Zeeman, Nicolette.
Christopher Cannon and Maura Nolan, eds. Medieval Latin and Middle English Literature: Essays in Honour of Jill Mann (Cambridge: Brewer, 2011), pp. 231-51.
Chaucer, Lydgate, and Henryson recognized a song's ability to excite and articulate passionate feeling and they invoke the idea of song in their works in ways that call attention "to the formal qualities of song itself." Zeeman inquires into "the…
Twenty-eight essays by various authors selected from the Seventh International Conference on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, July 2001, Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Topics range from cook books to Lollard arguments. For…
Chmaitelli, Nancy Adelyne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1986): 1722A-1723A.
On the bases of manuscript illuminations, ivory and stone carvings, and typological windows, Chmaitelli examines Dante's pageant at the end of "Purgatorio" and Chaucer's WBPT. The former shows the degeneration of the Church, while the latter reveals…
Discrepancy between intention and outcome is a theme of CT, especially in KnT, WBT, and MerT. Pilgrim narrators produce unintended effects in listeners especially in the Host.
Fisher, Marlene, ed.
Dubuque, Iowa: Wm. C. Brown, 1969.
A textbook anthology of literary works (some excerpted) that pertain to love and marriage, from the classical period to modern America. Includes MerT in Nevill Coghill's modern translation (pp. 17-44), with a brief descriptive introduction and…
Delasanta, Rodney.
Modern Language Quarterly 31 (1970): 298-307.
Presents the Host as the figure of Judge in CT and identifies the judgment imagery in ParsP and elsewhere in CT, along with its Biblical and iconographical roots. This theme of judgment anticipates the concern with penance in ParsT.
Hanning, Robert W.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles. (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976) pp. 15-36.
The opposing artistic impulses toward imposing order on experience and toward reproducing life natualistically are both evident in Chaucer's works, especially CT. This thematic tension is apparent in the overall design, in sequences of tales, and in…
Clogan, Paul M.
Medievalia et Humanistica 12 (1984): 167-84.
In TC 2.78ff., Chaucer distinguishes between Statius's "Thebiad" and the "Roman de Thebes" to characterize Pandarus and Criseyde, to emphasize the uncle-niece relationship, and to affect tone and atmosphere. In 5.145ff., he uses Statius to develop…
Star, Sarah.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 40 (2018): 191-216.
Describes the career and works of late medieval English medical writer Henry Daniel, arguing that his views on "collaboration" between "learned and lay sources" are similar to Chaucer's, and that the two writers are also "connected through their…
Blake, N. F.
London, Caulfield East, and Baltimore, Md.: Edward Arnold, 1985.
By manuscript evidence Blake justifies his position that of CT only what appears in Hengwrt can be attributed to Chaucer. He attributes all the early manuscripts to a single copy text assembled from Chaucer's own copies after his death. For best…
Nothing in the textual tradition of the three MSS of BD supports a thesis of differing exemplars. The lines of BD that are found in Thynne's edition but not in the MSS--lines 31-96, 288,480, 886--should be considered spurious until convincingly…
Clogan, Paul (M.)
Medievalia et Humanistica 5 (1974): 183-89.
The exensive emendations in the text of "Lady" are unjustified. The poem is a series of unfinished metrical innovations, showing Chaucer experimenting and practicing his art. The search for metrical regularity has in this lyric deprived the poem of…
Strohm, Paul.
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 129-48. Also in Paul Strohm. Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 57-74.
Sted reflects the same ideology as Richard II's contemporaneous program to disenfranchise the Lords Appellate. Both manipulate the assumption that sworn-oath, liveried affinities threaten social stability. Strohm delineates the political and social…
Walker, Greg.
Anne Marie D'Arcy and Alan J. Fletcher, eds. Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour of John Scattergood (Dublin: Four Courts, 2005), pp. 375-401.
Argues that The Plowman's Tale was composed in a complex process of interpolations and revisions (evident in various metrical schemes) that reflect various political and doctrinal agendas. Walker suggests a five-stage process of composition that…
McGann, Jerome J.
New Literary History 12 (1981): 269-88.
William Blake avoided the normal publisher-author relationship. "To know the publishing options taken (and refused) by Chaucer...enables the critic to explain the often less visible, but more fundamental, social engagements which meet in and…
Comparison of manuscripts of CT enables inferential conclusions about their exemplar (which does not survive), but the complexity of these conclusions justifies reliance on the Hengwrt manuscript. Blake considers the likelihood that the manuscripts…
Windeatt, Barry.
Mary Salu, ed. Essays on Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge: Brewer, 1979), pp. 1-22.
Root's contention that his alpha, beta, and gamma classifications represent stages of Chaucer's revisions of TC is untenable. The ms evidence must be judged for itself,not in comparison with other "revision" problems such as those in Gower and…
Aita, Shuichi.
Studies in Medieval Language and Literature 19: 37-49, 2004
Aita compares textual variants of ParsT in the Selden MS with British Library MS Lansdowne 851, showing how scribes attempted to clarify meaning by altering vocabulary and syntax.
Edwards clarifies the indeterminacies of the "editorial process" by questioning several textual issues pertaining to the manuscripts of HF: uncertain authority of individual manuscript and manuscript groupings, and the implications of this…
Bordalejo, Bá́rbara.
International Journal of English Studies 5.2 (2005): 133-48
Bordalejo compares variant readings of Caxton's first and second editions of CT, explores affiliations of these variants in the manuscript tradition of the poem, and argues that the readings in the second edition are useful for understanding the…
Kane, George.
Douglas Gray and E. G. Stanley, eds. Middle English Studies Presented to Norman Davis in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 39-58.
The text of LGW in the G manuscript is different from that of other manuscripts; it is much corrupted, containing 200 unoriginal variant readings. The pattern of scribal variations makes it unlikely that this version is the result of authorial…
Bedford, Ronald.
Philippa Kelly and L. E. Semler, eds. Word and Self Estranged in English Texts, 1550-1660 (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 167-81.
Bedford explores the development of the term "irony" and interpretive issues surrounding its use, focusing on Chaucer's use of irony as reflected in Milton's interpretations of SqT.
Olson, Glending.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 6 (1984): 103-19.
In WBP the Friar promises to tell a tale or two at the expense of summoners by journey's end; the Summoner, not to be outdone, brags that he will do the same at the expense of friars before the pilgrims reach Sittingbourne, i.e., "before" journey's…
