Chaucer's characterization in CT reflects the clash between the dogmatic world view of medieval philosophy and the critical, rational outlook proposed by post-Occamist philosophy. Variations in the "allegorical and/or individual costume" used in…
Arnovick, Leslie K.
Mark C. Amodio, ed. Oral Poetics in Middle English Poetry (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 125-47.
In light of linguistic, legal, and folkloric traditions, Dorigen's speech to Aurelius in the garden--a moment of dialogue within the larger dialogue of the pilgrims--does not constitute a promise. Rashly made promises were not considered legally…
Smith, Warren S.
Chaucer Review 36 : 374-90, 2002.
Far from being rambling, hasty, or incoherent, Dorigen's lament on faithful and faithless wives is a careful working out of the solution to her own dilemma. Starting with stories from Jerome's "Against Jovinian," she develops a favorable, Augustinian…
Friedman, John B.
Chaucer Review 31 (1996): 133-44.
Dorigen's home is in "lower" Brittany around Carnac and the Locmariaquer peninsula, an area replete with menhirs and dolmens. These megalithic pagan structures are the "grisly rokkes blake," and Dorigen's fear of them is both physical and spiritual.
Luecke, Janemarie.
Journal of Women's Studies in Literature 1 (1979): 107-21.
FranT, although a declared romance, has been judged almost universally by real-life standards of conduct in marriage. Two real-life women of Chaucer's period, Margaret Paston and Christine de Pizan, provide a standard of conduct in their own…
The word "hoom," appearing numerous times in FranT, changes according to the character with whom it is associated. This is especially true of Dorigen, whose "hoom" reflects her most moral self.
The riddle at the end of FranT-who is the most "fre"?-distracts the reader from the central issues of the Tale, namely the concept of the "Real" (Pierre Macherey) and questions of gender. Although Dorigen is apparently excluded from the answer to the…
Goodman, Jennifer [R.]
Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Feminea Medievalia I: Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Academia Press, 1993), pp. 69-90.
The desperation of the falcon in SqT and that of Dorigen in FranT link the two tales. Similar links include three sets of parallel relationships between older and younger men, as well as the notions of "trouthe" and fortitude in each tale's ending.
Revisiting E. Talbot Donaldson's scholarship provokes nostalgia as well as the recognition that, for Donaldson, "poems of the order of Chaucer's arouse feelings as well as thoughts, feelings based on the critic's own experience."
In juxtaposition to D. W. Robertson's comprehensive historicist method, E. Talbot Donaldson's "fundamentally rhetorical mode of analysis" also constituted a historicist approach, but one that moved from philological detail "toward some larger whole,"…
"Working within and yet exploding New Critical terminology," E. Talbot Donaldson's studies of Chaucer's irony--exemplified in his writing on Criseyde--are grounded in his deep understanding of rhetoric. They anticipate Linda Hutcheon's theory of…
Hahn, Thomas.
Fiona Somerset and Nicholas Watson, eds. Truth and Tales: Cultural Mobility and Medieval Media (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015), pp. 41-59.
Provides a "newly broadened context for Chaucer's obsession with Dido," and looks at Chaucer's narrators in HF and LGW.
Kuczynski, Michael P.
Chaucer Review 37: 315-28, 2003.
Scriptural injunctions underlie Chaucer's apology in MilP 1.3172-81 and his encouraging the audience to be cautious when judging his poetic enterprise.
Morrison, Susan Signe.
Exemplaria 8 (1996): 97-123.
WBPT addresses the relationship between vernacular texts and female audiences. Vernacular translations of authoritative texts allow women to enter the discourse of power, creating a new discourse that validates not only the existence of a different…
Ulrych, Margherita.
John Douthwaite and Domenico Pezzini, eds. Words in Action: Diachronic and Synchronic Approaches to English Discourse (Genoa, Italy: Culturali Internatzionali Genova, 2008), pp. 295-311.
Describes various kinds of mediation involved in interlingual, intralingual, and intersemiotic translation, and assesses the nature and degree of interpretation and originality in such mediation. Includes extended discussion of Ermanno Barisone's…
Romance typically treats ambiguous doubles, threatened incest,and the unfallen world. Though SqT fits both genre and teller, it devalues the marvelous (e.g., the dry tree) and transmutes its components (analogously to but differently from CYT). The…
Osborn, Marijane.
Helen Damico and John Leyerle, eds. Heroic Poetry in the Anglo-Saxon Period: Studies in Honor of Jess B. Bessinger, Jr. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 32 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1993), pp. 313-30.
Argues against over-ingenious readings of the dayraven in "Beowulf" and of the stone with which Alison threatens Absalon in MilT (3708, 3712), clarifying the commonplace nature of each.
Hamaguchi, Keiko.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 26 (2004): 331-54.
Explores the "postcolonial uneasiness visible" in KnT, particularly in Hippolyta's subversive mimicry in the face of efforts by Theseus and the Knight to westernize her "Amazon-ness." Emelye's powerful gaze upon the victorious Arcite reveals similar…
Salisbury, Eve, Georgiana Donavin, and Merrall Llewelyn Price, eds.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2002.
Thirteen essays by various authors discuss the portrayal of domestic violence in medieval literary, iconographic, legal, religious, and dramatic texts, focusing on how the texts reflect the family as a microcosm of society. For essays that pertain to…
Ellis, Deborah S.
Carole Levin and Jeanie Watson, eds. Ambiguous Realities (Detroit, Mich.: Wayne State University Press, 1987), pp. 99-113.
Associations of the home and domestic situation with "ambiguity, insecurity, and women's vulnerability" are most effective in TC and ClT. In the medieval home, the hall was the domain of the male and open to public affairs; the chamber was the…
Read in the light of late medieval letter collections and conduct manuals for women, the comedy of ShT springs from a recognition of the merchant's wife's "clever manipulation of her roles: as hostess, social networker, housekeeper, business…
Burger, Glenn.
Peter G. Beidler, ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1998), pp. 117-30.
The actions of the Host and the Pardoner in fragment 6 connect PhyT and PardT and their respective tellers, bringing "the male body into view to an extent not seen elsewhere" in CT.
Pigg, Daniel F.
Albrecht Classen and Connie Scarborough, eds. Crime and Punishment in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Age (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2012), pp. 347-58.
Argues that PhyT not only addresses changes in the medieval social power structure, but also serves as a "critique of masculine power" within the medieval European court system.
