Examines HF as a literary satire, a comic send-up of the love vision genre, evident in the naiveté of the narrator and his failure to attain love or information about it. The poem's "central structural idea" is "comic disillusionment," underscored…
Wright, Monica L.
Sarah-Grace Heller, ed. A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), pp. 159-72.
Explores medieval literary representations of clothing, nudity, and fashion. Includes discussion (pp. 160-63) of how the Wife of Bath's clothing indicates her "personality" and "the crisis of legibility in the fashion system in England"; reproduces…
Patterson, Lee, ed.
Berkeley : University of California Press, 1990.
A collection of seven articles on late-medieval culture, literature, and the problems of historical interpretation. Treats Chaucer, Langland, and others.
Johnston, Andrew James.
Sabine Volk-Birke and Julia Lippert, eds. Anglistentag 2006 Halle. Proceedings of the Conference of the German Association of University Teachers of English, no. 28 (Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2007), pp. 147-57.
Johnston discusses the treatment of political concerns in PF and Clanvowe's "Book of Cupid." PF defuses the political conflicts it conjures up through a conscious policy of aesthetic deferral, whereas the "Book of Cupid" openly shows the violence…
Claims that Chaucer, Spenser, and Dryden may be understood as a collective devoted to the project of "reviving or supplementing destroyed, deferred, and unfulfilled stories." Demonstrates the recursive, rather than linear, relations among these…
Caballero-Torralbo, Juan de Dios.
Juan de Dios Caballero-Torralbo and Javier Martın-Parraga, eds. New Medievalisms (Newcastle upon Tyne: 2015), pp. 149–76.
Surveys themes and plots in HF, comments on its sources, and discusses its "narrator-character."
Ten essays address correspondences between late-medieval nominalism and literature, including Julian of Norwich, "Sir Gawain and The Green Knight," Jean Molinet, and Chaucer.
Penn, Stephen.
Hugo Keiper, Richard J. Utz, and Cristoph Bode, eds. Nominalism and Literary Discourse: New Perspectives (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 1997), pp. 157-89.
Nominalism and literature were never parts of a single, seamless discourse; influences between them are at best complex and indirect. Penn surveys research on literary nominalism in late-medieval (mostly Chaucerian) texts, arguing that sources other…
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.
