Comments on the meanings and referents of "tretys" in MelP and in Ret, suggesting that the first usage is not particularly doctrinal and that the second refers to ParsT rather than CT as a whole.
In MLT, Custance's first husband is the "Sowdan of Surrye," and in "Macbeth" the witches plot to scourge a shipmaster who is "to Aleppo gone." That both texts treat Syria and the northern reaches of Great Britain as complementary zones, in space as…
In MilT, Alison resists Absolon's efforts to compel her to perform courtly behavior and chooses her "own predicates" of behavior, thus establishing her identity and coercing Absolon to abandon his failed courtly role.
Hieatt, Constance B.
Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, eds. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays presented to Paul E. Beichner, C.S.C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 139-63.
Food and eating provide central images and activities in Chaucer's poetry. Misunderstanding the foods mentioned, Chaucer's readers may miss points essential to their comprehension of his poetry. The revolution in tastes and eating habits may be…
Dalrymple, Roger.
Helen Phillips, ed. Chaucer and Religion (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010), pp. 175-82.
Explores how "enquiry-based learning (EBL)" as a pedagogical approach can be used to help undergraduate students understand Chaucer's religious context in CT.
Considers the diction and details of the description of the Host, Harry Bailly, in GP, especially as they are developed in the dramatic action of GP in anticipation of the Host's comic slips later in CT. Discusses his merriness; his concern with…
Hasenfratz, Robert Joseph.
Dissertation Abstracts International 50 (1989): 439A-440A.
Examines the emotional exploitation of the grotesque and sensational in the light of various modern critical views. Analyzes writings from Old English homilies to Margery Kempe, including Chaucer's ClT and PhyT.
Rossiter, William.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 166-93.
Complex intertextual relationships among ClT and its multiple sources, as well as the complex political implications of ClT, reinforce the Tale's "habit of returning its readers to the multiplicity of interpretation."
Finke, Laurie A.
Leeds Studies in English 15 (1984): 95-107.
ParsT is not a moral touchstone for judging all the tales but merely another example of a character's way of ordering his experience of truth through language and deliberate rhetorical patterning. The plain prose style embraces only one side of the…
RvT "confronts the paradoxical status of women's desire" in medieval Christian and feudal systems. The Tale's "significant divergences from the fabliau tradition" and several resemblances to the story of Theseus and Ariadne help undercut KnT; its…
Bachman, W. Bryant,Jr.
Chaucer Review 12 (1977): 55-67.
Contrary to prevailing criticism, Dorigien's rash promise is based on the reality of the experiential world. The tension arises when this reality appears an illusion, according to the Boethian concept of reality. When the world is neither real nor…
Hertog, Erik.
Erik Kooper, ed. This Noble Craft . . .: Proceedings of the Xth Research Symposium of Dutch and Belgian University Teachers of Old and Middle English and Historical Linguistics, Utrecht, 19-20 January, 1989. Costerus New Series, no. 80 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991), pp. 200-21.
Based on Roland Barthes's work on the structural analysis of narrative texts, this essay assesses SumT and two analogues. Hertog describes a model for the recognition of similar events in fiction.
Vasta, Edward.
Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, ed. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 97-113.
The speaker of Ros appears to be the earliest instance of the "persona" whom Chaucer presents in full dress in BD and develops in all subsequent major works. This early conception is already so complex and original as to justify the scribe's…
Goldstein, R. James.
Chaucer Review 33 (1998): 31-42.
Places the anti-Scottish legendary history of MLT into English historiographic tradition, especially Trevet's Chronicle. Argues that Chaucer implicitly supports England's claim to the overlordship of Scotland, a claim renewed by Henry IV and…
Palmer, Barbara D.
Douglas Radcliffe-Umstead, ed. Human Sexuality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (University of Pittsburgh: Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1978), pp. 3-14.
Evidence about medieval marital relationships appears in "auctoritee"--Church and civil records--and in "experience" reflected in literature. Legal and penitential documents depict an astounding range of sources of marital conflict, especially…
Female involvement in construction of the Findern anthology (Cambridge University Library MS Ff 1.6) resulted in "subtle interventions" in thematic concerns of several works included in the anthology: for example, "female eloquence" (in Gower's story…
Spencer, Alice.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 204-23.
The anonymous author of "The Assembly of Ladies" counterdefines herself against a clearly Chaucerian courtly tradition by allying herself with a distinctly feminine textuality that is opposed to a traditional masculine hermeneutics.
Chaucer's complaints develop a "poetics of agency" as they explore questions of subjectivity and causation. His most sophisticated complaint, Mars, presents "incompatible forms of causation" but makes them congruent poetically, achieving a…
PrT depicts "the production and exigencies of wonder" in concert with the ambiguity and inscrutability of the miraculous. The abbot reestablishes the distinction between the animate and the inanimate by removing the mysterious "greyn," which does not…
Nims, Margaret.
University of Toronto Quarterly 43 (1974): 215-30.
Traces commentaries on metaphor ("translatio") among medieval classicizing poets and rhetoricians, especially Alan de Lille and Geoffrey of Vinsauf, and examines samples of metaphor in Chaucer's works that reflect these commentaries. Focuses on…
Sayers, William.
Notes and Queries 254 (2009): 341-46.
Glossed in "The Riverside Chaucer" as "illusionists, magicians," tregetours cause their subjects to experience "a fall from cognitive certitude to amazement and bafflement," a result that is captured in the "associational field" that includes both…
Hanning, Robert W.
Chaucer Yearbook 4 (1997): 79-83
Reads "thus seyde here and howne" (TC 4.210) as "everyone agreed," a reading supported by reference to Henry Knighton's "Chronicle," in which Howne's army ("Hownher") may have connoted wide consensus in popular tradition.
