Morrison, Susan Signe.
Juliette Dor and Marie-Élisabeth Henneau, eds. Femmes et pèlerinages / Women and Pilgrimages ([Santiago de Compostela]: Compostela Group of Universities, 2007), pp. 141-52.
A number of the most famous fourteenth-century poets used pilgrimage as a genre to promote the use of vernacular language. Morrison's essay considers pilgrimage, gender, and use of the vernacular, raising questions about intertextual anxiety and the…
Suggests that Chaucer "creates a literary imitation of a real pilgrimage" in CT, exploring the extent to which this enables him to accommodate the sacred and social, a version of the medieval "earnest and game" topos. Focuses on WBPT and PardPT.
Morris, Colin, and Peter Roberts, eds.
Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Nine essays by various authors explore the activities and significance of pilgrimage in medieval and early modern England, focusing on "shrine-seekers," Thomas Becket, regional and international practice, and related topics. None of the essays…
Dyas, Dee, ed.
York: University of York; Nottingham: St. John's College, [2007].
Interactive, illustrated exploration of the "multiple meanings of pilgrimage within the Christian tradition," especially as expressed in the Middle Ages, although set in the broader context of worldwide practice. Includes a wide variety of…
Fitzpatrick, Joan.
In Charlotte Boyce and Joan Fitzpatrick, A History of Food in Literature: From the Fourteenth Century to the Present (New York: Routledge, 2017), pp. 15–62.
Includes discussion of food, drink, abstinence, feasting, gluttony, hunting, etc. in CT (pp. 35-52), observing Chaucer's consistent attention to moral and social implications, and comparing his depictions with those found in "Piers Plowman," "Sir…
Suzuki, Masayuki.
English Department Journal (Miyagi Gakuin Women's University) 45 (2017): 27-54.
Analyzes William Blake's "Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims" by paying special attention to its ordering of the pilgrims, and investigates Blake's understanding of Chaucer and his intention in his classification of the pilgrims. In Japanese.
Markland, Murray F.
Research Studies: A Quarterly Publication of Washington State University 33 (1965): 64-77.
Explores how each of the three major characters in TC seeks "happiness in earthly love." Even though they know that such pursuit is misguided, they are in "an unadmitted conspiracy not to recognize" their error, deceiving themselves and each other,…
Historical fiction that reinterprets CT from the points of view of the Wife of Bath and the Prioress, integrating the pilgrimage plot with those of individual tales.
Anecdotal revisitation of Harbledown, Bobbe-up-and-down, a mile from Canterbury. Chaucer himself likely traveled the Blean in official duties. As a type of Dante's "selva oscura," the Blean may have been in Chaucer mind in BD, TC, KnT, FrT, NPT,…
Biebel, Elizabeth M.
Martha Carlin and Joel T. Rosenthal, eds. Food and Eating in Medieval Europe (London and Rio Grande, Ohio: Hambledon Press, 1998), pp. 15-26.
Surveys references to food in CT, arguing that they capitalize on traditional associations of the "feminized Christ" and butchered animals.
Bolton, W. F.
Modern Philology 84 (1987): 401-407.
Yearbook law reports and plea-roll law records contain information about members of Chaucer's "legal 'circle'" (p. 402) and Thomas Pynchbeck, Chaucer's prototype for the Man of Law. Legal terminology from these sources informs the portrait in both…
Lorenz, Lee.
Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1981.
Bowdlerized version of MilT, adapted and illustrated by Lorenz for children. Carpenter John is Alison's grandfather in this version, and Nicholas connives to steal money. Absolon is eliminated.
Discusses "the narrator's rhetoric of pity," alluding to Augustine, Aristotle, Cicero, and others, while arguing that both pity and poetry involve "a kind of authentic inauthenticity" that is unstable, paradoxical, and contingent in LGW.
Simpson, James.
Brian Cummings and James Simpson, eds. Cultural Reformations: Medieval and Renaissance in Literary History (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 95-112.
Compares what PardT and Erasmus's "Pilgrimage of Pure Devotion" reveal about the "locatability" and placelessness of the Church, exclusion from Church locations, and disgust associated with such exclusion.
Howes, Laura L., ed.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2007.
Eleven essays by various authors, with an introduction by the editor and a survey of spatial theory and medieval literature by John M. Ganim. For five essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Place, Space, and Landscape in Medieval Narrative under…
Walling, Amanda.
Studies in Philology 115 (2018): 1-24.
With Albertanus of Brescia's "Liber de consolationis et consilii" as a common source, Mel and MerT both confront issues of counsel, gender, and lordship. MerT offers a skeptical, antifeminist, homosocial reassessment of the relatively optimistic…
Knight, Stephen.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 445-61.
Knight calls for a critical confrontation with the semiotics of place in Chaucer, commenting on a number of topographical references in Chaucer's works, suggesting closer examination of implications of places to which Chaucer traveled (especially…
Wolfe, Matthew C.
Chaucer Review 33: 427-31, 1999.
It is possible that Ret was written as a general work, found among the papers and drafts of CT, and then put at the end of that work by scribes and early editors. If thought to apply to Chaucer's entire corpus, Ret broadens our view of the poet as a…
Taavitsainen, Irma, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta, and Matti Rissanen, eds.
Berlin and New York : Gruyter, 2000.
Twenty-seven essays by various authors, addressing issues of linguistic history, dialect, lexicon, syntax, and prosody. Includes an introduction by the editors and a subject index. For six essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Placing Middle…
Johnson, Ian.
Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen and Lodi Nauta, eds. Boethius in the Middle Ages: Latin and Vernacular Tradition of the 'Consolatio Philosophiae' (Leiden, New York, and Koln: Brill, 1997), pp. 217-42.
Helps clarify the place and meaning of John Walton's translation of Boethius's "Consolatio Philosophiae" (1410) by contrasting it with Chaucer's Bo.
Smith, D. Vance.
South Atlantic Quarterly 98: 367-414, 1999.
Like Freud and Boethius, Chaucer views tragedy as the temporal transformation of a literal or figurative space. Integral to this understanding of tragedy is the notion of memory as a function of death, a relationship apparent in BD, MkT, and HF.…
Quinlan, Heather E.
Canton, Mich.: Visible Ink, 2020.
Introduces medical, historical, sociological, and literary aspects of various infectious human diseases, including addiction, illustrated with sidebar facts, literary examples, and photographs and reproductions. A chapter on "The Black Death"…
The "first survey of medieval English plant names to appear in print," Hunt's work covers 1,800 names, 500 not found in the OED, of interest to botanists and lexicologists as well as nonspecialists.
Pugh, William White Tison.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 2705A, 2001.
Play and game reveal to knightly protagonists human imperfection and divine truth. Pandarus is the "game-master" of TC, and Troilus achieves perspective through the game of courtly love.
