Maintains that MLT represents cultural and textual transmission through a network of premodern media: voices, texts, bodies, culture, human actions, and nonhuman forces---media which represent an alternative to the hegemonic, institutional, and…
Wallace, David.
Malden, Mass., and Oxford : Blackwell, 2004.
Wallace contemplates and reconstructs historical understanding of several locations, using visual and verbal texts to recapture perspectives of medieval and early modern witnesses or visitors.
Gravlee, Cynthia A.
James J. Paxson and Cynthia A. Gravlee, eds. Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid Through Chaucer (Selinsgrove, Penn.: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1998), pp. 177-87.
Argues that the "horizon of expectations" (a concept derived from Hans Jauss) of FranT is never fulfilled by the narrative. Although the Franklin strives to meet social and generic expectations, he leaves his Tale open-ended--Chaucer's means of…
Burger explores how MerT scrutinizes developments in class and gender identities and valuations of marital love and subjectivity that grew out of twelfth-century Gregorian Reform. In direct contrast to WBPT (and in response to ClT), the Merchant…
Ikegami, Tadahiro.
Eigo Seinen 130 (1985): 496-97.
A report of the main papers read both at the Fourth International Chaucer Congress in York, England (1984), and at the Fourteenth International Arthurian Congress in Rennes, France (1984).
Hanna, Ralph, III.
Tim William Machan, ed. Medieval Literature: Texts and Interpretation. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,no. 79. (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1991), pp. 17-39.
English respect for vernacular authors anticipates the Renaissance. Chaucer created for our language and its heritage a conception of culturally significant authority based on textual correctness. More than other Middle English poets, Chaucer…
Shetler, Brian M.
Dissertation Abstracts International A80.08 (2019): n.p.
Surveys the history of handpress printing of CT, analyzing 140 editions, with particular attention to paratextual material as indication of Chaucer's reception and the "abundance of mediation."
Hardman, Phillipa.
William K. Finley and Joseph Rosenblum, eds. Chaucer Illustrated: Five Hundred Years of the Canterbury Tales in Pictures (New Castle, Del.: Oak Knoll; London: British Library, 2003), pp. 37-72.
Focuses on the ordinatio and implications of illustrations to CT (apart from those in the Ellesmere MS): the "generic 'author' image" found in MS Lansdowne 851, MS Bodley 686, and the "Devonshire" MS; the portrait of the Friar in MS Rawlinson poet.…
Dane, Joseph A., and Seth Lerer.
Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 11.4 (1999): 468-79.
Assesses variations in copies of Stow's edition of Chaucer and suggests that copies with woodcuts may have been printed before those without and that Stow himself may have been involved in in-house corrections to the text, particularly that of Adam.…
Analyzes Edward Burne-Jones's illustrations of Rom in the Kelmscott Chaucer, arguing that they--and especially the final illustration of the poem--epitomize many of Burne-Jones's experiences with and attitudes toward books, book history, and the…
Analyzes parallel sections of text from William Caxton's two editions of CT set by the same compositor—Mel and ParsT, NPT and ManT—comparing practices in prose tales and verse tales, and also comparing the practices of the compositor of Richard…
Mathur, Indira.
Jean-Paul Debax, ed. Actes de l'atelier "Moyen Age" du XLVe congrès de la SAES (Société des Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur). Paris: Publications de l'Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2006, pp. 101-10.
Establishes a link between the "preamble" in WBP and the sermon genre.
Horn, Adam Tyler.
Dissertation Abstracts International A83.02 (E)
Ph.D. Dissertation. Columbia University, 2021
Argues for using "a Bernardine anagogical lens" to assess theological depth in CT and "Piers Plowman," and traces allusions and references to Bernard of Clairvaux in "Piers," ParsT, and the "Prick of Conscience.."
Lochrie, Karma.
Textual Practice 13: 295-313, 1999.
Argues that sodomy in medieval literature must be understood as an "unspecified plurality of acts and intentions," which includes women as well as men. Female sodomy occupies the "silent place in the discourse" that must be acknowledged in modern…
Scala, Elizabeth.
Film History 29.1-2: 34-45, 1999.
Argues that the 1990 film Pretty Woman is understandable as an analogue to medieval Fair Unknown romances and that, like WBT, the film affirms and inverts the ideology of romance through self-conscious nostalgia.
Brown, Emerson,Jr.
Studies in Philology 72 (1975): 258-74.
Chaucer emphasizes the phallic deity Priapus as a figure of frustration in PF. He does not try to abolish or deify the sexual passion Priapus represents. Priapus and the noble suitors may represent unproductive extremes of a more balanced position…
Rogerson, Margaret.
Sydney Studies in English 32 (2006): 45-63.
Surveys efforts to popularize CT through media (television, audio recordings, stage, and animation), commenting most extensively on the 2003 BBC television series.
Barthel, Carol.
David A. Richardson, ed. Spenser: Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern (Cleveland State University, 1977), pp. 72-83. [Microfiche available from the Department of English.]
In adapting the outdated motif of the medieval romance of dreaming of a fairy queen from Chaucer's Thop, Spenser blends naiveté and sophistication.
Gillespie, Alexandra.
Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2006.
Analyzing the impact of print on already-existing ideas of authorship, Gillespie argues "that the medieval author was a mechanism for ordering the new meanings of texts in print," even when the understanding of that author was a result, or…
Hofer, Kristin Rochelle.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 1393A, 2000.
Although Caxton, Thynne, and Speght use comparable techniques to establish Chaucer's works by collating, restoring, and emending texts, their editions reveal various and individual methods.
Fletcher, Bradford Y.
Studies in Bibliography 31 (1978): 184-201.
Though only three of the twenty-four poems attributed to the poet in John Stowe's "Chaucer" of 1561 are now accepted as genuine, comparative study of the mss used reveals remarkable substantive accuracy in the text of this early edition.
Erler, Mary C.
Chaucer Review 33 (1999): 221-29, 1999.
Manuscripts used as copy by printers are scarce. An examination of MS Bodley 638 reveals both codicological and textual evidence that discloses the printers' intentions. The 1530 edition of PF, used by Robert Copland, was established from this…
Higl, Andrew.
Essays in Medieval Studies 23 (2006): 57-77.
Explores why Chaucer was more marketable than either Gower or Lydgate in sixteenth-century England: Chaucer's variety, flexibility, and malleability made him more adaptable to various publics and therefore more attractive to early printers than other…
Echard, Siân.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008.
Echard studies the "postmedieval life of medieval texts" as they are embodied in material form, exploring strategies for representing the authenticity of the texts and for reimagining them for new audiences. The book includes chapters on design…
Rose, E. M.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 44 (2022): 63-92.
Reconsiders questions of the composition and occasion of PrT (here titled "Clergeon") before Chaucer incorporated it into the CT, arguing on biographical, stylistic, and liturgical grounds that Chaucer may have originally composed the poem as early…
