Berry, Reginald.
University of Toronto Quarterly 43 (1974): 285-97.
Explains the association of the eagle and air (as the medium of sound) in HF by identifying a number of iconographic affiliations of eagles with air in medieval depictions of the four elements. Includes 6 b&w illustrations
Chaucer's reference to "ferses twelve" in BD remains a tantalizing problem. He may have been thinking of a non-standard version of chess, such as the Courier game, which includes twelve pawns; or the narrator may be thinking of draughts. In any case,…
Applies Joseph Frank's theory of "spatial form" in the modern novel (forms in which meaning is created through simultaneity and juxtaposition rather than through linearity and causation) to BD, PF, and HF. Examines particularly the use of myth (Seys…
Galantic, Elizabeth Joyce.
Dissertation Abstracts International 43 (1983):2996-2997A.
Chaucer's dream visions reveal him as immersed in a literary quarrel of ancients and moderns. His iconoclasm is restrained in BD and HF, but he mocks the artificiality and decadence of contemporary love poetry in PF and LGWP.
Quinn, William A., ed.
New York and London : Garland, 1999.
Sixteen essays by various authors on BD, HF, PF, LGW, and the short poems. Fifteen are reprints or excerpts from longer works published between 1948 and 1994. Includes a brief introduction to each of the poems (and the section on the short poems), a…
Examines the philosophical content of Chaucer's dream visions--the interplay between the soul and its courtly context--arguing that in Chaucer's world, the ideal of courtesy rather than any explicitly spiritual principle holds together a fictive…
The chief French sources and analogues of Chaucer's four dream poems, presented here in translation, are brought together for the first time. Included are Machaut's "Jugement dou Roy de Behaingne," Froissart's "Paradys d'amours," Jean de Conde's…
Phillips, Helen, and Nick Havely, eds.
London and New York: Longman, 1997
Edits Book of the Duchess, House of Fame, Parliament of Fowls,and portions of Legend of Good Women (G-version Prologue and Dido), providing an introduction, bottom-of-the-page glosses and commentary, selected source material, and textual notes for…
Studies the "meaning of the dream-poems," exploring Chaucer's concerns with the "nature and causes" of dreams, the importance and role of imagination, tensions between courtly and commonplace ideals, and the "contest" between "authority and…
Benson, C. David.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1986.
Despite the tenets of "dramatic theory" from Kittredge to modern times, the links between the pilgrims and their tales are not reliable bases on which to build valid literary criticism. Not the psyches of the pilgrims but the different styles of the…
Barnes, Geraldine.
Geraldine Barnes, John Gunn, Sonya Jensen, and Lee Jobling, eds. Words and Wordsmiths: A Volume for H. L. Rogers (Sydney: University of Sydney, 1989), pp. 4-12.
If Chaucer intended to turn Boccaccio's "Teseida" into a chivalric romance, he did not succeed, "but if his purpose was to make the frequently banal conventions and optimistic outlook of that genre play an ironic counterpoint to the tale's bleak…
Describes grammatical and metrical conditions that restrict or encourage pronunciation of final -e at the end of lines in Chaucer's verse. Introduces double-consonant rhymes as a previously unnoticed factor in these concerns, explores their…
Brown, W[illia]m J.
University of Colorado Studies. Series in Language and Literature 10 (1966): 15-22.
Argues that the dramatic interchange between the Miller and the Reeve in MilP "anticipates every important argument in Chaucer's formal defense" of including the ribald MilT in CT. Together the two "apologies" constitute a "richly comic but…
Hard and soft analogues to Dorigen's conversations with Aurelius in FranT indicate that she is less a victim than someone playfully complicit in "flirtation." Offering "positive rhetorical models," Boccaccio and Christine de Pizan depict women who…
Prendergast, Thomas A.
Thomas A. Prendergast and Barbara Kline, eds. Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), pp. 258-69
Suggests that Usk's autobiographical Testament of Love has affected critical understanding of Chaucer's biography, influencing assumptions about Chaucer's level of political involvement and the relations between his politics and his poetics.…
Consideration of contemporary education and conditions shows the Physician a capable and ethical "practisour" who "follows the established medical practices and standards of his time."
McDuffie, Isaac
Ph.D. Dissertation. Louisiana State University, 2017.
Fully accessible at https://repository.lsu.edu/gradschool_dissertations/4182/; accessed February 5, 2025.
Argues that Chaucer's works "reflect an increasing awareness of the fragility of the author's implied voice and the dangers of misprision in a listening reception," largely an effect of the rise of English as a written language and tensions between…
Smallwood, T. M.
Studies in Philology 82 (1985): 437-49.
Chaucer's digressions distinguish the narrative structure of PardT, WBT, MerT, FranT, PhyT, and ManT from others of the period in a way not accounted for in rhetorical models of the period ("Confessio Amantis," "Decameron," "Ovide Moralise," "Gesta…
Stevenson, Barbara Jean.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1986): 896A-897A.
Controversy has arisen over Derek Price's theory that Chaucer wrote Equat. Apparently, Chaucer did not. Although Morton's "stylometry" test supports this view, the test itself reveals weaknesses.
Ginsberg, Warren.
Teresa Tavormina and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Endless Knot: Essays on Old and Middle English in Honor of Marie Borroff (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 129-40.
Examines GP sketches of the Wife of Bath, the Miller, and the Franklin to exemplify how Chaucer's arrangements of details can best be understood relationally.
Argues that the "artistic unity" of NPT is evident in "light of the [Nun's] Priest's personality," a man who is dissatisfied with "his position in life as a servant to a group of women." Differences between NPT and its source in the "Renart"…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Robert R. Edwards, ed. Art and Context in Late Medieval English Narrative: Essays in Honor of Robert Worth Frank, Jr. (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 127-47.
Collette examines the tradition of Mariology in relation to PrPT and SNPT. In their "Prologues," the Prioress and the Second Nun invoke the Virgin "as a figure of virtuous female power and speech." In their "Tales," however, women and children die…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Nobuyuki Yuasa et al., eds. Essays on English Language and Literature in Honour of Michio Kawai (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1993), pp. 45-52.
Discusses Chaucer's exploitation of the potential for ambiguity in such devices as cohesion, coherence, deixis, background assumptions, conversational implication, speech acts, and the narrative functions of speech.
Diekstra, F. N. M.
Neophilologus 67 (1983): 131-48.
Chaucer has adapted "ironic hints" from the analogue in Machaut's "Voir dit" to a bourgeois persona that demolishes "finer sensibilities," thus ironically reversing the tenor of the older material.
