Vines, Amy N.
Amanda Hopkins, Robert Allen Rouse, and Cory James Rushton, eds. Sexual Culture in the Literature of Medieval Britain (Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 2014), pp. 161-80.
Discusses the perception of sexual violence in medieval literature, using WBT and "Perceval" by Purcelle de Lis as primary case studies, and describes the medieval misconception that equates sexual assault with heroism.
Johnson, Lynn Staley.
Studies in Philology 87 (1990): 137-55.
Mel should be read in light of England's disrupted domestic state and especially of parliamentary dissatisfaction with Richard II in the 1380s. Thus, Prudence's advice, which emphasizes the contractual relationship between ruler and ruled but also…
Finlayson, John.
English Studies 89 (2008): 385-402.
In FranT, Chaucer reshapes the source material found in Boccaccio's "Filocolo" and "Decameron," adding the "pre-story" of a courtly love marriage, increasing the pathos of Dorigen, undercutting Arveragus's "self-serving" views of honor and truth, and…
Edwards, Robert R.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2017.
Investigates the rhetorical and creative potentials of the idea of authorship as it developed in medieval English literature and established the basis of authorial "prestige and power" for future literary tradition. Individual chapters assess works…
Williams, Tara.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2011.
Argues that Middle English writers employ gendered terms at moments when they are probing new ideas about women's roles; writers "invented womanhood" to describe women's experiences beyond their relation to men. KnT and ClT use gendered language to…
Williams, Tara Nicole.
Dissertation Abstracts International 65 (2005): 4190A
In exploring development of the word/concept "womanhood," Williams discusses KnT and ClT, as well as works by Gower, Lydgate, Henryson, Kempe, and Julian of Norwich.
Utz, Richard J.
Studies in Medievalism 8 (1996): 5-26
Uses Will Heraucort's "Die Werwelt Chaucer" (1939) as the focal point for examining the interplay between philology and ideology in German Chaucer studies between 1848 and 1945. Germanic elements were exaggerated, and French influence was…
Emerson, D Geoffrey.
Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Alabama, 2019. v, 202 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A81.03(E). Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses and via https://ir.ua.edu/collections/ed5428de-61dd-4547-bb08-8be93f503728; accessed August 24, 2025.
Surveys "sixteenth-century writers [sic] from Chaucer to Spenser and from Copernicus to Bacon, showing how they construct authority and attempt to rewrite intuitions about nature and her students. My subsequent chapters on physics, chemistry, and…
Burger, Glenn D., and Holly A. Crocker.
Burger and Crocker, eds. Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 1-24.
Emphasizes how this essay collection presents "an intersectional approach to what medievals call affect and what moderns call emotions," and "speaks to the 'affective turn' in contemporary literary and cultural studies.” Introduction provides a…
Moseley, C. W. R. D.
Critical Survey 30.2 (2018): 1-5.
Notes that the canonizing of Chaucer can have the effect of making him less challenging, blunting the force of his concern for the all-importance of "trouthe" and compassion, issues that "every person in every age" must face.
Moseley, C. W. R. D.
Critical Survey 29.3 (2017): 1-6.
Emphasizes the way in which Chaucer's poems engage in dialogue with his audience, changing the way we can engage with "the fundamental questions of knowledge, understanding, beauty, and pleasure."
Akbari, Suzanne Conklin, and James Simpson.
The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 1-7.
Argues that every handbook or guide to Chaucer is invested in time. Demonstrates how the essays in this volume bring together noted Chaucerians alongside experts in other fields. Provides an overview of previous handbooks and guides to Chaucer, and…
Finke, Laurie A.,and Martin B. Shichtman.
Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, eds. Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 1-11.
Summarizes through Kaske (defender of patristic exegesis) and Donaldson (opposer) the debate in the 1950's and 1960s over textual meaning. In the 1970s, medievalists underplayed historical differences between their work and medieval texts. In the…
Reid, Lindsay Ann, and Rachel Stenner.
Comparative Drama 55 (2021): 127-37.
Assesses and combines various attempts to define Chaucerian "resonance" as a term of intertextuality and the reception of Chaucer; also summarizes each of the twelve essays included in this special number of Comparative Drama. For summaries of the…
Economou, George D., ed.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976) pp. 1-14.
Chaucerian study has given rise to differing though complementary schools of criticism, as exemplified by Kittredge, Robertson, Donaldson, etc. The relationship of MilT and RvT exhibits Chaucer's power as an innovator.
Boitani, Piero.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Literature in Fourteenth-Century England (Tubingen: Gunter Narr; Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 11-31.
Reads HF as an index to English literary culture of the late fourteenth century--as Chaucer's "idea of fourteenth-century literature." The variety of genres of the work, its complex relations with literary traditions, its concerns with science and…
Windeatt, Barry, and Charlotte Brewer.
Charlotte Brewer and Barry Windeatt, eds. Traditions and Innovations in the Study of Middle English Literature: The Influence of Derek Brewer (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2013), pp. 1-17.
Introduces new scholarship developments based on Derek Brewer's contributions to Chaucerian studies. Connects Brewer's Chaucerian studies to his personal poetry, and provides insight into Brewer's pioneering work as a medievalist.
Robertson, Elizabeth.
English Language Notes 44.1 (2006): 77-79.
Robertson introduces a series of seven essays responding to Nicholas Watson's Speculum essay "Censorship and Cultural Change in Medieval England: Vernacular Theology, the Oxford Translation Debate, and Arundel's Constitutions of 1409" (Speculum 70…
Based on the language of Robinson's second edition, treats phonology and morphology of Chaucer's works and examines the differences between Chaucer's language and Modern English.
Fein, Susanna, and David Raybin.
ChauR 46.1-2 (2011): 1-9.
Introduces the essays in a double-issue of "Chaucer Review" dedicated to C. David Benson; includes a black-and-white picture of Benson and a bibliography of his publications.
Batkie, Stephanie L., and Eric Weiskott.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 237-44.
Tallies several differences and similarities between Chaucer's and Langland's works and worlds, comments on the relative prominence of Chaucer studies, and introduces the seven essays in a special section of YLS entitled "Chaucer’s Langland." For…
