Shows that the GP establishes a comic-satirical tone for the CT that is "indirect . . . shifting and multiple." In this light, ParsT "represents a way of seeing the world," but not the only one; the standard posed by the Parson is not an absolute…
CT is filled with proverbs, maxims, and witticisms included consciously by Chaucer for entertainment combined with instruction. The sapiential material in CT falls into four thematic groups: time, transcience and death; god, destiny and fortune;…
Discusses references to five saints in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and comments briefly on Chaucer's uses of four of them (Peter, John, Julian, and Mary).
Allusions to several Christian saints in HF show that, contrary to the arbitrariness of Fame's judgment, the "natural consequence of meritorious action" is "recognition both worldly and other-worldly."
Dunn, E. Catherine.
American Benedictine Review 27 (1976): 357-78.
Defines the saint's life as a "poetic genre of fiction with a basic fidelity to the mysteries of grace and Providential care," a product of Latin rhetorical tradition modified by generations of Christian figural thinking. As reflected in the "Acta…
Transcription and English translation of the Latin exemplum discussed in Nicholson's earlier article on the FrT analogues (English Language Notes 17 (1979): 93-98).
Purdon, Liam O., and Cindy L. Vitto, eds.
Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1994.
Twelve essays examine the decline of the feudal ideal, an ideal that may never have existed in practice. Exploring interactions between literature and sociohistorical data, contributors outline various gaps between feudal ideals and realities: …
Neubauer, Hans-Joachim.
Braun, Christian, trans..
London: Free Association Books, 1999.
Follows the history of rumor as a cultural force in art, literature, and politics in classical tradition and in the modern western world, as it relates to renown, fame, gossip, hearsay, news, contagious surmise, speculation, and propaganda. Includes…
Challenges Morris Halle and Samuel J. Keyser's theory of Chaucer's iambic pentameter (particularly their application of the notion of "stress-maximum"), and poses a theoretical distinction between "norms" and "rules" in discussing prosodic practice,…
Gilbert, Dorothy.
Dissertation Abstracts International 37 (1976): 288A.
Chaucer's line shows tension between accentual-syllabic meter and strong stress. The result is a complex prosody full of variety. Chaucer's prosody should be studied in texts that use the virgule because modern punctuation blurs the prosody.
The rhyme royal stanza takes its name from the fact that it was used in ballade contests in the fourteenth century to address real or imaginary royalty. Chaucer employed the stanza first for royal address in PF and TC. In MLT he used it to create a…
Pearsall, Derek.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 463-77.
Pearsall considers a range of medieval visual and verbal landscapes, exploring how they signify "something other" and enable the observer of the landscape to rove freely and "compose its meaning as if afresh." The essay refers to BD, PF, LGW, the…
Sáez-Hidalgo, Ana, Brian Gastle, and R. F. Yeager, eds.
New York: Routledge, 2017.
Includes twenty-six essays by various authors that entail "comprehensive discussions of recent and current scholarship" on Gower and his works, arranged in three broad categories: working theories, material culture, and polyvocality. Each essay…
An anthology of "English poets' commentary on their English peers," with a "selection of the poets' more general reflections on their art." The section on Chaucer (pp. 72-82) includes comments from Hoccleve through Wordsworth, and the volume's…
An adaptation of NPT, "retold and illustrated" by Helen Ward for young children. Appends comments on the plot and explanatory notes that focus on the barnyard breeds depicted in the illustrations.
Dahlberg, Charles, ed.
Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 1999.
Edition of Rom based on Glasgow University Library MS Hunter 409 and the 1532 printed edition of William Thynne, with collated variants from subsequent editions through The Riverside Chaucer and notes variorum through 1990. Emendations are guided by…
Brunskill, Ann, illus.
London: World's End Press, 1974.
Item not seen; reported in WorldCat with the following note: "Contains Fragment A of the Middle English Romaunt of the Rose, sometimes (as here) attributed to Chaucer, with the parallel section (verses 1-1670) of its Old French ancestor . . . . 'A…
Lay, Ethna Dempsey.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1998): 4667A.
Using the electronic Glossarial Database of Middle English, Lay analyzes Chaucer's habits of combining native English vocabulary with Romance vocabulary in doublets and puns, a reflection of his bilingual imagination.
Coley, John Smartt.
Dissertation Abstracts International 26.08 (1966): 4625-26A.
Translates a potion of the "Roman de Thebes" into modern English; the Introduction to the translation includes discussion of Chaucer's uses of the work in KnT
Huot, Sylvia.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
Examines manuscripts of "Roman de la Rose" to discover how medieval readers interpreted it. Explores glosses and other internal commentary as well as illustrations and various versions of the work. Issues explored in depth include the erotic and…
Boucher, Holly Wallace.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1987): 921A.
These two post-Ockham works treat absolute truth as unknowable and explore language and its manipulation, especially in their different renderings of the Griselda story.
Perkins, Nicholas, and Alison Wiggins.
Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2012.
Examines the use of desire in stories of romances in Dante, Chaucer, and Malory. Traces development of the medieval romance genre in later periods, including novels of J. R. R. Tolkien and J. K. Rowling, and films, such as "Star Wars" and "Monty…
Margherita Gayle.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.
Six essays that treat literature as "another kind of history" by "problematizing the question of history both within and around medieval literature." Challenging historicist approaches, the essasy are deconstructive, psychoanalytic, and feminist,…
