Paxson, James J.,and Cynthia A. Gravlee, eds.
Selinsgrove, Penn.:
An anthology of essays by various authors on aspects of medieval love literature. The introduction, by Paxson, discusses literary depictions of love in light of postmodern theories of the "psychological, phenomenological, and gendered bases" of…
Heyworth, Gregory.
South Bend, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2009.
Six studies on literature ranging from Marie de France to Milton. In the chapter on Chaucer, Heyworth examines medieval cultural values and suggests that Chaucer complicates those values, particularly marriage. KnT and FranT depict the social…
Bellamy, Elizabeth Jane.
Clio 34.3 (2005): 297-315.
Responding to Greenblatt's essay, Bellamy explores the status of psychoanalytic criticism in medieval studies, with particular focus on Chaucer studies.
Scala, Elizabeth.
Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 49-62.
Argues that "Desire-as-impasse is the human condition" in KnT, exploring how readers' "reading backward" from the end of the tale—seeking to fulfill the "desire for signification"—parallels the efforts of Arcite and Palamon to articulate their…
Fragment 7 of CT is unified by its focus on the problem of human violence and the "potential of literature to perpetrate or remedy this problem." In ShT, PrT, and Th, Chaucer shows their respective genres' "mythologies" of violence. Mel counsels…
Scala, Elizabeth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 31 (2009): 81-108.
In Lacanian terms, WBT and ClT reveal "what each speaker seems most desperate to deny." Ideas of sovereignty ("self-determination"), mastery ("control over another"), and the desires they help to constitute are parallel in the Tales. So are the…
Scala, Elizabeth.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2015.
Presents Lacanian analysis of desire in CT that focuses on the "circulation of the signifier" and the generative power of misrecognition/misreading. Clarifies the meaning and function of fundamental concepts (subject, signifier, Other, aggressivity,…
Moi, Toril.
David Aers, ed. Medieval Literature (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1986), pp. 11-33.
Reviews controversy (important in TC studies) on courtly love in Robertson, Donaldson, and Benton; naive "reflectionism" is attacked by Marxist theorists. In "De amore," desire is a hermeneutical challenge: "God for Andreas, like death for Lacan,…
Charles, Christopher Casey.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1993): 3199A.
Studies the ways "expressions of romantic fulfillment are disrupted by the excesses and inconsistencies that desire produces in the narrative developments and rhetorical gestures" of works about love by Chaucer, Montemayor, Sidney, and Shakespeare.
Murray, Jacqueline,and Konrad Eisenbichler,eds.
Toronto; Buffalo, N.Y. ; and London: University of Toronto Press, 1996.
Fifteen essays by various authors and an introduction on topics literary, historical, and social, all pertaining to sexuality in Europe before 1700. For three essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Desire and Sexuality in the Premodern West under…
Nishimura, Satoshi.
Journal of the Faculty of General Education, Chubu University 2 (2016): 1-7.
Points out Troilus's desire as an important element of TC, and argues that TC engages with the issue of Fortune in relation to human nature. In Japanese, with English abstract.
Orlemanski, Julie.
Katie L. Walter, ed. Reading Skin in Medieval Literature and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), pp. 161-81.
Focuses on Cresseid's leprosy in Henryson's "Testament," with attention to how the disease can help to chart the "ethical relationship" between his poem and Chaucer's TC.
Partridge, Stephen.
Alexandra Gillespie and Daniel Wakelin, eds. The Production of Books in England, 1350-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), pp. 79-103.
Observes that scribes often used more than one exemplar. In the case of at least one CT manuscript (Oxford, Corpus Christi College, MS 198), the scribe's addition of glosses from an exemplar apparently received late in the copying process resulted in…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 22 (1977): 1-16.
An analysis of evidence from CT, "Piers Plowman," and "The Divine Comedy" as well as from the writings of medieval saints and modern scholars indicates that generalizations regarding Christian behavior, the motivations of artists, and concepts of…
Meech, Sanford B.
[Syracuse, N.Y.]: Syracuse University Press, 1959.
A close reading of the structure, themes, and rich characterizations of TC, examined in comparison with its primary source, Boccaccio's "Filostrato," and with sustained attention to ancillary sources and Chaucer's particular emphases, especially the…
Connolly, Margaret, and Linne R. Mooney, eds.
York: York Medieval Press, 2008.
Thirteen essays by various authors, with a brief introduction by the editors. The collection treats English scribes, manuscripts, and the production and circulation of texts from 1350-1600. Addressing design and CT, the first section contains three…
Provides detailed background for Petrarch's ekphrastic descriptions of pagan gods in his "Africa" (iii.138-264), and argues that Chaucer's related descriptions in HF (131-39) and in KnT (1.1955-66) derive from the "Libellus de deorum imaginibus"…
Lipson, Carol S.
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication 12 : 243-56, 1982.
Assesses Astr as a piece of technical writing, admiring Chaucer's use of a personal voice, everyday examples, devices of cohesion, and other indications of audience awareness.
Creates in reconstructed Middle English a description, prologue, and tale for an additional pilgrim, the warrener. The description and prologue are in couplets (including speeches by the Host and Prioress), and the prose tale is an adaptation of the…
Hamada, Satomi.
Studies in Medieval Language and Literature 32 (2017): 17-35.
Places CT in the transitional period from oral to literal culture, and argues that the change of vocabulary from "herken" in Th's initial sections to "listen" in its third fitt indicates different functions of these sections in Chaucer's parody of…
Kendrick, Laura.
Cahiers de recherches medievales et humanistes/Journal of Medieval and Humanistic Studies 29, no. 1 (2015): 215–33.
Examines how Deschamps's balade 285 is a surprisingly generous recognition and glorification of Chaucer as a pioneering translator from Latin and French into English, and as an "illuminator" or enlightener of his native England. Reveals how this…
Kendrick, Laura.
Marie-Francoise Alamichel, ed. La complémentarité: Mélanges offerts à Josseline Bidard et Arlette Sancery à l'occasion de leur départ en retraite (Paris: AMAES, 2005), pp. 203-19.
Contrasts Chaucer's Wife of Bath with Belle, who is constructed from the tradition of masculine discourse on feminine attractiveness.
Describes the "literary attitudes" evident in Eustace Deschamps' "L'Art de Dictier," focusing on its concern with the "natural music" of lyric poetry, a concern also found among troubadour poets and in Chaucer's ballades and complaints, even though…
Calin, William.
Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, ed. Eustache Deschamps, French Courtier-Poet: His Work and His World (New York: AMS Press, 1998), pp.73-83.
Contrary to earlier critical opinion, the "Ballade to Chaucer" demonstrates very little about Chaucer's renown outside court circles in southern England; it cannot necessarily be read as a sincere expression of Deschamp's opinion of Chaucer the poet.
Stanbury, Sarah.
New Medieval Literatures 12 (2010): 155-67.
Considers the cat in MilT as a device of demarcation between the domesticity of John's house and the privacy of Nicholas's "elite" study, observing links between this use of an animal as a device with Derrida's contemplations on his cat. Also…
