Adelman, Janet.
Dewey R. Faulkner, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Pardoner's Tale: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 96-106.
Critical appreciation of PardT as "brilliantly constructed, simultaneously a parody of the very truths it purports to be about and a joke in which we are never quite sure of the butt"; pays particular attention to its "ragged structure" and how it…
Ruszkiewicz, Dominika.
M. J. Toswell and Anna Czarnowus, eds. Medievalism in English Canadian Literature: From Richardson to Atwood (Cambridge: Brewer, 2020.), pp. 129-42
Comments on several "manifestation[s] of the medieval" in the writings of Margaret Atwood, focusing on her "response to the patriarchal standards and conventions of the courtly tradition." Identifies connections with Chaucer's motif of "enditynge,"…
Considers CYPT to be "highly moralistic," a poem that addresses the "nature and the consequences of man's transgression against the will of God." Signaled by juxtaposition with SNPT and appropriate to placement near the end of CT, CYPT is anagogical,…
Characterizes the Canon's Yeoman as "a clever young man, almost too clever for his own good," a comic figure whose renunciation of the Canon and of alchemy is marked by shifting identities and ambiguities which indicate ironically the Yeoman's own…
Herz, Judith Scherer.
Modern Philology 58 (1961): 231-37.
Claims that CYT "depends on the metaphor of alchemy for both characterization and structure," discussing the Canon's Yeoman as a "fearful, naive, but by no means static" character and exploring the use of vocabulary of literary romance in his…
Weigel, Bjoern.
In Wolfgang Benz and Brigitte Mihok, eds. Handbuch des AntiSemitismus: Judenfeindshaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart, Vol. 7, Literatur, Film, Theater und Kunst (Boston, Mass.: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 49-52.
Describes the "religiös motivierte Xenophobien" (religiously motivated xenophobia) of PrT and comments on the degree to which it may be considered satirical.
Hatton, Thomas Jenison.
Dissertation Abstracts International 27.02 (1966): 456-57A.
Uses late-medieval literary and historical sources to define the Anglo-French ideal of a "perfect knight," and applies this understanding to KnT, MkT, WBT, and FranT.
Muscatine, Charles.
D. S. Brewer, ed. Chaucer and Chaucerians: Critical Studies in Middle English Literature (University: University of Alabama Press; London: Nelson, 1966), pp. 88-113.
Describes and comments on Chaucer's characteristic style, explaining how "insouciance" and "naturalness" combine with forward narrative movement, mastery of meter, formal listings, etc. to demonstrate his "great technical range." Then explores how in…
Combines neighbor theory with Pauline notions of debt, payment, and the "dual commandment" to love God and neighbor, exploring usury, neighborly obligation, Christian-Jewish proximity, and market economy in "The Childe of Bristowe" and PrT--found…
Bennett, Alastair.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 41 (2019): 141-72.
Traces the history and implications of the rhetorical analogy between the effects of "persistent speech" and water eroding or imprinting stone, from Ovid through medieval erotodidactic and religious writing to Boccaccio's Tale of Menedon and FranT,…
Simpson, James.
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. 189-206.
Treats the literary tradition of Troy as a war in which different versions of the story struggle to claim validity. Focuses on how Shakespeare seeks to "deface and disable the entire tradition," rendering it "unfit for any but the lowest human…
Brantley, Jessica.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Visual Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), pp. 139-53.
Considers FranT as a commentary on the "sister arts" of poetry and painting, linked in the tale's engagement with rhetoric, to form Chaucer's "theory of the imagetext." Unlike later theorizations that differentiate the visual from the verbal, the…
Carney, Clíodhna.
Hodder O'Connell and Brendan O'Connell, eds. Transmission and Generation in Medieval and Renaissance Literature: Essays in Honour of John Scattergood (Dublin: Four Courts, 2012), pp. 89-101.
Regards the Squire as the "son-substitute" of the Franklin, and reads FranT, with a nod to Freud, as a projection of the narrator's idealized and decontextualized attitudes toward money, generosity, gentility, and virtue that reveals a subtle…
Coley, David K.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 121-35.
Reappraises FrT and SumT and acknowledges the professional and personal animosity at the root of the tellers’ relationship to each other. Argues for a wider sense of that relationship between the tales and their tellers, contending that this…
Mroczkowski, Przemysław.
In G. A. Bonnard, ed. English Studies Today. Second Series: Lectures and Papers Read at the Fourth Conference of the International Association of University Professors of English Held at Lausanne and Berne, August 1959 (Bern: Franke, 1961), pp. 107-20.
Reads FrT as an exemplum against greed that is informed by commonplaces drawn from sermon tradition, specifically the "pulpit practice of late medieval mendicants." Aligns details of the plot and rhetoric in FrT with parallels found in works by John…
Zedolik, John.
Studies in Philology 112.3 (2015): 490-503.
Treats control as a thematic device in MerT and in CT at large. January seeks to control May through literal enclosure, but is himself figuratively controlled by May and Damian, becoming a keeper kept. Conversely, the pilgrim narrator of CT…
Describes three groups of equestrians among the Canterbury pilgrims: those who ride proud horses, those who "ride either poor or at least un-caparisoned horses," and "those whose characters seem compromised by their 'inefficiency' as horsemen."…
Williams, George G.
Modern Language Notes 72.1 (1957): 6-9.
Proposes that the facade of the thirteenth-century "Maison des Musiciens" in Reims may have inspired Chaucer's description of the exterior of Fame's palace in HF 1189-1266, hypothesizing how and when Chaucer may have seen the historical building.
Miller, Mark.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 59-72.
Accounts for the "strangeness" of KnT, cataloguing various theoretical and interpretative approaches, beginning with Charles Muscatine's scholarly contributions and ending with Elizabeth Scala's "Desire in the Canterbury Tales." Links each of these…
Warren, Michelle R.
postmedieval 6.1 (2015): 79–93.
Reviews references to how Chaucer is represented and appropriated in Anglophone Caribbean literature and critical essays. Includes example of "fictional allusion" to CT in Jean Rhys's "Again the Antilles."
