Using evidence of paleography, orthography, watermarks, and indications of provenance, dates booklet 1 of Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson C.86, as the second quarter of the fifteenth century; dates booklets 2-4 as early sixteenth century.
Benson, L[arry] D.
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 321-51.
Descriptive survey of major developments in Chaucer criticism and scholarship, treated historically and sub-divided into eight categories: 1) canon, 2) texts, 3) language and versification, 4) biography, 5) learning, 6) sources, 7)…
Bowen, Muriel.
New York: Farrar, Straus, and Co., 1964.
Introduces Chaucer's life and works to "those who are new readers" of the poet, evoking a sense of late-medieval life, especially London, Chaucer's court life, and international contexts. Explicates the tales and tellers of CT in thematic chapters,…
Sutton, Jonathan Wayne.
Dissertation Abstracts International 40 (1979): 2052A.
The stories in LGW represent a first attempt by Chaucer in a series of framed stories to deal with the relation between experience, authority, and ideal sentiment. Comparison with their Ovidian sources and close reading reveals that even though…
Friedman, John Block.
Chaucer Review 2.1 (1967): 8-19.
Examines animal, costume, and color imagery in RvT to show that Chaucer adapted his source by increasing and specifying such imagery, lending moral dimension to the fabliau plot and offering an exemplary illustration of the "sins of pride, wrath and…
Saito, Isamu.
Hisao Tsuru, ed. Fiction and Truth: Essays on Fourteenth-Century English Literature (Tokyo: Kirihara Shoten, 2000), pp. 61-78 (in Japanese), pp. 61-78.
Explores the double meanings of "outrider," "venerie," and "prikasour," focusing on the Monk in The General Prologue.
Noji, Kaoru.
Bulletin of Yamamura Women's Junior College 3 (1991): 245-62.
Explicates FranT, focusing on the characterization of Dorigen and how it reveals the "social compromises which women are conditioned to make." The "cracks in mutual understanding" between Dorigen and Arveragus also reveal how the values of women and…
Watanabe, Seiji.
Hisayuki Sasamoto et al., eds. Hearts to the English-American Language and Literature: Essays Presented to Emeritus Professor Sutezo Hirose in Honour of His 88th Birthday (Osaka: Osaka Kyoiku Tosho, 1999), pp. 525-43 (in Japanese).
Chaucer's statements in the "Thopas-Melibee" link, which critics have interpreted in at least three different ways, are significant only as a continuation of the Pilgrim Chaucer's pose of literary innocence. They serve to indicate a switch from…
Whittock, Trevor
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968.
Interpretive, evaluative, tale-by-tale reading of CT, focusing on how Chaucer's "mingling" of various styles, tones, genres, conventions, source materials, and world views come together as a unifying perspective that supersedes any one perspective .…
Huppé, Bernard F.
Albany: State University of New York, 1964.
Reads CT as a thematic engagement with the need for humans to pursue spiritual pilgrimage, considering allegorical and symbolic imagery and focusing on charity, "caritas," and contempt for engagement with the world ("contemptus mundi"). Explores…
Reames, Sherry L.
Modern Philology 87 (1990): 337-61.
A "Franciscan abridgment" of the Saint Cecilia legend, extant in two complete copies and numerous fragments, explains verbal details of SNT as well as omissions of episodes found in the "Legenda aurea" and Bosio's edition of "Passion S. Caeciliae."
Heffernan, Carol Falvo.
Chaucer Review 15 (1980): 37-43.
The cask figure combines religious and sexual symbols in the reference to wine and baptism and to the phallic spout. These connect to the tale with the fear of impotence and the careless oaths, suggesting that the Reeve misses the hidden religious…
Hodges, Laura F.
Chaucer Review 26 (1991): 133-46.
Places the Monk in the mainstream of medieval monastic modes of dress; his "grys," his boots, and his gold pin are not excessive in comparison to clerical fashions and practices of the period.
Von Kreisler, Nicholai.
Modern Philology 68 (1970): 62-64.
Explores Chaucer's intensification of emotion through his uses of variations on loving "with good wille, body, hert, and all," echoes of a biblical injunction.
Allen, Robert J.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 55 (1956): 393-405.
Argues that themes of the "nature of literary art" and "the material with which the literary artist deals" unify the HF: the opening of the poem focuses on how "literary artist's imagination finds expression"; the eagle articulates an intellectual…
Konas, Gary.
Thalia: Studies in Literary Humor 13 (1993): 50-55.
Argues that MilT is a "farce," using the definition of Eric Bentley in "The Life of the Drama" (1967). Academic criticism of MilT has not confronted its farcical elements.
Edwards, A. S. G.
Notes and Queries 266, no. 1 (2021): 25.
Contends that Cambridge, Pembroke College, MS 215 may be the manuscript referred to as "7574 Boethius's Consolat.of Philosophy, translated by Chaucer, 'imperfect,' 2s 6d" in the 1770 sale catalogue of London bookseller Thomas Payne, since it is…
Leighton, H. Vernon.
Notes on Contemporary Literature 42.1 (2012): 11-12.
Provides evidence that much of John Kennedy Toole's knowledge of Boethius, important to his novel "A Confederacy of Dunces," came through the Chaucer class that he took from Robert Lumiansky.
Cable, Thomas.
Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell, eds. Studies in the History of the English Language: A Millennial Perspective (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2002), pp. 177-82.
Critiques Youmans and Li's assessment of Chaucer's verse (in this same volume, pp. 153-75), urging metricists to avoid "importing phonological analyses" into theory of meter.
CT is basically religious in spite of its various secular elements. The religious connotation depends rather on Chaucer's Catholic views of life than on the outward signs. All the characters and their tales, both sacred and secular, are equally…
The heavily annotated copy of Thynne held by the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University shows what a sixteenth-century reader found of interest in Chaucer's story-telling, language, and moral vision.
