Recent work on Chaucer influenced by poststructuralism can be roughly divided into two types: that which finds postmodern concerns already in medieval poetics and language theory, and that which approaches Chaucerian texts through postmodern…
Rudd, Gillian.
John Parham, ed. The Environmental Tradition in English Literature (Burlington, Vt.: 2002), pp.117-29.
Analyzes interactions between humans and nature (animals and environment) "through the lens of ecocriticism," exploring animal metaphors and the treatment of trees in KnT and representations of the sea and rocks in FranT. In KnT humans render nature…
Johnson, Ian.
Phillips, Philip Edward, and Noel Harold Kaylor, eds. A Companion to Boethius in the Middle Ages (Boston: Brill, 2012), pp. 413-46.
Explores the "special place at the commanding heights of literary culture" that Boethian translation held in Middle English, surveying the variety of translations and uses of the "Consolation," commenting on the importance of Jean de Meun and…
Assesses three of Sheila Delany's critical essays (including "Geographies of Desire: Orientalism in Chaucer's Legend of Good Women'") for the ways that they have "dramatically shifted the direction of critical discourse in emergent subfields of…
Hieatt, Constance B.
Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal, eds. Food and Eating in Medieval Europe (London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1998), pp. 101-15
Corrects a number of misconceptions about medieval recipes and includes clarification of the meaning of "gyngebreed" in Th (CT 7.854).
Zimmerman, Erin Royden.
Dissertation Abstracts International A74.11 (2014): n.p.
Includes comments on Cassandra, Persephone, and Philomela as victims of "acquaintance rape" in Chaucer's works (TC, MerT, and LGW), treating his and other versions (classical, medieval, and modern) as adaptations of myths that create "metanarratives…
Stock applies semiotic theory to MerT: the reason-passion motif in May's stepping on January's back to climb the pear tree; the cough, the garden, and the May-Mary association; the serpent-Damien; the January-creator. The tale's verbal "signes"…
Payne, Robert O.
Chaucer Review 9 (1975): 197-211.
The "G" Prologue to LGW is central to Chaucer's poetic career both chronologically and artistically. The Prologue and its narrator are a "mythic distillation" of Chaucer's earlier works and show the love poet's mature awareness of his position in…
Maffuccio, Christine.
Dissertation Abstracts International A77.09 (2018): n.p.
While examining Thomas Hoccleve, John Skelton, and Ben Jonson, suggests that Hoccleve "channels" Harry Bailly from CT as a demotic voice, drawing upon the routines of London life in the establishment of an "English writerly voice worthy of laureate…
Fumo, Jamie Clire.
Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015.
Studies the history of interpretation of BD, surveying scholarly commentary, material transmission, and late medieval/early modern creative reception. Emphasizes the (re)making of BD over time, by means of the interrelated textual processes of…
Proposes a reading for PF 215-16: "and with a harde file / She couched hem." "Couched" comes from French "cocher," meaning "to cut a notch or groove," a necessary step in arrow-making.
Kordecki, Lesley.
Nona C. Flores, ed. Animals in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 85-101.
The overt hermeneutic directives of many animal books are evident in HF, WBP, and, especially, the silencing of the crow in ManT. The latter combines with the Parson's "antiliterary prologue" to undercut the whole of CT.
Olson, Glending.
Comparative Literature 31 (1979): 272-90.
Chaucer's distinction between "makere" and "poete" is found elsewhere in medieval writings. Serving both to separate classical from contemporary and to distinguish artistic quality from moral seriousness, the distinction suggests the relationship…
Cook, Megan L.
Spenser Studies 26 (2011): 179-222.
Considers how Edmund Spenser's "Shepheardes Calender" "influenced the reception and presentation of Chaucer in the late Tudor period," focusing particularly on how the editorial apparatus of Thomas Speght's "Works" influenced "two of the most…
Thomson, Peter.
Peter Thomson. On Actors and Acting (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 2000), pp. 16-25.
Includes commentary (pp. 16-18) on the "entrances" of Chanticleer and Russell into NPT, suggesting parallels between features of the Tale and the staging of a play.
Bordalejo, Barbara, Lina Gibbings, Richard North, and Peter Robinson.
Digital Medievalist 14, special issue (2021). 32 pp.
Reviews the history, planning, making, distribution, an early use of the CantApp edition of GP (2020), designed to be accessed on a mobile device, the first of its kind. Offers suggestions for similar efforts in the future and includes description of…
Assesses Pandarus's house and its literary functions in light of architectural details of fourteenth-century houses such as the "privy," "stewe," and "trappe" and in relation to conventions of medieval dramatic staging. Pandarus, leading Troilus…
Meale, Carol M., and Derek Pearsall, eds.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2014.
Collection of essays honoring A. S. G. Edward's career, as well as his scholarly work on the "transitional period between manuscript and print culture." For two essays pertaining to Chaucer, search for Makers and Users of Medieval Books under…
Identifies difficulties in translating Chaucer for American audiences: linguistic difficulties (especially false cognates such as "countrefete" and "lust") and several social changes that make Chaucer the "absent father in the United States."
Shepherd, Geoffrey T.
Mary Salu and Robert T. Farrell, eds. J. R. R. Tolkien: Essays in Memoriam (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 204-20.
Chaucer questions the nature of storytelling and the possibility of writing "truth" in imaginative literature. Two words express the divergence of the problem in the Middle Ages: "sooth," which is axiomatic truth (often expressed proverbially);…
Kerby-Fulton, Kathryn.
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Maidie Hilmo, and Linda Olson, eds. Opening up Middle English Manuscripts: Literary and Visual Approaches (Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 2012), pp. 39-94.
Section 5, "Some of the Earliest Attempts to Assemble the Canterbury Tales," analyzes structural and scribal differences in CT manuscripts.
Kennedy, Kathleen E.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009.
Examines a variety of medieval social relations as forms of "maintenance," i.e., "being provided or providing the wherewithal to live." Lord-retainer, master-servant, and husband-wife relations are analogous forms of maintenance that inform one…
Kennedy, Kathleen E.
Chaucer Review 39 (2004): 165-76.
Events depicted in Chaucer's French source "mirror a popular English legal remedy, the loveday or accord," and Chaucer uses the occasion to comment on the importance and role of "maintenance" (the "exchange of money and influence between a lord and…
Craig, Lisa Renee.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 1119A, 1999.
In this study of a specialized kind of computer manual, Chaucer's Astr is cited as a prototype and analyzed for its use of three characteristic rhetorical features.
