Presson, Robert K.
English Miscellany 15 (1964): 9-21.
Surveys Chaucer's uses of thematic and stylistic contrast, antithesis, and contention, treating them not as examples of a divided mind "but rather of a mind most aesthetically aware how best to state what is experienced most intensely." Draws…
Benson, C. David.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Religion in the Poetry and Drama of the Late Middle Ages in England (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1990), pp. 101-17.
Argues that "Chaucer is as much a religious artist as a comic artist" and that to exclude either fabliaux or religious tales is to reduce the achievement of CT. Examines the common aesthetic of PrT, SNT, MLT, and ClT, which despite their stylistic…
Johnston, Andrew James.
Helen Fulton, ed. Chaucer and Italian Culture (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2021), pp. 145-68
Explores relationship between "astrology and governance," and Chaucer's ekphrastic descriptions of classical and Italian architectural and visual arts in KnT.
Cavin, John A., III.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1996): 198A.
Considers the opposing theories of James Thorpe and G. Thomas Tanselle and emphasizes the need for full understanding of the aesthetic of meter, as with Chaucer's "heroic" line.
Fowler, Elizabeth.
Thomas C. Stillinger, ed. Critical Essays on Geoffrey Chaucer (New York: G. K. Hall; London: Prentice Hall International, 1998), pp. 59-81.
In KnT, Chaucer questions force as a basis for government. Conquest "dissolves voluntary social bonds" and fails to produce the consent necessary to a good society. An agent of force, Theseus uses rhetoric to control others, and his final speech is…
Edwards, Suzanne M.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
Investigates the "discourses of [rape] survival" in medieval literature and its historical contexts, addressing the aftereffects of rape as they are depicted in saints' lives, anchoritic literature, accounts of raped wives (particularly Lucretia in…
Evans, Ruth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 263-70.
Considers the implications of source study and its revitalization in response to recent theory, raising questions about its (possibly irreconcilable) relationships with intertextuality, "genetic criticism," invention, translation, and electronic…
Allen, Valerie.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.
Introduction and study guide to Chaucer and his works (especially CT), with emphasis on connections with contemporaneous history and literature. Includes advice on how to approach medieval texts; extracts from the literature with discussion; a …
Interactive audio/video presentations on a series of historical and literary topics that relate to Chaucer, designed for classroom use. Includes nine presentations: "Interview with Chaucer," "Medieval London," "Chaucer Abroad: France," "Chaucer…
Item not seen; the single WorldCat record states that this is a filmstrip for children, with "Photographs of original pictures and the English countryside [that] illustrate life in the Middle Ages in England."
Jenkins, Simon.
A Short History of London: The Creation of a World Capital ([London]: Viking, 2019), pp. 33-42.
Chapter 4 of a social history of London, with emphasis on the plague, the status of the Church, the vivid characterizations of CT as a "window on the world . . . in all its richness," and Richard Whittington's mayoralty. Also published in The City on…
Brown, Peter, and Andrew Butcher.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Examines CT within the social and political life of the later fourteenth century. Chaucer had an unusually assimilative, syncretic, and integrative imagination, but he lived at a time of disintegrating social and religious forms and values. He was…
Deals with medieval systems of dividing life into ages, with ages based on time divisions, and with exhortations to overcome the difficulties of various ages and to act one's age. Discusses the GP Squire as a youth, the Wife of Bath's youth, old…
Brewer, Derek S.
Studies in English Literature (Tokyo), English Number (1972): 3-15.
Comments on the ambiguities and implications of the ages of the protagonists in TC, considering evidence that indicates Troilus is "twenty or less," Criseyde, "several years older," and Pandarus, a "middle-aged trendy."
Krier, Theresa M.
Theresa M. Krier, ed. Refiguring Chaucer in the Renaissance (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998), pp. 165-88.
PF and "Love's Labours Lost" develop similar relations between lyrics and poetic or dramatic narratives. Shakespeare emulated Chaucer's movement from narrative to song--a psychoanalytic release from courtly or social constraint into "cosmic,…
Sigal, Gale.
John M. Hill and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds. The Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages: Reconstructive Polyphony. Essays in Honor of Robert O. Payne (Madison, N.J., and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 2000 ), pp. 221-40.
The twelfth-century alba genre offered a more flexible paradigm for gender roles than critics have realized, a flexibility that Chaucer, in his appropriation of the alba in TC, continues and capitalizes on as he highlights the lovers' differences in…
Ziolkowski, Theodore.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.
Surveys the figure of the alchemist and the uses of alchemical imagery in western literature, focusing on how satire and trivialization of the subject gave way to more esoteric uses, especially as the practice of alchemy gave way to chemistry.…
Burt, Kathleen.
South Atlantic Review 86, no. 1 (2021): 58-76.
Anatomizes the theme and structures of failure in CYPT, contrasting the Canon's Yeoman and Chaucer-pilgrim as narrators, and tallying ways that failure dominates the narrative: failed science, failed rhetoric, failed comedy, failed moralizing, and…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 243-48.
Collette offers Umberto Eco's notion of a "rhizome labyrinth's indefinite structure" as a heuristic tool for describing the relationship of a text to its "cultural matrix" rather than to specific sources. Focuses on CYT.
Taylor, Paul Beekman.
Chaucer Review 17 (1982): 1-4.
"Zephirus" and "licour" are not merely stylistic adornment but referential as well. The words evoke alchemical change and purification, themes that run through many of the tales and conclude the collection in ParsT with spiritual rebirth.
Little, Frances.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1989): 3358A-3359A.
Protagonist and narrative are usually aligned in medieval literature, but the protagonist is alienated from the narrative when his or her ethos conflicts with generic context, as in Chaucer's TC and CYT and in works of Malory and Hoccleve, among…
