Knapp, Peggy (A.)
David Raybin and Linda Tarte Holley, eds. Closure in The Canterbury Tales: The Role of The Parson's Tale (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 2000), pp. 95-113.
Analyzes uses of "glose," "lewed," "estat," and "fre" to clarify the relation of the Parson and ParsT to Lollardy. Lollard diction is more prevalent in the GP description of the Parson and in ParsP than in ParsT, perhaps neutralizing the…
Tani, Akinobu.
John Ole Askedal, Ian Roberts, and Tomonori Matsushita, eds. Noam Chomsky and Language Descriptions (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2010), pp. 149-68.
Tani examines the word pairs or doublets in Fragment A of CT and those in Chaucer's prose texts. The pairs are used for rhyme and for generic and stylistic differentiation among verse texts.
Jones, Sarah Rees.
Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans, eds. Roadworks: Medieval Britain, Medieval Roads (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pp. 97-126.
Explores the "design and regulation of real streets" in late medieval Britain, and "streets as symbolic of capital" in contemporaneous literature, art, and architecture. Includes comments on windows and doors in TC.
Stenner, Rachel.
Comparative Drama 55 (2021): 259-82.
Argues that allusion to Apollo in TC conveys an ambivalent attitude toward literary authority by affiliating it with sexual violence, an ambivalence that Shakespeare echoes in "Troilus and Cressida." Both writers use Apollo to problematize…
"Checklaton" (jacket fabric) is recorded only in Chaucer's Thopas, Spenser's "Faerie Queene," and "A Vewe of the Present State of Ireland"--an indication that Spenser wrote the latter.
Pelling, Margaret.
Social History of Medicine 8 (1995): 383-401.
Comments on the appropriateness of PhyT to its teller, both in its classical learning and in its "gender-related ambivalences," also found among historical physicians.
Plummer, John F.
Vox Feminae: Studies in Medieval Woman's Songs (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University, 1981), pp. 135-54.
In the character of Absolon in MilT, Chaucer exploits the literary fact that "the minor orders were not taken seriously as lovers, but were found precisely in the burlesque world of the 'fabliau'." The willfulness and sexual appetite of the Wife of…
McWhir, Anne.
SEL: Studies in English Literature 23 (1983): 413-23.
Explores comic allusions in John Gay's pastorals "The Shepherd's Week" and "Trivia," along the way identifying "several allusions" to Chaucer's work in "The Shepherd's Week"--allusions to the Wife of Bath's red stockings, the use of "queynte" and the…
Postmus, Bouwe
Tony Bex, Michael Burke, and Peter Stockwell, eds. (Contextualized Stylistics: In Honour of Peter Verdonk. Amsterdam.: Rodopi, 2000), pp. 103-11.
Argues that a seventeenth-century play, "The Wisest Have Their Fools About Them," may reflect the influence of Chaucerian fabliau and some late-medieval stage traditions. Baldwin's analysis focuses on stereotypical characters.
Brooke, Christopher N. L.
Christopher N. L. Brooke. The Medieval Idea of Marriage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), pp. 211-27.
Comments on the theme of marriage in Chaucer's works to indicate the poet's "capacious view of love and sexuality." Chaucer's representations of marriage range from bawdy humor in WBP to the sublime in BD, often combining more than one view, as in…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Edward Vasta and Zacharias P. Thundy, ed. Chaucerian Problems and Perspectives: Essays Presented to Paul E. Beichner, C. S. C. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979), pp. 70-82.
Generically and rhetorically NPT is a fable devoted to the teaching of wisdom, undercut by its mock quality, by its characterization, by its scholastic reasoning; but finally leading us back, on a higher level, to its original didactic purpose. NPT…
Kellogg, Michael K.
Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus, 2016.
Defends the "depth of thought and the diversity of expression that characterized the Middle Ages" through an examination of "philosophical treatises, memoirs, letters, tales, romances, and epics that drove the medieval search for wisdom." The chapter…
Rowland, Beryl.
Jan Goosens and Timothy Sodmann, eds. Third International Beast Epic, Fable and Fabliau Colloquium, Munster 1979: Proceedings (Koln and Wien: Bohlau, 1981), pp. 340-55.
Surveys several classical, oriental, and exegetical traditions of the symbolic or exemplary value of the cock, variously an emblem of wisdom, pugnacity, or stupidity. Chauntecleer of NPT is unusual in combining many qualities, for later literary…
Minnis, Alastair.
Helen Cooney, ed. Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 99-114.
In the Wife of Bath, Chaucer radically remakes La Vieille from the Roman de la Rose, granting her true wisdom and authority. The Wife of Bath successfully uses Latin tradition and academic techniques in WBP, and WBT reflects the profound wisdom of…
Chaucer uses "the winds of Fortune" as a metaphor to organize the genre and to define the characters. Troilus' perception of Fortune shifts from the divine to Criseyde, assuring his fall. The narrator opposes Pandarus' attitude in accepting the…
Ferris, Sumner.
Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 8 (1987): 33-66.
The diptych (1398-99), an English work that once belonged to Richard II, shows "God, the Blessed Virgin, and Richard's ancestors" conferring upon him "absolute, unlimited sovereignty." As the king's altarpiece, it "proclaimed the religious mystery…
Explores de Worde's multiple uses of the same woodcut (a depiction of an exchange of rings) in various books he produced. Found twice in de Worde's TC, the woodcut may reflect his reception of TC via the summary of it in John Skelton's "Phyllyp…
