Wood, Chauncey Derby.
Dissertation Abstracts International 25.05 (1964): A2970.
Describes medieval understanding of astrology and examines the "technical side of astrological passages in Chaucer" as well as their "meanings . . . in their poetic contexts. Includes discussion of FranT, Mars, GP, MilT, WBP, MerT, MLT, and ParsP.
Studies Chaucer's uses of "gan" and "do" with infinitive forms, tracing the history of the usage in English and providing statistics about Chaucer's uses and their relative chronologies. In Chaucer's works, "gan" is generally periphrastic and used…
Purdon, L. O.
Papers on Language and Literature 25 (1989): 216-19.
Chaucer's reference to "wod" in "Form Age" 17 not only suggests England's flourishing dyeing industry (lacking in the former age) but also alludes to abuses of that trade.
Jimura, Akiyuki.
Masuo Umedo, ed. Perspectives on Word: Essays on English Language and Literature (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1995), pp. 47-54.
Explores the use of "unsad," "untrewe," and "undiscreet" in ClT, relating these words to their stems--"sad," "trewe," and "discreet"--and to Chaucer's characterization of Griselda.
Arthur, Ross G.
American Benedictine Review 38 (1987): 29-49.
Critics such as Bennett and Lumiansky discuss Chaucer's Christianization of classical thought, but his adaptation of the "Somnium" in PF actually critiques its limitations. The naive narrator, looking for the "certayn" divine knowledge, is vaguely…
Jimura, Akiyuki.
Michio Kawai, ed. Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honour of Michio Masui. The English Association of Hiroshima (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991), pp. 289-305. Also in Hisao Turu, ed. Reading Chaucer's Book of the Duchess. Medieval English Literature Symposium Series, no. 5 (Tokyo: Gaku Shobo Press, 1991), pp. 221-43 (in Japanese).
Chaucer's use of "herte" for "the hart," "the heart of the body," and the "sweetheart" unifies BD.
Tallies and comments upon various irreversible paired words in Chaucer's works (e.g., "joy and bliss," "word and dede," wele and wo," etc.), observing where modern usages vary or continue medieval practices.
Lester, G. A.
English Language Notes 27:1 (1989): 25-29.
The "De re militari" of Flavius Vegetius Renatus--translated three times into Middle English-condemns poorly kept armor. This passage supports the argument of Terry Jones ("Chaucer's Knight" SAC 5 (1983), no.137) that the physical deterioration of…
North, J. D.
Oxford and New York: Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press, 1988.
North reveals a cryptic extension to Chaucerian criticism: a celestial allegory. Part 1 is a guide to late-medieval understanding of the planets and their influences on humans, physiologically and morally, including chapters on the spheres, the…
Benson, C. David.
Christianity & Literature 37 (1988): 7-22.
Benson urges that Chaucer be returned from merely professional scholarship to the mainstream of English literature and finds that structuralist, poststructuralist, Marxist, and feminist theories give new perspectives on Chaucer's work. Equally,…
Taylor, Karla.
Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds. The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 47-82.
Italian vernacular literature (rather than French court culture) inspired Chaucer to develop his authorial voice. FranT is a reading of Decameron 10.5 that illustrates the development of Chaucer's distinctly English agenda.
Taylor, Joseph.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 109 (2010): 468-89.
In RvT, Chaucer's references to language, lore, and the North both explore uncanny (in the Freudian sense) political differences among regions and reveal notions of nation. The North or Northernism plays a small but significant role elsewhere in CT,…
Hardman, Phillipa.
Review of English Studies 31 (1980): 172-78.
Chaucer's contemporaries were familiar with his "tyraunts of Lumbardye" (LGW, G. 353), notorious for their cruelty. The Lombard setting of ClT suggests proverbial Lombard tyranny for Walter, an imperfect mixture of tyranny and pity, for he rues…
Lawton, David.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 9 (1987): 3-40.
In ParsP, ParsT, and Ret, we are "forced to confront" the textuality of CT; the "various conflicting interpretations" are conditioned by habitual responses to CT. Four standard approaches to ParsT--absolute, ironic, dualistic, and textual--result in…
Dutton, Marsha L.
Benjamin Thompson, ed. Monasteries and Society in Medieval Britain: Proceedings of the 1994 Harlaxton Symposium. Harlaxton Medieval Studies, no. 6 (Stamford: Watkins, 1999), pp. 296-311.
Dutton reads the Prioress and the Second Nun as paired opposites: one childish, the other adult. In PrPT, the Creator is subordinated to his creatures, who seem "unaware of the effects of the Incarnation." SNPT reasserts the proper order, in which…
Alson, Angus.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 63-70.
Argues that the balanced opposition between the sacred and the secular in the opening and closing sections of the GP encourages readers to be tolerant and cautious in judgment.
An examination of Skeat's Rime-Index to Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" shows that "vowel length is an unneeded hypothesis" and Chaucer's vowels may be classified solely on the basis of "quality, not quantity."
Barney, Stephen A., ed.
Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1980.
Contains seventeen essays or excerpts from longer works by various authors, fourteen previously published, some with very brief additional "afterwords." For the three newly-published pieces, search for Chaucer's Troilus: Essays in Criticism under…
Argues that in Book 4 of TC Chaucer presents a "conflict between reason and desire" (amplified from Boccaccio's "Filostrato"), helping to characterize and evaluate Troilus as, simultaneously and ambiguously, "both strong and weak," reasonable as a…
