Chaucer's uses of "verray felicitee parfit" and "verray parfit" evince his engagement with Boethius's concern with "the true and everlasting good, the 'summum bonum'" in the "Consolation of Philosophy." Whether meant ironically or used in the spirit…
Chaucer draws upon the festive tradition of mock saints early in TC to poke fun at "the pretensions of 'fin amor'"; as the poem progresses, the inversions of carnival come to represent "a necessary part of being a lover." By the time Troilus laughs…
Haruta, Setsuko.
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. 71-80.
Compares Criseyde with Dido and Aeneas in the works of Ovid and Virgil to shed light on the unique characterization of Chaucer's heroine in the context of classical Trojan literature.
Hudson, Anne.
Helen Cooper and Sally Mapstone, eds. The Long Fifteenth Century: Essays for Douglas Gray (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 313-29.
Describes how John Bales sought to preserve English literary tradition by cataloging it in his "Scriptorum illustrium maioris Brytanniae...Catalogus" (1557 and 1559). Comments on Bale's treatment of Chaucer in the "longest entry concerning a…
Saycell, Kenneth J.
Studi d'Italianistica nell'Africa Australe/Italian Studies in Southern Africa 5 (1992): 79-102.
Discusses the progressive changes in versions of the Griselda story from Boccaccio's "Decameron" to ClT. Chaucer's poetic version, the culmination of these changes, reveals many of the problems in the original story.
Fradenburg, Louise O.
Exemplaria 2 (1990): 169-202.
Chaucer's poetry of loss and reparation, exemplified by Anel and BD, reveals anxieties about isolation, change, and death through the defensive strategies generated by the poems both to remember and commemorate loss and to point toward a regenerative…
Acker, Paul.
American Notes and Queries 21 (1982): 2-4.
Sumner Ferris (AN&Q 9:71-72) sees a pun on the name "Wade" in MerT 1684: "lat us waden out of his mateere." More probably the image is one of wading with difficulty out of a stream. The MerT allusion to "Wades boot" is a metaphor for "the (male)…
Ferris, Sumner J.
American Notes and Queries 9.5 (1971): 71-72.
Identifies a "possible pun" on the name of the mythological Wade in MerT 5.1684 ("waden"), arguing that, followed by a reference to the Wife of Bath, the pun recalls January's allusion to Wade in 5.1424 and deepens Justinus's warning against…
Knapp, Peggy A.
Laurie A. Finke and Martin B. Shichtman, eds. Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987), pp. 142-57.
Arguments against patristic readings in WBP pose the "problem of controlling biblical interpretation in an age of increasing lay literacy." The Wife speaks of herself as "a text to be glossed."
Uses Chaucer (MilT and the absent Plowman), Hoccleve, Lydgate, and Bishop Reginald Pecock to investigate changing ideas regarding "post-plague labor practice" and the traditional concept of the plowman.
Eade, J. C.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 4 (1982): 53-85.
Examines ways in which Chaucer called upon his readers' mental agility and elementary acquaintance with astronomy to show how passages customarily regarded as difficult or impenetrable yield to orderly analysis once their technical apparatus has been…
The two distinct "social spaces" within the poem--the city of Troy and the Greek camp--represent the varying attitudes of the characters inhabiting them, particularly their attitudes concerning women. When Criseyde is given over to Diomede, however,…
Bauer, Kate [A.]
Nancy M. Reale and Ruth E. Sternglantz, eds. Satura: Studies in Medieval Literature in Honour of Robert R. Raymo (Donington: Shaun Tyas, 2001), pp. 205-26.
Explores the figure of the "puer senex" (wise youth) in "Pearl," Gower's "Confessio Amantis" ("Tale of Apollonius"), courtesy books, and PrT. Chaucer carefully presents an "ordinary world" in which the clergeon of PrT is educated through realistic…
Bellis, Joanna.
Medium Aevum 83.02 (2014): 210-34.
Intentional scribal adaptations of the "Siege of Rouen" in continuations of the "Brut" demonstrate that manuscript differences are often intentional and not "innocent." Raises anew questions of what it means for Chaucer to insist that Adam write…
Gulley, Alison.
Studies in Medievalism 23 (2014): 189-204.
Starting with the clear similarity between PardT and the tale of "The Three Brothers" in the last of the Harry Potter books, argues that the series as a whole, like CT, is "framed by death," and by the fear of spiritual death. The terrible condition…
Bertolet, Craig E.
Studes in Philology 99 : 229-46, 2002.
CkT illustrates what can happen to the urban household that opens its "pryvetee" to strangers who could damage the family and ruin its reputatiion in the community.
Wallace, David.
Lee Patterson, ed. Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain, 1380-1530 (Berkeley: University of California Press), pp. 156-215.
Argues that "to achieve some sense of what Petrarch meant to Chaucer we must...recover the historical specificity both of the Petrarchan texts and of Chaucer's reading of them." Petrarch's concern for the preservation of his texts induced him to…
Muscatine, Charles.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 3 (1981): 3-11.
(Presidential address to the New Chaucer Society). Chaucerians must engage undergraduate minds, going beyond source studies, textual studies, and narrow explications into cultural history, sociology, historiography, and ethnography.
Sylvester, Louise.
New Comparison: A Journal of Comparative and General Literary Studies 11 (1991): 137-57.
Chaucer's borrowings from "Decameron" are more often poetic strategies and individual episodes than complete plots. The wife in ShT echoes Peronella in "Decameron" 7.2; MilT reflects "Decameron 2.4 more than RvT does 9.6. Generally, Chaucer extends…
Greene, Logan Dale.
Literatura em Debate 2.3 (2008): n. p. [Electronic publication]
Examines the "archetype, or mytheme," of the loathly lady in WBT and related stories, considering the implications that the story derives from "ancient Celtic myth with its archetypal patterns of masculine development." In Portuguese and English.
Patterson, Lee.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 23: 437-70, 2001.
Examines the "uncomfortable sense of selfhood" recorded in Hoccleve's works, a sense of an individual lost within the press of responsibilities. Patterson remarks on Chaucer's influence and suggests that the older poet was beyond conventional praise…
Higgs, Elton D.
Mid-Hudson Language Studies 2 (1979): 28-43.
The tension between Harry Bailly's governance over the pilgrims and the tolerance and permissiveness of Chaucer's fictional narrative voice is implied in three link passages: between KnT and MilT, in the Prologue to MLT, and in the Prologue to ParsT.…
