In an effort to rehabilitate the medieval romance, argues that Th, when read through the prism of the Auchinleck MS, shows more affection for the form than is generally believed.
Elliott, R. W. V.
A. C. Cawley, ed. Chaucer's Mind and Art (New York: Barnes & Noble; Edinburgh and London: Oliver & Boyd, 1969), pp. 46-68.
Describes the literary resources available to Chaucer (and their limitations), comments on the works that influenced him most pervasively, and explores the "close links" between dreaming and reading in his dream visions (BD, PF, HF, and LGWP) and…
Consideration of authorial agency enables professors and students to explore relationships between personal ethos and literary texts. Ethical criticism frames discussions of whether Chaucer raped Cecily Chaumpaigne or whether Flannery O'Connor was a…
Diekstra, F. N. M.
Nijmegen: Dekker & Van de Vegt, 1974.
Comments on disparities between the narratives and the morals applied to them in SumT, ManT, FranT, ClT, and MLT, exploring the Chaucer's incongruities and indirections. There are no "monolithic" morals to be found in BD, HF, or PF, which tend toward…
Bergeson, Anita K.
Dissertation Abstracts International A67.10 (2007): n.p.
Bergeson explores the semantic and dramatic range of Middle English "reden"--advise, counsel, read, interpret--as it is used and enacted in BD, HF, PF, and TC.
The pilgrimage to Canterbury is actually a search for wisdom. Chaucer is seeking to arrive at a fusion of rational thinking and revelation. KnT rejects reason as the only answer to man's problems. In ParsT the superiority of godly revelation over…
Shigeo, Hisashi.
Hiroe Futamura, Kenichi Akishino, and Hisato Ebi, eds. A Pilgrimage Through Medieval Literature (Tokyo: Nan' Un-Do Press, 1993), pp. 59-80.
The poet's involvement in HF is an extension of similar involvement in BD, modified by Chaucer's occupation as an officer in the London Customs House.
Both PardT and the Pardoner's interruption of the Wife in WBT are "touches of the queer" that temporarily denaturalize heterosexual subjectivity, revealing its performative nature.
Schibanoff, Susan.
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006.
Schibanoff challenges the notion that Chaucer escaped from the decadent, "unmanly" influence of French verse to achieve his status as "father" of English poetry. In BD, Chaucer adopts the persona of "the weak, puerile, and loveless poet - the 'queer'…
Burger, Glenn.
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
CT can destabilize essentialist categories of sexuality, subjectivity, and nationality. From a queer and postcolonial perspective, CT enables or compels neither a symbolically simple London originary nor an allegorically closed ending, but rather an…
Investigates the "agency and influence of medieval queens" by comparing the careers of the English queens Philippa of Hainault and Anne of Bohemia and the "almost queen" Joan of Kent. Examines patronage and intercession and explores the extent to…
Spisak, James W.
Chaucer Review 18 (1984): 204-10.
In LGW, Chaucer adheres closely to Ovid in the Pyramus and Thisbe legend. By omissions, by shifts in tone and emphasis, and by the frame of LGW, Chaucer emphasizes seeds of comedy in the original.
Recounts the scholarly tally of puns in Chaucer, locates the device in rhetorical tradition, and clarifies its wide range of stylistic effects. Then provides an alphabetical list of puns in Chaucer's works (more than 100), both previously known…
Augments Baum's earlier dictionary of puns (PMLA 71 [1956]), with nearly 30 more examples noticed by Baum and by readers of his earlier listing, exemplifying and explaining each.
Watson, Nicholas.
Religion and Literature 37.2 (2005): 99-114.
Chaucer's religion is important even in his secular tales, a reflection of his public stance as a lay penitent, a member of the "mediocriter boni," a category of the religious to be distinguished from the contemplative path of the "perfecti." Reads…
Tripp, Raymond P. Jr.
Bulletin of the Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association 24 (1970): 51-59.
Contends that Chaucer's adaptation in HF of Virgil's "Aeneid" "anticipates his development away from medieval conventions toward modem, psychological people."
Reviews Prudence's "allegorical reading practices" and argues that Mel is based on the "relationship between the literary mode of moralizing allegory and contingent reading practices."
Lunz, Elisabeth.
Essays in Literature (Macomb, Ill.) 4 (1977): 3-10.
Because Dame Prudence in Mel embodies the qualities her name implies--reason, intellect, circumspection, providence, docility, and caution--she is a model of medieval female virtue.
Chaucer's interest in future contingencies (a problem raised by Aristotle) in part shapes the narratives in TC and NPT. The musings of Troilus and Criseyde about the future rely on Boethian principles (among others). Chauntecleer's theory--that…
Everhart, Deborah.
Carmina Philosophiae 1 (1992): 35-52.
Everhart considers Chaucer's translation strategies in Bo and identifies his unusual one-to-one substitution of "hap" for Latin "casus" in that work. Multiple connotations of "hap" in TC imply a different, playful rhetoric of translation that in turn…
Hendrickson, Rhoda Miller Martin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1981): 1140A-41A.
Proverbs appear conventionally in most of Chaucer's early works, usually to lament changes in fortune. In the short poems, For, Buk, and Scog, however, Chaucer's proverbs become personal. In TC and CT proverbs spoken by characters (especially…
Fujiki considers comic "misapplication of proverbs" in TC (Pandarus), MilT (John), MerT (January), and SumT (the friar), suggesting that Chaucer capitalized on his audience's expectation of proverbs to characterize some users as foolish.
Robinson, Ian.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1971.
Explores what can and cannot be known about the meter and rhythm of Chaucer's verse and that of his contemporaries and followers, arguing that Chaucer employed a lively "balanced parameter" that is not heavily restricted by regularity and that should…
Fox, Allan B.
Language and Style 10 (1977): 27-41.
Although Heywood's comic debates are dismissed as negligible in metrical skill, once we realize that Chaucer's line is a non-pentameter, more dependent on alliterative accentual native verse than most metrists allow, then we can see that the debates…
