Gallacher, Patrick (J.)
Speculum 51 (1976): 49-68.
Many medieval sources describe food and purgation as having moral, theological, and metaphysical meanings. In NPT the interrelationships between food, humors, emotions, free will, and divine foreknowledge point to a model of continuous…
NPT makes fun of the Monk and the Prioress by combining hunting, rough handling of animals, sexual indulgence, and two morals. The "treading," the hunting, the near sacrifice and downfall, the injunction against flattery, touch upon the…
In its narrative strategy and its theme of the comic irrelevance of the abstractions on which men try to base their lives, Nigel of Longchamps' medieval Latin beast fable, "Speculum Stultorum," provided a suggestive model for Chaucer's NPT.
In NPT, the thrust of the satire on the relation between foreknowledge and free will is that theories like Bishop Bradwardine's simple necessity, St. Augustine's paradox, and, most notably, Boethius' conditional necessity are too abstract and…
NPT is indebted to the naturalistic and mock-heroic tone of the French "Roman de Renard," as well as to an indigenous English tradition of didactic beast fables and exempla. The Priest's concluding exhortation on humility marks the point of the…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 337-49.
In SNT, Chaucer works within the theological tradition of Plato, Augustine, and Prudentius to instruct Christians in their proper attitude toward this world: a "thing" perceived by the physical senses, especially sight, is an apparent reality that…
SNP and SNT express a feminist point of view not present in the original sources and analogues, but added by Chaucer in order to portray dramatically her character. She is contrasted with the Prioress and the Nun's Priest.
Reames, Sherry Lee.
Dissertation Abstracts International 36 (1976): 8036A-37A
Comparison with its sources reveals that the changes in ABC destroy the unity but not the coherence. Chaucer's version comes closer than its source to fulfilling Augustine's recommendations. SNT falls short of its sources in conveying the ethical…
Manly's reordering of the final lines of ParsP in his 1928 edition is contested by manuscript evidence, Chaucer's general usage of pronouns, and the intelligibility and literary excellence of the original version.
Bie, Wendy A.
English Language Notes 14 (1976): 9-13.
Readers err in trying to define the time-scheme of TC too closely, since only a few days of the story's three years are narrated in detail. One must distinguish, therefore, between historical and dramatic chronology, noting Chaucer's emphasis more…
By proposing aesthetic and religious inevitability, the palinode to TC relieves the reader's frustration at Chaucer's deliberately ambiguous characterization of the poem's three main characters and shows the unity underlying the seemingly diverse…
Dobbs, Elizabeth Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 37 (1976): 960A.
The action of TC takes place in both naturalistic and schematic space. This opposition is reinforced by the creation of an intrusive narrator and a fictional audience. Schematic space functions as a principle of limitation, reinforcing the…
Erzgräber, Willi.
Manfred Bambeck and Hans Helmut Christmann, eds. Philologica Romanica: Erhard Lommatzsch gewidmet (Munich: Fink, 1975), pp. 97-117.
Book IV divides into five sections, as does section 5 (the parting scene)--Chaucer being influenced by Boethius even in matters of structure. The whole poem has "dramatic" qualities, but in Book IV the drama is of non-action.
The narrator of TC has two functions: structurally, he acts as a narrative device which, via book and scene division, lends dramatic immmediacy to Chaucer's romantic drama; he also is a "dramatis persona" characterized by his very use of narrative…
As narrator Chaucer partakes heartily in the general mood of each book of TC. The detached coldness of the poem's apocalyptic ending suggests divine omniscience, making the reader acutely aware of the difference between his perception of the mutable…
Hanson, Thomas B.
Chaucer Review 9 (1975): 297-302.
To emphasize the theme of Troilus' misconception of the nature of love and to make his poem reflect the stages of "gradus amoris," Chaucer placed the consummation scene at the numerical center of the "beta" version of TC.
Knighten, Merrell Audy,Jr.
Dissertation Abstracts International 36 (1976): 8076A.
Chaucer's poetry should be regarded as aural rather than oral. Aural poetry is less formulaic and digressive than poetry composed extemporaneously, but it too has special characteristics since it was to be heard and not read. TC reveals Chaucer's…
The vivid association of the dramatic action of TC with its physical settings reflects a medieval rhetorical technique whereby architectural images ("loci") were employed as aids to organization and memory. The perception of the significance of…
Kurtz, Diane Gray.
Dissertation Abstracts International 36 (1976): 6116A.
In TC idolatrous love is rationalized by being conceived as one of the workings of nature. By Chaucer's time the Augustinian view of the valuelessness of temporal activities had been modified so that St. Thomas Aquinas could attach positive value to…
Rowe, Donald W.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
TC is best understood in terms of the tradition of "discordia concors," the harmonization of opposites, which Chaucer saw exemplified in the "school of Chartres" and Jean de Meun. Chaucer's profound philosophical insight, which linked the perfection…
Delany, Sheila.
A. P. Foulkes, ed. The Uses of Criticism (Bern: H. Lang, 1976), pp. 77-95. Reprinted in R. A. Shoaf, ed. Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde: "Subgit to alle Poesy": Essays in Criticism. MRTS, no. 104 (Binghamton N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1994), pp. 29-46.
In TC Chaucer deliberately uses the technique of alienation or aesthetic distancing through devices that render ordinary characters and situations peculiar and unexpected.
Gallagher, Joseph E.
Modern Language Quarterly 36 (1975): 115-32.
Foreshadowing submission to Troilus and Diomede, Criseyde's erotic dream of the eagle symbolizes her fear of man's aggressive nature and her belief in love's ennobling influence. Throughout the poem love modifies the worst in Troilus, the warrior,…
Kiernan, Kevin S.
Annuale Mediaevale 16 (1975): 52-62.
Chaucer has greatly expanded the role of Hector from his comparatively minor status in Boccaccio. As an honorable man of action and reason, Hector is a thematic contrast to Troilus, who is often prostrated by egocentric passions and loses Criseyde…
Peyton, Henry H.,III.
Interpretations 6 (1974): 1-6.
That Diomed was indeed "of tonge large" is to be evinced from his conversations with Criseyde in Book V. His large tongue becomes a symbol of the eventuality of Criseyde's infidelity and of Troilus' tragic demise, as well as of the inevitability of…
