Explores the reception of John Gower as an alchemist in the sixteenth century, including description of Elias Ashmole's notion that Gower was Chaucer's "master" and "mentor" in alchemical science.
Larson, Wendy A.
Maureen B. M. Boulton, ed. Literary Echoes of the Fourth Lateran Council in England and France, 1215–1405 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2019), pp. 229-70.
Surveys the cultural impact of "Omnis utriusque sexus," and shows how Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve used "confessional discourse" to help construct subjectivities in their works. Comments on ParsT as the "best known confessional manual in Middle…
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…
Irvin, Matthew W.
Chaucer Review 56.1 (2021): 1-32.
Using Michel de Certeau's idea of the tactic, argues that the Monk represents the monastic estate, and that he uses tragedies to attack the Host, representative of the city, and the Knight, representative of the nobility. Explores the Monk's own…
Schaefer, Ursula.
Anna Kathrin Bleuler and Manfred Kern, eds. Poesie des Widerstreits: Etablierung und Polemik in den Literaturen des Mittelalters (Heidelberg: Winter, 2020), pp. 271-98.
Shows not only that Th is a send-up of the tail-rhyme romance and its conventions, but that the poem's metadiscursive horizon of expectation, established by means of the characterization of Chaucer the Pilgrim, resonates in the tale and reveals…
Witalisz, Władysław.
Władysław Witalisz and Ewa Rusek, eds. Across Borders: Cultural and Linguistic Shifts in the 21st Century (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2020), pp. 63-73.
Reads the GP description of the Prioress as an ironic frame for PrT, concluding that they combine as an "exercise in depicting and ridiculing popular anti-Semitism rather than condoning it."
Wicher, Andrzej.
Iudaica Russica 1.4 (2020): 102-14.
Compares the antisemitism in the three works, describing the Jews of PrT as "an undistinguished mass with no face, and no individuality, a mass that can instinctively react, if given a chance, against their Christian neighbour"; they are less…
Wallace, Andtew.
The Presence of Rome in Medieval and Early Modern Britain: Texts, Artefacts and Beliefs (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 172-218.
In Wallace's volume dedicated to examining various aspects of the importance of Rome and the Latin language--classical and Christian--in early British culture, this chapter focuses on their roles in theorizing and depicting relations between living…
Rabin, Andrew.
Notes and Queries 68.2 (2021): 164-65.
Claims that Chaucer may have been aware of a fourteenth-century alchemical work prescribing an "elixir" of "a grain of wheat soaked in wine" that prolongs life long enough for someone whose death is imminent to "speak, make their will, and confess."…
Lampert-Weissig, Lisa.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 43 (2021): 111-49; 3 b& w illus.
Reads PrT and the thirteenth-century Anglo-Norman "Hugo de
Lincolnia" as "conspiracy theory narratives," showing "how they use language and imagery to generate aesthetic emotions, especially fear and disgust," and revealing connections "both to…
Combines neighbor theory with Pauline notions of debt, payment, and the "dual commandment" to love God and neighbor, exploring usury, neighborly obligation, Christian-Jewish proximity, and market economy in "The Childe of Bristowe" and PrT--found…
Graver, Bruce.
Wordsworth Circle 52 (2020): 92-103.
Argues that Wordsworth chose to publish his translation of PrT "for a very simple reason: he wanted to give an example of close translation of Chaucer, and it was the only one ready and unobjectionable." However, various critics found the translation…
Considers PrT and its depiction of premodern antisemitism and relation to premodern race. Ties PrT’s construction of Jews as a cursed monolith to the workings of structural racism. Discusses Agbabi's "Sharps an Flats," which demonstrates "how…
Recounts personal experiences of studying PrT and its reception as a prelude to examining the role and status of medieval studies in twenty-first-century British educational culture, particularly its inequalities, colonialisms, and appropriations,…
Douib, Mohamed Karim.
International Journal of Language and Literary Studies 3.4 (2021): 154-66.
Claims that the "Pardoner's atypical sexuality is subversive of the medieval gender matrix and that his challenge to heteronormativity is ultimately encompassed and disarmed." The descriptions of the Pardoner in GP and PardPT disrupt "the medieval…
Maguire, Laurie.
Rory Loughnane and Andrew J. Power, eds. Early Shakespeare 1588–1594 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 121-46.
Explores relations between Franklin--the tale-telling character of "Arden of Faversham"--and Chaucer’s Franklin as narrator of FranT, concentrating on scenes in the play attributed to Shakespeare, and focusing on the "subject matter and literary…
Contextualizes FranT using Hannah Arendt's "The Human Condition," and argues that the tale represents another moment in CT where journeys end abruptly before the destination is reached. Considers how the tale functions as "a parable of how household…
Walsh, Lora.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 43 (2021): 75–109.
Interprets Griselda of ClT "as the late medieval English Church wedded to a secular power [Walter] that would radically dominate and divest her in the name of reform." Resists "domineering exegetical acts," using "literary and feminist…
Vélez Sainz, Julio.
Dicenda: Estudios de lengua y literatura españolas 37 (2019): 363-76.
Compares versions of the Griselda story: Boccaccio's original; Petrarch's translation; and other rewritings by Bernat Metge, Christine de Pizan, and Chaucer (ClT), as well as the Spanish story in "Castigos y doctrinas que un sabio daba a sus hijas"…
Argues that Chaucer uses philosophical language in describing the fart joke of SumT in order to burlesque the "logical thinking" of scholastic thinkers, particularly the Merton Calculators, showing how literature can "more effectively" work out…
Turner, Marion.
Times Literary Supplement November 19, 2021, pp. 14-15.
Reviews a production of Zadie Smith’s stage play "The Wife of Willesden" (Kiln Theatre), along with the edition of the play (London: Penguin, 2021), describing its relations with WBPT and mentioning other recent adaptations.
Verse-drama adaptation/translation of WBPT and Ret in decasyllabic rhyming couplets and north London dialect, with Jamaican patois, and multiple actors. WBP is set in a contemporary London pub; WBT, in eighteenth-century Maroon Town, Jamaica, under…
Neufeld, Christine M.
Avid Ears: Medieval Gossips, Sound, and the Art of Listening (New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 148-79.
Theorizes the classical figure of Echo as a figure to "think with" in exploring "female vocality" and the topos of the "Philosopher and the Shrew" in WBPT and ClT (especially the Envoy), focusing on issues of deafness, gendered gossip, listening, and…
Hanna, Ralph.
Journal of the Early Book Society 23 (2020): 141-73.
Investigates the "material conditions" that underlie the fictional book of "wikked wyves" described in WBP, 669-73, analyzing extant manuscripts that "most closely resemble Jankyn's volume" and have other Chaucerian and Oxonian associations. Explores…
