Figg, Kristen Mossler.
New York and London: Garland, 1994.
Assesses the nature and quality of Froissart's short poems: lays, chansons royales, pastourelles, ballades, virelays, and rondeaux, providing texts and commentary. The Introduction includes a survey of scholarship about Froissart's influence on…
Ibrahim, Yasmin.
Notes and Queries 264 (2019): 510-12.
Confronts as an "orthographic paradox" Scribe B’s uses of "Þt," arguing that the "short form is not specific to the orthography of the exemplar but generic to all variants" of the word "that."
Identifies two projects in Chaucer studies--John M. Manly and Edith Rickert's early twentieth-century "Chaucer Research Project" and Ingham's own graduate research practicum, "Experiments in the Humanities Lab"--as evidence of ongoing reclamation and…
Phillips, Helen.
In Jamie C. Fumo, ed. Chaucer's "Book of the Duchess": Contexts and Interpretations (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 177-97.
Studies the rhetorical topos of exemplary lists of famous antique figures in BD, in comparison with contemporary uses of the device. Chaucer's lists are more than simply didactic or conventional, affirming "chivalric and regal identity" and thus…
Biddick, Kathleen.
Durham, N. C., and London : Duke University Press, 1998.
Explores the "contemporary consequences of the methods used to initiate medieval studies as an academic discipline in the nineteenth century," particularly how the discipline is "still intimately bound" to the "fathers" of medieval studies.
Removing attribution of the phrase "al stille and softe" from the monk and reading the phrase instead as narrative discourse eliminates ambiguity, enhances our perception of the monk's character, and extends the tale's thematic concerns.
Jager, Eric.
Donka Minkova and Theresa Tinkle, eds. Chaucer and the Challenges of Medievalism: Studies in Honor of H. A. Kelly (Frankfurt and New York : Peter Lang, 2003), pp. 253-60.
Jager draws upon commentary by Jacques Le Goff and Gerhard Dohrn-van Rossum regarding how time was measured in the late Middle Ages. He argues that ShT indicates how merchant time, space, and values triumph over those of the Church, because of an…
ShT contains within itself the opposing standards contrasted in KnT, MilT and RvT. The voice of ShT is more nearly Chaucer's own than in any of the more dramatically employed fabliaux.
Recorded at radio station KRCW, Santa Monica College, during the Tenth International Congress of the New Chaucer Society. Re-edited and digitally mastered as a CD-ROM by Troy Sales and Paul Thomas in 2006.
Ellis, Mark Spencer.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales (Harlow: Longman, 1989), pp. 51-61.
Explicates the Shipman's knife in GP, and explores how similar details unfold to characterize the Canterbury pilgrims. Details of "aggression and assertion" recur in the descriptions, as do commercial concerns.
Childs, Wendy R.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 277-96.
Discusses the ambiguity of Chaucer's Shipman, connecting ShT to estates satire and contending that Chaucer combined an "ideal craftsman and the flawed individual" in the character of the Shipman.
A comic, absurdist, satirical novel of interlocking tales told by a series of ship's passengers, loosely modeled on CT, opening with a "General Prologue" that introduces the tale-tellers and proceeds in chapters dedicated to individual tellers and…
Burnley, David.
Ian Lancashire, ed. Computer-Based Chaucer Studies (Toronto: Centre for Computing in the Humanities, University of Toronto, 1993), pp. 123-40
Burnley describes progress to date, suggesting how the textbase can illuminate the "linguistic architecture" of Chaucer and his contemporaries, e.g., Chaucer's use of final -"e", his lexicon and style, and his relation to his contemporaries.
Dor, Juliette.
Anke Bernau, Ruth Evans, and Sarah Salih, eds. Medieval Virginities (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), pp. 33-55.
Dor links the exhibitionist sheela-na-gig with the widespread Celtic mythological motif of Lady Sovereignty that has been identified with the transformation motif in WBT.
Hallissy, Margaret M.
Essays in Literature (Macomb, Illinois) 9 (1982): 127-31.
The reference to the ape in ParsT is usually understood as an allusion to the sin of pride, the ape being an apt embodiment of the pomposities of fashion. This image is, however, also congruent with the extensive imagery of poison in the tale, since…
Morgan, Mary Valentina.
Dissertation Abstracts International 41 (1980): 2126A.
Rhetoric functions to shape the content of the narrative in a particular way and is successful when it enables the reader to actively participate in constructing the fictional world. Chaucer, Fielding, and Dickens call attention to their narrative…
Cooper, Helen.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) pp. 168-84.
The Wife of Bath is interpreted variously: She is a shrew; she is the voice of feminism; she represents Eve; she stands for joy and vitality. The Wife demands female sovereignty in marriage, but this sovereignty is put into doubt by the end of both…
Kaylor, Noel Harold Jr.
Marcin Krygier and Liliana Sikorska, eds. Þe Laurer of Oure Englische Tonge. Medieval English Mirror, no. 5 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang), 2009, pp. 93-105.
The five-book structure of TC is informed both by Dante's "Divine Comedy" and by Boethius's "Consolatio," a combination that adds to the text's ambiguity. Chaucer extends Dante's three-step journey from Inferno to Heaven by adding Troilus's downward…
Lorrah, Jean.
Robert A. Collins and Howard D. Pearce, III, eds. The Scope of the Fantastic--Culture, Biography, Themes, Children's Literature: Selected Essays from the First International Conference on the Fantastic in Literature and Film. (Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 1985),: pp. 199-204.
In HF, the Eagle is a shamanistic guide; the labyrinthine House of Rumor, a shamanistic symbol.
Cañadas, Ivan.
Medieval and Early Modern English Studies 18.1 (2010): 57-79.
Chaucer's depiction of the statues of Virgil and Ovid in HF comments ironically on Virgil's political support of Augustus Caesar and on Augustan notions of authority--evidence of Chaucer's skeptical attitude toward literary and political authority.
Edwards, Robert R.
Yearbook of Comparative and General Literature 52 (2005-2006): 5-17.
Contemplates relations between Ernst Curtius' imperial understanding of medieval literature with modern theories of postcoloniality, analyzing passages from Marie de France, Dante, and Chaucer to show what they can tell us about the "cultural…
PrT and SNT mirror each other but "with a telling difference." The two stand in relation to each other as Old Testament figura to New Testament fulfillment (the shadow and substance of the title). Ironically, in this figural scheme, PrT takes the…
Green, Richard Firth.
Mediaevalia 8 (1985 for 1982): 351-58.
The Pardoner is characterized not by signs of homosexuality, but by indication of effeminacy, thought in the Middle Ages to indicate carnality. Green offers parallels in works by Gower and Lydgate.
