Cooper, Helen.
Ardis Butterfield, ed. Chaucer and the City (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 109-28.
Cooper discusses the poetic confraternities called "puys," devoted to competitive writing of poetry. An edition and translation of Renaud de Hoiland's "Si tost c'amis" serves as an example of the kind of civil performance being rejected by the…
Scattergood, John.
Ardis Butterfield, ed. Chaucer and the City (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 162-73.
Chaucer's begging poem reflects his anxieties about money within the complex moneyed economy of fourteenth-century London. Reprinted in Scattergood's Occasions for Writing: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Literature, Politics, and Society…
Traces the legacy of Lollard and Wycliffite writings in early modern print, including works incorrectly attributed to Chaucer (such as "The Plowman's Tale," "Jack Upland," and "The Testament of Love") and led to him being regarded as a…
Somerset, Fiona, Jill C. Havens, and Derrick G. Pitard, eds.
Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 2003
Thirteen essays by various authors on topics such as the conceptualization of Lollardy as a movement, its underlying thought, its book culture, and its relationships with other movements. Includes an extensive bibliography of Lollard study, with a…
Sylla, Edith Dudley.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 456-71.
Traces the work and influence of the "Oxford Calculators" (William Heytesbury, Thomas Bradwardine, Walter Burley, Richard Kilvington, Roger and Richard Swineshead, and John Dumbleton), demonstrating how Chaucer "might have picked up some of their…
Wang, Denise Ming-yueh.
Wenshan Review of Literature and Culture 5.1 (2011): 99-119.
Discusses the "the practice of privacy in reclusive spaces" in TC and MilT, focusing on the physical surroundings, behaviors, and interactions with other characters of Criseyde and Nicholas, and identifying aspects of "personal privacy" within the…
In the five instances in which "male," meaning "bag or pouch" or "holder of writing," appears in CT, the word can also mean "man, male gender, or genitals," "stomach," and "wrongdoing." Through this wordplay, Chaucer reveals his anxieties about the…
McCleary, Joseph Robert, Jr.
DAI 66 (2005): 1009A.
Considers Chesterton's literary criticism of Chaucer as a means to understanding Chesterton's conception of locality as part of his philosophy of history.
Thompson, N. S.
Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds. The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 85-101.
Studies two ways CT borrows from Boccaccio: first, in transforming exemplary narratives into "novelles" and, second, in the use of narrative detail to create local history. MilT, RvT, and ShT are examples.
Argues that Chaucer employs Livy's and Augustine's stories of Lucretia as a way to hold up feminine virtue, rather than repeating their negative attributes exhibited in the source material.
Robinson, Carol L., and Pamela Clements
Studies in Medievalism 18 (2009): 55-75.
Notes (on pp. 65-67) a BBC One production of six tales in CT that aims to present the Wife of Bath as "a wonderful, feisty, bawdy, independent woman who is very much alive and living in the 21st century"; a Canadian (Baba Brinkman) who has…
Nakley, Susan.
Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017.
Examines the views that accept Chaucer's nationalism as a given and those that focus on his international or European identity and vision. Draws on concepts of sovereignty and domesticity appearing "primarily in romantic and household contexts," and…
Gilbert, Jane.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
In the chapter "Becoming Woman in Chaucer: 'On ne naît pas femme, on le devient en mourant'," Gilbert reads BD and LGW through the lenses of Robert Hertz's and Jacques Lacan's theories, respectively. BD represents a response to death that follows a…
Fradenburg, L. O. Aranye.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 33 (2011): 41-64.
Contemplates Chaucer's concern with and depictions of therapeutic "intersubjectvity" in light of modern cognitive theory and evolutionary psychology, particularly as expressed by Brian Boyd. Chaucer's "clinical sensibility" (50) is evident in his…
Untermeyer, Louis.
New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959.
Surveys major British and American writers from Chaucer to Dylan Thomas. Praises Chaucer for his lively characterizations and his "variety and vitality" of narration, with particular attention to CT, but including commentary on the poet's life and…
A history of international English poetry, with recurrent attention to the history of the language, verse forms and style, political contours, and the anxieties of influence. The structure is chronological until the twentieth century, when Schmidt…
Kendrick, Laura.
Teodolinda Barolini, ed. Medieval Constructions in Gender and Identity: Essays in Honor of Joan M. Ferrante (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005), pp. 103-15.
Kendrick compares GP to the vernacular compilations of lives of the troubadours in fourteenth-century songbooks. A revised version of "Chaucer's General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales and the 'Lives' of the Troubadours," published in 2001.
Tabulates liturgical references within CT and argues that the poem depicts the secularization of liturgy and its appropriation for social control, while also presenting a carnivalesque celebration of the reversal of social hierarchy.
Jacobs, Joseph.
Alan Dundes, ed. The Blood Libel Legend (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 41-71.
Focuses on the story of the martyred child, Hugh of Lincoln, said to have been murdered by Jews for religious purposes. Jacobs traces the story through history, songs, and legend. Considers the prayer at the end of PrT.
Ingham, Patricia Clare.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 31 (2009): 53-80.
Reads SqT as Chaucer's exploration of the "double-face of newness." Cambyuskan's encounter with the brass steed is counterpointed by Canacee's communication with the falcon, posing an ambiguous pairing of "creative rationality" and "enchanted…
Stadolnik, Joe.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 121 (2022): 359-82.
Claims that although the prologue to Astr is addressed to Chaucer's son "little Lewis," it is structurally and rhetorically complex, appealing to sophisticated Latinists as well as to young English speakers. Argues that the prologue imitates Latin…
