Sadlek, Gregory M.
Monika Fludernik and Miriam Nandi, eds. Idleness, Indolence and Leisure in English Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 17-39.
Offers background to late-medieval English literary notion of "otium" (idleness) and explores tensions between leisure and productivity in works by Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the "Gawain" poet, particularly their representations of the morality of…
Wilkinson, Anouska.
Seventeenth Century 29 (2014): 381-402.
Discloses John Dryden's "profound interest in the rich cultural history of natural law philosophy" through close comparisons of his translations/adaptations of KnT and WBT with their Chaucerian originals, as well as through similar examinations of…
Son, Byung-Yong.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 23.1 (2015): 61-81.
Argues that Chaucer's alterations of the conventions of romance in KnT indicate the poet's political caution in giving advice to his king, advising him in the figure of Theseus to deal with political trouble by valuing Parliament. In Korean with an…
Siewers, Alfred K.
Louise Westling, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 31-44.
Assesses the ecopoetics of the Celtic underworld in the "Immram Brain," "Tochmarc Étaíne," and the "Mabinogi" as background to green-world concerns in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Closes with commentary on parallel concerns in the opening of GP…
Knoetze, Retha.
Scrutiny 2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa 20.2 (2015): 34-53.
Argues that WBPT provides "a serious defence of women," claiming that the Wife's ideas about "about mutuality and domestic partnership" in marriage "coincide with ideas which were developing in Chaucer’s society as a result of social and economic…
Johnston, Alexandra F.
English: The Journal of the English Association 64, no. 244 (2015): 5-26.
Explores the meanings and dating of "miracle play" / "miraculum" as descriptors for medieval drama, discussing a range of historical records and offering WBP (3.543-59) and details from MilT as evidence of fourteenth-century dramatic activities in…
Crawforth, Hannah.
Gordon McMullan, Lena Cowen Orlin, and Virginia Mason Vaughn, eds. Women Making Shakespeare: Text, Reception, Performance (New York: Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare, 2014), pp. 25-34.
Explores aspects of the diction of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," focusing on nuances derived from the glossaries in Thomas Speght's editions of Chaucer's Works, with particular attention to KnT, the source of "Kinsmen," and to issues of gender identity.
Choi, Jiyeon.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 23.2 (2015): 145-59.
Focuses on the clothing of Alisoun of MilT and the Wife of Bath, with attention to color, stereotyping, and economic conditions. In Korean, with an abstract in English (pp. 158-59).
Lalla, Barbara.
Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2008.
Examines Old and Middle English language and literature in light of postcolonial conditions and theories, particularly those of Caribbean studies, considering issues of cultural contact, vernacularity, competing discourses, power, transgression, and…
Revisits the "authorship question" of "The Two Noble Kinsmen," exploring not what was composed by Shakespeare or by Fletcher, but rather the social tensions between characters found in KnT, the play's source, and those nameless ones of the "Jailer's…
Fyler, John M.
Studies in Philology 112 (2015): 415-52.
Comments on a wide variety of examples—comic and/or serious—of boundaries and sutures between languages in the late medieval literature, exploring issues of translation, including biblical translation; perceived contrasts between "supposedly fixed…
An anthology of "English poets' commentary on their English peers," with a "selection of the poets' more general reflections on their art." The section on Chaucer (pp. 72-82) includes comments from Hoccleve through Wordsworth, and the volume's…
Trudeau, Lawrence.
Lawrence Trudeau, ed. Literature and Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Volume 56 (Farmington, Mich.: Gale, 2000), pp. 1-117.
Anthologizes nine critical essays or excerpts from books published between 1970 and 1997 on issues of gender and sexuality in Chaucer's works, with a brief introduction.
Person, James E.
James E. Person, ed. Literature and Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Volume 17 (Farmington, Mich.: Gale, 1991), pp. 42-247.
Reprints forty-eight examples of critical commentary on Chaucer and his poetry, from Deschamps, Gower, and Caxton to 1989, some excerpted and some complete essays, with an annotated list of suggestions for further reading. The Introduction (pp.…
Ludwig, Jenny.
Lawrence Trudeau, ed. Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Volume 210 (Farmington, Mich.: Gale, 2012), pp. 37-228.
Reprints twenty essays on HF published between 1896 and 2006. The introduction by Ludwig (pp. 37-39) summarizes the plot and characters of HF, and comments on its plot and sources, major themes, and critical reception. Includes a selected…
Ludwig, Jenn.
Lawrence Trudeau, ed. Literature Criticism from 1400 to 1800. Volume 213 (Farmington, Mich.: Gale, 2013), pp. 1-114.
Reprints twelve essays on BD published between 1934 and 2007. The introduction by Ludwig (pp. 1-4) summarizes the plot and characters of BD, and comments on its plot and sources, major themes, and critical reception. Includes a selected bibliography…
Johnstone, Boyda.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 41 (2019): 301-24.
Reads "The Isle of Ladies" for its "covert feminine resistance," arguing that such resistance is evident through the "divided, ambivalent lens" of the half-asleep dream vision of a city of ladies--perhaps influenced by Christine de Pizan's "Le livre…
Bukowska, Joanna.
Wojciech Drąg and Ewa Kębłowska-Ławniczak, eds. Spectrum of Emotions: From Grief to Love (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2016), pp. 13-25.
Assesses the literary conventions and intellectual context of "The Court of Love," a sixteenth-century poem thought to be by Chaucer until the twentieth century. Emphasizes early modern modifications of medieval amatory verse, and includes comments…
Barr, Helen.
Bonnie Lander-Johnson and Eleanor Decamp, eds. Blood Matters: Studies in European Literature and Thought, 1400-1700 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018), pp. 238-48.
Describes the iconography of Thomas Becket's blood in Canterbury Cathedral and its “Christomimetic” associations, and explores parallels between Becket's blood and the Pardoner's blood in the "Canterbury Interlude" that precedes the "Tale of Beryn,"…
Beal, Jane.
Peregrinations: Journal of Medieval Art and Architecture 6.3 (2018): 105-29.
Analyzes the "thematic sexualization of the mappaemundi” in Ros, Shakespeare's "Lucrece," and Donne's "Weeping," providing interpretive background for the imagery, explaining the poets' familiarity with T-O maps, and exploring the range of…
Bennett, Robert Russell.
Mauricetown, N.J.: Maurice Press, 2018.
Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that this vocal–piano score, composed by Bennett for Percy E. Fletcher, was edited by Janet Schlein Somers and Paul Mack Somers. Sets MercB to music in three parts: “Captivity,” “Rejection,” and “Escape,”…
Yeager, Stephen M.
Critical Inquiry 45 (2019): 747-61.
Focuses on how protocol, a term for systems of rules allowing communication and behavior, is frequently used in digital environments, and builds on Alexander Galloway’s comparison of internet protocol to chivalry in "Protocol: How Control Exists…
Reads the relations between the planetary event and perspectives on it in Mars as analogous to those between form and interpretation in new formalist literary analysis. In Mars the celestial motion of the geocentric universe is subject to the…
Bozick, Morgan M.
Chaucer Review 54.2 (2019): 162-90.
Offers a new interpretation of Wom Unc, a lyric attributed to Chaucer. Argues for different punctuation in the poem, and claims that the lady and subject of the poem is green herself rather than dressed in green, thus symbolizing May. The poem, then,…
