Spolsky, Ellen.
Hebrew University Studies in Literature and the Arts 16 (1988): 51-67.
Argues that for most Chaucerian scholars historical criticism,which necessarily recognizes generic and cultural differences between our own time and the Middle Ages, is outweighed by aesthetic criticism, which is viewer-centered and oriented toward…
Outlines the expression of narratorial self-consciousness through various phrases such as "I kan nat seye" and through rhetorical usages such as "occupatio" and then analyzes its purposes in Chaucer's poems.
Strohm, Paul.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Genres, Themes, and Images in English Literature from the Fourteenth to the Fifteenth Century (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1988): pp. 90-104.
Chaucer's "multiplicity of competing voices" has encouraged modern critics to focus on his "openness." Strohm examines reader reception of Chaucer in contemporaries and followers: Clanvowe, Scogan, Lydgate, and Henryson. Clanvowe, like Chaucer,…
Tachau, Katherine H.
Leiden and New York: E. J. Brill, 1988.
Charts the "development of a complex of optical, epistemological, and semantic ideas" in fourteenth-century Oxford, London, and Paris. Cits SqT 225-35.
Tambling, Jeremy.
Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988.
Rejecting unity theories and reductive allegorization, Tambling draws on "medieval theories of reading and understanding a text" and compares them with Derridean critical theories and hermeneutics (with several references to Chaucer).
Thiebaux, Marcelle, trans. and introd.
New York and London: Garland, 1987.
Presents translations of the "literature of medieval women from the fourth to the fourteenth century in a wide variety of genres: letters, travel accounts, lyrics, and religious works. Writers include Egeria, Dhuoda, Hrotswitha, Anna Comnena, Marie…
Bay, Marjorie Caddell.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1988): 1460A.
This triad, repeated through the romances and the Marriage Group, and the unifying figure of the Host, in both GP and the links, demonstrate Chaucer's command of rhetoric and his originality.
Fisher, John H.
Medieval Perspectives 1 (1988, for 1986): 1-15.
Medieval comedy is class-based: ridicule of the stupidity of country folk. Modern comedy is psychological: ridicule of the eccentricity of city dwellers. Evolution from class-based to psychological comedy can be traced in the fabliaux and in…
Fichte, Joerg O.
Willi Erzgraber and Sabine Volk, eds. Mundlichkeit und Schriftlichkeit im englischen Mittelalter. Script Oralia, vol. 5 (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1988), pp. 121-31.
Examines both "authorial strategies guiding and determining the reception" of CT and the reception itself--especially the "free-flowing live speech" of WBP and CYP, oralizations in KnT and MLT, dialogue in MilT and FrT, and figures of sound in…
Hamaguchi, Keiko.
Doshisha Literature 33 (1988): 1-24.
Examines the women in Chaucer's fabliaux in connection with the antifeminist tradition. Hamaguchi argues that Chaucer's view of women was complex, partly affected by the antifeminist tradition yet partly sympathetic to the feminist position.
Holloway, Julia Bolton.
J. Stephen Russell, ed. Allegoresis: The Craft of Allegory in Medieval Literature (New York and London: Garland, 1988, for 1987), pp. 109-32.
Using CT, "Piers Plowman," and Dante's "Commedia," Holloway looks at traditions of pilgrims and pilgrimages in their figural connections, the role of play and playfulness as correctives for error, and the pilgrim as "pharmakoi," "scapegoat figures of…
Holt, John Douglas Gordon.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1988): 257A-258A.
Lists references both to the Vulgate and to the mass, prayers,holy office, and hymns, as noted in the Baugh, Benson, Fisher, Pratt, and Robinson editions. The Latin passage, modern English translation, and Chaucer's treatment follow.
Hussey, S. S.
Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, and Joseph S. Wittig, eds. Medieval Studies Presented to George Kane (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Wolfeboro, N.H.: D. S. Brewer, 1988): pp. 153-65.
Examines the Host as the "unifying feature of the whole pilgrimage fiction." Chaucer's "revisions" of the character and function of the Host increase his "realism" and serve as a structural device.
James, Max H.
Christian Scholars' Review 18 (1988): 118-35.
Although many of Chaucer's works are bawdy, modern readers can find contemporary ethical and moral issues resolved or discussed according to Christian values. "Christlike" faithfulness, steadfastness, and truth underlie TC, WBT, ClT, MerT, and…
Kendrick, Laura.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988.
Using "paradigms" of human behavior drawn from psychology, psychoanalysis, and anthropology, Kendrick studies play in CT. Chaucer's tales involve either "pathetic fictions that foreground individual accommodation to exterior reality or public…
Kikuchi, Shigeo.
Hiroshima Studies in English Language and Literature 32 (1987): 44-53.
Argues that a semiotic analysis of oppositions in the narrative structure of CT yields a better understanding of Chaucer's perception of the nature of reality.
This concordance, a complement to "The Structure of Chaucer's Rime Words (Tokyo, 1964), examines the relationship between "rime words" and the syntactic structure, style, and rhetoric of CT.
Sleeth, Charles R.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 89 (1988): 174-84.
The invocations of a mother's advice in WBP, PardT, and MkT, in contrast to the wisdom of "Oure Lady" invoked by the two nuns in CT, become an ambiguous source of authority not in themselves but because of the actions they appear to justify.
Taylor, Paul Beekman.
Neil Forsyth, ed. Reading Contexts. Swiss Papers in English Language and Literature, vol. 4 (Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 1988): pp. 133-46.
Parodied in MilT, exposed as "disordered and violent" in RvT, Theseus's "faire cheyne of love" (KnT 2991) is the first of several "images of mediation which cluster in interlocking fashion" throughout CT. Like other comedies of mediation, CT reveals…
Explores the relationship between fragments I and II and the "Marriage Group," reading the tales in I and II and III through V as "an ongoing discourse between Chaucer and the ultimate narrator and reader." Argues that Kittredge's concept of the…
