Smith, Jeremy J.
Jacek Fisiak, ed. Studies in Middle English Linguistics (Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 1997), pp. 551-60.
Although the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts were both copied by "Scribe B," their differences indicate how a variety of factors affect textual transmission.
McCarty, Willard.
Ian Lancashire, ed. Computer-Based Chaucer Studies (Toronto: Centre for Computing in the Humanities, University of Toronto, 1993), pp. 49-65.
Briefly surveys the practice of concordance making and assesses the limitations of Tatlock and Kennedy's concordance to Chaucer (1927) and Oizumi's computer-assisted but conventionally printed one (1991). Some of the limitations of traditional…
Norsworthy, Scott.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100: 313-32., 2001.
In MkP, the Host associates the Monk with a sacristan or cellarer. Norsworthy surveys historical cellarers and the role of the cellarer according to the Rule of St. Benedict, connecting bad cellarers with MkT. The Monk's narratives pertain to tyrants…
Patrouch, Joseph A., Jr
David M. Hassler, ed. Patterns of the Fantastic (Mercer Island, Wash.: Starmont House, 1983), pp. 63-66.
Opens a discussion of Harlan Ellison's uses of a "speaking voice" in his fiction by commenting on Chaucer's multiple narrative voices and the depiction of "Chaucer reading aloud" in the Troilus frontispiece (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 61).
Pintor, Ivan, and others.
Hamilton, N. J.: Films Media Group, 2009.
An illustrated interview with Harold Bloom, with commentary and contributions by others. The section entitled "Chaucer and the Creation of Character" includes Bloom's suggestion that the Pardoner is a precursor to Shakespeare's Iago and Edmund, and…
Quinn, William A.
Studies in Medievalism 14 (2005): 200-216.
Monroe's essay "Chaucer and Langland," published in her journal Poetry in 1915, argued that Chaucer's preference for French forms and rhythms had cut off later English poetry from the true native tradition represented by Langland's alliterative…
Sadlek, Gregory M.
James M. Dean, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer (Ipswich, Mass.: Salem Press, 2017), pp. 37-52.
Explores how CT reflects Chaucer's "orientation toward life that celebrates 'bisynesse' [business/busyness] and abhors wasteful idleness." Focuses on the importance of the Host and Chaucer's "marking of the time" in CT.
Byers, John R., Jr.
English Language Notes 4 (1966): 6-9.
Argues that the Host's oath by the "precious corpus Madrian" in CT (MkP 7.1892) refers to St. Hadrian or Adrian, adducing details from the "Golden Legend" and citing the Host's "untrained ear," as well as parallels with Melibee's wife, Prudence, and…
Eckert, Kenneth.
Review of English Studies 68, no. 285 (2017): 471-87.
Reads Th as a "brilliant joke at the Host's expense": not a satire or parody of tail-rhyme romances but a repudiation of the Host's "crude homosocial bantering," his "puerile tastes," and his "pretensions" as a literary critic. Includes comments on…
Taitt, P. S.
Studia Neophilologica 41 (1969): 112-14.
Comments on the Host's "outrage" and the "silence" of the other pilgrims at the end of PardT, attributing them both to failure to "separate art from reality."
Dubs, Kathleen.
Kathleen Dubs and Janka Kascáková, eds. Does It Really Mean That? Interpreting the Literary Ambiguous (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2011), pp. 35-58.
Through Harry Bailly in CT, Chaucer explores the literary tastes of his new audience. Although the Host's interpretations of Chaucer's tales are usually wrong-headed, Chaucer uses the Host to suggest appropriate audience reactions to various…
Richardson, Thomas C.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales". (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 324-39.
Characterizes the Host by examining the social history of his profession as an innkeeper and its possible associations with prostitution. In his interactions with other pilgrims,the Host reveals a "desire to be entertained with merry stories" and an…
Groves, Beatrice.
Beatrice Groves, Literary Allusion in "Harry Potter" (New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 38-59.
Argues that the most "tempting objects" in J. K. Rowling's "Deathly Hallows" derive in part from the girdle in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"; the "thirty pieces of silver that persuade" the biblical Judas to betray Jesus; and the "deadly pile of…
Harward, Vernon.
Studies in Scottish Literature 10 (1972): 48-50.
Argues that Troilus's wooing and loss of Criseyde in TC influenced the depiction of Wallace's wooing and loss of the Bradefute maiden in Hary's "Wallace."
Foster, Edward E.
Chaucer Review 34: 398-409, 2000.
Chaucer possibly intended for Mel to be a take-it-or-leave-it kind of work. Its storyline was extremely familiar in the fourteenth century, and its very presence within CT made a statement. Mel is a tale to be known rather than read, both by…
Kano, Koichi.
The Society for Chaucer Studies and Koichi Kano, eds. To the Days of Studying Medieval English Literature: Essays in Memory of Professor Tadahiro Ikegami (Tokyo: Eihosha, 2021), pp. 69-86.
Interprets WBT as a story in which the knight finally accepts the absurdity caused by himself, persuaded by the old woman's words citing classical works. In Japanese.
Shimonaga, Yuki.
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. 100-10.
Points to the position of ParsT as the last tale of CT, and discusses reasons for this placement by taking into account Harry Bailly's attitude toward the Parson, the meaning of evening time, and Chaucer's adoption of prose rather than verse for…
Fyler, John M.
Critical Survey 30.2 (2018): 20-50.
Argues that the narrator in MerT "augments the malignity of the tale itself by debunking all idealism and mocking its naiveté, but in his blindness and rhetorical ineptitude points to a sordid reality that he fails to gloss over." Yet, the tale…
Expressions of hatred of Criseyde belie a persistent love for her and thus motivate new attempts at telling her story. In this way, hatred serves as "a sign of dispossession" of Criseyde "that invites repossession by the next author."
Hoccleve's authorial identity develops through "borrowings and echoes" derived from TC: "Boethian dialogue; diseased language; and gendered subjects." These allusions work as conjurings--understood as both invocation and exorcism--of the "spectral…
Heor, Woo Ree.
Ph.D. dissertation (City University of New York, 2023), Dissertation Abstracts International A84.11(E). Freely accessible at https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/5372 (accessed January 31, 2025).
Identifies a "dichotomy of fascination and revulsion towards Troy" in several Middle English narratives, and argues that in TC and Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid," Criseyde "signifies the repeated theme of loss and treachery inherent in the…
Vial, Claire.
Jean-Pierre Naugrette and Catherine Lanone, eds. Le temp qu'il fait dans la littérature et les artes du monde anglophone / What's the Weather Like in Anglophone Literature and Art (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2020), pp. 57-70.
Examines "inner and outer landscapes in relation with the seasons" in three works of medieval literature, including articulation of the aesthetic pleasure evoked at the beginning of GP, effected through Chaucer's thematic range and use of "every…
Petrosillo, Sara.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2023.
Assesses various medieval works to show that training instructions for medieval falconry "offer a means of understanding how poetic languageworks, and particularly how it works to represent women." One section describes how metaphors of mewed hawks…
