Whaley, Diana.
Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade and John Frankis, ed. Language Usage and Description: Studies Presented to N. E. Osselton on the Occasion of His Retirement (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1991), pp. 5-16.
The phrase "Nowelis Flood" near the end of MilT has commonly been taken as a malapropism, an instance of the carpenter's complacent ignorance. Whaley tests this assumption against the evidence of manuscript readings, meter, and literary contexts;…
Patterson, Lee.
Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991.
Chaucer approaches history as a subject and human beings as individualized subjects within history, examining the medieval view of history as degeneration from an ideal and developing the modernist, humanist view of history. In Anel, Boethianism…
Chaucer used English as a revolutionary gesture: "the vernacular destroyed the intellectual and political control of the aristocrats of church and state." Potter addresses several 14th-century English concerns: aristocratic control exercised…
Reuters, Anna Hubertine.
Frankfurt am Main Peter Lang, 1991.
Classifies some thirty English medtrical romances according to several categories of friendship or love: tales of masculinefrinedship, of male/female mutual love, of marriage, and of the advances of forward fairies, heroines, or heroes. These…
Root, Jerry.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1991): 2373A-2374A.
Following Foucault, Root examines the theory that patristic tradition and ecclesiastical practice eventually permitted confessional self-representation, as seen especially in WBT, Livre du voir dit, and Libro di buen Amor.
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.
English Language Notes 29:2 (1991): 16-20.
Carl Lindahl's hypothesis (Earnest Games, SAC 11 [1989], no. 135) of folkloric approaches to Chaucer oversimplifies and stereotypes the poet's art. Such readings, which detract from close reading, "have a potentially distorting effect."
Schmitz, Gotz.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
English translation, with a new preface, of Die Frauenklage: Studies zur englischen Verserzahlung in der englischen Literature des Spatmittelalter und der Renaissance (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1984). Investigates the relations between subject matter and…
Sturges, Robert S.
Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991.
Stressing the role of the reader in finding meaning, Sturges traces the development of a "belief in an indeterminacy of literary meaning." Alongside Neo-Platonism and the "directed vision" typical of the early Middle Ages, a "new mind set emphasized…
Torti's introduction explores the Christian and classical precedents for mirror metaphors in late-medieval English literature and surveys medieval tradition. Subsequent chapters discuss mirror imagery in Lydgate's Temple of Glass, Hoccleve's…
Examines the imagery, formulas, structure, and audience appeal of a number of Middle English sermons and sermon cycles, exploring their influence on Chaucer in Mel, ParsT, PardT, and NPT. The aural element of sermons is reflected in Chaucer's poems;…
Wolterbeek, Marc.
New York, Westport, Conn., and London: Greenwood Press, 1991.
Defines and traces the development of three genres of early medieval Latin comic literature: ridicula ("funny stories in rhythmic verse"), nugae ("trifles" of learned poets), and satyrae (vevality satires). Such tales, especially ridicula,…
Wurtele, Douglas J.
Fifteenth-Century Studies 18 (1991): 315-43.
Argues that a "climate" of social and political treachery prevailed in Chaucer's England, considers its effects on Chaucer's work, and surveys the poet's incorporation of the theme of treachery in his major poems.
Allen, Mark.
South Central Review 8 (1991): 36-49.
The imagery of falling reinforces CT's penitential motif at the end of PardT, in NPP, in ManP, and in Ret, affectively leading the reader "through art to morality."
Andrew, Malcolm, ed.
Toronto, and Buffalo, N. Y.: University of Toronto Press, 1991.
Anthologizes twenty-one previously published essays and extracts from longer discussions. The pieces were originally published between 1809 and 1987, although all but one are from the twentieth century. Topics range from dramatic criticism to…
Astell, Ann W.
Raymond-Jean Frontain and Jan Wojcik, eds. Old Testament Women in Western Literature (Conway, Ark.: UCA Press, 1991), pp. 92-107.
Gregory's Moralia in Job not only associates Job's wife with Eve as the archetypal temptress but also links her voice to the feminine speaking of poetry, with its imagistic power to move, delight, and (mis)instruct. Chaucer refashions her in CT in…
Suggests that Chaucer identifies the virtuous women in MLT, ClT, PhyT, and Mel with one of the four cardinal virtues to enhance the characteristics found in his sources.
Traces the medieval legend and cult of Saint Loy the horsesmith, especially from British sources; identifies references to the saint in GP and FrT. Two gazetteers assemble artistic and cultural evidence for the legend in Europe and the British…
Brown, Peter, and Andrew Butcher.
Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.
Examines CT within the social and political life of the later fourteenth century. Chaucer had an unusually assimilative, syncretic, and integrative imagination, but he lived at a time of disintegrating social and religious forms and values. He was…
Carroll, Virginia Schaefer.
Medieval Perspectives 3 (1988): 76-88.
MilT and RvT raise the issue of "maistrie" in relation to the economic stability of the family. Women are defined as passive, in terms that equate sexual loyalty and commercial value. Wives "quyte" (repay) their husbands through financial loss and…
Eberle, Patricia J.
M. L. Friedland, ed. Rough Justice: Essays on Crime in Literature (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), pp. 19-51.
Medieval notions of crime were broader than modern ones. Chaucer's views on justice and crime, as reflected in FrT, MLT, and ClT, are elusive. It seems he was "seriously doubtful about the value and practical application of any systematic view of…
Felch, Susan M.
Medieval Perspectives 6 (1991): 144-53.
The realist-nominalist debate underlies Chaucer's language, which, through multiple discourses and by analogy, embodies social order. By withholding his authority, Chaucer delegates responsibility for moral decisions to his readers.
Frese, Dolores Warwick.
Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 1991.
The twofold purpose of this study is "first, to demonstrate the originality and complexity of Chaucer's intertextual practice . . .; second, to advance the claims of the Ellesmere manuscript as the poetic text best reflecting Chaucer's final…
Ganim, John, M.
Poetica: An International Journal of Linguistic Literary Studies 34 (1991):88-100.
Investigates the ways CT problematizes the medium of speech and, through its self-conscious narrators, comments on the changing value of spoken language. Though Chaucer preserves and allows resistance to the tyrannies of high literary form, his…
Goodwin, Amy Wright.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1991): 533A.
Analyzes how GP and the dramatic links in CT affect reader interest and narrative. Suggests that the Clerk misreads allegory for mimesis and critiques Petrachan poetics and the narrowness of the moral, exemplary tales.
