Wetherbee, Winthrop.
Cindy L. Vitto and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. New Perspectives on Criseyde (Fairview, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2004), pp. pp. 299-332.
Revisiting his own "Chaucer and the Poets: An Essay on Troilus and Criseyde," Wetherbee argues that Criseyde is in many ways a more complex, mature, and heroic character than is Troilus. Troilus, the narrator of TC, and especially the narrator of…
Cronan, Dennis.
Studia Neophilologica 62 (1990): 37-42.
Examines TC 2.442-76, Criseyde's first interview with Pandarus. The passage shows a Criseyde "who is essentially innocent, but who has a capacity for self-deception." Most of her sleight is practiced against herself, not against Pandarus.
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Speaking of Chaucer (New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 65-83.
Shows how the narrator's "wildly emotional attitude" toward Criseyde contributes to her characterization in TC, describing how and where nuances of style and point of view raise questions for the reader despite--even because of--the narrator's…
Examines the contexts of Criseyde's tears in an antifeminist tradition, to which Chaucer and TC respond, and engages with the revisions to depictions of Criseyde's weeping in TC. Uses insights from sociology and behavioral psychology to argue that…
Martínez López, Miguel.
Cuadernos del CEMYR (Centro de Estudios Medievales y Renacentistas) 27 (2019): 109-44.
Examines "exceptional crimes" in CT in the context of the main English legal texts that regulated, prosecuted, and punished medieval criminals. The procedural singularities of this type of prosecution are explored first through the analysis of the…
Eberle, Patricia J.
M. L. Friedland, ed. Rough Justice: Essays on Crime in Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), pp. 19-51.
Medieval notions of crime were broader than modern ones. Chaucer's views on justice and crime, as reflected in FrT, MLT, and ClT, are elusive. It seems he was "seriously doubtful about the value and practical application of any systematic view of…
Shippey, Thomas A.
In Heroes and Legends: The Most Influential Characters of Literature. Chantilly, VA: The Great Courses, 2014. Video recording. Disc 1 of 4, Lecture 6.
Video recording of lecture (ca. 31 min.), with illustrations, accompanied by an edited text of the lecture in the Course Guidebook (pp. 37-42). Describes the plot of TC, emphasizing the ambiguities of Criseyde and contrasting her character with that…
Compares Chaucer's characterization of Criseyde, Henryson's of Cresseid, and Shakespeare's of Cressida, assessing Shakespeare's "transformation" of the character as typical of "Jacobean sensibility."
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Maynard Mack and George deForest Lord, eds. Poetic Traditions of the English Renaissance (New Haven, Conn.; and London: Yale University Press), 1982, pp. 67-83.
Chaucer and Shakespeare use different narrative techniques to lend ambiguity to the characterization of Criseyde/Cressida, but each uses ambiguity to create sympathy for his character.
Compares the representation of Cresseid and Dido in Robert Henryson's "The Testament of Cresseid" and in Gavin Douglas's "Eneados," along with other female figures, mortal and immortal, and reflects on the differences between these Scottish poems and…
Wetherbee, Winthrop.
T. L. Burton and John F. Plummer, eds. "Seyd in Forme and Reverence": Essays on Chaucer and Chaucerians in Memory of Emerson Brown, Jr. (Provo, Utah: Chaucer Studio Press, 2005), pp. 133-41.
In its bleak presentation of love, Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" responds in a complex way to Chaucer's characterization of Criseyde in TC, making apparent the "spiritual and ethical limitations of the world view that frames the experience of…
Aronstein shows how Henryson, influenced by late-fifteenth-century attitudes toward women, especially prostitutes, returns the story of Criseyde to its pre-Chaucerian misogynistic purpose. The article examines the story's literary history and its…
Cullen, Mairi Ann.
Studies in Scottish Literature 20 (1985): 137-59.
Henryson's preface to the "Testament of Cresseid" is to be taken seriously. Having read Chaucer, he picked up "an euther quair" that portrays Cresseid as a whore. His poem therefore accurately reflects a contemporary apologia for his heroine.
Investigates credulity as a feature of radical medieval thought (Marsilio of Padua, William of Ockham, John Wycliffe) and as depicted in Boccaccio and Chaucer. A creative artist rather than a philosopher or theologian, Chaucer uses various characters…
Focuses on critical commentary on Chaucer by William Godwin, William Hazlitt, Leigh Hunt, and Walter Savage Landor, concluding with a survey of efforts by Romantic writers to claim that Chaucer shared their outlooks.
Appreciative discussion of the accomplishments of individual artists, designers, musicians, and authors, emphasizing their labors and the nature of their accomplishments. Chapter 2, "Chaucer: The Man in the Fourteenth-Century Street," discusses…
Zimbardo, Rose A.
Chaucer Review 11 (1977): 283-98.
The epilogue to TC emphasizes the poem's double perspective of man as an active character in life's drama and of man deliberately separating himself from reality to perceive it objectively. This problem reflects the dilemma of the artist, who is at…
Cook, Alexandra.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Visual Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), pp. 23-38.
Revisits the significance of the image-based mnemonic system known as artificial memory, especially as conceived in John of Garland's "Parisiana poetria," for Chaucer's poetic project in HF. Argues how "visual mnemonics and creative memory" shape…
Nitzsche, Jane Chance.
Papers on Language and Literature 14 (1978): 459-64. Rpt. in Harold Bloom, ed. Modern Critical Interpretations: The General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales (New York: Chelsea, 1988).
In the opening of GP, Chaucer follows the six days of Creation narrated in Genesis. The principles both of "natura naturata," created Nature, and of "natura naturans," renewing Nature, inform this passage.
Vaughan, Míceál F.
Thomas A. Prendergast and Barbara Kline, eds. Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), pp. 45-90.
Examines the relationship of Ret to ParsT and the relation of both to CT, arguing that editors and critics have been mistaken in separating the treatise from the confession and in ascribing one to the Parson and the other to Chaucer. Manuscript…
Maintains that the silence of the pilgrims at the end of PrT signifies the Prioress's effectiveness in delivering a story of pathos that stuns the audience into silence. Explores how Chaucer uses PrT "to promote cautious, critical analysis" as a…
Dermond, Donna, and Paul Hogan.
Once and Future Classroom 1.2 (2003): n.p. [Web publication]
Describes an experiment in teaching CT (especially GP) that has students attempt to write their own Chaucerian satiric descriptions and tales, perhaps delivered orally at different campus locations.
Rogos, Justyna.
Joanna Kopaczyk and Andrea H. Jucker, eds. Communities of Practice in the History of English (Philadelphia: Benjamins, 2013), pp. 105-21.
Explores the "shared practice" of late-medieval English scribes, particularly their adherence to "a negotiated set of norms and procedures" that constitutes their "community of practice." Exemplifies such practice by describing the orthography and…
