Knapp, Peggy A.
Julian N. Wasserman and Lois Roney, eds. Sign, Sentence, Discourse: Language in Medieval Thought and Literature (Syracuse, N. Y.: Syracuse University Press, 1989), pp. 294-303.
Studies MilT for its "intersecting strands of linguistic coding" and contrasts Robertsonian character typing with Bakhtin's "dialogic imagination," semantic open-endedness. The stock character type of the Miller is "quited" by his tale. Bakhtin's…
Wein, Jake Milgram
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. 311-25.
Wein examines and appreciates the ways Kent's illustrations of the Canterbury pilgrims broke with formal and interpretive traditions. The essay focuses on the aesthetic impact of the lavish 1930 limited edition (published by Covici-Friede), later…
Kolve, V. A.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Poetics: Theory and Practice in Medieval English Literature (Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 165-95.
An illustrated analysis of moral and aesthetic issues raised by Chaucer. The rocks, garden, and study that form the loci of FranT carry iconographic meaning suggesting a true poetics of illusion.
Manzalaoul, Mahmoud.
Notes and Queries 209 (1964): 165-66.
Cites Roger Bacon's "Tractatus brevis . . . in libro Secreti Secretorum Aristotilis" as possible justification for emending "convers" to "convex" in the reference to the eighth sphere in TC 5.1910, despite the lack of textual support.
Paravano, Cristina.
Francesca Orestano and Michael Vickers, eds. Not Just Porridge: English Literati at Table (Oxford: Archaeopress, 2017), pp. 1-11; 4 illus
Assesses the characterization and culinary skills of the Cook, commenting on details of GP, CkP, and ManP, and commending his variety of cooking techniques. Includes recipes for "Chicken with the Marrowbones" and "Mortreux" (GP, 380, 384).
Schleburg, Florian.
Uwe Boker et al., eds. Of Remembraunce the Keye: Medieval Literature and Its Impact Through the Ages. Festschrift for Karl Heinz Goller on the Occasion of His 80th Birthday (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2004), pp. 79-93.
The three main characters of TC "embody three widely different ways of handling the roles they want to be judged by": total identification (Troilus), total detachment (Pandarus), and acceptance with reservations (Criseyde). Although Chaucer could not…
Explores connections between authority and production/distribution in Bodley 861. Briefly compares the Bodley scribe and scribe B in the Hengwrt CT, discusses Chaucer's shorter poems and their dependence on external evidence, and discusses John…
Dessart, Jamie Marie Thomas.
Dissertation Abstracts International 60: 4003A, 1999.
Meanings of the words "women," "authority," and "language" change throughout Chaucer's works, depending on the complex and shifting relationships of speaker, persona, scribe, and audience, plus pervasive irony. Treats TC, LGW, ClT, FranT, and SNT.
Reiss, Edmund.
Thomas J. Heffernan, ed. The Popular Literature of Medieval England. (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), pp. 108-30.
A general discussion of the popular character of Middle English romances. The Theseus story in KnT and the Gawain material in WBT show Chaucer relying on audience familiarity with the material. Juxtaposing courtliness and bawdy, the structure of CT…
Wetherbee examines the literary history of KnT in classical epic, Statius, Dante, and Boccaccio to demonstrate (1) how, in a "deliberate, political" move, the Knight attempts to suppress psychological and historical reality to produce an "optimistic…
Perkins, Nicholas.
Susan Scollay, ed. Love and Devotion from Persia and Beyond (South Varra, Victoria: Macmillan Art Publishing, 2012), pp. 151-56; 3 b&w figs.
Comments on the importance of love as a topic in Chaucer's works, with particular attention to TC, SqT, and PF.
Tigges, Wim.
Henk Aertsen and Alasdair A. MacDonald, eds. Companion to Middle English Romance (Amsterdam: VU University Press, 1990), 129-51.
Examines eleven texts, dating from the late fourteenth to the early seventeenth century, that are related to the metrical romance by their metatextual commentary on one or more romance characteristics. Includes discussion of CT, particularly KnT,…
Mills, Malwyn, Jennifer Fellows, and Carol M. Meade, eds.
Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1991.
Papers read at the first meeting (1988) of the Society for the Study of Medieval Romance, ranging in chronological concern from the twelfth to the fiftennth centuries. Included are general discussions of MS Ashmole 61 and the Percy Folio. …
Yu examines the changing roles of literary rhetoric and dialectic, poesy and logic, from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries. Chaucer is cited as a writer whose use of irony reflects changes in the understanding of logic.
Fellows, Jennifer, Rosalind Field, Gillian Rogers, and Judith Weiss, eds.
Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996.
Collection of essays on medieval romance that contains recurrent references to FranT, KnT, MLT, MilT, PhyT, and Th. For an essay that pertains to Chaucer, search for Romance Reading on the Book under Alternative Title.
Cooper, Helen.
A. S. G. Edwards, ed. Medieval Romance, Arthurian Literature: Essays in Honour of Elizabeth Archibald (Cambridge: Brewer, 2021), pp. 46-60.
Argues that "repetition should be included among the family resemblances that trigger the imaginative response that signals 'romance'." ” Includes discussion of MLT and the analogous accounts in Nicholas Trevet's "Chronicles" and John Gower's…
Johnston, Michael.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 112 (2013): 433-60.
Argues that many late Middle English romances appeal to the gentry by coded references to the practice of "distraint," whereby gentry landowners were forced to take up knighthood or to pay fines. Concludes by comparing the attitudes expressed in…
A classroom anthology of sixteen examples of the literary mode of romance, including FranT in Nevill Coghill's modern poetic translation. The volume describes the mode of romance, offers brief biographies of the writers included, and lists discussion…
Wadiak, Walter Philip.
Dissertation Abstracts International A69.01 (2008): n.p.
Wadiak considers how Middle English romances focus on "giving and spending" as a questioning of the emergent capitalistic system, examining romances from "King Horn" through KnT and arguing that these works simultaneously shape and reflect the move…
Mitchell, J. Allan.
Comparative Literature 57.2 (2005): 101-16.
Emmanuel Lévinas's "Time and the Other" indicates how Fortune or contingency is constitutive of ethics in Chaucer's TC. In contrast to Boethian readings of TC, a Lévinasian reading shows how Troilus's subjection to love and his passivity before…
Griffith, Gareth
Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe, and Gareth Griffith, eds. Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 137-49.
Focuses on elements of the "popular romance" in the manuscripts of "The Tale of Gamelyn" and "The Tale of "Beryn" and excerpts from Chaucer's works in other manuscripts to show how "the 'Chaucer' presented to early modern readers by the manuscript…
Osborn, Marijane.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998.
Anthologizes three Middle English "woman-centered" romances--"Emaré," "Le Bone Florence of Rome" (Part 2), and MLT--in rhymed modern English, and discusses their common theme of castaway queens, their sources and analogues, and modern reflexes of…
Driver, Martha W.
Helen Cooney, ed. Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 147-62.
Driver explores how the Roman de la Rose was "re-written" for late medieval audiences in various ways: Chaucer advocates contemporary views of the work in his adaptation of La Vieille in WBP, and Pizan criticizes such views in her Book of the Three…
Considers the end of NPT and the Bible verse Romans 15:4. Claims the verse is used to bridge the two opposing views of Chaucer's intent in his writing, attempting to unite the morally serious poet with the subversive poet.
