Explores details, emphases, ironies, and double ironies in the GP description of the Manciple and in ManPT, characterizing him as "shrewd," "smug," and "indiscrete"--a "successful rascal" who aspires to "gentil" status, is "insecure," and overly…
Clarifies the reference to Christ catching Peter as he sailed in GP 1.696-98, focusing on the figurative meaning of "hente" and its implications regarding the Pardoner's faux relic, Peter's sail-cloth.
Explores the denotative, connotative, figurative, and ironic implications of the GP description of the Wife of Bath as one who knows "muchel of wandrynge by the weye" (1.497).
Schless, Howard.
Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 132-54.
Advocates a "contextual" approach to source study, arguing that several discussions of Dante's influence on Chaucer depend upon weak correspondences, better treated as shared tradition than direct influence. Discusses the lists of lovers in PF and…
Green, Richard Hamilton.
Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 110-33.
Summarizes theories and meanings of conventional mythographic images and allusions in medieval literature, derived from classical fables and allegorized in late-classical and medieval commentaries on such fables. Includes comments on the allusion to…
Utley, Francis Lee.
Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 83-109.
Examines critical opinions about the presence of mythic, folkloric, and ritualistic images and allusions in medieval English literature, commenting on various works and critical views of them: "Beowulf," "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," accounts of…
Kaske, R. E.
In Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 27-60.
Exemplifies the wide-ranging importance of "exegetical tradition" in explicating images and allusions in medieval literature, drawing examples from "Piers Plowman," from the Summoner's taste for garlic, onions, and leeks (GP 1.634), and from various…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Dorothy Bethurum, ed. Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature: Selected Papers from the English Institute, 1958-59 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1960), pp. 1-26.
Challenges patristic criticism for its claim that medieval literature is univocally concerned with asserting Christian "caritas" allegorically, arguing instead that poetry has a right to "say what it means and mean what it says." Illustrates the…
Bethurum, Dorothy, ed.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1960.
Six essays by various authors and a summary Introduction by the editor. For five essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Critical Approaches to Medieval Literature under Alternative Title.
Beichner, Paul E.
Richard J. Schoeck and Jerome Taylor, eds. Chaucer Criticism, Volume I: "The Canterbury Tales" (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960), pp. 117-29.
Praises the "high organic unity" of MilT, attributing it to effective characterization of the major actors: "by making him 'hende' in one sense or another, Chaucer has motivated each incident of the plot involving Nicholas; and similarly, he has…
Bayley, John.
John Bayley. The Characters of Love: A Study in the Literature of Personality (London: Constable, 1960), pp. 51-123.
Explores the characterizations in TC of Troilus, Pandarus, and, most extensively, Criseyde, explaining how Chaucer modifies their antecedents in Boccaccio's "Filostrato" by adapting the conventions and rhetoric of courtly love and creates rich…
Baugh, Albert C.
Wolfgang Iser and Hans Schabram, eds. Britannica: Festschrift für Hermann M. Flasdieck (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1960), pp. 51-61.
Reviews discussions that consider Nicole de Margival's "La Panthère d'Amous" to be a source of HF, challenging most of them for lack of specificity or because shared details are conventional. Only two brief passages evince Margival's influence and…
Baker, Donald C.
University of Mississippi Studies in English 1 (1960): 97-104.
Argues that "the role of the artist as purveyor of Fame" is the fundamental unifying theme of HF and suggests that Chaucer may have intended to resolve tensions between Dantean and Boethian views of the poet (as teacher and misleader, respectively)…
Hira, Toshinori.
Bulletin of the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Nagasaki University, Humanities 18 (1978): 59-78.
Considers the techniques of characterization in CT, with particular attention to the range of social classes and the assigning of fabliaux to particular tellers. Comments on the gender of individual tellers and on the likelihood of class and gender…
Hira, Toshinori.
In [Anonymous ed.,] Essays in English and American Literature: In Commemoration of Professor Takejiro Nakayama's Sixty-First Birthday (Tokyo: Shohakuska, 1961), pp. 31-44.
Offers historical context for and commentary on the characterizations of the pilgrims in the CT who may be considered "gentry," both those of traditional gentle birth and those on the rise as a class of new gentry.
Giordano, Roberta.
Avellino: Sinestesie, 2014. Open access ebook at https://en.calameo.com/read/005864328fc7b606cf080; accessed March 3, 2022.
Studies Chaucer's and Boccaccio's dream vision narratives and their references to dreaming in light of the history of the genre, focusing on the secularization of the genre, the rising importance of the poet as dreamer-viator, and aesthetic successes…
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…
Trigg, Stephanie.
Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature 30 (2014): 51-66.
Explores relations between the reception of Chaucer and the "study of the history of emotion," focusing on the "symbolic capital" of Samuel Taylor Coleridge's brief comments on Chaucer in "Table Talk," the "social context" in which the comments were…
Sadlek, Gregory M.
Monika Fludernik and Miriam Nandi, eds. Idleness, Indolence and Leisure in English Literature (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), pp. 17-39.
Offers background to late-medieval English literary notion of "otium" (idleness) and explores tensions between leisure and productivity in works by Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and the "Gawain" poet, particularly their representations of the morality of…
Wilkinson, Anouska.
Seventeenth Century 29 (2014): 381-402.
Discloses John Dryden's "profound interest in the rich cultural history of natural law philosophy" through close comparisons of his translations/adaptations of KnT and WBT with their Chaucerian originals, as well as through similar examinations of…
Son, Byung-Yong.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 23.1 (2015): 61-81.
Argues that Chaucer's alterations of the conventions of romance in KnT indicate the poet's political caution in giving advice to his king, advising him in the figure of Theseus to deal with political trouble by valuing Parliament. In Korean with an…
Siewers, Alfred K.
Louise Westling, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Literature and the Environment (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), pp. 31-44.
Assesses the ecopoetics of the Celtic underworld in the "Immram Brain," "Tochmarc Étaíne," and the "Mabinogi" as background to green-world concerns in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Closes with commentary on parallel concerns in the opening of…
Knoetze, Retha.
Scrutiny 2: Issues in English Studies in Southern Africa 20.2 (2015): 34-53.
Argues that WBPT provides "a serious defence of women," claiming that the Wife's ideas about "about mutuality and domestic partnership" in marriage "coincide with ideas which were developing in Chaucer’s society as a result of social and economic…
Johnston, Alexandra F.
English: The Journal of the English Association 64, no. 244 (2015): 5-26.
Explores the meanings and dating of "miracle play" / "miraculum" as descriptors for medieval drama, discussing a range of historical records and offering WBP (3.543-59) and details from MilT as evidence of fourteenth-century dramatic activities in…
