Delasanta, Rodney K.
Tennessee Studies in Literature 13 (1968): 117-32.
Reads NPT as the teller's attack on the "anti-monastic" Monk (as well as the "indifferent" Prioress), contrasting the "sacerdotal demeanor" of the two clerics and arguing that the NPT is opposed to MkT in both theme and technique, focusing on their…
Archer, Harriet.
Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe, and Gareth Griffith, eds. Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 224-42.
Comments on the interdependence of innovation and imitation in Chaucer's poetry, and explores how Spenser's depictions of Chaucer and his poetry are part of the early modern concern with this dynamic, particularly evident in Luke Shepherd's reformist…
Normandin, Shawn.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 58 (2016): 235-55.
Reads ClT closely as a "fundamentally enigmatic parable" that, as part of the "glossing group" of the CT, focuses on interpretation and hermeneutic resistance. Chaucer alternately abbreviates and amplifies his Petrarchan source "so that interpretive…
Davis, Rebecca.
In Jamie C. Fumo, ed. Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess": Contexts and Interpretations (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 51-69.
Examines the "metafictional import of sleep," as distinct from dreaming, in BD. Influenced by Machaut's "Livre de la fonteinne amoreuse," BD aligns sleep, as an embodied process, with the "werk" of elegy.
Nisse, Ruth.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 166-83.
Surveys the extant Anglo-Hebrew authors, lost to Chaucer and his readers, which are, "nevertheless, a productive memory for his current readers." Catalogues a range of authors and genres, showing the flowering of the Jewish literary environment in…
Long, Mary Beth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 39 (2017): 159-89.
Considers the shift in "social and rhetorical roles" of Cecilia in SNT--from sweet wife to ardent polemical martyr--and argues that both are consistent with views of female speech in pastoral literature, particularly confessional manuals and…
Claridge, Alexandra.
Notes and Queries 265 (2020): 338-40.
Presents connections between the "epithet 'of bath'" in relation to the Wife of Bath and a character in the fifteenth-century play "Lucidus and Dubius," who also refers to himself as "a childe of bathe." Suggests that this understanding "has the…
Li, Xingzhong.
Don Chapman, Colette Moore, and Miranda Wilcox, eds. Studies in the History of the English Language VII: Generalizing vs. Particularizing Methodologies in Historical Linguistic Analysis (Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2016), pp. 107-30.
Seeks to "account for constraints governing Chaucer's syntactic inversions with a purpose to uncover Chaucer's underlying metrical principles," employing a combination of "optimality theory" and "Maxent Grammars" and analyzing "every tenth line" of…
Renevey, Denis.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 42 (2020): 351-64.
Discloses how compilations of devotional literature such as "Disce mori" can help us to recognize a "female textual subjectivity," exploring the work's makeup as compilation, and commenting on how "references [in it] to passages and characters from…
Isaacs, Neil D.
American Notes and Queries 5.6 (1967): 85-86.
Explores the ambiguities of betting terminology and suggests that Pardarus's use of such terminology in TC 4.622 means that he is urging Troilus generally to "take his chances."
Sadlek, Gregory M.
Monika Fludernik and Miriam Nandi, eds. Idleness, Indolence and Leisure in English Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 17-39.
Offers background to late-medieval English literary notion of "otium" (idleness) and explores tensions between leisure and productivity in works by Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the "Gawain" poet, particularly their representations of the morality of…
Hoffman, Richard L.
Notes and Queries 209 (1964): 49-50.
Conjectures that the source of a recurrent glosses to MilT at 1.3381-82 (variously 3383) attributed to Ovid by the glossators resulted from a misreading of Ovid's "Fasti" 2.193.
Aligns Chaucer's juxtaposition of owls and apes in NPT 7.3092 with the "moral obliquity" of the two animals in medieval art and sculpture, identifying origins in patristic commentary.
Garbaty, Thomas Jay.
Chaucer Review 2.2 (1967): 108-134.
Translates "Pamphilus" into modern English prose (lineated as verse) and describes its influence on late medieval literature, including discussion of Chaucer's references to it in Mel and FranT and its role as a secondary source of the first three…
Olszewska, E. S.
Notes and Queries 211 (1966): 209.
Identifies four medieval instances (three from Mel) of collocation of forms of "passen" and "gon" that predate the OED's two quotations for "past and gone," from 1598 and 1897.
Harper, Elizabeth.
Jane Beal and Mark Bradshaw Busbee, eds. Approaches to Teaching the Middle English "Pearl" (New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2018), pp. 148-55.
Clarifies how students' experiences with grief or loss can be useful in overcoming modern resistance to reading "Pearl," and suggests comparative study of the poem with other texts in Middle English, including BD. Offers discussion questions for…
Davis, Rebecca.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Presents Chaucer's and Langland's representations of the natural world, reading "Langland's treatment of nature alongside Chaucer's as an expression of a continuous though diverse tradition of humanism." Chapter 1 focuses on nature in PF.
Connects LGW with the "Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry" and the "Menagier de Paris." Suggests that the domestic sphere of "Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry" and the "Menagier de Paris" offers a place for productive, satisfying love; however,…
Mahler, Andreas.
Andrew James Johnston, Russell West- Pavlov, and Elisabeth Kempf, eds. Love, History and Emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare: "Troilus and Criseyde" and "Troilus and Cressida" (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 32-45.
Maintains that Chaucer in TC and Shakespeare in "Troilus and Cressida" present love as detached from history or topicality, depicting it through irresolvable plural discourses--Platonic, Petrarchan, courtly love-sickness, and more--and thereby…
Defines "pronominatio" and traces its background in medieval rhetorical handbooks; then surveys instances in the works of Chaucer, Gower, and Skelton, analyzing individual uses that convey either praise or censure given to characters by associating…
Weiskott, Eric.
Notes and Queries 266 (2021): 253-55.
Argues that Prov, although attributed to Chaucer in medieval manuscripts and in the Riverside Chaucer, contains verse forms not found elsewhere in Chaucer’s oeuvre.
Galway, Margaret.
Notes and Queries 202 (1957): 371-74
Reconsiders the toponym "Pullesdon" as a location in archival records that pertain to Chaucer, Philippa, and their patrons Lionel and Elizabeth, exploring possibilities for the location and implications concerning Philippa and Elizabeth.
