It is commonly held that a large number of Old French loan words in Middle English were literary borrowings. However, a study of a restricted group (designating articles of dress and fabrics) shows that most such words were current before the…
An anthology of comic selections, including (pp. 9-17) the Nevill Coghill translation the GP description of the Wife of Bath and selections from WBP, with a brief introduction. The volume includes a commentary on literary humor, illustrations by…
Daiches, David, and John Flower.
New York: Paddington Press, 1979.
Explains topographical references in the works of various British writers, from Chaucer to Robert Louis Stevenson and James Joyce, and explores how various locales contributed to various works of literature, including works by Shakespeare, Dr.…
Wright, Steven Alan.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1987): 4400A.
Medieval literary influence should be understood through borrowing not only of phrasing but also of literary devices. Chaucer's grasp of the totality of Jean de Meun's technique pervades Chaucer's handling of allegorical conventions.
Justice, Steven.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 199-214.
Justice explores "historicism's liabilities" and their consequences for the prospects of an aesthetic "turn." Traces the interactions between historicism and "theory" in debunking formalism and comments on this process in medieval studies,…
Lerer, Seth.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp.75-91.
Lerer assesses the mid-sixteenth-century versions of Truth and TC in Tottel's "Miscellany" (among other texts) as evidence of Renaissance reception of medieval literary history.
Clogan, Paul M.
Medievalia et Humanistica 11 (1982): 199-209.
The pedagogic techniques in "Liber Catonianus," a standard textbook used by Chaucer, show the combination of grammar and morality, the study of the "artes" as a study of ethics,and the integration of the ethical in the "Septennium" of the liberal…
Elliott, Ralph W. V.
Studies in English Literature (Tokyo) 66 (1989): 37-56.
Chaucer created a literary dialect that influenced writers centuries later. Elliott focuses on Chaucer's dialect, pronunciation, and grammar; Hardy's words and syntax; and Garner's rythms and cadences.
Scattergood, V. J.
V. J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne, eds. English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages (London: Duckworth, 1983), pp. 29-43.
Argues that Chaucer and Gower were "hardly essential reading " at the court of Richard II, although some evidence indicates that they were being read. Such evidence includes comments on Sted, TC, LGW, Scog, and works by Gower.
Clogan, Paul M.
Medievalia et Humanistica 6 (1975): 189-98.
Godwin's literary criticism of Chaucer's poetry contributed to the Romantic conception of Chaucer the man. His "Life" gives insight into the idea of the Middle Ages in early-nineteenth-century England.
Clogan, Paul M.
I. D. McFarlane, ed. Acta Conventus Neo-Latini Sanctandreani (Binhamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1986), pp. 569-78.
The distinctive form of literary criticism in the medieval canon of classics in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries is evidenced by an examination of one of the characteristic types of treatise that resulted from the association of poetry with…
Badessa, Richard Paul.
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Indiana, 1967. Dissertation Abstracts International 28.10 (1968): 4114A. Full-text access at ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global; accessed September 14, 2023.
Surveys the conventions of English and French courtly literature, emphasizing backgrounds, setting, plot structure, the contributions of Machaut and Froissart, and the influence of the "Pearl." A closing chapter on BD explores how and in what ways…
Benson, C. David.
Ardis Butterfield, ed. Chaucer and the City (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 129-44.
Significantly, the setting of GP is located outside the limits of London proper, and most of the pilgrims are not Londoners. CkT offers a clear vision of fourteenth-century London and reflects what is both good and appalling about the city.
Fowler, Elizabeth.
Ithaca : Cornell University Press, 2003.
Fowler explores literary character and characterization as processes of the reader's engagement with "social persons" posited by a given text through various habituated devices and understood in light of various historical contexts-psychological,…
In her poem "The Author's Dreame," Lanyer uses the medieval dream vision, allusions to Chaucer (HF) and other poets, and Renaissance and biblical tropes to criticize as well as praise her patrons; however, her authority is threatened by the use of…
HF contains an inordinate number of lists of seemingly disparate materials in random order. Chaucer challenges the concept of authority by suggesting that the lists themselves provide the "authority"--not any one central force. Readers authorize a…
Maddox, Donald, and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994.
Thirty-four essays in English and French by various hands, arranged under five categories: (1) Configuring the Feminine; (2) Lyric Voice, Poetic Style: From Troubadours to Rhetoriqueurs; (3) Amor: Ethos and Affect; (4) Fictions of Identity and…
Longo, John Duane.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1982): 4444A.
The medieval understanding of "translatio" comprises not only recasting in another language but also literary interpretation. In drawing on the "Roman" (already richly allusive), Chaucer adapts Jean de Meun's "mirouer" technique for works of various…
Hazell, Dinah.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 4003A, 1999.
Source study of "Ywain and Gawain," "Sir Launfal," and NPT that explores how the process of appropriation reflects social, economic, political, and ideological continuities and transformations.
Cooper, Helen.
Patrick Mileham, ed. Harry Mileham, 1873-1957: A Catalogue. His Life and Works, with a Selection of Paintings, Designs, and Sketches (Paisley: University of Paisley, 1995), pp. 45-47.
Comments on Harry Mileham's painting of the Canterbury pilgrims, depicted in a tavern during the telling of PardPT. Mileham is sensitive to literary and historical detail, derived especially from GP and the Ellesmere illustrations. The painting…
Honeyman, Chelsea Victoria.
DAI A71.12 (2011): n.p.
Discusses Scottish poets' uses of Chaucer, both to deepen their own works and to establish their own independent literary tradition. Instances include "Kingis Quair," which incorporates motifs from TC and KnT; Henryson's work; and Gavin Douglas's…
Blake, N. F.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Genres, Themes, and Images in English Literature from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1988), pp. 166-85.
Almost all studies of Middle English language and style are flawed in method or lacking in comprehensiveness. The reaction of the medieval audience to dialectal differences is hard to gauge; e.g., sociolinguistic implications of the Northern dialect…
Studies the historical underpinnings of the GP descriptions of the Knight and Squire and discusses KnT and SqT for the ways they reflect the development of the Squire's "Romantic Chivalry" out of the Knight's "Religious Chivalry," questioning the…
Cummins, Patricia W., Patrick W. Conner, and Charles W. Connell, eds.
Morgantown: West Virginia University Press, 1982.
Essays by various hands. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Literary and Historical Perspectives of the Middle Ages under Alternative Title.
Chaucer's catalog of women in LGWP contains attributes specifically chosen to reflect both the themes of the work itself and allusions to other literary works on the respective characters. Chaucer thus demonstrates his knowledge of previous…
