Linkinen, Tom.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015.
Includes a chapter, "Sharing Laughter" (pp. 205-32), that identifies examples from late medieval art and literature where laughter constitutes "moral censorship" of same-sex desire or actions, then focuses on the Pardoner; his relation with the…
Chaucer prepares for Arcite's Samsonlike vow to cut his hair by drawing on the traditions of Samson as a fool for love and by reworking and adding details to the story of Boccaccio's "Teseida." Samson was commonly paired with Hercules as biblical…
Argues that Johnson's perfunctory references to Chaucer reflect the former's view of the latter not as an excellent "English" poet but as one who successfully transmitted literature from the Continent into Britain. Considers possible reasons Johnson…
Cowen, J. M.
Notes and Queries 232 (1987): 152-53.
The handwritten collations in the British Library 643.M.1 copy of Urry's "Chaucer" are in the hand of Samuel Pegge the elder, antiquary and vicar in Kent, 1730-51. The collations are from British Library MS Add. 9832, which Pegge evidently owned.
Bradley, Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 56 (1996): 4763A.
Chaucer's Troilus derives from three reflections of the "Iliad": classical, the Christian-allegorical, and the romance. Sarpedon's feast is central to TC, with classical, Scholastic, and finally Dantesque treatment of free will, fate, and…
Chaucer employs "costume signs" in TC, affecting plot and characterization. Signature costumes assigned to each character shed light on significant parts of the plot, as do the reversal and degeneration of costume patterns. Characterization through…
Smith, Nicole D.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012.
Studies clothing in imaginative literature, arguing that writers of romances redirect the negative depictions of the courtly body found in clerical chronicles and penitential writings into positive images that convey virtue. While religious and…
Koonce, Benjamin G., Jr.
Mediaeval Studies 21 (1959): 176-84.
Describes the "traditional Christian" symbolism that underlies the fowler/bird and winter/spring imagery in LGWP 125-39, identifying biblical roots, exegetical commentary, and literary examples that precede Chaucer, suggesting that the "alert…
Ogborn, Jane, and Peter Buckroyd.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
An introduction to satire for classroom use, directed at university students and focusing on English literature from Chaucer to Carol Ann Duffy; concerned with definitions, social contexts, and the transaction between reader and text. The discussion…
Garbáty, Thomas Jay.
Chaucer Review 8.1 (1973): 1-8.
Identifies the "compound humor" of the "geographic dialect" material in RvT and the GP description of the Reeve, where he is depicted as an "immigrant" from Norfolk to London and thereby the butt of humor for indigenous Londoners.
Kiley, Frederick, and J. M. Shuttleworth, eds.
New York: Odyssey, 1971.
An anthology of examples, arranged chronologically, of literary, social, and political satires; includes a prose translation (by Robert Lumiansky) of PardPT, with a brief introduction.
Russell, John, and Ashley Brown, eds.
New York: World Publishing, 1967.
Anthologizes samples of satire from classical to modern literature, arranged by genre (Prose and Drama, Verse, Epigrams), including modernizations (by Nevill Coghill) of FrPT and SumP under Verse. The Foreward (pp. xv-xxxiv) describes the…
Allen, Charles A., and George D. Stephens, eds.
Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1962.
Anthologizes theoretical essays and illustrative examples of literary satire drawn from the ancients through the moderns. Designed for classroom use, with a glossary of terms, a bibliography of suggestions for further study, and an index. Includes…
Lall, Rama Rani.
New Delhi: New Statesman Publishing Co., 1979.
The satiric fable, with oral origins among the Orientals and Greeks, is usually characterized by economy, light-heartedness, and singleness of impression. The popularity of the genre continued into the Middle Ages and beyond not only because of its…
Vermeule, Blakey
Classical and Modern Literature 22.2: 85-101, 2002
Describes the cognitive condition of "mind blindness," often associated with autism, and argues that a literary version of the condition recurs in satire, where authors use the blind spots of characters to ironically convey unstated information. Uses…
Mann, Jill.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 5 (1983): 17-48.
Both "Pearl" and ClT use comparatives for contrasts with a notion of satisfaction signified by the words "enough" and "suffisaunce." The set of related words in ClT, including "sadness," "suffraunce," "outrely," and other words of degree and…
Reale, Nancy M., and Ruth E. Sternglantz, eds.
Donington : Shaun Tyas, 2001.
Fourteen literary studies that range across Old English, Old French, Anglo-Latin, Middle English, and medieval Irish, Spanish, and Italian. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Satura under Alternative Title.
Contends that Cresseid's maturation in Henryson's "Testament of Cresseid" includes an evolving contemplation of free will, as one finds in Boethius and in Chaucer's depiction of Troilus in TC.
Loomis, Dorothy Bethurum.
Arno Esch, ed. Chaucer und Seine Zeit: Symposion für Walter F. Schirmer (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1968), pp. 149-61.
Describes the neo-Platonic, Chartrian tradition in which astral influence (or determinism) includes Saturn as a figure of wisdom as well as cold, temporal destiny, suggesting that the depiction of the god/planet in "De Universitate Mundi" by Bernard…
Medieval mythographies interpret Saturn in various ways: astrologically, euhemeristically, morally, naturally, and Neoplatonically. Interpretation of Saturn in KnT should entail recognizing this complexity of influences rather than privileging only…
Bryant, Brantley L., et al.
Myra Seaman, Eileen A. Joy, and Nicola Masciandaro, eds. Dark Chaucer: An Assortment (Brooklyn, N. Y.: Punctum Books, 2012), pp. 13-27.
Explores the contrast between Theseus and Saturn in KnT as a metaphor for the lives of modern academic Chaucerians.
Wadiak, Walter.
Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2016.
Traces the evolution of the romance to the start of the sixteenth century, and its repositioning from an aristocratic genre to one that was embraced by the common audience. Claims this move marks a shift from violence in its early stages to one of…
Critics' inability to sympathize with Troilus in TC results from their failure to recognize the "medieval practical reasoning that informs Troilus's deliberations and ultimately humanizes him." His philosophising "reflects a withdrawal from the…
Strohm, Paul.
Paul Strohm, with an appendix by A.J. Prescott. Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 75-94. Also in Barbara Hanawalt, ed. Chaucer's England: Literature in Historical Context (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), p. 21-40.
Discusses the tenuous nature of Henry's early success in usurping Richard's crown and his program of enlisting writers in support of his cause. The last stanza of Purse reflects the political assumptions that underpinned Henry's claims to the…
