Locates an allusion to "Chaucers Bootes" (see Bo 4m5) in line 17 of Nathaniel Ward's "commendatory poem" written for Anne Bradstreet's "Tenth Muse Lately Sprung Up in America . . ." (1650).
Cauthen, I. B., Jr.
Notes and Queries 203 (1958): 248-49.
Locates a previously unnoticed allusion to MilT 1.3638-39 in Samuel Harsnet's "A Declaration of Egregious Popish Impostures" (1603), perhaps recalled from memory.
Cassidy, Frederic G.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 57 (1958): 739-42.
Suggests that "don thyn hood" in TC 3.954 may have the literal meaning of "put on your nightcap" or, more likely, the figurative meaning of "restrain yourself," the latter drawn from the practice of hooding a hawk.
Identifies a cut-down single-page portion of Book 1 of TC ("Cecil" manuscript), found attached to the cover of a rent book in Hatfield House. Provides a facsimile, transcription, table of variants, and commentary.
Brewer, D. S.
Modern Language Review 53 (1958): 321-26.
Surveys the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French tradition of short love-visions, observes similarities between PF and Oton de Grandson's "Le Songe Saint Valentin," and emphasizes that Chaucer's originality most evident in two ways: his…
Brereton, Georgine E.
Medium Aevum 27 (1958): 173-74.
Proposes that an error of transmission in Chaucer's source (Frère Renaud de Louens' "Livre de Mellibee et Prudence") accounts for the inaccurate claim in Mel: that Ovid says a weasel can slay a bull. The proposed error confuses Ovid's "viper"…
Bradbrook, M. C.
Shakespeare Quarterly 9.3 (1958): 311-19.
Argues that "[c]ompression and inversion direct Shakespeare's use of" TC in "Troilus and Cressida," particularly, "the clear inversion of every idealistic feeling save those of Troilus is so relentless that a 'mirror image' emerges." Shakespeare…
Bowers, R. H.
Modern Language Notes 73.5 (1958): 327-29.
Transcribes (with modern punctuation, capitalization, and commentary) a 26-line compilation of proverbial misogynistic sentiment from London, British Library MS Harley 7333, fol. 121v-122r, attributed there to "Impingham," identified by Manly and…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Modern Language Review 53 (1958): 408-10.
Argues that the correct reading of TC 5.1809 is the eighth sphere (not seventh as in some manuscripts), and that Chaucer's "making use consciously or unconsciously of an old tradition, placed his hero for all eternity in the sphere of the fixed…
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.
Baum, Paull F.
Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1958.
[xii], 229 pp.
Appreciative commentary on Chaucer’s life and works, considering what can and cannot be determined from his life-records and literature, why he may not have completed several works, why (though a civil servant) he did not comment on political events,…
Baker, Donald C.
Studia Neophilologica 30 (1958): 17-26.
Demonstrates "the extremely close dove-tailing of the three major sections" of BD "and the way in which they complement and illuminate one another" through parallel incidents and atmosphere. Then examines "the imagery patterns in the poem" to show…
Gray, Douglas.
H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison, eds. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 61 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004): 11: 247-59.
Biography of Chaucer, with brief bibliography. Sub-sections include "Early Life," "Poetry: The Beginnings," "Journeys on the King's Service--Italy," "Chaucer at the Customs House and Aldgate," "Works of the 1370s and early 1380s," "Life in London,…
Schmidt-Hidding, Wolfgang.
Heidelberg: Quelle & Meyer, 1959.
Opens with a chapter on Chaucer (pp. 9-35)--followed by ones about William Shakespeare, Henry Fielding, Thomas Sterne, Charles Lamb, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain--surveying his self-portraits, narrative poses, characterizations, ironies, and the…
Includes sixty trans lyric poems, presented in a “transliteration of English—Chaucerian in affect, but revolutionary in effect,” with spelling reminiscent of Middle English.
Franklin, James.
ETC: A Review of General Semantics 40.2 (1983): 177-91.
Assesses the epistemological implications of the growth in vocabulary in Middle English, focusing on Latin-derived terms for "very general concepts," many from philosophical discourse. Uses the OED and the MED as major sources, drawing evidence from,…
İplіkçі Özdenі, Ayşenur.
[Iplikci Ozdeni, Aysenur].
Artuklu Human and Social Science Journal 4.1 (2019): 26-33.
Analyzes the songs and letters embedded in TC as lyric forms that function "in several senses such as means of self-expression of characters--their bliss or afflictions, fundamental communication tools of characters, mediums that assure secrecy in…
Includes commentary on depictions of Islam and Muhammad in MLT and GP: despite the pejorative naming of the Prophet in MLT, GP is "the inaugural English text which set in motion cross-cultural understanding between the West and the Muslim world."
van Gelderen, Elly.
Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018.
Classroom textbook of examples for syntactical analysis in English language history, with texts reproduced in color manuscript, original-language transcriptions, and modern translations, plus commentary on significant features of language and…
Item not seen. From publisher's website: "This study argues that the vernacular fable constituted a productive site for negotiating scholastic poetics in late medieval England. On the basis of a close reading" of NPT and ManT, "the book analyses how…
Fulton, Helen.
Journal of the Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association 106 (2006): 25-42.
Assesses the late-medieval and early modern popularity of the "story of Griselda" as an exploration of the "paradox of her non-noble status and her fitness to hold the moral high ground" and a reflection of anxiety "about marriages based on unequal…
