Surveys medieval and early modern study of alchemy and writing about alchemy, with particular attention to its obscurities of language and limited potential for progress. A section called "Playing with Obscurity: Chaucer's Manipulation of the 'Tabula…
Baker, David Philip.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Durham University, 2013. Open access at http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/7716/ (accessed January 28, 2023).
Explores interrelations between literary and logical/mathematical texts in late-fourteenth century England, focusing on how "sophismata" (relatively standardized, imagistic, absurd logical puzzles) underlie late-medieval literary texts. Explains the…
Stephens, John, and Ruth Waterhouse.
New York: Routledge, 1990
Seeks to describe and negotiate the variety of "cultural codes" that serve as the contexts for the "language of literature" between Chaucer and Alan Garner. The section on Chaucer and Gower (pp. 24-30) focuses on their "syntagmatic" emphasis within…
Explores literary allusions used in the courts of law in Britain and Ireland, revealing how literature conceptually informs practical life. Osborough briefly mentions Chaucer when discussing etymology in a nineteenth-century case involving…
Burkman, Katherine H.
Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978.
Presents two scripts for "teaching through performance": 1) an adaptation of scenes from several of Shakespeare's plays, presented as a single playscript ("Shakespeare's Mirror"); and 2) a fusion of reduced, modernized versions of MilT, PrT, WBPT,…
Surveys 115 books threatened with censorship in the United States because of objections to their social (rather than political, religious, or sexual) depictions. Arranged alphabetically by title of the work, each entry includes a plot summary, a…
Boitani, Piero, and Anna Torti, eds.
Cambridge: D.S. Brewer; Tubingen: Gunter Narr, 1983
Essays by various hands on fourteenth-century poetry, secular drama, songs, and lyrics. For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Literature in Fourteenth-Century England under Alternative Title.
An, Sonjae (Brother Anthony).
Seoul: Sogang University Press, 1997.
A traditional literary history of Britain from the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons until 1500, introducing major writers (including Chaucer) and works, with summaries and brief quotations.
Olson, Glending.
Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1982.
Later medieval medical theories and ethical commentaries recognized the benefits of literary pleasure. Olson's aim is "to redress an imbalance in modern scholarship that fosters, intentionally or not, the notion that medieval literary thought had…
Coss, P. R.
T. H. Aston et al., eds. Social Relations and Ideas: Essays in Honour of R. H. Hilton (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp. 109-50.
Coss surveys Continental and English historical and literary uses of the term "vavasour" to demonstrate its varying meanings. Applied to Chaucer's Franklin, the term might convey an "old-fashioned air," but such connotations must be drawn from…
Howard, Donald R.
Massachusetts Review 8 (1967): 442-56.
Contrasts the climactic love scenes in Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato" and in TC, considering details, omissions, emphases, and narrative perspectives to argue that Chaucer makes the scene "emotionally, and indeed sexually, more intense" without being…
Newhauser, Richard G.,and John A. Alford, eds.
Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995.
Includes seventeen essays on Chaucer, "Piers Plowman," pastoral literature, scripture and homilies, and lyric poetry; a dedicatory introduction; and a list of Wenzel's publications. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Literature and…
Cole, Andrew.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Post-Wycliffite writing has a different character from that which preceded it. Writers of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, including Chaucer, produced works with this novel character, often defined as heretical. Cole connects…
Scase, Wendy.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Studies the "impact of judicial complaint on the formation of literary practice" in late medieval England, describing the "emergence and development" of the "literature of clamour" and exploring the influence of this literature on the rise of English…
Hadfield, Andrew.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2021.
Analyzes the relationship between conceptions of social class and literary representations of them in Britain from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. Chapter 2, "Perceptions of Class in the Late Middle Ages," addresses William Langland's…
Teskey, Gordon.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 379-95.
Teskey explores the development of "story-telling" into "literature" in English tradition, including comments on Chaucer's place in this development.
Dobbs, Elizabeth [Ann]
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 14 (1992): 31-52.
Analyzes the tale-telling contract in the context of late-medieval English legal terminology. Explores Chaucer's use of legal diction and situation to establish both the telling of the tales as a form of pleading and the Host's role as judge until…
Focuses on Chaucer's position as lay controller of customs and argues that HF constitutes an attempt to change the field of literature to benefit--in socioeconomic and aesthetic senses--someone in his "liminal" professional position.
Meyer-Lee, Robert.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019
Discusses literary value and the value of continued interest in Chaucer's CT, focusing on parts 4 and 5. Argues that these parts function as a unified group, a framing that offers a new way to read and discover the value of the other CT tales.
Shoaf, R[ichard] A[llen].
Bruce Henricksen and Thais E. Morgan, eds. Reorientations: Critical Theories and Pedagogies (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990) pp. 77-92.
In medieval studies, which are threatened by pluralism, medievalists can communicate the intent of the originals (now translated) by using literary theory to examine "punning, allusion, quotation, and voice." Examines puns, etc. in TC, Dante's…
Yeager, R. F.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 6 (1984): 135-64.
Caxton's Chaucer is "moral," while Thynne's is "gentle." In their selection and rejection of texts both were guided by established critical principles.
Strouse, A. W.
Dissertation Abstracts International A78.09 (2017): n.p.
Uses WBT as a case study in the development of circumcision's use as a metaphor for situations ranging from shifting of intellectual ground to the process of reading itself.
Rubey, Daniel Robert.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1982): 3154A.
Medieval romances reflect changing attitudes toward social conflicts with chronologically developing alterations in their audiences. Chaucer's romances are studied briefly.
