Akehurst, F. R. P.,and Stephanie Cain Van D'Elden, eds.
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1997.
Nine essays by various authors on representation of and attitudes toward strangers in medieval literature and society. Topics include merchants as strangers, Jews in France, Wolfram von Eschenbach's "Wolfram, Renaut de Montaubon," the German poet…
Comments on HF and TC in chapter 2, "Medieval Literature: Geoffrey Chaucer and William Langland" (pp. 47-86). Compares the three buildings that the dreamer visits in HF--the temple in the desert, the palace of Fame, and the twirling house of…
Mehl, Dieter.
Dieter Mehl. Geoffrey Chaucer: An Introduction to His Narrative Poetry (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 98-119
The reader shares Chaucer's struggle with the difficulties of retelling the classical myths. Traces the adaptation of the persona to "Heroides," and Chaucer's renderings of stories to indeterminate readings and judgments. The use of sources entails…
Paxton, Jennifer.
Chantilly, Va. The Teaching Company, 2010.
A program of thirty-six illustrated lectures on English history, including lecture 29, "Chaucer and the Rise of English," which includes comments on literary and linguistic developments, summarizes CT and GP (a series of "capsule biographies"), and…
Pei, Mario.
Philadelphia and New York: J. B. Lippencott, 1967.
A revised version of the 1952 publication, with largely revamped discussions of the "Geography of English" and "The American Language," with the latter standing alone in a new section. This revised edition expands the list of works consulted, the…
Includes a chapter entitled "Chaucer's English" (pp. 56-71) that focuses on the growth of the dominance of the East Midland dialect over other dialects of Middle English, with commentary on Chaucer's English and CT, the "Gawain"-poet, Wyclif, the…
A history of the English language that emphasizes sidelights (alphabets, reform movements, etc.) as well as major developments (Old English through Post-Modern English), with a select bibliography, an index, and recurrent attention to literature,…
Collins, David G.
Publications of the Arkansas Philological Association 7 (1981): 9-30.
As the figure of Briseida, Criseyd, Cressida moved from Benoit de Saint-Maure (ca. 1160) and Guido della Colonne (1287), through Boccaccio (1336) and Chaucer (ca. 1385), to Shakespeare (1601-1602) and Dryden (1679), her portrait becomes increasingly…
Faulkner, Peter.
Journal of William Morris Studies 16.2-3 (2005): 56-79.
Discussion of the Alcestis account in Morris's 'Earthly Paradise' and in Ted Hughes's adaptation of Euripedes's 'Alcestis,' including comments on the influence of Chaucer's LGWP on Morris.
Kang, Ji-Soo.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 14 (2006): 33-56
Medieval texts interact with their sources as memory operates, according to classical tradition, in individual cognition. Chaucer's depiction in HF of Virgil's story of Dido and Aeneas exemplifies this interaction and lets readers determine what is…
Explores the conventionality/unconventionality of plot, detail, and image in "The Floure and the Leafe," arguing that its depiction of "literary nature" presents "poetry as a shared and participatory tradition: a carefully maintained garden from…
Lovesey, Peter.
New York: Soho Crime; London: Sphere, 2014.
A detective mystery in which a stone-tablet illustration of the Wife of Bath provokes the killing of a Chaucer professor during an auction. The story includes a putative portrait of Chaucer and surmises about his life.
Comments on three "distancing-involving" devices in BD--the narrative pose, structural arrangement, and the "self-reflexive consideration of the poem's poetics." Include a brief Jungian analysis of the dream.
Treharne, Elaine.
Elaine Treharne, ed. Writing Gender and Genre in Medieval Literature: Approaches to Old and Middle English Texts (Cambridge: Brewer, 2002), pp. 93-115.
Compares the Wife of Bath's speech in WBP and Otto Jespersen's folk-linguistic stereotyping of women's language, showing that Chaucer replicates stereotypes of women's language, ultimately undermining the Wife of Bath's authority.
Zuraikat, Malek.
Jordan Journal of Modern Languages and Literature 9.1 (2017): 95-105.
Assesses female silence as resistance to masculine power in KnT, arguing that the strategy is limited. In KnT women succeed when they “express their need” for male protection, but not when they oppose or resist patriarchy. Includes an abstract in…
Bennett, Matthew.
Christopher Harper-Bill and Ruth Harvey, eds. The Ideals and Practice of Medieval Knighthood (Wolfeboro, N.H.: Boydell & Brewer, 1986), pp. 1-11.
Historical background: assesses the "social and military role of the squire" in England and northern France.
Ussery, Huling E.
Tulane Studies in English 22 (1969): 1-30.
Investigates the historical backgrounds to the "status" of Chaucer's Monk, concluding that he is "probably" Benedictine and "perhaps the prior" of a "dependent cell," with a "reasonably good income." As an "important administrator," he is "qualified…
Statistical analyses, including charted data, of variant readings of CT in (1) a given single tale in pairs of manuscripts; and (2) paired tales in single manuscripts.
Sturges, Robert S.
Tison Pugh and Marcia Smith Marzec, eds. Men and Masculinities in Chaucer's "Troilus and Criseyde" (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2008), pp. 28-42.
Sturges applies Giorgio Agamben's theory of sovereignty to TC, exploring shifting figures of sovereignty in the poem (the people, parliament, Hector) and measuring the extent to which Troilus and Criseyde live in a "state of exception" (an Agambenian…
Ridley, Florence [H.]
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 1 (1979): 3-16.
Two major trends of the past two decades have been the attempt to define the Chaucerian aesthetic and to focus sharply on the poetry itself. Recently, there is a great increase in those critics who read medieval poetry in terms of modern, clinical…
Contrasts the "star system" of contemporary critics (e.g., Derrida) with the previous paradigm of dominant but nonstellar scholars in Chaucer studies. George Lyman Kittredge, John M. Manly, and John Livingston Lowes serve as examples.
Thiébaux, Marcelle.
Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press, 1974.
Traces the varieties of the stag-hunt motif in the art and literature of the Middle Ages, including classical roots, considering hunting manuals, imagery and fictive presentations, and allegorical uses. Includes recurrent references to Chaucer's…
Contends that the "Joce"/"croce" rhyme in WBP 3.483-84 is not just a convenient rhyme but a set of sexual puns, dependent upon the association of St. Joce with a staff.
