Finlayson, John.
Studia Neophilologica 70 (1998): 35-39.
RvP is a psychological study of the bitterness and frustrations of old age, as well as a quiting of the Miller. Chaucer borrowed the leek-old age simile from Boccaccio's Decameron and adapted it to his own purpose. The simile is not proverbial.
Brown, Emerson,Jr.
Leigh A. Arrathoon, ed. Chaucer and the Craft of Fiction (Rochester, Mich.: Solaris Press, 1986), pp. 63-84.
The Merchant's comparison of May to "Queene Ester" (MerT 1744) indicates the terror, treachery, and hatred that lie beneath a demure exterior; the Prioress's response to trapped mice (PrT 144-45), which figure Christ ensnaring the devil, reveals a…
The owls and apes of Medieval-Renaissance tradition appear in the Chester "Deluge" and in Burton's "Anatomy of Melancholy." The latter may echo Chaucer.
Batkie, Stephanie L.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 245-70.
Assesses speech and silence in the characterizations and functions of the narrators of GP and the Prologue to "Piers Plowman." Both narrator-figures are introduced "through tropological silencing," but the "muted contact" of the GP narrator with the…
Boker, Uwe, et al., eds.
Frankfurt am Main : Lang, 2004.
Twenty-one essays by various authors and a bibliography of Goller's publications. The essays focus on medieval romances and their reception in later traditions, German and English. For four essays pertain to Chaucer, search for Of Remembraunce the…
Newlyn, Evelyn S.
Jean-Jacques Blanchot and Claude Graf, eds. Actes du 2e Colloque de langue et de litterature ecossaises (moyen age et renaissance) (Universite de Strasbourg, 1978), pp. 268-77.
Whereas Henryson's tale focuses on flattery and pride, and with the relationship of these sins to language, Chaucer's NPT--a likely source for Henryson--emphasizes the rhetoric of heroic poetry and the question of women's opinions. These different…
Like Chaucer's pilgrimage, community colleges accept all comers and promise a miraculous transformation of a clientele representing a cross-section of society. The student-pilgrims prefer the spoken to the written word, requiring frequent reading…
Twelve essays by various authors, a celebratory introduction of testimonials, and a bibliography of publications of M. B. Parkes. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer search for Of the Making of Books under Alternative Title.
Chaucer completed CkT in approximately seven hundred lines, but since the final quire of the booklet containing the tales of the Miller, Reeve, and Cook was lost very early in the manuscript tradition, the Hengwrt scribe--writing in London or…
Stanley comments on the inconclusive endings of several Chaucerian narratives and argues that CkT is complete as it is, developing the theme of herbergage (taking in lodgers) that runs throughout Part 1 of CT.
Considers medieval knowledge of tidal patterns and details about astrology and the seasons in FranT to support the argument that the clerk of Orleans predicts rather than magically causes the rise of the sea, disguising the presence of the coastal…
Federico, Sylvia.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 3125A.
Examines fictional representations of Troy as England's mythic ancestor in TC, HF, Gower's Vox Clamantis, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and other works. Since Troy was thought to have led to later empires only through its fall, the city is an…
Comments on differences and similarities among these characters: the Wife of Bath as depicted in WBP, La Vieille of "Roman de la Rose," and old women who take young lovers in two medieval Japanese narratives.
Steadman, John M.
Medium Aevum 33.2 (1964): 121-30.
Argues that the old man of PardT is neither a Messenger of Death nor Old Age personified, but a figure of the exemplary wisdom and virtue of the aged, set in contrast the youthful rioters and their foolish avarice. Compares Chaucer's "aged stranger"…
Mehl, Dieter.
Christa Jansohn, ed. Old Age and Ageing in British and American Culture and Literature. Studien zur englischen Literatur, no 16 (Münster: LIT Verlag, 2004), pp. 29-38.
Explores the representation of old age in WBPT, MerT, PardT, Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Confessio Amantis, and the Book of Margery Kempe, arguing that the motif of old age falls into three distinct categories: "the comical figure…
Explains the different strands in Scog partly through elements taken from Cicero's De amicitia and partly through its nature as a begging poem for Michaelmas, when annuities were renewed.
Burrow, J. A.
Pat Rogers, ed. The Oxford Illustrated History of English Literature (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 1-58.
Illustrated survey of Old and Middle English literature, with recurrent attention to linguistic conditions and the development of literary genres and conventions. Includes many comparative references to Chaucer in the discussion of Middle English…
Vantuono, William, ed.
New York: Peter Lang, 1994.
A pedagogical anthology designed for use in classes on the History of the English Language. The materials that pertain to Chaucer (pp. 81-115) include Bo 2m5 ("The Former Age"), a guide to pronunciation, lines 1-42 of GP, and PardPT.
Edits GP and WBPT from the Ellesmere manuscript, with glosses, notes, and brief introductions. The first edition of the volume (2000) includes no works by Chaucer; the third (2010) includes no additional material by him.
Higgins, Iain Macleod.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 620-35.
Examines "The Kingis Quair" and "The Testament of Cresseid," the 'two Scottish works that respond most fully' to Chaucer's corpus, demonstrating how these poems rework Chaucerian verse and its framings for new and possibly subversive ends. Compares…
Boitani, Piero.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 39-57.
Literature is both source and subject matter for Chaucer. In BD, PF, and HF, he transforms source material ("old books") into "new" Chaucerian texts with their own structures and themes.
Pearsall, Derek.
London and Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977.
Covers the first nine hundred years of English poetry. Includes treatments of Chaucer, his circle of friends, his choice of English as a literary language, his foreign influence.
Rex, Richard.
Massachusetts Studies in English 10 (1985): 132-37.
Explicating WBP 418, Rex rejects Skeats's interpretation ("the common food of rustics") and Hoffman's ("harmony in marriage") and decides, on the basis of Old and Middle French slang meanings attested to in riddles and fabliaux, that the obscene…
Botelho, José Francisco.
Literature Compass 15.6 (2018): n.p.
Explores cultural, stylistic, and personal aspects of translating CT into Portuguese verse, focused on making the work "readable . . . to the Brazilian readership" in detail and idiom, but also a "bit old-fashioned" and "familiar in a strange way."
