiorgis, Stavros.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 129-41.
Chaucer used elements from linguistic to cosmological in raising CT to the anagogic level of symbolism (cf Frye's "Anatomy of Criticism"). Various tales illustrate this progression to anagogy.
Quinn, Esther C.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 55-73.
All aspects of CT--the pilgrims themselves and the characters,themes, and language of each tale--unite to present the pilgrimage to Canterbury as a representation of the conceptual pilgrimage of all Christians.
The pilgrimage to Canterbury is actually a search for wisdom. Chaucer is seeking to arrive at a fusion of rational thinking and revelation. KnT rejects reason as the only answer to man's problems. In ParsT the superiority of godly revelation over…
Chaucer insists through the Merchant that we keep in mind the treachery as well as the virtue of the Old Testament heroines Rebecca, Judith, Abigail, and Esther. We are forced to maintain a multileveled viewpoint on them, on their function in the…
Weissman, Hope Phyllis.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 93-110.
The depiction of women in CT stems from the medieval presentation of four main female archetypes. Chaucer employs and experiments with these types, occasionally seeming sympathetic to women. Nonetheless, the women in the tales perpetuate the…
Eckhardt, Caroline D.
Yearbook of English Studies 5 (1975): 1-18.
The observable final total of pilgrims is 33, a symbolically significant sum. The Pilgrim Chaucer's two tales may have been meant as a center-point signifying a shift from game to earnest. The initial statement that there were 29 may demonstrate…
Engelhardt, George J.
Mediaeval Studies 37 (1975): 287-315.
Each of the ecclesiastical pilgrims of CT is related to a type of ethos codified in church commentary. The Clerk, who gladly teaches and learns, is a kind of "hilaris dator". The Monk is a "praelatus puer" whose passion for hunting makes him a…
The Narrator's recollection of the Pilgrim's talk and the intonations of his own voice leave their sounds in all subsequent English poetry. These sounds are the result of the brilliant combination of conventional features.
Branch, Eren Hostetter.
Dissertation Abstracts International 35 (1975): 7861A.
Boccaccio's "Teseida" is about social relationships and its theme is the proper behavior of rational people in a rational society. The KnT also treats social behavior, but its concern is people's attitude towards irrational, superhuman forces.
Cowgill, Bruce Kent.
Philological Quarterly 54 (1975): 670-79.
The tournament described in Part IV is archaic. Chaucer's purpose is to dissociate the Knight from the ideals of his age and thus align the tale with its narrator's portrait in the GP as an implicit reproval of the Hundred Years' War.
Chaucer, possibly familiar with the concept of the "poeta-theologus" current in fourteenth-century Italian poetics, actually structures KnT "in a fashion which parallels or imitates divine creation"; perfection of structural order counters the…
Green, John Martin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 35 (1975): 5403A
KnT explores four hypothetical world views: the world ruled by Fortune, exemplified by Theseus and the Theban widows; man bewailing his helplessness, Palamon and Arcite in prison; man attempting to control social disorder, the tournament; man…
Though similarities have been found, Mercury's appearance to Arcite in KnT cannot be traced to a single specific source. One should view the scene in the broad context of the theme of epic descent from which Chaucer draws several effects.
Clark, Roy Peter.
Dissertation Abstracts International 35 (1975): 6091A
The scatalogical language and happenings in MilT and SumT can be interpreted as a serious commentary. The farting, kissing, and symbolic sodomy recall the anal character of demonic ritual. The friar's misuse of the gift of tongues may reflect the…
Clark, Roy Peter.
Studies in Short Fiction 13 (1976): 277-87.
The tale includes several oblique references to Christmas. At once comic and suggestive of serious religious ideas, these features may mark the work as an actual bawdy Christmas tale.
Di Gangi, John J.
American Notes and Queries 13 (1974): 50-51.
Hende Nicholas of MilT and Frere N. Lenne, a source of "Astr," both refer to the Oxford astronomer and mathematician Nicholas of Lynne. This is borne out by chronological, local, and occupational similarities among the three.
Hirsh, John C.
English Language Notes 13 (1975): 89-90.
In forecasting Monday as the date of the flood, Nicholas seized on John's belief in current superstitions of the day's ill reputation, due both to its etymological association with the unstable moon and to the tradition of certain "perilous Mondays,"…
