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…
Owen, Charles A.,Jr.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 155-72.
Against the revision theories of R. K. Root, Barry Windeatt's edition of TC argues that Chaucer began by translating Boccaccio, then filling in "reflective and 'philosophic' material." Arguments from context support Root rather than Windeatt;…
Tkacz, Catherine Brown.
Ball State University Forum 24:3 (1983): 3-12.
As Deiphebus observes (TC 2.1572), Troilus is indeed "sick" from love. Following Boethian medical imagery in "Consolatio," bk. 1, Chaucer interprets his passion as a moral disease: Troilus declines through affection, passion,and bestiality into…
Lambert, Mark.
Mary Salu, ed. Essays on Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge: Brewer, 1979), pp. 105-25.
C. S. Lewis was right to emphasize Criseyde's timorousness. She is unambitious and moderate, and the cosy, unheroic situation in Troy in the first three books suits her well.
Explores similarities between the love-lorn knight of Machaut's "Jugement" and Troilus, including their mutual concern with Fortune and their misunderstanding of Providence, their failure to comprehend human freedom, and the ways their speeches…
Chaucer's "inventio" results in a rearrangement of concepts at the end of TC--a result of the process of composition. Exploiting the narrator, TC is in accord with Boethian and Aquinan aesthetics.
Chaucer's addition of Troilus' swoon allows reestablishment of "obeisaunce" critical to Criseyde's loving him, and threatened by Pandarus' story of his jealousy and his own inability to refute or continue it. Mutual apologies suggest mutual…
Garbaty, Thomas J.
Chaucer Review 11 (1977): 299-305.
In the epilogue Chaucer addresses his book as "litel myn tragedye," adding that God might prompt him still to make it into "som comedye." This objective is achieved when Troilus (recalling "Paradiso," XXII) transcends tragedy and attains celestial…
Wheeler, Bonnie.
Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Feminea Medievalia I: Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Academia Press, 1993), pp. 91-116.
Chaucer situates Dorigen, who is bound to contradictory roles as faithful wife and courtly mistress, within contradictory rhetorical schemes that metonymically reinforce and undercut notions of truth and "fin amors." Through carefully constructed…
Baswell, Christopher C.
Jeanette Beer, ed. Translation Theory and Practice in the Middle Ages (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute, 1997), pp. 215-37.
By inserting elements of Chaucerian narrative and language and making direct references to Chaucer and TC, Lydgate replaces the Latin model of literary accomplishment with a vernacular model, thus translating Chaucer's English writing into the high…
Straus, Barrie Ruth.
Straus, Barrie Ruth, ed. Skirting the Texts: Feminisms' Re-Readings of Medieval and Renaissance Texts. Special Issue of Exemplaria 4 (1992): 135-68.
Examines the interrelations of "truth," "freedom," and "woman" as these terms are constructed in FranT. The Franklin's masculinist discourse posits distinctions between truth and fiction, appearance and reality, plain speaking and rhetoric, although…
Vander Elst, Stefan.
Studies in Philology 106 (2009): 379-401.
Vander Elst argues that the "life and writings of the French soldier and statesman Philippe de Mézières" inspired "almost every line" of Chaucer's description of the Knight in GP. This inspiration evinces the circulation of Philippe's works in…
Boffey, Julia.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions. Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 279-97.
Boffey summarizes the various numbers of legends included in LGW and in references to the work and assesses concern with these numbers. She considers LGW in light of the tradition of nine female Worthies in literature and the visual arts and in light…
Although modern readers read SqT as parody, such a reading would have seemed "preposterous" to pre-eighteenth-century readers, who were concerned with sententiae. Pairing tales, pouring over large sections of text, and engaging in self-reflections…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Chaucer Review 19 (1984): 39-45.
Chaucer draws on the symbolic and scriptural traditions of the oak to permit the Pardoner to show off his exemplum-telling skill. Anagogically the exemplum is an allegory of grace offered and refused.
Eberly, Susan Schoon.
David Chamberlain, ed. New Readings of Late Medieval Love Poems (Lanham, Md.; New York; and London: University Press of America, 1993), pp. 15-39.
Surveys the biblical, folkloric, and courtly imagery of thorns and hawthorn trees, which indicate the "presence of misguided love." Considers use of the imagery in a wide variety of works, including KnT and some Chaucerian apocrypha.
Biscoglio, Frances.
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 25 (1995): 163-77.
While the iconography of the spinning woman is generally considered to represent domestic virtue, it can also demonstrate either a model of misaligned femininity, as exemplified by Cenobia in MkT (7.2373-74), or an instance of role reversal--a mark…
Chaucer explores the "citation and corruption of media" in MLT by having the lawyer tell a tale of "pseudo-circulation" in which Custance remains constant despite her apparent circulation and use. The tale enacts the Man of Law's anxieties about…
Kawaaki, Masatoshi.
Koichi Kano, ed. Through the Eyes of Chaucer: Essays in Celebration of the 20th Anniversary of Society for Chaucer Studies (Kawasaki: Asao Press, 2014), pp. 54-70.
Traces Criseyde's mental and emotional movement through the plot of TC, and argues that, for Chaucer, Fortune does not have to do only with the change of external world, but also with man's interiority.
Internal evidence about Harry Bailly's literary aesthetic suggests that he would have chosen the Nun's Priest as the winner of the "soper" at the Tabard. The priest's "sentence," "solaas," conviviality, and obvious masculinity are the deciding…
Singman, Jeffrey L.
English Language Notes 31:2 (1993): 1-7.
The "viritoot" of MilT 3870 is probably a top used in a game. The word caused Chaucer's scribes considerable difficulty and might be a nonce-word. The image conveys Absolon's mental and physical energy.
Simpson, James.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Interpretation: Medieval and Modern (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 167-87.
Refashions the Neo-Platonic "Timaean" aesthetic proposed by Jordan (Cambridge, 1967), focusing on the painting imagery used by Alain de Lille in his discussion of the creative acts of God, Nature, and writers. Despite Jordan's claims for the…
Doederlin, Sue Warrick.
Comparative Literature 33 (1981): 156-66.
In his translation of KnT, Dryden imposed a number of pictorial effects--colors, emblems, icons, static scenes, and landscapes--to transform Chaucer into a seventeenth-century gentleman.
Alisoun presents a puzzle without a key because she is unreal,created out of an imaginary book derived from real male clerical authorities but eventually destroyed. Alisoun and her self-projection--the hag-bride--represent not women who can answer…
