Driver, Martha [W.]
Derek Pearsall, ed. New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays from the 1998 Harvard Conference (York; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, in association with Boydell and Brewer, 2000), pp. 53-64.
Assesses the Internet and CD-ROMs as tools in the study and teaching of manuscript research, summarizing the potential and limitations of each. Comments on the impact of a number of projects, products, and Web sites, focusing on the Canterbury Tales…
Bullough, Vern L.,with Gwen Whitehead Brewer.
Jacqueline Murray, ed. Conflicted Identities and Multiple Masculinities: Men in the Medieval West. Garland Medieval Casebooks, no. 25; Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, no. 2078 (New York and London: Garland, 1999), pp. 93-110.
By making the Pardoner offensive, Chaucer "established a negative stereotype of the effeminate male in Western literature." Modern critical tradition perpetuates the negative stereotype, often ignoring the fact that the Canterbury society tolerates…
New York: Films Media Group, 2011. Originally produced by the BBC; available through Films on Demand.
Features the beauty and importance of the Luttrell Psalter and Caxton's second edition of CT, with commentary on book production and the sociohistorical importance of the featured texts. Four sections pertain to Chaucer: "Commercial Printing" (2:30),…
Waterhouse, Michael, dir.
Episode Two in "The Beauty of Books." Tern Television Productions. BBC Worldwide, 2011.
Introduces the manuscript of the Luttrell Psalter and the Oxford copy of William Caxton's second edition of CT (with hand-colored woodcuts), with extensive visual representation of the codices (panning many details) and their library settings,…
Redresses neglect of medieval views in recent materialism studies, arguing that "that medieval definitions of matter, both hylomorphic and humoral, constitute their own versions of 'materialism,' versions that can help us to historicize later…
Hines, John.
John Hines. Voices in the Past: English Literature and Archaeology (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2004), pp. 105-36.
Discusses the use of space and physical objects in TC, arguing that the poem's movements among exterior and interior spaces reveal how characters manipulate such spaces--and even furniture--to negotiate relationships with one another and to chart…
Urban, William.
London: Greenhill; St. Paul, Minn.: MBI Publishing, 2006.
Surveys relations among mercenary practice, war, and the monetization of war-making in Western Europe. Includes comments on the "traditional" idealized view of the Knight and his Tale, attributing these views to John Aubrey in the seventeenth…
Bloch, R. Howard.
Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991.
Explores the scriptural roots of medieval attitudes toward women, focusing on how various kinds of abstraction and aestheticizing led to fundamentally misogynistic contradictions. Examines French romances, lays, and lyrics for the ways they elevate…
Summarizes the discussions of Chaucer in Lynn
Staley's "The Island Garden" (2012), Jamie K. Taylor's
"Fictions of Evidence" (2013), and Jonathan Hsy's "Trading
Tongues" (2013).
Chaucer abuses authority throughout CT. He refers to so many authorities that they cannot be reduced to anything like unity. Such abuse reflects the farcical potential of the academic procedure of disputation as well as the dilemma of the…
Pearsall, Derek.
R. F. Yeager and Toshiyuki Takamiya, eds. The Medieval Python: The Purposive and Provocative Work of Terry Jones (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 59-73.
Describes various depictions of monks and friars in late medieval English vernacular literature, observing that, despite prevalent anti-fraternal satire, friars "retained considerable support" in this literature. Because they were cloistered, monks…
Barnes, Geraldine.
Ruth Evans, Helen Fulton, and David Matthews, eds. Medieval Cultural Studies: Essays in Honour of Stephen Knight (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2006), pp. 241-67.
Barnes contrasts the absence of the city of London in medieval fiction (CkT, CYT, and Athelston) with fictionalized descriptions of medieval London in murder mysteries written in the 1980s and 1990s by P.C. Doherty and Kate Sedley.
Black, Nancy B.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2003.
In narratives of falsely accused queens, the queens frequently undergo periods of exile that refine their souls through poverty and suffering. Black compares the Constance narratives by Nicholas Trevet, Gower, and Chaucer, examining each version in…
Examines connection between "language and cultural identity" and claims that Chaucer mocks "Alexander's 'storie' as 'commune' "in MkT. Analyzes how Latin, French, and English Alexander narratives were read, and rewritten, in medieval literature…
Kirk, Jordan.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2021.
Examines works by Priscian, Boethius, Augustine, Walter Burley, and Chaucer,
to explore how fourteenth-century writers understood "possibilities in language" and "transformed these accounts into new forms, and practices of non-signification."…
Holley, Linda Tarte.
Chaucer Review 21 (1986): 26-44.
Optics as expounded by Roger Bacon provided the theory of perspective and radiating lines; architecture and manuscript illumination provided the technique of viewing scenes and personages through a frame. In TC, there are physical, verbal,…
Gerber, Amanda J.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.
Explores the political motivations of Ovid's "frame narratives" and how they appealed to and influenced medieval writers. For a chapter on Chaucer see Chapter 4, "Clerical Expansion and Narrative Diminution in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales."
Howard, Donald R.
Medievalia et Humanistica 3 (1972): 99-115.
Gauges the value of historicist approaches to medieval literary study, compared with other approaches, suggesting that a phenomenological approach aligned with humanistic awareness of individual consciousness is desirable. Recurrent references to…
Chaganti, Seeta, ed.
New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.
Essays emphasize the importance of poetry and poetics in the "formation of social structures, actions, and utterances" in this festschrift for Penn R. Szittya. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Medieval Poetics and Social Practice…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Speaking of Chaucer (New York: Norton, 1970), pp.164-74.
Focuses on the single use of the word "sin" in MilT (1.3589), suggesting that the Tale and, more generally, the "best medieval literature" do not "necessarily have anything to do with sin," but offer "joy to the reader."
Fredell, Joel Willis.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1986): 895A.
Both the portraits of GP and the representations of the Deadly Sins in "Piers Plowman" (B text of "Visio") achieve a new form, combining the traditional with "individualized details." Such a pattern is analogous to the development of late-Gothic…
This review article assesses four recent books on how the Middle Ages responded to classical literature: Ralph Hexter's "Ovid and Medieval Schooling," the essay collection "Lectures medievales de Virgile," Jean-Charles Huchet's "Le Roman medieval"…
Coleman, Janet.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
Deals with verse and prose in Middle English, Latin, and Anglo-Norman as literary evidence of the rise of literacy and social mobility. Most literary works aimed at reform and edification in Christian ethical behavior rather than at entertainment. …
