Širca, Alen.
Primerjalna književnost 44 (2021): 87-105.
Surveys depictions of Antigone in western literature from Antiquity through the late Middle Ages, with assessment of Chaucer's characterization of her in TC as an interweaving of Trojan and Theban traditions. In Bulgarian with English abstract.
Ebi, Hisato.
The Journal of Liberal Arts Department, Kansai Medical University (December 1980): pp. 15-126.
Pseudo Dionysius Areopagita's theory of "One Light of God" had very much to do with the rich achievements of Gothic art. Consciously or unconsciously, Chaucer was a man in the High Gothic era. In BD his aesthetic idea is clearly presented by the…
Fradenburg, L. O. Aranye.
Staying Alive: A Survival Manual for the Liberal Arts (Brooklyn, N.Y.: Punctum, 2013), pp. 223-61.
Contemplates and appreciates the "indisputable fact of our common aliveness," exploring various topics for evidence of cognitive and aesthetic similarities: biosemiotics, real estate advertising, human natal development, communal grooming, and the…
The Old Man of PardT, wretched because of his inability to die, embodies a lesson of "contemptus mundi" that should correct the rioters' "rash wish" to overcome physical death,but due to their spiritual blindness, they fail to heed his warning.
Mann, Jill.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014.
A collection of Jill Mann's previously published essays, edited with an introduction by Mark David Rasmussen. The Preface explains that the essays are organized around exploring the implications of key words as ways to understand human experience in…
Mertens-Fonck, Paule.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval English Literature (Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 105-15.
Chaucer's use of the name "Eglentyne" in the description of the Prioress in GP and in a scene of KnT emphasizes the disparity between reality and the courtly love tradition.
Craun, Edwin D.
Cambridge: Cambridge Univeristy Press, 1997.
Draws from thirteenth-century pastoral literature (much of it in manuscript) that treats "Sins of the Tongue" to demonstrate how a pastoral "speech code" was "woven into late medieval [literary] texts." Chapters 1 and 2 distinguish in the pastoral…
Analyzes Langland's and Chaucer's uses of "tally-tale-tail" puns in "Piers Plowman" and ShT, clarifying medieval understandings of signification, polysemy, equivocation, deception, economic value, and misogyny. Unlike Lady Mede, who is trapped in a…
Nine essays by various authors on love-sickness in classical and medieval literature. The essays discuss the topos in medicine, classical writing, medieval Latin, Islamic writing, troubadour poetry, ansd medieval vernacular languages: Spanish,…
Reichl, Karl.
Theo Stemmler, ed. Liebe als Krankheit: 3. Kolloquium der Forschungsstelle fur europaische Lyrik des Mittelalters an der Universitat Mannheim (Tubingen: Narr, 1990), pp. 187-215.
Surveys the forms and conventions of Middle English lyrics that treat love-sickness, including MercB, and those in TC and KnT.
Sanders, Barry.
David R. Olson and Nancy Torrance, eds. Literacy and Orality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), pp. 111-28.
In GP, Chaucer poses himself as a "liar," capable of impossible feats of memory; in tales such as MilT, he capitalizes on the oral genre of joking. As a liar and a joker, the literate Chaucer manipulates oral expectations, compelling his audience to…
Argues that both the structure and the content of ManT explore the relativity of truth and lie. Regarding the structure, the dependence on literature of practical wisdom raises a doubt as to the tale's authority as an exemplum. As for the content,…
Duggan, Hoyt N.
C. B. McCully and J. J. Anderson, eds. English Historical Metrics. (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996): pp. 219-37.
Comments on Dryden's and Tyrwhitt's views of Chaucer's meter as background to assessing editorial treatments of the meter of "Pearl." Argues that editors need to emend the manuscript of "Pearl" more aggressively to minimize scribal interventions and…
In CYT, Chaucer's comic use of technical terms related to alchemy or to alchemists (e.g., "craft," "disciplyne," "emprise," "experience," "labour," "loore," "maistrie," "multiplicatioun," "philosophie," "science," "travaille," "wirkyng,"…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
English and English Teaching: A Festschrift in Honour of Prof. Hisashi Takahashi and Prof. Jiro Igarashi (Hiroshima: Department of English, Faculty of School Education, Hiroshima University, 1993), pp. 177-85.
Discusses "slydynge" and related words (such as "kynde" and "pite") with regard to Criseyde's characterization. Examines also the syntactic structures containing those words.
Thomas, Susanne Sara.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 2645A.
Examines how Chaucer and the Gawain poet explore the legal power of written and spoken words. "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" challenges the potency of oral oaths, WBT parodies courtroom rhetoric, the GP sketch of the Sergeant of Law exposes legal…
Reisner, Thomas A.,and Mary E. Reisner.
Modern Philology 75 (1978): 385-90.
Newly discovered Spanish document reports 400 gold "fortes" paid to Lewis Clifford, Chaucer's friend, on behalf of Carlos II of Navarre, thus connecting Clifford with the Black Prince's Spanish campaign, and explaining some of his other connections…
Yager, Susan.
Ann W. Astell and J. A. Jackson, eds. Levinas and Medieval Literature: The "Difficult Reading" of English and Rabbinic Texts (Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009), pp. 35-56.
Examines parallels between Levinas's writing and medieval allegory. Yager reads ClT in a Levinasian mode to generate an open-ended reading or "an exercise in ifs." ClT can be read as an ethical allegory; Chaucer, as an ethical allegorist. Yager…
Astell, Ann W., and J. A. Jackson, eds.
Pittsburgh, Penn.: Duquesne University Press, 2009.
Twelve essays by various authors, plus an introduction by the editors, consider interactions among Christian allegory, talmudic hermeneutics, and the interpretive theory of Emmanuel Levinas. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for…
Pappano, Margaret Aziza.
Robert M. Stein and Sandra Pierson Prior, eds. Reading Medieval Culture: Essays in Honor of Robert W. Hanning (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 248-70.
Pappano characterizes late medieval craft guilds and the roles they play in CT, particularly the recurrent concern with "male artisan identity." Through MilPT, Chaucer critiques the exclusionary nature of "craft fraternalism."
McKinnell, John.
Mary Salu, ed. Chaucer Studies III: Essays on Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge: Brewer, 1979), pp. 73-89.
Trevet's commentary on Seneca's "Hercules Furens," which Chaucer may have known, reveals that medieval theorists gave weight to the "formal cause" of tragedy. In TC, the interpolated songs, dreams, prayers, and letters may be analyzed as elements…
