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The unresolved contradicitons, sudden shifts, and visible seams in MLT indicate the Man of Law's limitations not just as storyteller but also "as a man of law." The limits of the common law of his patriarchial society give him his identity and…

In giving the tale of Constance the form and narrative structure of a saint's life while omitting conventional motivations or explanations, Chaucer has made the Man of Law an inept narrator and has invested the tale with irony and humor.

The pattern of sustained allusion to Gower's "Confessio Amantis" provides an important index to the purpose of MLT. Gower communicates the horror of a moral void; the Man of Law inveighs against Canacee's sinfulness. Chaucer's tale ultimately…

Shows that key passages in the Wife's monologue can be justifiably located in the context of Lollardy, focusing on her use of the word "expres" (WBP 27, 61, 719) and her insistence on the primacy of scriptural authority.

Hansen reaffirms the importance of the Wife of Bath to feminist criticism but also argues that her character is the creation of a male poet: the reader must not readily take the Wife as an authority, "as a female speaker or subject or as a…

In WBP and WBT, Chaucer dramatizes a powerful reorientation of tradition. In the endings of both, Alison images a reconciliation that awards women justification and a degree of self-definition, without injuring men. The comic genre of CT does not…

The rapist-knight's plea to "Tak al my good and let my body go" (WBT 3.1061) highlights his role reversal not only with the raped maiden but also with women bound to legalized rape by the concept of the "marriage debt." Richman suggests that the…

Draws contrasts between Sir Gawain, who attempts to act the part of standard knight of romance, and the protagonists of WBT and MerT. The Wife sets her tale in the medieval antifeminist matrix; the Merchant, building on her insight, mingles romance,…

Chaucer teases the "magisterial" Jerome by putting material from "Adversus Jovinianum" into WBP in the "mouth of a woman he would despise."

Explores how some poststructuralist contributions to the theory of narrative enable a feminist rereading of two of the tales and suggests that Chaucer presents a bleak view of male-female relations.

Coverchiefs, while sometimes a sign of mourning, are more often read as a devilish device to "blind men's sight," as Robert Mannyng suggests. The Wife's coverchiefs serve as one of numerous signs that "her life...remains in theological disarray."

Rejecting Siegfried Wenzel's view that the character Thomas suffers from insensitivity, Malone finds that Thomas shows more sensitivity to the death of his only child than his wife shows in all she says.

Outrage at Walter's treatment of Griselda, seeing Griselda's story as a religious allegory of patience, even seeing it as a folk tale rewritten--such responses indicate that ClT is a poem "divided against itself." One way to resolve these conflicts…

In response to William McClellan's article and drawing on an earlier article of his own, Engle sketches how Bakhtin can function as a mediating figure in the current politics of theory and interpretation, particularly with ClT.

Chaucer exemplifies one of Mikhail Bakhtin's important claims that laughter can engage and comment on human systems and can function as a form of social and intellectual critique. Engle briefly surveys Bakhtinian theory, suggests its power in…

Whether or not Chaucerian, the glosses reveal medieval responses to ClT; they emphasize the introduction of important thematic material and highlight the difference between the Clerk's restrained rhetoric and the ornate style of Petrarch's 'Seniles'…

Dante's advocacy of absolute rule as necessary for a peaceful state ("De monarchia") was opposed by other fourteenth-century Italian political theorists who saw such a state as tyrannical. Boccaccio's treatment of Griselda in "Decameron" implicitly…

The Clerk's "apparently subversive narration" draws the reader away from pathos toward "harder wisdom." ClT is a "gem of narrative irony." The Clerk manipulates reader response by exploiting "techniques of irony" and pointing out inconsistencies in…

Reading ClT in its social and historical context is reason for employing Bakhtin's theoretical framework, since Bakhtin recognizes the complexity and riches of poetic discourse as connected to the diversity and complexity of socio-ideological…

McClellan discusses the strengths of Engle's Bakhtinian analysis of ClT, particularly Engle's "very valuable insight about Griselda's dialogic re-envoicing of Walter's discourse." McClellan argues, however, that Engle gives no psychological analysis…

Morabito attempts to provide the fullest bibliography possible for the diffusion of the Griselda story throughout Europe. Beginning in 1350 with the "Decameron," the bibliography is arranged chronologically for each of twenty-one languages.

In ClT, Griselda paradoxically is able to achieve power only by submissiveness to Walter. As in LGW, Chaucer is equivocal about the power of women.

The Clerk's dismissal of Petrarch's opening "descriptio" is ironic--for the "king of rivers" would be understood by knowledgeable pilgrims to signify rhetorical powers and divine wisdom. In fact, the Clerk deploys a full range of rhetorical figures…

A previously untranslated Middle Dutch Play, "Lippijn," is possibly a source for MerT.

The divergence of critical opinion about MerT attests to Chaucer's success in prompting multiple responses to his text and in allowing no definitive reading. In the tale, "the narrator/narratee relationships are reflected in a multiplicity of…