Delasanta, Rodney [K.]
Providence: Studies in Western Culture 3 (1996): 285-310.
Assesses the Wife of Bath's admissions of lying, her glossings of Scripture, and her sexual punning as "nominalistic discourse" underpinned by her preference for the empirical and experiential over the universal. Disagrees with feminist readings of…
Delasanta, Rodney (K.)
Hugh T. Keenan, ed. Typology and English Medieval Literature (New York: AMS, 1992), pp. 121-39.
The pilgrim narrator of CT represents the views of nominalist epistemology, creating a tension in the text as Chaucer the poet continues to uphold a more traditional epistemology based on "ante-rem," "in-rem," and "post-rem" universals.
Furr, Grover C.
Richard J. Utz, ed. Literary Nominalism and the Theory of Rereading Late Medieval Texts: A New Research Paradigm (Lewiston, N.Y.; Queenston, Ont.; Lampeter, Wales: Edwin Mellen, 1995) pp. 135-46.
Examines the theme of free will in NPT in light of the "nominalist-Augustinian debate of the fourteenth century," arguing that Chaucer's position reflects contemporary indeterminacy.
The century between Dante and Boccaccio saw the poet's role as prophet deteriorate. Boccaccio and Chaucer found a middle road between blasphemy and reverence wherein language has its own independent set of standards, as one sees in comparing the…
Watts, William H.,and Richard J. Utz.
Medievalia et Humanistica 20 (1994): 147-73.
Surveys and evaluates scholarly work on Chaucer and nominalist--especially Ockhamist--philosophy, using four categories: epistemology, universals versus particulars, poetic structure, and relation of human to divine. Chaucer's awareness of and…
Reviews providential readings of CT, asserting that nominalism furnishes theological context for MLT; contrasts MLT with its source in Trevet; and surveys use of the term "nominalism." In MLT, God's remoteness and arbitrariness ad the "extreme…
Hamaguchi, Keiko.
Frankfurt am Main: Pater Lang, 2006.
Applies postcolonial theory to explore how Chaucer represents non-European women as Other in both gender and culture and how Chaucer reflects his own position as a poet and his career in historical context. Treats KnT, MLT, SqT, MkT, HF, and LGW.
Examines illustrations as cues to engage non-professional readers of the Ellesmere manuscript and the Kelmscott Chaucer. These techniques may suggest ways of engaging present-day non-professional readers of Chaucer as well.
Machan, Tim William.
A. N. Doane and others, eds. Old English and New: Essays in Language and Linguistics in Honor of Frederic G. Cassidy (New York: Garland, 1992), pp. 111-24.
Explores Chaucer's lexical and stylistic experimentation in Bo, assessing how its 516 different words reflect the philosophical content of the original and a desire for lexical variety.
Blake, N. F.
Irma Taavitsainen, Gunnel Melchers, and Päivi Pahta, eds. Writing in Nonstandard English (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 1999), pp. 123-50.
Assesses the northernisms in RvT and the speech of the bastard in Shakespeare's King John as examples of "nonstandard" language in a time when a standard was only developing. In both pronunciation and lexicon, the northernisms of RvT "should perhaps…
Burrow, J. A.
Richard Firth Green and Linne R. Mooney, eds. Interstices: Studies in Middle English and Anglo-Latin Texts in Honour of A. G. Rigg (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004), pp. 44-54.
Burrow comments on several scenes in TC while exploring the limited vocabulary with which medieval English poets could convey nonverbal communication. Considers words such as "cheere" and "countenance."
Robertson, Elizabeth.
Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack, eds. Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages. Medieval Cultures, no. 32 (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), pp. 322-51.
A revised version of the author's essay, "The 'Elvyssh' Power of Constance: Christian Feminism in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Man of Law's Tale" (SAC 23 [2001], pp. 143-80).
Ueshima, Yasuo.
Hisayuki Sasamoto et al., eds. Hearts to the English-American Language and Literature: Essays Presented to Emeritus Professor Sutezo Hirose in Honour of His 88th Birthday (Osaka: Osaka Kyoiku Tosho, 1999), pp. 59-68. (In Japanese).
Documents Chaucer's uses of northern dialect in RvT and assesses their effects.
Describes how Chaucer and John Gower appear as two poets/storytellers in "Greenes Vision" (1592), offering "authorization and legitimization" to Robert Greene's work "within a specifically English tradition," colored by "ambivalent nostalgia for an…
Explores scribal errors in copying and comprehending details regarding classical characters and classical allusions in poetry, and how poets' phrasing implies awareness of those risks and seeks to mitigate them. These problems in transmission reveal…
Fictional account of twenty-one Australian tourists telling self-disclosing stories, modeled on CT, with many echoes, e.g., character-names such as Tony Knight, Giles Sumner, Barbara Bath, etc.
Symons, Dana.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 123-59.
Also named "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale," "Boke of Cupide" was once considered one of Chaucer's great poems until it fell into obscurity when it was removed from the canon. The essay considers stylistic similarities to Chaucer's dream visions, the…
Simpson, James.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015): 31-54.
Explores aspects of anagogical reading practices and their relations with social prediction and prophecy. Reformation readers perceived predestinarian and prophetic themes in spurious Chaucerian texts, although Chaucer himself seems to distrust…
Greenfield, Jane.
Yale University Library Gazette 72.1-2: 68-72, 1997.
Describes a Yale University copy of the Kelmscott Chaucer (1896) printed on vellum and elaborately bound (apparently by Douglas Bennett Cockerell) in pigskin stamped with designs by William Morris. Includes 2 figures.
Classifies approximately 220 mythological characters that appear in Chaucer's works: supernatural creatures, human beings, and other classical references. Describes and analyzes the presence of Ascalafo, Canace, and Midas in Chaucer, focusing…
Cains, Anthony G.
Huntington Library Quarterly 58 (1996): 127-57.
Discusses the disbinding, preservation, and rebinding of Huntington Library MS El 26C9. Provides new information regarding earlier bindings, inks, pigments, the relationship of text and decoration, repairs, etc.
A short list of caveats for users of the 1977 photographic facsimile of the Findern manuscript, together with transcriptions of marginalia previously unprinted. Note 1 includes an extensive bibliography of scholarship on the manuscript.
