Finlayson, John.
Studies in Philology 104 (2007): 455-70.
SumT is not a hidden allegory, but a narrative that exploits characteristics of the fabliau to explore larger issues of morality and ethics. By focusing almost solely on the distribution of the "gift," critics have ignored most of the story and…
Traces several iconographical, etymological, and punning associations of cherubs with redness, commenting on confusion with seraphs, and suggesting that these associations underlie details of the Summoner's description in GP.
Garbáty, Thomas Jay.
Papers of the Michigan Academy of Science, Arts, and Letters 47 (1962): 605-11.
Reviews evidence in GP that Chaucer's Summoner suffers from venereal disease rather than leprosy, using it as an example of little-known or overlooked scholarship that might be lost or ignored. Cites other examples more briefly, including the record…
Maintains that the Summoner's fondness for "overheating foods" conveys lechery, adducing evidence from Reginald Pecock's fifteenth-century "The Reule of Crysten Religioun."
Cawley, A. C.
Proceedings of the Leeds Philosophical and Literary Society (Literary and Historical Section) 8 (1956-1957): 173-80.
Assesses "unsavory" details of the GP description of the Summoner, the "bad feeling" between the Friar and the Summoner (WBP 3.829ff. and FrP 1265ff.), and concerns that link the GP Summoner and the summoner of FrT, clarifying the Friar's "attack" on…
Magoun, Francis P., Jr.
Traditio 11 (1955): 409-20.
Quotes, translates, and anatomizes the Latin "arguments" of the "books" found in Statius' "Thebaid" that underlie Cassandra's summary of the Statius' work in TC 5.1457-1533, with its twelve-line Latin summary interpolated in most TC manuscripts.…
Cannon, Christopher.
Piero Boitani and Jill Mann, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Chaucer, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003), pp. 233-50.
Though traditional at root, Chaucer's diction, syntax, and rhetoric are made fresh by the poet's careful combination and articulation of traditional features. Doubleness (as in mixed styles, ambiguity, and irony) is characteristic of his style and a…
Breeze, Andrew.
Notes and Queries 254 (2009): 21-23.
For both linguistic and political reasons, the town in RvT from which John and Aleyn hail may be identified as Westruther in Berwickshire, making Chaucer's rendition of their speech "the first imitation of Scots dialect in English literature."
Taylor, Paul Beekman.
Chaucer Yearbook 4 (1997): 1-19.
Explores Chaucer's meanings for "translation" and related terms, using them to examine Chaucer's use of source material. Conjointure, verbal play, etymologizing, and transfer of meaning typify Chaucerian translation, exemplified in Troilus's…
Kellogg, Arthur L., and Robert C. Cox.
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 108-45.
Describes the backgrounds to Chaucer's reference to St. Valentine in PF (line 309) and explores its contemporaneous contexts in the poetry of Oton de Grandson and Charles d'Orléans. Rooted in Roman Lupercalia seasonal rites of purification and…
Argues that "gentilesse" is the main concern of SqT, linked to the sub-themes of integrity, mercy, education, truthful rhetoric, youthfulness, and social class.
Various concepts of "otherness" in SqT—oriental setting, magic, non-human speech, female centrality—reflect Chaucer's "reshaping" of Ovidian "transformation" myth. His efforts to enter "into feminized animal subjectivity . . . intertwine with…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Poetica (Tokyo) 12 (1981): 28-35
Bloomfield considers natural law, an interest in distant geography, and the similarities between magic and technology in SqT as evidence of the "new spirit of the Renaissance" in Chaucer's works.
Fleming, John.
Notes and Queries 212 (1967): 48-49.
Explores relations among details of the GP description of the Squire (CT 1.94-96), the "Roman de la Rose," and a passage from fragment B of the "Romaunt of the Rose," suggesting that Chaucer influenced the fragment and that the two passages derive…
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
Annuale Mediaevale 21 (1981): 111-20.
The idea of sex as hard work and the portrait of January as lover draws on Augustinian theories of pre- and postlapsarian sexuality, also important in WBT and MkT; nevertheless, bawdy treatments of Christian theories are "harmoniously absorbed by the…
Benson, Larry D.
English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700 03 (1992): 1-28.
Doubtful of M. L. Samuels's argument that Equat is Chaucer's work, Benson examines dominate and recessive spelling forms to argue that it is not. Compares spelling in Equat with that of various manuscripts of TC and CT.
Horobin, Simon.
Irma Taavitsainen, Terttu Nevalainen, Päivi Pahta, and Matti Rissanen, eds. Placing Middle English in Context (Berlin and New York: Gruyter, 2000), pp. 199-207.
Compiles spelling variants of 'though' (thirteen manuscripts) and the verb 'work' (ten manuscripts) as they occur in CT, seeking to establish Chaucer's basic orthography and to explore scribal habits.
Samuels, M. L.
Middle English Studies Presented to Norman Davis in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 17-37.
The only manuscript which reflects Chaucer's own spelling is that of "Equat." Because this text is short, it does not provide a complete model for editors; Hengwrt is probably the best choice for a complete model.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Bulletin of University Education Center, Fukuyama University Studies in Higher Education 7 (2021): 117-38.
Analyzes the structure and function of reporting verbs, such as "seyde" and "quod, "in representing speech and thought in TC from a variety of viewpoints, including syntactical position of the reporting verbs, balance of direct and indirect…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Jonathan Fruoco, ed. Polyphony and the Modern (New York Routledge, 2021), pp. 169-91.
Offers a technical linguistic analysis of STR (speech and thought representation) in TC, theorizing a hierarchical "structure of subjectivities" to examine samples from the poem, attending to nuances latent in diction, situation, point of view,…
Rowland, Beryl.
English Studies in Canada (Toronto): 7, 2 (1981): 129-40.
The narrator establishes a relationship with the audience to give the impression that they are jointly and empirically exploring human nature. His continuous presence and the mode of oral delivery enables the narrator to impose his views on the…
Miller, T. S.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 114 (2015): 373-400.
Maintains that in Anel, a poem about the faithless lover Arcite, the poet narrator is also false both in specific details and in reference to his putative sources. Argues that Chaucer emphasizes "the deception inherent in his poetic process" in a…
Lerer, Seth.
University of Toronto Quarterly 73: 906-15, 2004
Comments on Thomas and Lewis as Chaucer's sons and explores Astr as a didactic treatise, part of Chaucer's "Macrobean" development from "literary study to moral inquiry."
A companion volume to "Music in the Age of Chaucer." Fourteen of Chaucer's lyrics on the French model are presented in a performing edition with musical settings derived from contemporary songs by Machaut, Senleches, Solange, Andrieu, and the…
