Scanlon, Larry.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1987): 387A.
Originating as a device of classical rhetoric, the exemplum became a genre in its own right through the church. Preachers brought it to a lay audience, and poets (Gower, Chaucer, Hoccleve, and Lydgate) eventually secularized it in various ways.
There are in CT examples of the late medieval attack on the symbolic attitude. The literal use of the Song of Songs in MerT, and the Wife of Bath's scriptural interpretation, are respectively examples of the mockery and parody of analogical thought.
Kertz, Lydia Yaitsky.
Medievalia et Humanistica 45 (2020): 75-99.
Clarifies "two distinct modes of ekphrasis, the literal and the literary," exploring how and where they are deployed in HF (storm at sea and wall paintings of Dido and Aeneas) and in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" (castle description and Gawain's…
Spearing, A. C.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 165-71.
In BD, Chaucer uses "the ambiguous status of the dream, as irresponsible fantasy and as vision of truth," to defend poetic fiction. Only in the "context of the figurative" does "the literal possess its full rhetorical power."
Nugent, Christopher Gerard.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 1124A, 1999.
The sense of individual authorship and the acceptance of English as a literary language were eventually accomplished by Chaucer, who, though he sometimes assumed authority through his guise of translator, became the model for subsequent English…
Volk-Birke, Sabine.
Heinz-Joachim Mullenbrock and Renate Noll-Weimann, eds. Anglistentag 1988 Gottingen: Vortrage (Tubingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1989),pp. 209-19.
The oral-aural traditions of sermon giving and hearing can be illustrated in Chaucer's PardT, where four principles of sermon writing can be seen: strong interaction between the Pardoner and his audience of pilgrims; syntactic patterns such as…
Bowden, Betsy.
New York and London: Garland, 1988.
London: Routledge, 2015.
Lists recordings of Chaucer, of Middle English excluding Chaucer, and of Old English. Analyses of elocutive style and evaluations are provided for Chaucer only. Includes a review of Chaucer scholarship relevant to pedagogy as well as a bibliography.…
Varnaite, Irena.
Literatura: Lietuvos TSR Aukstuju Mokyklu Mokslo Darbai 21.3 (1979): 22-32.
Treats Chaucer's embedded lyrics as "independent complete structures" that contribute to their respective contexts and can as well stand alone. Comments on the rondel in PF, the ballade in LGW, the envoy of ClT, and the aubades, songs, and letters in…
Haas, Renate.
Juliette Dor, ed. A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens-Fonck (Liege: University of Liege, 1992), pp. 178-92.
Early dissertations on Chaucer by women illustrate the limitations faced by early female academics. Critical neglect of Maria Koellreutter's 1908 dissertation on Chaucer suggests little recent social progress.
Bixler, Frances.
Papers of the Arkansas Philological Association 12 (1986): 1-12.
Deals with the order of CT in group C. Establishes parallels,antitheses, and thematic similarities regarding morality, sacrifice, and characters in PardT and SNT.
Gorlach, Manfred.
Christa Jansohn, ed. Problems of Editing. Beihefte zu Editio, no. 14. (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1999)
Görlach surveys a selection of textual cruxes (Old English to Modern) that reflect the importance of linguistic evidence in editorial decisions, including two from Chaucer ("armee," GP 1.60; "Aueryll," GP 1.1) and one "quasi-Chaucerian" example…
Stadnik, Katarzyna.
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 51 (2016): 45-76.
Traces the role of the verbs "mot-," "shul," "oughte," and "willen" in defining the relations and motivations of Walter and Griselda, to demonstrate how "the contextualization of the linguistic construction of identity relative to the individual's…
Similarities of orthography and copying habits indicate that the Hammond scribe copied the following manuscripts: BL Additional 34360, BL Harley 2251, Trinity College Cambridge R.14.52, and Royal College of Physicians 113 [Py]. This scribe's spelling…
Smith, Jeremy J.
Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 104-12.
Demonstrates how specific linguistic features can be used to disclose "scribal attitudes to the text being copied," using as a primary example a number of linguistic forms from "one of the most notorious manuscripts" of CT, British Library MS Harley…
Putter, Ad.
English Language Linguistics 26 (2022): 471-85.
Treats the scansion of "high" and "sly" in works by Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve--all "careful metrists"--as evidence of the demise of "inflection of monosyllabic adjectives (final -e for weak and plural adjectives)." Posits that irregularities in…
Wagner, Erin Kathleen.
Wagner, Erin Kathleen. Linguam Ad Loquendum: Writing a Vernacular Identity in Medieval and Early Modern England. Ph.D. Dissertation. Ohio State University, 2015. Dissertation Abstracts International A81.12(E). Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Abstracts.
Studies uses of and attitudes toward vernacular English in late-medieval and early modern writing, literary and religious, from Wyclif and the Lollards to Tyndale and More. Includes comparison of ManT with Gower's analogous Tale of Phebus and…
Rentz, Ellen K.
Notes and Queries 263 (2018): 172-74.
Argues that San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 64538, a short Middle English defense of women attributed to Solomon, appears to derive from Chaucer's Mel, specifically Mel, 1103-9. Suggests that "scholars ought to continue thinking about the…
Wright, Constance S.
American Notes and Queries 24 (1986): 68-69.
A new text offered for these lines returns to the manuscript reading of "he" for Robinson's "she" in line 882, and with different punctuation. The new text resembles more closely the lines of Ovid that Chaucer is paraphrasing.
Fletcher, Alan J.
English Language Notes 24:2 (1986): 15-20.
The many appearances of the name Malkyn in medieval English texts do not support the common assumption that the name suggested a woman of loose morals but rather indicate that it evoked a woman of the lower classes.
Scott, Kathleen L.
Felicity Riddy, ed. Prestige, Authority, and Power in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, 2000), pp. 55-75.
Discusses the artist of the Troilus frontispiece of Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 61, identifying other manuscripts by the same artist. The associations of these manuscripts with important and influential patrons indicate that the artist…
Grossvogel, David L.
Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1968.
Explores the "complex dialectic between the author and his reader" as the defining feature of the novel as a literary form, offering case studies in a range of works, medieval to modern. Includes a discussion of TC (pp. 44-73) which focuses on…
Travelling levels status distinctions and puts the pilgrims at the threshold stage in a rite of passage. Their "ritual elder" is the Host; their enterprise, a restructuring of social conventions: love, rank, "gentillesse", vulgarity, and money. …
Considers the protagonists of ClT and Lars von Trier's film "Breaking the Waves," exploring how the audience's experiences of the "weird realism" of Griselda and Bess may be seen to induce a "heightened mode of encounter with the traces of a…
