Pedagogical website dedicated to CT, with separate pages for selected tales that include introductions and ancillary information. Considers KnT, MilT, RvT, MLT, WBPT, FrT, ClT, FranT, PardPT, PrT, MkT, Mel, and NPT. Also includes links to related…
Wright, Stephen K.
English Language Notes 26:1 (1988): 4-7.
Jankyn's scheme for the equal distribution of the fart in SumT may be derived from Boethius's theory of the propagation of sound waves in "De musica," a Boethian passage also echoed in HF.
In WBP, Alison asserts the primacy of "experience" but is challenged by Jankyn's "authority." Alison's greatest enemy is Heloise, whose arguments against marriage inspired Abelard to make the first antigamous collection, prototype of Jankyn's book…
Lawler, Traugott, and Ralph Hanna III, eds., using materials collected by Karl Young and Robert A. Pratt.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2014.
Edits the seven known commentaries on Walter Map's "Letter of Valerius to His Friend Ruffinus, Dissuading Him from Marrying," with Latin-English facing pages and scholarly apparatus. The Introduction (pp. 1–14) clarifies the importance of the…
Pratt, Robert A.
Annuale Mediaevale 3 (1962): 5-27.
Articulates the evidence for an "antifeminist, antimatrimonial" tradition in medieval Oxford and Paris that lies behind the contents of Jankyn's book in WBP, describing the backgrounds, transmission, availability, and collocations of Walter Map's…
Hanna, Ralph III, and Traugott Lawler, eds., using materials collected by Karl Young and Robert A. Pratt.
Athens, Ga. and London: University of Georgia Press, 2014.
Critical edition of seven commentaries (one excerpted) on Walter Map's Latin antifeminist treatise, with analyses of contents and impact, manuscript information, variants and emendations, extensive notes, and facing-page translations. The…
Hanna, Ralph, III, and Traugott Lawler, eds., using materials collected by Karl Young and Robert A. Pratt.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997.
Critical edition of the three Latin antifeminist works that influenced Chaucer most significantly, especially his WBP, MerT, and FranT. Includes a complete version of Map's "Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum" and portions of Jerome's "Adversus Jovinianum"…
Adapts aspects of CT (particularly WBPT, PardPT, and MilT), "Everyman," and "Piers Plowman" in a single plot, designed for the stage, with a brief Introduction and stage directions.
Cooke, Jessica.
English Studies 78 (1997): 407-16.
Medieval texts on the ages of humankind (such as "The Parlement of the Thre Ages") indicate that January of MerT is not extremely old or about to die; he is at the transition between middle and old age. May is in early stage of adulthood.
Economou, George D.
Comparative Literature 17.3 (1965): 251-57.
Argues that the image of the mirror of January's mind in MerT (4.1577-87) derives from the "Roman de la Rose" and connects with Chaucer's garden setting to underscore the selfish narcissism of January's distorted love-seeking.
Beidler, Peter G.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 72 (1971): 735-38.
Summarizes the plot of French fabliau "Bérenger au long cul" and suggests that it helps to "explain the background upon which Chaucer was drawing when he decided to make January a knight of Lombardy" in MerT.
Considers January's social status and asks why MerT concerns a knight. Examines portrayal of January's household, finding him well-bred but lacking gentility; MerT is thus more firmly situated in the debate about "gentilesse." Also argues that part…
Kaske, R. E.
Modern Language Notes 75.1 (1960): 1-4.
Observes in MerT several commonplaces of the "aube" in the description of January and May's wedding-night, suggesting that they help "to point up the bitterly comic incongruities in January's marriage," and echo details of RvT and TC.
When January shaves for his wedding night, he only makes himself like a "houndfyssh." Earlier, he would join "Oold fissh and yong flessh" (line 1418)--but with himself in the role of a sexually satisfying "pyk," not a disgusting dogfish. The…
MerT, particularly its marriage encomium, was influenced by exegetical treatments of Eve as "helper," drawn from the Augustinian tradition and from Albertanus of Brescia. Chaucer rewrites these two divergent strands, reverses their interpretations of…
Andrew, Malcolm.
English Language Notes 16 (1978-79): 273-77.
The point of the proverb that a man may not sin with his own wife or cut himself with his own knife is reversed in MerT. Chaucer intends the effect of surprise to create a sense of the nature and significance of January's wrong headedness.
Explores why Chaucer connected the theme of marriage with a fabliau of a pear-tree story, observing January's view of marriage and his actual married life.
Grennen, Joseph Edward.
Dissertation Abstracts International 22.03 (1961): 859.
Reads CYPT as Chaucer's response to the "pretentiousness, perverseness, and confusion he found in alchemy," exploring the poet's knowledge of alchemical sources, the place of CYPT in CT (especially in juxtaposition with SNT), and the skill and irony…
Chaucer's audience would have considered the Miller's apparent lack of jealousy toward his wife in the context of a long-standing teaching that jealousy has a salutary side. According to that view, "[w]hoever is not jealous does not love."
Clermont-Ferrand, Meredith, ed.
Lewiston, N. Y.: Mellen, 2008.
Clermont-Ferrand edits d'Angoulême's copy of CT, providing continuous lineation (15,080 lines), sidebar glossing, and bottom-of-page explanatory notes. The introduction (pp. vii-xxxv) comments on editing a "bad" copy of CT, various exemplars of…
Breeze, Andrew.
National Library of Wales Journal 34 (2008): 311-21.
Like Chaucer, the fourteenth-century Welsh poet Dafydd ap Gwilym borrowed from Jean de Meun, using "Le Roman de la Rose" as the source for "Y Gwynt" ('The Wind'). Breeze notes sixteen motifs common to both poems and contrasts the Welsh poet's method…
