Boenig, Robert.
Notes and Queries 241 (1996): 261-64.
MkT is not fragmentary, although the Knight misunderstands its common fourteenth-century technique of closure. Boenig provides parallel examples from Chaucer and Machaut.
Murchison, Krista A.
Modern Language Review 115 (2020): 497-517.
Explores how writers and audiences in medieval England "approached textually constructed audiences," considering evidence from rhetorical theory, readers' comments, and "signs of adaptation undertaken by authors, correctors, and scribes."…
Murchison, Krista A.
Modern Language Review 115, no. 3 (2020): 497-517.
Argues that audience-based lines of interpretation are no more reliable than author-based loci of interpretation, and reviews the "ars predicandi", religious guides, and the "ars poetica" (literary works), analyzing "how writer and actual audiences…
Edwards, A. S. G., and Linne R. Mooney.
Chaucer Review 26 (1991): 31-42.
Equat is not a holograph. The careful preparation of certain aspects of the text indicates a final version, and certain deletions and corrections suggest that the copier did not always understand the material he wrote down. The scribe was likely an…
Saito, Isamu.
Doshisha Studies in English 52-53 (1991): 8-29.
Discusses whether the dubious Eglentyne of GP is the right person to tell the pious tale. Chaucer's genius makes her succeed in putting deep human and feminine emotion into the tale.
Robinson, Peter
Richard J. Finneran, ed. The Literary Text in the Digital Age. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 99-115.
Argues that electronic editions are both archival and interpretive, enabling users "to find the one text they seek" and recording data that reflect reception history and provide linguistic information. Cites examples from the electronic WBP (SAC 20…
Corsa, Helen.
Literature and Psychology 16 (1966): 184-91.
Argues that Chaucer's characterizations of the three main actors in TC produce an "Oedipal triangle" that helps to explain the power of the feelings in the consummation scene. Considers the changes Chaucer makes to Boccaccio's "Filostrato," focusing…
The death of England's Prince Henry sparked a "sense of near-nihilism" and prompted Shakespeare and Fletcher to question chivalry in The Two Noble Kinsmen. This interrogation anticipates modern readings of KnT--the source of the play--as a…
Explores "the socioeconomic significance of the ugly, monstrous figures in the Gawain romances" and in WBT, arguing that Chaucer "bifurcates" the "ugly antagonist" of the romances into the "crude, social-climbing Wife . . . and the loathly lady of…
Bennett, Michael [J.]
J. S. Bothwell, ed. The Age of Edward III. (Rochester, N.Y.; and Woodbridge: York Medieval Press and Boydell Press, 2001), pp. 215-25.
Seeks to "reveal a little more fully the world" in which Chaucer was trained as a page, examining the household accounts of Isabelle (BL MS Cotton Galba E.14) in the context of better-known household accounts. Bennett comments on pageantry,…
Schildgen, Brenda Deen.
Jon Ma. Asgeirsson and Nancy van Deusen, eds. Alexander's Revenge: Hellenistic Culture through the Centuries (Reykjavik: University of Iceland Press, 2002), pp. 209-21.
Compares and contrasts the "treatment of Islam" in MLT and in "Decameron" 1.3 and 10.9, arguing that, unlike Boccaccio, Chaucer "vehemently condemns fraternizing with Islam" and presents Islam "as a dangerous and perfidious opposition to the…
Using the medieval concepts of "intromissive optics" and the passive viewer, Martin suggests that Chaucer in TC, KnT, and MerT employs conventions from outside the romance genre at the moment of sight. She contrasts this technique with that of…
Wright, Michael J.
Studia Neophilologica 70 (1998): 181-86.
FranT is set in a pre-Christian age, but Dorigen prays to God and thus achieves the status of a good pagan. She is portrayed as an individual rather than a socially rule-bound wife. Chaucer celebrates individuality through her, but he also recognizes…
Treats various characters of CT as figures in or of isolation: Arcite (KnT), John (MilT), Constance (MLT), Friar John (SumT), Thomas (SumT), and the Pardoner. As such, they share characteristics with figures in Old English poetry.
Cable, Thomas.
Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell, eds. Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 125-51.
Surveys twentieth-century developments in describing and analyzing the prosody of early English poetry, summarizing and assessing the views of Wimsatt and Beardsley, Halle and Keyser, Kiparsky, and others on meter, stress, ictus and their relations.…
McMullen, Carol.
[Jay Ruud, ed.] Papers on the "Canterbury Tales": From the 1989 NEH Chaucer Institute, Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota ([Aberdeen, S.D.: Northern State University, 1989), pp. 73-83.
Argues that the "moral lesson" of MerT is "self-deception and spiritual blindness" which result from January's efforts to "create a paradise on earth."
A book "about the different aspects of words" (etymology, morphology, language acquisition, language and cognition, etc.), designed for a popular audience and arranged as a series of 121 topical pieces of varying lengths. Item 54 ("Chaucer's Words,"…
McCormick uses game theory and the debate genre to investigate the structure of LGW and of Pizan's "Le livre de la cité des dames." The former is "a ludic puzzle"; the latter, "an architectural mnemonic."
Commenting on how Baba Brinkman's rap version of MilT "recast and reset" Chaucer's original, Beidler raises questions about the pedagogical and cultural value of the live performance, the audio recording, and the printed version. Includes (pp.…
Edwards, Robert R.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Contemporary Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010), pp. 3-24.
Reconsiders Chaucer's use of Italian sources and his references to Italy and Italian regions (including Rome), focusing on ways that Italy was a geographical and cultural place of strangeness. Authors such as Chaucer and Gower negotiated tensions…
Carruthers, Mary J.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987), pp. 179-88.
Concerns the influence upon Chaucer exerted by the "rhetorica ad herennium," specifically in the art of memory training, which was largely ignored in medieval commentary until it was revived in Italy. Both Dante and Chaucer make use of the…
Gulley, Alison.
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy and Profession 3 (2022): 31-39.
Discusses the Pardoner's "queerness and fitness to tell a moral tale" in light of ethical concerns about J. K. Rowling’s "public comments about trans women," suggesting pedagogical uses.
Horobin, S. C. P.
English Studies 82: 97-105, 2001.
Challenges Tolkien's view that Chaucer aimed at a consistent representation of Northern dialect in RvT. Probably closest to Chaucer's autograph, the Hengwrt manuscript is neither complete nor consistent, while later scribes added Northern features…
Salu, Mary, and Robert T. Farrell, eds.
Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1979.
Includes Tolkien's obituary from the London "Times" (3 Sept. 1973), his "Valedictory Address" at Oxford (3 June 1959), a handlist of his writings, and fourteen essays by various authors about Tolkien, Old and Middle English literature, and Tolkien's…
