Kraman, Cynthia.
Diane Watt, ed. Medieval Women in Communities (Toronto and Buffalo, N.Y.: University of Toronto Press, 1997), pp. 138-54.
In MerT, the marginal communities of females and Jews maintain ambiguous statuses, serve as subtext to the "Tale," and assert the seductiveness of the suppressed. The ambiguity of the garden--exciting but exclusionary--is associated with female…
Arguing that translations may be used to shape and define community identities, considers MLT as an effort to establish a "multicultural English Christianity." Other examined texts include "Orosius" and Aelfric's "Lives of the Saints."
Steiner, Emily.
New Medieval Literatures 6 (2003): 199-22.
Steiner assesses political "clamor," "appeal," and "voice," using them to discuss the Prologue to "Piers Plowman" as a work in which "commonality" is "the poem's ideological subject and poetic process." Suggests briefly that the same is true of PF.
Erzgräber, Willi.
Elmar Lehmann and Bernd Lenz, eds. Telling Stories: Studies in Honour of Ulrich Broich on the Occasion of His 60th Birthday (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: B. B. Gruner, 1992), pp.188-204.
In HF, Chaucer reflects on the literary tradition he follows and on the written and oral materials available to him. James Joyce does the same in his novels, although he was not directly influenced by Chaucer. Each connects with the literary…
Chaucer and other writers of the "middle strata" of English society (Gower and Langland) "imagine economic activity" in ways that are much like the views recorded in documentary writing. Such writings by societal, administrative, and governmental…
Anderson, Judith H.
Chaucer Review 41 (2007): 271-78.
E. Talbot Donaldson's commentary on FranT in "Chaucer's Poetry" exemplifies his criticism "at its best": "[c]onstructive provocation, rather than dogmatic mastery."
Davis, Walter R.
David A. Richardson, ed. Spenser: Classical, Medieval, Renaissance, and Modern (Cleveland State University, 1977), pp. 84-91. [Microfiche available from the Department of English.]
Disagrees with Carol Barthel's assertion that Spenser derived Prince Arthur's dream of the Fairy Queen from Chaucer's Thop, but argues that, in completing SqT in Book 4 of "The Faerie Queene," Spenser encourages his readers to seek allegorical…
Middleton reads the Pardoner materials as Chaucer's "formal and ideational" tribute to Langland's "Piers Plowman"--an embodiment of his appreciation of Langland's struggles with poetic self-representation, the gendered status of the poet, and the…
Wheatley, Edward.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 18 (1996): 119-41.
Compares the structure and interpretive techniques of NPT with those of scholastic fable commentaries widely used in medieval classrooms, arguing that Chaucer capitalized on these similarities to encourage readers to recognize the inseparability of…
Pinti, Daniel (J.)
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 22: 311-40, 2000.
PF engages the same issues as does Trecento commentary on Dante's Divine Comedy, largely matters of interpretation and meaning. Part of this intertextual tradition, PF participates in and comments on the "comedic" nature of literary history, i.e.,…
Williams, Deanne Marie.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 3585A, 2001.
Postcolonial analysis of post-Conquest attitudes toward France and French in England, considering the formulation of English identity. Williams discusses Chaucer, Corpus Christi plays, Stephen Hawes, John Skelton, Shakespeare, and continuing effects…
Wolterbeek, Marc.
New York, Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 1991.
Defines and traces the development of three genres of early medieval Latin comic literature: ridicula ("funny stories in rhythmic verse"), nugae ("trifles" of learned poets), and satyrae (vevality satires). Such tales, especially ridicula,…
Symons, Dana M.
Sandra M. Hordis and Paul Hardwick, eds. Medieval English Comedy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2007), pp. 83-109.
Symons compares and contrasts the comic inaction of Th with comic spectacle in MilT and in the popular romance "Sir Tristrem." A "sophisticatedly 'bad' poem," Th depends for its success on expectations that differ from those of popular literature.
"Pearl" is a divine comedy which views earthly matters from above with tolerance. In KnT Chaucer eliminates the flight to the heavens found in "Teseida"; the perspective of Theseus is earthly but still tolerant. In TC, by contrast, Troilus' ascent…
