Argues that Dante's siren of "Purgatorio" XIX is analogous to the Wife of Bath and the transformation of the loathly lady of WBT, helping to undercut the Wife's views on female sovereignty and ironically "reasserting the medieval Christian idea of…
Fletcher, P. C. B.
Theoria: A Journal of Social and Political Theory 26 (June 1966): 43-50.
Compares the characterizations of Palamon and Arcite in KnT, focusing on the relative intensity of their responses to love and arguing that, rather than fortune, their actions and passions determine their outcomes. Arcite"s fall from his horse is the…
Drucker, Trudy.
New York State Journal of Medicine 68 (1968): 444-47.
Describes various disorders, discomforts, and diseases among the Canterbury pilgrims and in their tales, commenting on medieval and modern understandings of symptoms and causes.
Summary description of CT, with comments on Chaucer's life and language, and appreciative analysis of the characterizations of several pilgrims, the conflicts between their tales, and the "eternal relevance" of the work overall. Recommends cinematic…
Barney, Stephen A.
Dewey R. Faulkner, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Pardoner's Tale: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 83-95.
Commends the "harmony" of PardT and "its capacities to elicit responses," discussing it as a tale that is "eloquent," intelligent, significantly expressive, unified, and instructive." Includes contrasts with PhyT.
Adelman, Janet.
Dewey R. Faulkner, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Pardoner's Tale: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 96-106.
Critical appreciation of PardT as "brilliantly constructed, simultaneously a parody of the very truths it purports to be about and a joke in which we are never quite sure of the butt"; pays particular attention to its "ragged structure" and how it…
Lampe, David E.
Papers on Language and Literature 3, summer supplement (1967): 49-62.
Reads "The Cuckoo and the Nightingale" as a poem about the power of love and its effects on its lovesick narrator, at points comparing it with works by Chaucer, Gower, Lydgate, and others, observing likely derivations.
Maxwell, J. C., and Douglas Gray.
Notes and Queries 214 (1969): 170.
Identifies two echoes of PF 22-25 in John Hardyng's "English Chronicle in Metre," also mentioning the later use of the PF lines in Speght's 1598 edition of Chaucer's works.
Bawcutt, Priscilla.
Review of English Studies 21, no. 84 (1970): 401-21.
Identifies a number of parallels between Chaucer's works and those of Gavin Douglas, focusing on "Eneados" and demonstrating that "Douglas owes far more to Chaucer than has been generally recognized." Not a "servile imitator," Douglas, "like…
Donaldson, E. Talbot
T. S. Dorsch, ed. Essays and Studies 1972: In Honour of Beatrice White. Being Volume Twenty-Five of the New Series Essays and Studies Collected for the English Association (London: John Murray; New York: Humanities, 1972), pp. 23-44.
Explores "two related but distinct aspects of Chaucer's celebrated stylistic clarity": 1) while "self-evident," it is "often more apparent than real," and 2) a "means by which" Chaucer "escapes dexterously from the danger of really being clear and…
Southall, Robert.
Review of English Studies 15 (1964): 142-50.
Describes the Devonshire manuscript (Ds) and comments on its provenance. Newly identifies a Chaucer fragment in the manuscript (f. 59v) from TC 1.946-52.
Campbell, Jackson J.
Princeton University Library Chronicle 26 (1964): 5-6.
Reports on the acquisition by Princeton University Library of a manuscript of the CT, variously known as the Tollemache Chaucer or the Helmingham MS. Includes comments on contents, paleography, and codicology.
Compares and contrasts details of the illustrative portraits of the Canterbury pilgrims--illuminations from the Ellesmere manuscript and woodcuts from Richard Pynson's edition of 1491/92, here inaccurately called the "first printed edition." Comments…
A novel set in modern Kenya, involving three friends who find a cache of money that "disrupts their happy relationship." The epigraph quotes PardP 6.324-28.
Handyside, I. G., ed.
Houndsmill, Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1978.
School edition of MilPT and the description of the Miller in GP. Facing-page (modern prose opposite Chaucer's poem), accompanied by explanatory notes, a glossary, appreciative criticism of the Miller's characterization, commentary on the setting and…
Lehmberg, Stanford E., Samantha Meigs, and Thomas William Heyck.
Chicago: Lyceum, 2008.
Credits Chaucer "[m]ore than any other single person . . . with establishing the position of Middle English," describing him as a "major figure in politics as well as literature," and declaring that CT "achieved instant popularity" and that it is the…
Kaylor, Noel Harold, Jr., Jason Edward Streed, and William H. Watts, eds.
Carmina Philosophiae 2 (1993): 55-104.
Publishes "for the first time a full transcription of an anonymous Middle English translation of Book I of the "Consolation of Philosophy" which is held by the Bodleian Library of Oxford University and catalogued as MS AUCT. F.3.5," drawing the title…
Kaylor, Noel Harold, Jr., ed. and Philip Edward Phillips, eds.
Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr., and Philip Edward Phillips, eds. New Directions in Boethian Studies. Studies in Medieval Culture, no. 45 (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 2007), pp. 223-79.
Transcribes the text of "The Boke of Coumfort of Bois," a Middle English translation of Book 1 of Boethius's Consolation of Philosophy, found only in MS Auct. F.3.5. Accepts the claim in the Bodleian catalogue that the translation depends upon…
Dabydeen, David.
Maggie Butcher, ed. Tibisiri: Caribbean Writers and Critics (Sydney: Dangaroo Press, 1989), pp. 121-35.
Interrogates differences and tensions between modern black British poetry and the dominant Anglo-American tradition, focusing on the use of "Caribbean creole" to resist colonial subordination of black voices. Refers to Chaucer and the tradition of…
Kee, Kenneth, ed.
New York: St. Martin's; Toronto: Macmillan of Canada; London: Macmillan, 1966.
Reprints (generally from Chaucer Society publications) selections from Chaucer's short poems (MercB, Ros, Sted, Buk, Adam, and Purse) and from CT (GP, WBPT, MerPT, FranT, NPT, ParPT, and Ret), with sidebar glosses and bottom-of-page explanatory…
Dutton, Elisabeth.
Carmina Philosophiae 22 (2013): 1-33.
Reinforces Mark Liddell's argument ("The Academy," March, 1896, n.p.) that "The Boke of Coumfort" (MS Bodley Auct F.33.5) depended upon Chaucer's translation of Boethius in Bo, showing that it adds material from the Latin commentary tradition.…
Beck, Richard K., ed.
Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1964.
Edits the GP portrait of the Wife of Bath, WBP (with excisions and interspersed summaries), WBT, and a portion of FrP, with bottom-of-page textual notes, and end-of-text explanatory notes and glossary. The Introduction addresses the base-text…
Assesses occurrences of the diction and sentiment of tenderness, pity, and consolation in Chaucer's works (GP Prioress, BD, TC), linking them with Bothius's "Consolation of Philosophy." In Japanese.
