Argues that Chaucer uses philosophical language in describing the fart joke of SumT in order to burlesque the "logical thinking" of scholastic thinkers, particularly the Merton Calculators, showing how literature can "more effectively" work out…
Turner, Marion.
Times Literary Supplement November 19, 2021, pp. 14-15.
Reviews a production of Zadie Smith's stage play "The Wife of Willesden" (Kiln Theatre), along with the edition of the play (London: Penguin, 2021), describing its relations with WBPT and mentioning other recent adaptations.
Verse-drama adaptation/translation of WBPT and Ret in decasyllabic rhyming couplets and north London dialect, with Jamaican patois, and multiple actors. WBP is set in a contemporary London pub; WBT, in eighteenth-century Maroon Town, Jamaica, under…
Neufeld, Christine M.
Avid Ears: Medieval Gossips, Sound, and the Art of Listening (New York: Routledge, 2019), pp. 148-79.
Theorizes the classical figure of Echo as a figure to "think with" in exploring "female vocality" and the topos of the "Philosopher and the Shrew" in WBPT and ClT (especially the Envoy), focusing on issues of deafness, gendered gossip, listening, and…
Hanna, Ralph.
Journal of the Early Book Society 23 (2020): 141-73.
Investigates the "material conditions" that underlie the fictional book of "wikked wyves" described in WBP, 669-73, analyzing extant manuscripts that "most closely resemble Jankyn's volume" and have other Chaucerian and Oxonian associations. Explores…
Cawsey, Kathy.
Ada S. Jaarsma and Kit Dobson, eds. Dissonant Methods: Undoing Discipline in the Humanities Classroom (Edmonton: University of Alberta, 2020), pp. 33-49.
Exemplifies the theory and practice of "evental pedagogy," describing the classroom experience of teaching WBPT in the context of a "scandal" and "media uproar" at Dalhousie University (Halifax) in 2015. Comments on rape, "restorative justice"" and…
Suggests that in medieval literature generally the "motif of crossing a body of water was regularly perceived as an epistemological operation of a physical and a spiritual kind," and explores the notion in several narratives, including MLT, examining…
Morrison, Susan Signe.
Notes and Queries 266.1 (2021): 45-49.
Contemplates the word "lemman" in Malyne's dawn song of RvT: its connotations elsewhere in Chaucer's corpus indicate that it names her experience the night before as sexual assault.
Rodrigues, Leandro Dias Carneiro.
REVELL: Revista de Estudos Literários da UEMS, special issue (2019): 147-58.
Analyzes the aesthetic features--the linguistic, prosodic, and structural form and the aesthetic tradition of MilT--and the vulgar and humorous content of the Tale to emphasize its importance in the canon of popular poetry.
Uses a "political theology of the refugee as neighbor" to explore contiguities between "Refugee Tales" (2016) and CT. Explicates nuances of "tendre/"tender" in the works and examines the absent presence of Theban refugees in KnT. The Knight "edits…
North, Richard.
Carlos Prado-Alonso and Rodrigo Pérez Lorido, eds. Of ye Olde Englisch Langage and Textes: New Perspectives on Old and Middle English Languages and Literature (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2020), pp. 301-22.
Reconstructs a career for the Knight, based on the GP description and details from KnT, MkT, and historical sources. Maintains that Chaucer had met the Knight, perhaps in France, and that the Knight was some fifteen years younger than usually…
Reads aspects of Theseus's stadium, tournament, and funeral arrangements in KnT as "performance of power" in response to the procession of his "regional rivals": Arcite and Palamon of Thebes, Emetreus of India, and Lygurge of Thrace. George…
Vial, Claire.
Jean-Pierre Naugrette and Catherine Lanone, eds. Le temp qu'il fait dans la littérature et les artes du monde anglophone / What's the Weather Like in Anglophone Literature and Art (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2020), pp. 57-70.
Examines "inner and outer landscapes in relation with the seasons" in three works of medieval literature, including articulation of the aesthetic pleasure evoked at the beginning of GP, effected through Chaucer's thematic range and use of "every…
Thompson, Kenneth J.
Chaucer Review 56.3 (2021): 280-95.
Focuses on the Yeoman of GP, suggesting that the figure may have been based on Richard II's archers of the crown. Examines the life of Thomas Forster of Drybek, one of these archers, catalogues biographical information about him, and suggests he is a…
Stanisoara, Codruta Mirela.
Philologia: Naučno-stručni časopis za jezik, književnost i kulturu/Academic Journal for Language, Literature and Culture 18 (2020): 97-107.
Advocates an "anthropological" approach to reading Chaucer's works, especially CT, in which the reader observes the writer's roles as not only poet, narrator, and social historian, but also an anthropologist who crosses borders and invites us to…
Otaño Gracia, Nahir I.
English Language Notes 58.2 (2020): 35-49.
Includes the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa in conceptualizing the global North Atlantic, and argues that in several places in CT (e.g., GP description of Knight, MLT, Pedro in MkT) Chaucer uses paradigms that are similar to those of "settler…
Employs critical race studies and adaptation studies to trace the role and frequency of "somatic brownness" in CT and Rom. Considers brownness as a racial category that is capacious, before tracing "Chaucerian brownness" in several modern…
Brenzel, Patrick.
Open access Ph.D. dissertation (Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, 2018). Available at https://hss-opus.ub.ruhr-.de/opus4/frontdoor/index/index/year/2020/docId/7373 (accessed November 23, 2022).
Clarifies the ambiguities of nobility and "gentilesse" in Chaucer's era, and examines the presentation of them in CT, particularly in WBT, ClT, NPT, and FranT, arguing that the Franklin's views align with Chaucer's own, i.e., both view virtues…
Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Review 56.3 (2021): 296-308.
References a previous article from thirty-five years ago that discussed various translations of important passages from Chaucer and appraised them. As a companion piece, considers ten verse translations of the opening lines of CT. Concludes with an…
Discusses pre-World War II state of medieval studies, its pro-Germanic/Nordic focus, and the academy's anti-Mediterraneanism. Argues that this period saw significant changes in the field, including a shift toward more interdisciplinary approaches and…
Van Dyke, Carolynn.
Susan McHugh, Robert McKay, and John Miller, eds. The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), pp. 127-40.
Surveys the functions and understanding of the nightingale in myth, literature, music, and sign theory, observing how the bird "inhabits the borders between states of being." Then discusses its roles in John Lydgate's "A Seying of the Nightingale"…
Torres, Sara V., and Rebecca F. McNamara.
New Chaucer Studies: Pedagogy & Profession 2.1 (2021): 34-49
Offers pedagogical strategies for confronting "literary representations of sexual violence" in a range of medieval romances and novelle within story collections, including KnT; FranT; and works by Malory, Boccaccio, Gower, and Marguerite de Navarre.…
Investigates the "agency and influence of medieval queens" by comparing the careers of the English queens Philippa of Hainault and Anne of Bohemia and the "almost queen" Joan of Kent. Examines patronage and intercession and explores the extent to…
Considers how Bohemian culture in the late fourteenth century influenced English medieval writers including Chaucer, Gower, and the Gawain- poet.Focuses on Anne of Bohemia, who married Richard II, and claims she "may have been in Chaucer's mind as a…
