Zeeman, Nicolette.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 29 (2007): 141-82.
Male singers in Chaucer's works recurrently--perhaps inevitably--embody narcissism and receive "brutal," scatological punishment as a result of their deserved, comic victimhood. Psychoanalytic understanding of love as "affect" and of song as…
Zeeman, Nicolette.
Jeremy Dimmick, James Simpson, and Nicolette Zeeman, eds. Images, Idolatry, and Iconoclasm in Late Medieval England: Textuality and the Visual Image (Oxford: Oxford University Press), 2002, pp. 43-62.
For Chaucer and other medieval writers, "the figure of the idol is a means of focusing on problematic aspects of imaginative textuality and its contexts" (44). The sculptures in HF and Lollius in TC are partially represented or broken figures of…
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…
Zedolik, John J., Jr.
Dissertation Abstracts International A71.04 (2010): n.p.
Considers how "quyting" ("paying back or balancing") among the pilgrims enforces comic harmoniousness and balance in CT, despite the work's fragmentary structure. In addition, CT invites the reader to "'quyt' the author."
Uses the Halle-Keyser theory of meter to discover a "pattern of heavy stresses in the initial syllables" of twenty-one of the twenty-three stanzas of ABC that "illuminate the poem aurally."
Pedagogical website dedicated to CT, with separate pages for selected tales that include introductions and ancillary information. Considers KnT, MilT, RvT, MLT, WBPT, FrT, ClT, FranT, PardPT, PrT, MkT, Mel, and NPT. Also includes links to related…
MkT makes a political statement reflecting Richard II's tyrannous activities during the altter years of his reign. The stories of misgovernment suggest a late date of composition for the work. The character of the Monk is based on Nimrod, himself…
As part of a discussion of Gower's trilingualism and his uses of history, science, and literature, Zarins contrasts the treatment of astronomy and literature in HF with Gower's "praise of science . . . for its own sake."
Zarins, Kim.
In The Open Access Companion to the Canterbury Tales. https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu, 2017.
Cautions that what we say about the Pardoner's body "might say something about ourselves"; summarizes critical discussion of the Pardoner's sex, sexuality, and rhetoric; and comments on the Old Man, Death (compared to Terry Pratchett's Mort), the…
Zarins, Kim.
Accessus: A Journal of Premodern Literature and New Media 4.1 (2017): 1-63.
Interprets the Pardoner as an intersex person, taking his sexuality literally rather than figuratively, a matter of variation rather than lack. Clarifies these concepts in the history of science and the history of Chaucer criticism, and compares the…
A young-adult novel, modeled on CT, in which senior high school students on a bus trip from Canterbury, Connecticut to Washington, D.C. share stories about their awakening sexuality. Characters' names (including the primary narrator, Jeff Chaucer)…
Zarins, Kim.
Elisabeth Dutton, with John Hines and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower, Trilingual Poet: Language, Translation, and Tradition (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2010), pp. 239-53.
Zarins assesses Gower's and Chaucer's uses of rime riche ("in which rhyme patterns appear identical but diverge in meaning"), focusing on instances in which the device lends seriousness (or mock seriousness) in characters' dialogue. Appends a partial…
Zanoni, Mary Louise.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1982): 5115A.
Chaucer's use of philosophy, classic and medieval, goes far beyond Boethius. KnT explores order and disorder in terms of scholasticism; TC treats will and determinism in the light of views from Augustine to Bradwardine; and NPT subtly inverts…
Zangen, Britta.
Britta Zangen, ed. Misogynism in Literature: Any Place, Any Time (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 39-58.
Antifeminism is prevalent throughout CT in depictions of women, assumptions about them, and attitudes toward female-male relations. Nevertheless, CT is still considered a "master-piece" of literature, evidence that critics have not completed the work…
Zangen, Britta.
Gabriele Genge, ed. Sprachformen des Körpers in Kunst und Wissenschaft. Kultur und Erkenntnis, no. 25 (Tübingen and Basel: A. Francke, 2000), pp. 244-58.
CT is startlingly antifeminist ("erschreckend frauenfeindlich") in its depiction of women and of male attitudes toward women. Recent criticism has begun to recognize this antifeminism but has not fully overcome adulation of the author.
Zaerr, Linda Marie.
Evelyn Birge Vitz, Nancy Freeman Regalado, and Marilyn Lawrence, eds. Performing Medieval Narrative (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005), pp. 193-208.
Zaerr explores the concept of "mouvance" (textual variation) as reflected in a performance of "The Weddynge," commenting on the process of performance and adaptation and tabulating variants between the manuscript of the poem and a recorded memorized…
Zacher, Christian K.
Brian Gastle and Erick Kelemen, eds. Later Middle English Literature, Materiality, and Culture: Essays in Honor of James M. Dean (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2018.), pp. 43-56.
Describes known examples of late medieval travel writing in English, discussing several ways they might be categorized. Includes commentary on pilgrimage narratives and on CT as a fictional example.
Zacher, Christian K.
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976.
Investigates the relation between "curiositas" (vice-laden seeking of experience or knowledge) and pilgrimage (symbolic devotional journey) as a tension between desire for the physical and spiritual worlds, examining the theological underpinnings of…
Comments on the comic and aural effects of the allusions to Hasdrubales's wife and to Nero in NPT (7.3362-73), focusing on Pertelote and the other female chickens.
Yvernault, Martine.
Cercles 32 (2014): 90-107. Open access journal; available at http://www.cercles.com/n32/yvernault.pdf. Accessed February 10, 2022.
Explores relations among voice, genre, music, orality, and memorial transmission in "Lay le Freine," "Sir Orfeo," and FranT, including assessment of the ambiguities and Bahktinian polyphony of voices in the GP description of the Franklin's oral…
