Lucas, Peter J.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 33 (1991): 19-29.
Analyzes ambiguity in the setting of FranT, suggesting that a distinction between the information given and what is revealed by it depends on the response of the audience. Textual clues open an ironic gap between the poet and his narrator.
Noll, Dolores L.
Chaucer Review 17 (1982): 159-62.
Allusions to serpent and sting intensify the irony of the Pardoner's posture as preacher. The imagery is further complicated and intensified by the natural association readers make with the Pauline passage on the sting of death.
In CT, Chaucer "counters authority with the fracturing and multiple perspective of comedy," most clearly seen in NPT, which best represents the structure of the CT as a whole. Chaucer's multiplicity is ultimately, however, like Boethius's leap "to…
Musson, Anthony.
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. 206-26.
Portrays the "moral, social, political, and professional" worlds of medieval lawyers, often found in estates satires, enriching understanding of Chaucer's Sergeant of Law in GP.
Proposes a new sequence for the parts of CT, one in which the tales of the Physician and Pardoner follow that of the Man of Law and in turn are followed by those of the Shipman, Prioress, etc. In light of this sequence and its arrangement of…
PhyT is concerned with texts, whether "historical" or the "fable." Virginia is compared to a text--a "book"--and the concerns with governance and authority in the Tale pertain to interpretation.
Despite the usual closure of the dream-vision form (as in Pearl), some dream visions are open-ended or exhibit surprising or disappointing closure. HF, usually considered unfinished, exhibits features of closure.
The word "directe" has been taken to mean "to dedicate," and critics have assumed that the poem was dedicated to Gower. But "ye loveres," Gower and Strode, are sent the poem for correction, especially in morals and philosophy. The word "directe"…
Ikegami, Yoshihiko
Key-Word Studies in "Beowulf" and Chaucer 1 (1980): 67-104.
The article, which follows essentially the same theoretical line of approach as the same author's "Semological Structure of English" (Tokyo, 1970; originally a Yale dissertation), presents a description of the meaning of verbs of motion in Old and…
Krummel, Miriamne Ara.
Literature Compass 1 (2003-04): 1-14.
Surveys critical commentary on the absence and presence of Jews in late medieval English society and literature,gauging the state of discussions of works such as PrT,the Croxton Play of the Sacrament,and others.
Donnelly, Colleen Elaine.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1987): 4381A-4382A.
Chaucer's method of creating romance (unlike the techniques of Milton, Hawthorne, and Faulkner) requires scrutiny of the placement of formulaic phrases to reveal meaning and theme.
Pigg, Daniel F.
Jean E. Jost, ed. Chaucer's Humor: Critical Essays (New York and London: Garland, 1994), pp. 321-48.
Pigg traces a pattern in the Ellesmere order of CT, beginning with how the narrators circumscribe the religious comedy of MLT and ClT by keeping their plots earthbound. PhyT is a "transitional ... refiguring" that leads to the more spiritual…
Paxson, James J.
James J. Paxson and Cynthia A. Gravlee, eds. Desiring Discourse: The Literature of Love, Ovid Through Chaucer (Selinsgrove, Penn.: Susquehanna University Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1998), pp. 206-26.
Reads TC as "an autocritique of the sophisticated rhetorical devices used by medieval poets to create the literature of desire." Examines several instances of apostrophe, pragmapoeia, ethopoeia, and sermocinatio in the poem, exploring relations…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
English and English Teaching, Vol. 2: A Festschrift in Honour of Kiichiro Nakatani. Hiroshima: Department of English Faculty of School Education, Hiroshima University, 1997, pp. 23-42.
Discusses the semantic unity of shal / sholde in TC, focusing on degrees of subjectivity on the part of the speaker.
Green, Donald C.
Modern Philology 84 (1986): 18-23.
Distinguishes among "maistrie," "soveraynetee," "servage," "servyse," "governance," and "assente" in CT. These words thematically link WBT and ClT: individually defined relationships are signaled by "maistrie" and "servyse"; role-defined…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Hideshi Ohno, Kazuho Mizuno, and Osamu Imabayashi, eds. The Pleasure of English Language and Literature: A Festschrift for Akiyuki Jimura (Hiroshima: Keisuisha, 2018), pp. 241-60.
Analyzes Chaucer's presentation of speech and thought in TC and seeks to show the way the "conceptual blending" of different subjects occurs in it.
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Bulletin of University Education Center, Fukuyama University Studies in Higher Education 5 (2019): 3-22.
Analyzes the semantics of the use of the present tense in the narrative parts of TC using V.176-96 as an example and applying the "four-layered semantic structures (referential, textual, expressive and metalinguistic)" proposed by Fleischman (1990).…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Toshio Saito, Junsaku Nakamura, and Shunji Yamazaki, eds. English Corpus Linguistics in Japan. Language and Computers: Studies in Practical Linguistics, no. 38 (Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2002), pp. 235-47.
Explores the "quantifiability" of the elements that condition the semantics of moot/moste and shal/sholde modals. Although conditions deriving from proposition and clause structure are quantifiable and machine-readable, pragmatic conditions require…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
Yukio Oba et al., eds. Currents in Linguistic Research: A Festschrift for Professor Kazuyuki Yamamoto on the Occasion of His Retirement from Yamaguchi University. Tokyo: Kaitakusha, 1999, pp. 231-46.
Discusses external causals, one of the pragmatic features in the use of Chaucer's moot / moste. Clarifies the fusion of fate, divine intervention, and the speaker's subjective factors.
Morgan, Gerald.
Modern Language Review 71 (1976): 241-55.
Modern psychological exploration of individual consciousness is not applicable to medieval literature which, as in "Cliges" and the "Romaunt of the Rose," assumes unity between action and intention. Hence the issue of the closing of PardT is not,…
Facing-page poetic translation of GP, KnT, MilPT, RvPT, CkPT, WBPT, ClPT, MerPT, FranPT, PardPT, PrPT, Thop and prologues to Thop and Mel, NPPT, ParsP, and Ret. Follows Chaucer's verse forms. Includes biographical and cultural backgrounds (pp.…
Allen, Rosamund S.
Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen, eds. Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry. King's College London Medieval Studies, no. 5 (London: King's College Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1991), pp. 122-42.
Reads Seige as an attempt to provide CT with "a sense of closure and completeness" by supplying the tale of Thebes to balance the plot, style, and themes of KnT. The poem capitalizes on the popularity of CT and acknowledges Chaucer's greatness.
Justman considers the transmission of Eastern narratives (especially Petrus Alphonsi's "Disciplina Clerica," but also "Thousand and One Nights" narratives) to Western Europe--particularly to Boccaccio and Chaucer--exploring how the "category of…
Baird, Joseph L.
Chaucer Review 2.3 (1968): 188-90.
Identifies the legal denotations of the word "secte" (suit at law) and argues that the Clerk's use of it when referring to the Wife of Bath (4.1170-71) indicates that his Tale is a reply to hers.
