Chaucer evinces awareness of marriage law, in particular the necessity of a church ceremony to secure property rights. Wives with a legally unassailable right to property (May in MerT, the Wife of Bath, Alisoun in MilT, Cecilie in SNT) are in a much…
Jacobs, Kathryn.
Gainesville : University Press of Florida, 2001.
Four chapters explore the influence of contemporary marriage law on Chaucer's imagination, and three investigate similar influences on religious and Renaissance drama. Chaucer did not merely reflect his society's concerns with marriage and its…
McCarthy explores how marriage is represented in medieval English literary and legal texts and the "relationship of these representations to actual practice." Subjects range from Beowulf and Old English laws to late medieval ecclesiastical statutes…
Surveys two medieval attitudes toward marriage (pro-matrimonial [Aquinas] and anti-matrimonial [Jerome] and their depictions in various tales of virgin martyrs, analyzing SNT most extensively.
Galloway, Andrew.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 14 (1992): 3-30.
Demonstrates the relations between WBP and sermons on the marriage at Cana, particularly those by Jacobus de Voragine. The Wife neither parodies traditional antifeminist material nor preaches a "sermon joyeux." Using details and approaches…
Robertson, Elizabeth.
Wendy Harding, ed. Drama, Narrative and Poetry in The Canterbury Tales (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 2003), pp. 175-93.
Robertson considers KnT, WBT, and FranT in the light of contemporary marital law, Christian doctrine, and the question of mutual consent to marriage. Chaucer's profound interest in the legitimacy of the female subject is a subset of his larger…
McSheffrey, Shannon.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press: 2006.
An introduction, seven chapters, and a conclusion study marriage in London in the second half of the fifteenth century. The "fundamental argument is that bonds of marriage and sex were . . . intimate, deeply personal ties and matters of public…
Cartlidge, Neil.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 218-40.
Cartlidge examines the range of attitudes toward marriage, sexuality, and the family in CT - including questions of marriage as an ordering principle, sexuality as a threat to marriage, and sexuality as a form of aggression outside of marriage. Also…
Moritz, Theresa Anne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1982): 4445A.
Certain twelfth-century mystics, especially Bernard of Clairvaux, interpreted the Song of Songs as figuring the love of God and man not only through heterosexual love but specifically as an ideal of marriage. In Chaucer's works both the concept of…
Mouron Figuera, Cristina.
Ana María Hornero and María Pilar Navarro, eds. Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of S.E.L.I.M. (Zaragoza: Institucion Fernando el Catolico (CSIC), 2000), pp. 147-57.
Compares views about married women reflected in The Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale with late-fourteenth-century social reality.
Dean, James M.
Comparative Literature 41 (1989): 128-40.
Compares Chaucer's treatment of the Mars and Venus fables with Ovid's and with other medieval versions to demonstrate that Chaucer created Mars as a misguided commentator on his own story. Chaucer's audience, familiar with Jean de Meun's "Roman de…
Observes points of similarity and difference between WBP and Martha Moulsworth's poetic autobiography, "Memorandum" (1632). The Wife serves as Moulsworth's "stylistic and rhetorical precursor."
Bushnell, Rebecca, ed.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.
Anthologizes a wide variety of selections from classical, biblical, medieval, and early modern literatures in a "companion to literary or cultural study of premodern ecological concerns." Includes two samples from Chaucer: a conflation of portions of…
Jones, Timothy S., and David A. Sprunger, eds.
Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2002.
Fourteen essays by various authors in honor of John Block Friedman, covering topics that include Anglo-Saxon, Mandeville's Travels, Cleanness, Gesta Herwardi, Froissart's "Debate of the Horse and the Greyhound," apocrypha, insanity, nude Cyclops, and…
Findon, Joanne.
English Studies in Canada 32.4 (2006): 25-50.
Explores relations between medieval romance and medieval religious drama, focusing on the "woman cast adrift" motif in the Digby Mary Magdalene play. Assesses how contrasts between the protagonists' agency in the play and in versions of the Constance…
Ganim, John.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York: Lang, 2003), pp. 175-89.
Ganim argues that Mary Shelley was influenced by her father, William Godwin, who wrote "Life of Chaucer" and from whom she learned a dual attitude toward the Middle Ages: people are shaped by historical circumstances, and they must seek to rise above…
Remley, Paul G.
Peter C. Herman, ed. Rethinking the Henrician Era: Essays on Early Tudor Texts and Contexts (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1994), pp. 40-77.
Remley describes the Devonshire manuscript (British Library Additional 17492) and assesses the role and purposes of Shelton's writing it-e.g., protesting the incarceration of Margaret Douglas and Thomas Howard, reflecting Tudor practices of "making"…
Czarnowus, Anna.
Jane Tolmie and M. J. Toswell, eds. Laments for the Lost in Medieval Literature (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2010), pp. 129-47.
Compares the "theatricality of imagery" in MLT, particularly in Constance's prayer to the Virgin (2.841-54), with the Polish Marian crucifixion lament "Listen, Dear Brothers." Includes an English translation of the Polish lyric.
Reames, Sherry.
Helen Phillips, ed. Chaucer and Religion (Cambridge: Brewer, 2010), pp. 81-96.
Explores religious content of Marian prayers found in ABC, PrP, SNP, Ret and MLT. Argues that Chaucer does not attempt to "simplify moral issues and theological questions" in his tales of saints.
Explores the contrast between the Marian womb imagery of SNP (7.43-49) and the deflated bladder of Almachius's power in SNT (7.437-41), finding in the contrast "a vision of the Church that attests freedom and obedience, as well as Chaucer's embracing…
Aers, David.
Chapter 3 in David Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity (London and New York: Routledge, 1988), pp. 117-52.
Examines the social psychology and structure of male power--aggression in gazing, rape imagery and fantasy, objectification of women, competitive assertiveness among males--as aspects of "love" and the social expectations for masculine identity in…
Beidler, Peter G., ed.
Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998.
An introduction by the editor, plus seventeen essays by various authors. The collection includes one essay on the Host, thirteen on CT, and three on TC. For the individual essays, search for Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness under…
Paxson, James J.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 73-81.
Troilus's secret entry into Criseyde's bedroom in Pandarus's house alludes to King David's surprise of the Jebusites when conquering their city (2 Samuel 5); it attests to Troilus's masculine heroism and derives in part from Chaucer's experiences…
Reader-response analysis of various dramatic monologues. Shaw focuses on the dramatic monologues of Robert Browning and other Victorians but clarifies the functions of deception, self-deception, casuistry, irony, double irony, and Sartre's concept of…
