Considers Chaucer's uses of bird imagery in TC, contrasting them at many points with other, more anthropocentric literary birds, and generally commending his bird (and animal) imagery for its rhetorical range and evocation of precise emotion.
Muscatine, Charles.
Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1957.
Describes aspects of medieval French poetry that influenced Chaucer's style, high and low, tracing the idealizing, nonrepresentational conventions of courtly romances from the early twelfth century to their epitome in Guillaume's de Lorris's portion…
Focuses on Chaucer's uses of "this" to "create narrative tone and dramatic meaning" in CT, discussing a variety of examples and exploring metrical, rhetorical, and syntactic features as they help in characterization. Includes comments on the six uses…
Owen, Charles A., Jr.
Modern Language Notes 72.3 (1957): 164-65.
Accepts that the manuscript of Equat is Chaucer's own draft, with revisions, and suggests that evidence from TC indicates that "Chaucer did not wait till he had finished his work to have parts of it copied out fair by his scribe."
Owen, Charles A., Jr.
Modern Philology 55.1 (1957): 1-5.
Explores how several of Chaucer's putative additions to or revisions of TC (posited by R. K. Root) strengthen the poem's structural and thematic symmetry.
Robinson, F. N., ed.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin; London: Oxford University Press, 1957.
Edits the complete works of Chaucer from various manuscripts, with end-of-volume explanatory notes, textual notes, and glossary. A general Introduction summarizes Chaucer's life, the canon and chronology of his works, his language and meter, and the…
Suggests that "spiced conscience" in GP (1.526) means "peppery" moral indignation; "sweet, spiced conscience" in WBP (3.435), a "bland, gentle disposition."
Slaughter, Eugene Edward.
New York: Bookman, 1957.
Classifies various kinds of love in Chaucer's works--religio-philosophical, courtly, heroic, and syncretistic--with sub-categories of virtues, vices, and sins in each. Describes the sources, characteristics, and overlapping of the classifications,…
Stavrou, C. N.
South Atlantic Quarterly 55 (1957): 454-61.
Rejects Matthew Arnold's claim that Chaucer lacked "high seriousness," commenting on the "close interrelationship between the ironist and moralist" in the older poet's works, and suggesting that, though genial in his acceptance of human variety and…
Re-arranges the sequence of the descriptions in GP to align with the order in which the pilgrims tell their tales. Includes descriptions of pilgrims who tell no tales at the end, along with the colloquies or speeches of the pilgrims in the links…
Provides detailed background for Petrarch's ekphrastic descriptions of pagan gods in his "Africa" (iii.138-264), and argues that Chaucer's related descriptions in HF (131-39) and in KnT (1.1955-66) derive from the "Libellus de deorum imaginibus"…
Williams, George G.
Modern Language Notes 72.1 (1957): 6-9.
Proposes that the facade of the thirteenth-century "Maison des Musiciens" in Reims may have inspired Chaucer's description of the exterior of Fame's palace in HF 1189-1266, hypothesizing how and when Chaucer may have seen the historical building.
Williams, George G.
Rice Institute Pamphlet 44, no. 1 (1957): 126-46.
Argues that the "chief characters" of TC "were probably modeled from real people" and, exploring alterations from Boccaccio's "Filostrato," speculates that Troilus is based on John of Gaunt, Criseyde on Katherine Swynford, and Pandarus on Chaucer…
Wright, Herbert G.
London: University of London, Athlone, 1957.
Surveys the influence of Boccaccio's Italian and Latin works on English writers and literary tradition through the nineteenth century, with extensive analyses of Chaucer's uses of the "Teseida" in KnT, "Filostrato" in TC, and "Decameron" in ClT.…
Dyson, George, composer.
London: Oxford University Press, 1958. Original composition 1930. Reprinted several times.
Includes scoring for oratorio of fifteen cantatas: GP I, GP II, Knight, Squire, Nun, Monk, Clerk of Oxenford, Guildsmen and the Merchant, Sergeant at Law and Franklin, Shipman, Physician, Wife of Bath, Parson, and L'Envoi. Performed and recorded…
The first two in a series of essays Dédéyan published on Dante in England in Les Lettres Romanes, volumes 12-15 (1958-1961). The first surveys references, allusions, and uses of Dante in TC, PF, and HF. The second continues the discussion of HF,…
Hertz, John Atlee.
Dissertation Abstracts 19.10 (1959): 2600-01.
Addresses "source relationships of geographical matters" in Chaucer. Chaucer's cosmography and its sources, and other "geographical matters," arguing that Chaucer "makes more frequent use of geography than do most of his contemporaries." Focuses on…
Aligns Chaucer's style, themes, and characterization in TC with Renaissance humanism more than with medieval conventions, genres, and rhetoric, arguing that the poem anticipates the "poetry of Shakespeare's century" in its fusing realism, epic, and…
Cooney, Barbara.
New York: Thomas Y. Crowell, 1958. Rpt. New York: HarperCollins, 1986. Reissued with new cover illustration New York: HarperTrophy, 1989.
NPT, adapted and illustrated for juvenile audience.
Baker, Donald C.
Studia Neophilologica 30 (1958): 17-26.
Demonstrates "the extremely close dove-tailing of the three major sections" of BD "and the way in which they complement and illuminate one another" through parallel incidents and atmosphere. Then examines "the imagery patterns in the poem" to show…
