Taylor, Davis.
Speculum 51 (1976): 69-90. Reprinted in Stephen Barney, ed. Chaucer's Troilus: Essays In Criticism (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1980), pp. 231-56.
Lyric conventions, syntax, and verb usage in Troilus's style show his role as traditional lyric hero. As a static but vigorous representative of conventional moral virtues, he characterizes values Chaucer tests, ironizes, and finally praises as…
Storm, Melvin.
English Language Notes 14 (1977): 172-74.
Various medieval sources establish the image of the tiger as a figure of hypocrisy. Chaucer's description of the tercelet as a "tiger, full of doublenesse" (5.543) is no accident.
Lewis, Lucy.
John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong, eds. Printing Places: Locations of Book Production & Distribution Since 1500 (Newcastle, Del.: Oak Knoll; London: British Library, 2005), pp. 1-14.
Lewis assesses challenges confronted by printer Thomas Richard when, in 1525, he produced John Walton's translation of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," especially those challenges that resulted from interspersing intermittent commentary in a…
Bertolet, Craig E.
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. 167-88.
Compares ShT and FranT as works that assign different values to "the transaction for a woman’s body . . . couched in the tale-teller's understanding of his own economic system." ShT reflects the coin-based economy of the "Atlantic maritime commercial…
Rogers, H. L.
G. A. Wilkes and A. P. Riemer, eds. Studies in Chaucer (Sydney: University of Sydney, 1981), pp. 3-27.
An explication of the MerT and FranT using the Hengwrt manuscript order, the article surveys some critical interpretations of the two tales, concerning the clerical or secular nature of the tellers.
Severs, J. Burke.
Companion to Chaucer Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979): pp. 271-95.
Chaucer's romances include KnT, SqT, WBT, FranT, and Th; but "Chaucer's realism, humor, and interest in character all tend to transform his romances into something beyond what one usually finds in the genre."
Pratt, Robert A., ed.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.
Edits CT, with marginal glosses, bottom-of-page notes, and an additional "Basic Glossary." The text is based on Robinson's 1957 edition, with variants explained and listed in a "Comment on the Text" (pp. 561-79). The Introduction (pp. ix-xxxiv)…
Read, Michael.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 55-64.
Explores the psychological realism of the conflict at the end of PardT between the Host, a "bully" who rejects the power of language, and the Pardoner, a "conscious artist" who has attacked the Host's "coarse masculinity." Ironically, the Host's…
Friend, Albert C.
Medievalia et Humanistica 1 (1970): 57-65.
Late twelfth-century English stories by Alexander Nequam and Berechiah haNakdan provide context for the caged bird episode in SqT, indicating that Chaucer may have intended to complete the episode with the falcon reuniting with her own kind. Also…
Recorded digitally at Boulder, Colorado, in association with the 13th International Congress of the New Chaucer Society. Edited and mastered by Troy Sales and Paul Thomas.
Vázquez González, Nila.
Ph.D. dissertation. University of Santiago de Compostela, 2006.
Edition of the "Tale of Gamelyn," including a description of manuscripts, illustrations from diplomatic transcriptions of ten manuscripts, a critical edition with collated variants, and critical apparatus. Also includes a Modern English translation…
Shippey, T. A.
Ad Putter and Jane Gilbert, eds. The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance. Longman Medieval and Renaissance Library. (New York: Longman, 2000), pp. 78-96.
Attributes the popularity of "Gamelyn," in part, to its association with CT, arguing that Chaucer intended to adapt "Gamelyn" for telling by the Knight's Yeoman, even though Chaucer "did not like yeomen very much." Also assesses the tension between…
Contrasts Gower's story of Ceyx and Alcyone with versions by Ovid and Chaucer (in BD). Gower imagined a new dramatic possibility in the character of Alcyone and thereby subverted "monolithic notions of culture and gender" (503).
Meale, Carol M.
Geoffrey Lester, ed. Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honour of Norman Blake (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 118-38
Analyzes evidence of readership found in fifteenth-century copies of LGW, including its placement in anthologies, poems with which it is associated, and evidence of female names in LGW manuscripts. Infrequently excerpted, the poem was seldom mined…
Harty, Kevin J.
American Benedictine Review 34 (1983): 361-71.
From KnT to CkT, tales degenerate from magnificence to grossness. MLT attempts to establish decorum but backfires on the teller, who "courts the sin of presumption."
Burnley, David.
Irma Taavitsainen and Andreas H. Jucker, eds. Diachronic Perspectives on Address Term Systems. Pragmatics & Beyond New Series, no. 107 (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 2003), pp. 27-45.
Describes the "difficulties faced by scholars in unraveling" the complications involved in the usage and nuances of meaning of late Middle English you /thou pronouns, with particular attention to Chaucer's works, Eustace Deschamps' address to…
O'Neal, Cothburn M.
Martin Shockley, ed. Proceedings of [the] Conference of College Teachers of English of Texas, no. 32 (Lubbock: Texas Technical College, 1967), pp. 18-23.
Explores the generally negative connotations and nuances of the lexicon, details, and imagery of the Monk's description in GP, providing context from medieval literature and exegetical commentary to argue that the Monk is "corrupt, gluttonous,…
Wentersdorf, Karl P.
Clifford Davidson, ed. Word, Picture, and Spectacle: Papers by Karl P. Wentersdorf, Roger Ellis, Clifford Davidson, and R. W. Hanning. Early Drama, Art, and Music Monograph Series 5 (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Medieval Institute Publications, 1984), pp. 1-19.
Not mere "doodles" but symbolic images, scatalogical images in the margins of medieval manuscripts derive ultimately from biblical and religious writing. Verbal scatalogy in MilT and SumT is serious, moralistic, not vicious.
Critics of "The Floure and the Leafe" respond less to the text than to its critical history. Detraction by W. W. Skeat and other members of the Chaucer Society is compensation for earlier praise of the work by Dryden, Pope, Keats, and others.
Murata, Yazaburo.
In Kazuo Araki, and others, eds. Studies in English Grammar and Linguistics: A Miscellany in Honour of Takanobu Otsuka (Tokyo: Kenkyushi, 1958), pp. 289-99.
Describes Chaucer's "power and limitations as a stylist," offering examples, and tabulating more extensively examples of oaths and swearing in Chaucer's works, including strong and weak oaths, wishes, and imprecations.
