Harms, Gary.
[Jay Ruud, ed.] Papers on the "Canterbury Tales": From the 1989 NEH Chaucer Institute, Northern State University, Aberdeen, South Dakota ([Aberdeen, S.D.: Northern State University, 1989), pp. 84-93.
Comments on five critical essays that pertain to RvT.
Ramsey, Roy Vance, ed., with a foreword by Henry Ansgar Kelly.
Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 2010.
A corrected reprint of Ramsey's 1994 publication (see SAC 18 [1996], no. 31), with Kelly's summary of the importance of the volume and its arguments concerning the relationships of the manuscripts (especially Hg, El, and Dd) and the editing of…
Booth, Wayne C.
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
Anatomizes irony as a literary device. Includes one example from Chaucer: details of the Monk's description (GP 1.177-82) describing it as straightforward irony that is stable, covert, and local, "firm as a rock" when "discovered by the proper…
Halford, Donna Allard.
Dissertation Abstracts International 52 (1991): 547A.
Of the five parts of classical rhetoric, "memoria" (including semiotics) has been insufficiently recognized. Chaucer's dream visions reveal interaction of memory and invention; "memoria" is also significant in Renaissance and Romantic poetry.
Oizumi, Akio,and Hiroshi Yonekura; programmed by Kunihiro Miki.
Hildesheim,
A computer-generated alphabetical concordance of rhymes in Chaucer's poetry, based on "The Riverside Chaucer," arranged by rhyme elements (e.g., "-aas," "-aat," "-abbe") within individual works. Includes for each work, in addition to the basic…
Spearing, A. C.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarenden, 1997), pp. 1-22.
Surveys critical opinion about the narrator of TC, arguing that the narrator is not best regarded as unreliable, that it is difficult to separate narrator from author, and that is is unwise or impossible to construct a single stable narratorial…
Includes ten short stories, plus a Prologue and an Epilogue, all overtly modeled in topic and tone on CT and Boccaccio's "Decameron," both works referred to in the Prologue and alluded to in titles such as "The Reeve's Sister's Tale."
Kern-Stahler, Annette.
Frankfurt am Main : Peter Lang, 2002.
Examines interior space in late medieval English architecture, manuscript illumination, and literature, focusing on homes, churches, and their imagery as they helped to shape feminine identity.
Hirsh, John C.
Modern Language Review 116 (2021): 1-14.
Attends to "evident Scotian implications" of MLT and ClT without arguing that Chaucer read or was directly influenced by the works of John Duns Scotus. Focuses on the nature of God and voluntarism in the tales, arguing that "where Custance had to…
Taylor, Ann M.
Nottingham Medieval Studies 24 (1980): 51-56.
Chaucer's presentation of a Trojan parliament unanimously resolving, despite the reasonable objections of Hector, to exchange an innocent Criseyde for a wicked Antenor (TC IV, 141-217), makes allusions to the trial of Christ before Pilate; Chaucer's…
Higuchi, Masayuki.
Michio Kawai, ed. Language and Style in English Literature: Essays in Honour of Michio Masui. The English Association of Hiroshima (Tokyo: Eihosha, 1991), pp. 266-76.
Examines Chaucer's use of descent and ascent, particularly in NPT, a successful comedy.
The phrase "as he/she that," a calque from French "com cil/cele qui," developed polysemic use in Chaucer's day. The article includes a chart of occurrences of the English phrase from ca. 1000 to Caxton, indicating Chaucer's uses by work and…
Russell, J. Stephen.
J. Stephen Russell, ed. Allegoresis: The Craft of Allegory in Medieval Literature (New York and London: Garland, 1988, for 1987), pp. 171-85.
Examines the crux in lines 1907-15 as a "seam" in Chaucer's fabrication that reveals his understanding of allegory and its appropriateness for his vision. The "disconversant dialogue" represented in these lines is "a convention of personification…
Johnson, Ian.
Sabrina Corbellini, Giovanna Murano, and Giacomo Signore, eds. Collecting, Organizing and Transmitting Knowledge: Miscellanies in Late Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 23-38.
Considers late medieval miscellanea and the "sensibility of the miscellaneous," using the concept of "heterarchy," and assessing Nicholas of Lyre's discussion of the Psalter, the :Biblically licensed diversity" of CT (evident in ParsT, Ret, and…
Brown, William H.,Jr.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 83 (1984): 492-508.
In TC, Chaucer used the tradition of Joseph of Exeter and Benoit (who had drawn on Dares) to emphasize Troilus's public career rather than his private affairs.
Hornsby, Joseph.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales" (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 116-34.
Surveys the development of the legal profession in medieval England as background to understanding how the GP sketch of the Man of Law is a "thumbnail sketch of a common lawyer," focusing on his status as a "sergeant." MLT capitalizes on the myth…
Kruger, Steven F.
Gail Ashton and Louise Sylvester, eds. Teaching Chaucer (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 30-45.
Pedagogical approach to CT combining traditional "high-stakes" formal writing and "low-stakes" informal writing, incorporated in a broader portfolio of student responses and projects.
Rogers, Cynthia A.
Notes and Queries 265 (2020): 195-98.
Reviews how, in ten manuscript witnesses, the sixty-eight stanzas of "Letter" are misordered, in four distinct ways, three of which stem from collation errors. Though "unfortunate" for the poem, the errors "provide another few data points" regarding…
Edits Jonathan Sidnam's rhyme-royal "paraphrase" of Books 1-3 of TC found in London, British Library, Additional MS 29494, with occasional bottom-of-the-page textual notes and an extensive Introduction (pp. 5-88) that is indexed, although the text is…
Moore, Stephen Gerard.
Dissertation Abstracts International 59 (1998): 2014A.
Readers of medieval allegory look for meaning but find themselves obliged by many factors to revise their interpretations. Even the literal sense proves highly complex, seeming to shift as it develops, so that readers must reconsider. Moore analyzes…
King, Sigrid.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales" (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 210-19
The GP description of the Shipman depicts him as a typical privateer, one modeled, perhaps, on the historical John Hawley and Piers Risselden. ShT reflects a cynical attitude, aimed especially at the merchant of the "Tale."
Summarizes the historical and formal stumbling blocks involved in describing a tradition of Middle English secular lyrics, with comments on Chaucer's innovations and on the evidence in his works for courtly and popular legacies.
