Spearing, A. C.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.
Suggests we cannot necessarily assume that, in medieval texts, every instance of an "I" must represent a fictionalized narrator who has a persona that can be analyzed and ultimately held responsible for various details of, or problems within, the…
Medieval fable cannot be read as though each animal or figure held a fixed allegorical meaning. NPT, for instance, could signify as many meanings as subsequent readers have postulated.
Benson, Robert G.
Copenhagen: Rosenkilde and Batter, 1980.
Treats Chaucer's use of and experimentation with conventional gesture as modified by genetic considerations in CT, TC, PF,HF, Anel, LGW, BD, Rom, and minor poems. Includes an appendix of relevant passages.
Yamaguchi, Eriko.
Gengobunka Ronshu (University of Tsukuba) 53: 17-44, 2000.
Assesses the chest--a significant piece of furniture as both a container and a bench in the Middle Ages--as an image in CT, discussing "possession" and the body-space formed on/in the chest by the act of sitting on it.
Orme, Nicholas [I.]
New Haven and London : Yale University Press, 2001.
Orme surveys medieval childhood, from the seventh to the mid-sixteenth century, with emphasis on England. Topics include birth and family life, danger and death, children's literature, learning to read and reading for pleasure, play, children and the…
Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Review 44 (2009): 186-204.
Reading ShT in the context of fabliaux in which children witness their mothers' infidelity, Beidler recalls that the Tale was originally intended for the Wife of Bath. He argues that the placement of a prepubescent girl on the scene of another wife's…
Kaske, R. E.,with Arthur Groos and Michael W. Twomey.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988.
Bibliography including the following divisions: biblical exegesis, liturgy, hymns, sermons, visual arts, mythography,commentaries on major authors, and miscellaneous.
Phillips, Helen.
Rosalind Field, Phillipa Hardman, and Michelle Sweeney, eds. Christianity and Romance in Medieval England. Christianity and Culture: Issues in Teaching and Research (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 3-25.
Surveys the treatment of classical material in medieval romances (arranged by topic), exploring where and how the romance authors engage the status and validity of their pre-Christian material. Comments on KnT and TC.
Treats three examples of eighteenth-century comic medievalism as the "male adolescence of the Enlightenment": Henry Fielding's presentation of Arthurian material as "farcically lascivious discourse" in "Tom Thumb," the "pre-modern prurience" of…
Brewer, Derek, ed.
Woodbridge, Suffolk ; and Rochester, N. Y. : D. S. Brewer, 1996.
An expanded revision of the 1973 edition, with one additional tale translated from French, three from Spanish, five from Middle English, three from German, six from Dutch (with three deleted), and one from Latin, for a total of eighty tales, songs,…
David, Alfred.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching, n.s., 2 (1991): 23-30.
Individual GP pilgrims represent distinct groups or organizations within medieval society, epitomizing social diversity--yet the community functions as a cohesive whole.
First, McGerr reviews modern theories on closure and examines medieval theory on literary design and closure in Geoffrey of Vinsauf, John of Garland, Ludolf of Hildesheim, Brunetto Latini, Dante, and others to show that "medieval concepts of closure…
Cartwright, John [H].
John H. Cartwright and Brian Baker, eds. Literature and Science: Social Impact and Interaction (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2005), pp. 1-29.
Summarizes "Aristotelian cosmology" and describes its role as a structural and thematic device in Dante's "Paradiso." Describes the roles of astrology, the humours, and alchemy in Chaucer's CT, especially in the description of the Physician and in…
Hanawalt, Barbara A.,and David Wallace, eds.
Minneapolis and London : University of Minnesota Press, 1999.
Ten essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors. The essays focus on intersections between literary and historical texts, especially those concerned with representations of law and transgression of law. For three essays that pertain…
Offers brief backgrounds to historical novels, medievalism, and crime fiction, and surveys the subgenre of medieval crime fiction, i.e., novels "featuring crime or mystery that is solved by a 'detective' and set during the European Middle Ages."…
Newman, Barbara.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2013.
Explores how the "sacred and the secular interact" in Latin, French, and English texts and frames this "crossover concept" as key to understanding medieval literature. Includes discussion of PrT, FranT, KnT, MLT, WBPT, LGW, and TC.
Evans, Ruth, ed.
Cardiff : University of Wales Press, 2006.
Seventeen essays by various authors on topics such as Robin Hood, Chaucer, medieval romance, medievalism, cultural studies, and modern crime fiction. Includes an introduction (pp. 1-6) and a bibliography of Knight's publications (pp. 269-77). For six…
An anthology of readings from medieval sources—literary, political, religious, etc.-- translated into modern English. Includes GP (translated by Frank E. Hill), titled "Chaucer's Picture of Medieval Society," with a brief descriptive introduction.
Anthologizes selections and excerpts from medieval literature and history (most in modern English), offered for use as a textbook in social history. Includes GP, lines 1-274 (pp. 228-48), in normalized Middle English, with no notes or glosses,…
Anthologizes a wide array of medieval texts that pertain to disability studies, each with an introduction and apparatus by individual contributors. Entries include Historical and Medical Documents, Religious Texts, Poetry, Prose, Drama, and visual…
Minnis, A. J.
Dissertation Abstracts International 37 (1976-1977): 1534C.
Theological commentators in the Middle Ages distinguished between the roles of "auctor" and "compilator." Gower seems to have modeled his main literary stances (as "propheta" in the "Vox Clamantis" and "sapiens" in the "Confessio Amantis") on the…
Fumo, Jamie C.
In Alison Langdon, ed. Animal Languages in the Middle Ages: Representations of Interspecies Communication (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 217-34.
Departs from purely functional or allegorical approaches to the whelp in BD by situating the narrative's portrayal of canine-human relations within the field of critical animal studies. Establishes the role of the whelp in rectifying human…
Kowaleski, Maryanne, and P. J. P. Goldberg, eds.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Eleven essays by various authors (and an introduction by the editors) address a range of topics: domestic and monastic spaces, attitudes toward living alone, various literary and historical depictions of homes and households, etc. The collection…
Quinn, William A.
David F. Johnson and Elaine Treharne, eds. Readings in Medieval Texts: Interpreting Old and Middle English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 323-36.
Quinn defines the genre of dream vision, surveys "standard readings" of BD, and offers a "re-vision" of the poem that reconciles its humor and sadness by imagining it as a performance some years after the death of Blanche. The poem may have been…
Spearing, A. C.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 1976.
Studies the backgrounds and traditions of "dream-poetry" in English literature from the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, exploring poets' awareness of writing within an ongoing tradition and their uses of the dream device to express their…
