Pantalone, Vince.
Red Bank, N.J.: Newman Springs, 2018.
Fictional prequel to the CT, set in 1366, when Chaucer and his fellow pilgrims (many from CT) are involved with a kidnapping and murder plot while traveling to Canterbury.
The "Verginia Story" evolved from Livy to Chaucer in various literary forms, most often the exemplum. Chaucer adapted the story into a novella, developing a new narrative form.
Petrina, Alessandra.
Atti Dell'Istituto Veneto di Scienze, Lettere ed Arte 152 (1993-94): 391-422.
Surveys the connections in classical and Christian literature between incubi and nightmares. Documents the intersections of these traditions in Middle English literature, where such night visitations are more frequent than in Continental literature.…
Taitt, Peter S.
Salzburg, Austria: Institut fur Englische Sprache und Literatur, Universitat Salzburg, 1975
Offers a close examination of the various ecclesiastical figures in CT and "Piers Plowman" and of the literary techniques used by the two authors to distinguish them. Chaucer's method of characterization concentrates audience interest on the person…
Sidhu, Nicole Nolan.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
Argues in Chapter 2, "Chaucer's Poetics of the Obscene: Classical Narrative and Fabliau Politics in Fragment One of the "Canterbury Tales" and the "Legend of Good Women" (pp. 76-110), that RvT taps the subversive potential of the fabliau to critique…
Lewis, R. E.,N. F. Blake, and A. S. G. Edwards,eds.
New York and London: Garland, 1985.
"A record of all extant Middle English prose texts composed between c. 1200 and c. 1500 in both manuscript and printed form in medieval and post-medieval versions." Lists texts and editions through 1982.
Blamires, Alcuin.
Elaine Treharne and Greg Walker, with the assistance of William Green, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 478-95.
Discusses representations of individuality in medieval literature, exploring concepts of "singularity" and the Chaucerian notion of "condicioun." Comments on BD, ClT, and the descriptions of the pilgrims in GP, along with a range of medieval works.
Pickering, O. S., ed.
Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1997.
Twelve essays by different authors examine the achievements of frequently neglected works, exploring the quality of the poems, their relations to various traditions and genres, and their poetic methods. Brief references to ABC, BD, GP, MilT, and…
Rogers, William Elford
Annuale Mediaevale 15 (1974): 74-108
Close reading of the speech patterns of the Canterbury pilgrims in the links between the tales, focusing on level of diction (Romance vocabulary), syntax, and figurative language, and relating these features to characterization. Comments at length on…
Whitebook, Budd Bergovoy.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Yale University, 1971. Dissertation Abstracts International 32.06 (1971). Full-text available from ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global; accessed September 14, 2023.
Distinguishes two kinds of medieval romance hero: those who "are defined by institutional virtues" and those defined by "personal attributes and experiences." Treats characters from various romances, examining Palamon, Arcite, and Theseus of KnT in…
Lindley, Arthur.
Robert J. C. Young, Ban Kah Choon, and Robbie B. H. Goh, eds. The Silent Word: Textual Meaning and the Unwritten. (Singapore: University of Singapore and Word Scientific, 1998), pp. 103-18.
Argues that gaps and "narratorial subversions" make Chaucer's works (and much of medieval aesthetic theory) "postmodern," comparing them with the definition of postmodernism by Ihab Hassan.
Aligns vernacularity with visual and verbal profanity, observing occurrences in MilPT in which Chaucer "indulges in vernacular eschatology" and "moves to suppress it." Heyworth reads the window scene of MilT in light of medieval guides to…
Frank, Robert Worth,Jr.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 11 (1989): 5-14.
Argues that Chaucerians should assess more explicitly the consequences of critical readings: for instance, interpreting Alison of Bath as a murderer or Criseyde as having an incestuous affair with Pandarus.
Matthews, David.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22: 93-114, 2000.
Surveys translations and bowdlerizations of The Canterbury Tales from ca. 1870 to the present, identifying variations on the tendency to present the work as morally regulatory or innocent. Focuses on adaptations by Mary (Mrs. H. R.) Haweis, Charles…
Examines the "rhetoric of pestilence" as a "powerful contemplative tool" that urges readers to "self-examination, penitence, and a more active, strategic approach to death" in five texts: PardT, John Lydgate's "Danse Macabre," "The Castle of…
Sawada, Mayumi.
Osamu Imahayashi, Yoshiyuki Nakao, and Michiko Ogura, eds. Aspects of the History of the English Language and Literature: Selected Papers Read at SHELL 2009, Hiroshima (New York; Peter Lang, 2010), pp. 131-42.
Tallies uses of "that" clauses and "to" clauses after the verb "command" in Chaucer's works, documenting their frequencies in various syntactic contexts.
Yeager, R. F.
In Miren Lacassagne, ed. Le rayonnement de la cour des premiers Valois à l'époque d'Eustache Deschamps (Paris: Presses de l'Université Paris-Sorbonne, 2017), pp. 69-79, 183-91.
Explores the influence of Eustache Deschamps on the development of non-musical fixed forms in the English lyric tradition, commenting on poems from Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson D. 913; the poems of "Ch"; and works by Chaucer and John Gower,…
Anastasopoulos, Alexandra.
Meeting of Minds XVII 11 (2009): 199-203.
Anastasopoulos argues for mediated influence of Benoît's "Le Roman de Troie" on characterization, didactic message, and acknowledgement of sources in TC.
Thaisen, Jacob.
English Studies 95 (2014): 500-513.
Establishes that scribes are less likely than otherwise to introduce their own spellings of words that occur in initial position in verse lines, exploring why in psycholinguistic terms, and suggesting several implications for manuscript study. The…
Chancery highlighted problems posed in the medieval common law courts by failures in jurisprudence. MLT raises questions about injustice that reflect critically on the Sergeant of Law. Though he is shown to be an expert in jurisprudence, he is…
Lemons, Andrew Miles.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Princeton University, 2014. Available at http://arks.princeton.edu/ark:/88435/dsp01h415p968p. Accessed November 28, 2021.
Dissertation Abstracts International 75.08 (2014): n.p.
Identifies the "sense of middleness" found in Middle English verse that rejects "received concepts of poetic form and offers alternatives.” Includes a reading of HF "in which Chaucer presents a radically unconventional definition of 'poetic voice'…
Knutson, Karla.
Dissertation Abstracts International A70.06 (2009): n.p.
Knutson examines medieval ideas of innocence associated with penitential forgiveness in CT, "Pearl," and medieval pageant plays, suggesting that a later concept of innocence—a lack of "knowledge or experience"—shaped William Godwin's and Mary…
