Chaucer's use of an identifiable late-Gothic portrait technique can be seen by comparing one of the most familiar portraits of GP--the Prioress--with a roughly contemporary sculptural portrait of Philippa of Hainault. These late-Gothic portraits…
Weissman, Hope Phyllis.
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 9 (1979): 133-53.
Past opinions are either that Chaucer was profoundly involved with the tale and reflected the period's emotionalism or that he was detached and disenchanted with the narrator. Actually the tale is an exposure of the "publicly sentimentalizing…
Scase, Wendy.
Michael O'Neill, ed. The Cambridge History of English Poetry (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 43-62.
Scase summarizes the Latin, French, and English traditions of poetry in late medieval England, describing how major poets of the era engaged these traditions and created a new legacy. Chaucer engaged tradition by posing as an "inadequate" poet, by…
Sobecki, Sebastain.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019.
Claims that "medieval vernacular literature . . . is indexical . . . and created for a specific audience with direct access to the author" as well as the author's social and historical conditions. Focuses on Chaucer's "authorial humility" and…
Harley, Marta Powell.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 91 (1992): 1-16.
Chaucer's four additions to the story of Virginia can be explained, and the whole poem understood, as clarifications of "her allegorical role as the human soul" in rejecting sin.
Powell, Brian.
Maria Isabel Toro Pascua, ed. Actas del III Congreso de la Asociacion Hispanica de Literatura Medieval (Salamanca, 3 al 6 de octubre de 1989), II. 2 vols. (Salamanca: Biblioteca Espanola del Siglo XV, Departamento de Literatura Espanola e Hispanoamericana, 1994), pp. 789-96.
Compares narrative aspects of CT and Juan Ruiz's "Libro de buen amor," especially their uses of irony and an author-narrator; also explores relations between the Prioress and Ruiz's Dona Garoca.
Vélez-Sainz, Julio.
Dicenda: Estudios de lengua y literatura españolas 37 (2019): 363-76.
Describes treatments of the Griselda story from Boccaccio's "Decameron" to Joan Timoneda's "El patrañuelo" (1567), tracing its transformation from a story intended to present Griselda as a model for humankind to a "manual for wives-to-be," including…
Vélez Sainz, Julio.
Dicenda: Estudios de lengua y literatura españolas 37 (2019): 363-76.
Compares versions of the Griselda story: Boccaccio's original; Petrarch's translation; and other rewritings by Bernat Metge, Christine de Pizan, and Chaucer (ClT), as well as the Spanish story in "Castigos y doctrinas que un sabio daba a sus hijas"…
McClellan discusses the strengths of Engle's Bakhtinian analysis of ClT, particularly Engle's "very valuable insight about Griselda's dialogic re-envoicing of Walter's discourse." McClellan argues, however, that Engle gives no psychological analysis…
Staley, Lynn.
University Park : Pennsylvania State University, 2005.
Explores how late medieval English literature helps us to understand contemporary political events and aristocratic efforts to develop a successful rhetoric of power amid shifts in control. Chapter 1 focuses on Richard II, political discourse, and…
Williams, Jon Kenneth.
Dissertation Abstracts International A71.02 (2010): n.p.
Through a close reading of various Ricardian texts, Williams examines the building of what appears to be a contemporary anti-Ricardian rhetoric. Astr implies loyalty to English monarchy, rather than personal loyalty to Richard; KnT and Mel offer a…
Yoo, Inchol.
Dissertion Abstracts International A71.02 (2010): n.p.
Argues that Chaucer's texts engage translation as a political tool. Rom indicates a balance of resistance to France and outreach to its cultural products; Bo can be read as suspicious of royal power during the late Ricardian period; and ClT…
Ostade, Ingrid Tieken Boon van, and John Frankis, eds.
Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991.
Sixteen essays encompass the interpretation of textual cruxes in Middle English, lexicography in the past and present, current and older problems in English usage, and the history of English spelling.
For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search…
Hadbawnik, David.
Dissertation Abstracts International A76.11 (2015): n.p.
Considers the diction of Chaucer, his successors, and CT editor Thomas Tyrwhitt as part of a larger argument for the interrelationship of late medieval and early modern poetic language.
Williams, David.
Naples: Fla.: Sapientia Press of Ave Maria University, 2007.
Chaucer is a philosophical realist whose naïve narrators, tale-within-a-tale structuring, and focus on irony and linguistic slippage enable him to assert Truth while exposing the limitations of individual human perspectives. Williams examines the…
Taylor, Karla.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 99-115.
Taylor surveys the development of attention to language and linguistics in Chaucer studies, commenting on the usefulness of developments that enable increased attention to sociolinguistic uses rather than philological forms. She reads RvT as a work…
Hickey, Raymond, and Stanislaw Puppel, eds.
Berlin and New York : Mouton, 1997.
One hundred and thirty-five selections by various authors, ranging widely in linguistics theory and practice, English language history, contrastive linguistics and language acquisition, and discourse analysis. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer,…
Kastovsky, Dieter, and Arthur Mettinger, eds.
Frankfurt am Main : Lang, 2001.
Seventeen essays on various issues in Old and Middle English linguistic study: language contact, borrowing, code-switching, spelling, versification, etc. For four essays pertain to Chaucer, search for Language Contact in the History of English under…
Fyler, John M.
Studies in Philology 112 (2015): 415-52.
Comments on a wide variety of examples—comic and/or serious—of boundaries and sutures between languages in the late medieval literature, exploring issues of translation, including biblical translation; perceived contrasts between "supposedly…
Historical analysis of early women's speech; describes early modern England's regulations of women's speech and women's subversive strategies to represent themselves as subjects in masculine discourses (including court depositions). Examines speech…
Kane, George.
Christian J. Kay and Louise M. Sylvester, eds. Lexis and Texts in Early English: Studies Presented to Jane Roberts. Costerus New Series, no. 133. (Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi, 2001), pp. 161-71.
Argues for "literary" rather than "historicist" analysis, examining the tone and rhetoric of the reference to the uprising of 1381 in NPT and arguing that Chaucer was "distancing" himself from the events.
Stadnik, Katarzyna.
Studies in Logic, Grammar and Rhetoric 41 [54] (2015): 127-41.
Summarizes aspects of cognition theory and posits that the "knowledge accumulated by past generations is encapsulated in language" and that, like a "palimpsest," imagery retains "vestiges" of the worldviews of the past. Discusses examples of…
