Carruthers, Mary (J.)
Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 39-44.
Comments on the rhetorical ontology of the Wife of Bath. The character is a figure of power who "continues to bother" because she is not silenced in the text, compelling readers to wish to respond.
Provides an afterword to the special issue on LGW, focusing on the theme of love's loss, and presents an argument that Prince's song "When You Were Mine" provides a foil for the women of LGW.
Johnson, Eleanor.
In Thomas A. Prendergast and Jessica Rosenfeld, eds. Chaucer and the Subversion of Form (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018), pp. 61-82.
Argues that HF, like Virginia Woolf's "To the Lighthouse" and Lyn Hejinian's "My Life," rejects a "hermeneutic of linear causality." Both Chaucer and the postmedieval authors develop the potential of the dream-vision form to advance a "literary…
Describes the history and reception of friars in France and England from their inception to c. 1400, with a chapter on late fourteenth-century English literary responses: "England: The Turbulent 14th Century, and the Writings of Chaucer, Langland and…
A heretofore overlooked list of internal evidence for Chaucer's authorship of Wom Unc concerns the source of the mirror image--the latter used by Chaucer in his Bo. Since Chaucer's lady is described in terms that smack of Boethius's Fortune, the…
Minnis, Alastair.
Medieval Translator/Traduire au Moyen Age 16 (2017): 357-76.
Maintains that, despite the critical tradition of Chaucer's self-effacing persona, there are significant assertions of his own poetic authority in ThP and HF, and perhaps even challenges to Dante. Explores details of diction and imagery ("popet,"…
Examines the fifteenth-century manuscript known as "On Husbondrie," compiled by Duke Humfrey of Gloucester, which contains information on farming, agriculture, and animal husbandry. Argues that the manuscript is not simply a practical guide for…
Chaucer's use of the interjection "Oo" in KnT (2533) is adduced as a stage in the history of "Ahoy" going back to the Anglo-French verb "oir" (to hear, listen).
McLeod, Glenda.
Glenda McLeod, Virtue and Venom: Catalogs of Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Women and Culture Series. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991), pp. 81-109.
Contrary to critical tradition, Chaucer did not necessarily abandon LGW in boredom. A reading with attention to the discrepancies between LGWP and the legends, and to their ordering and their figurative language, reveals a careful and purposeful…
Spearing, A. C.
John V. Fleming and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 2, 1986 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1987), pp. 169-77.
Examines the pervasiveness of love iconography and tradition in PF. Reviews various interpretations, political and social, and sees the "center" of the poem in the central line on the treacherous lapwing, a model for Chaucer's method with its many…
Kiser, Lisa J.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), pp. 1-14.
Assesses the depiction of female-gendered Nature in Brunetto Latini's "Il Tesoretto," Alain de Lille's "De planctu naturae," Jean de Meun's "Roman de la Rose," and Chaucer's PF. A modern ecofeminst approach to these depictions helps disclose the…
In playing on Alan's "theological epic" in HF, Chaucer projects a view of readerly interpretation as a key component of literary production, thus challenging the notions that poetry springs solely from inspiration and "that textual meaning could be…
Donabeita Fernandez, Maria Louisa.
Teresa Fanego Lema, ed. Papers from the IVth International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval Language and Literature (Santiago de Compostela: Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 1993), pp. 43-53.
A deconstructive-psychoanalytical reading of WBP that examines the gaps left in the Wife's discourse, exploring implications of rape, sexual economics, and prostitution.
Molencki, Rafał.
Studia Anglica Posnaniensia 31 (1997): 163-77.
Traces the history of the phrase "al be it" from its late-medieval "heyday" through its reduction to a single-word conjunction to its current status as a marker of "concessivity" or contradiction. Most medieval instances are cited from Chaucer.
Pratt, Robert A.
Philological Quarterly 57 (1978): 267-68.
Jankyn's theories of the dissemination of sound and odor coincide precisely with those of medieval science as presented by Albertus Magnus in his "Liber de sensu et sensato." Chaucer draws upon these widely disseminated medieval views rather than…
Ackroyd discusses Chaucer within the larger context of describing and defining the distinctive qualities of English imagination, focusing on Chaucer's themes of remembrance, science, and truth as part of the process of becoming English. Considers HF,…
Carlson, Paula J.
Mediaevalia 11 (1989, for 1985): 139-50.
In LGWP, Alceste is a more complicated character than is suggested by references to her in TC: "Alceste's truth, goodness, and faithfulness are offset in the Prologue by her obstinance, petulance, and fickleness." Critical readings ignore the…
Higgins, Anne.
Teresa Tavormina and R. F. Yeager, eds. The Endless Knot: Essays on Old and Middle English in Honor of Marie Borroff (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 113-27.
One key to recognizing the parody of hagiography in LGW is the identification of Alceste as Alice de Cestre in LGWP.
Hitchcox, Kathryn Langford.
Dissertation Abstracts International 49 (1989): 3033A.
Most scholarly treatments of Chaucer and alchemy deal with whether Chaucer believed in alchemy or whether he condemned it, but Chaucer's primary concern with alchemy was to use it as "symbolic language," especially in SNT and CYT. This salvific…
Hadbawnik, David.
Katherine W. Jager, ed. Vernacular Aesthetics in the Later Middle Ages: Politics, Performativity, and Reception from Literature to Music (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019), pp. 201-31.
Focuses on Norton and Gower, but closes with a comparison of Gower's "linking of alchemy and language" with Chaucer's in CYT and suggests that Gower combines Latin and English to "produce poetic truths" while Chaucer emphasizes "combinations of…
Linden, Stanton J.
Wayne H. Finke and Barry J. Luby, eds. A Confluence of Words: Studies in Honor of Robert Lima (Newark, Del.: Juan de la Cuesta, 2011), pp. 227-62.
Traces the influence of CYPT on the "writings of late medieval alchemical works," focusing on George Ripley's "Compound of Alchemy" and discussing a variety of motifs, from alchemists' attire and associations, to the jargon and dangers of alchemy,…
Analyzes the literary treatment of alchemy from Chaucer's CYT through works by John Donne and Ben Jonson; presents CYT as the foundational text in the "long tradition of alchemical satire."
St. John, Michael.
Carla Dente, George Ferzoco, Miriam Gill, and Marina Spunta, eds. Proteus: The Language of Metamorphosis. Studies in European Cultural Transition, no. 26. Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2005, pp. 83-92.
Argues that an "individual's knowledge of history" is presented in HF in a way that is metaphorically linked to alchemical transformation--with "tydynges" either substantially transformed or flying into uncontrollable energy. CYT shows Chaucer's…
Bentick, Eoin.
Dissertation Abstracts International DAI C81.04 (2019): n.p.
Studies the portrayals of alchemy and alchemists in fourteenth-and fifteenth-century English verse, including discussion of Chaucer's negative depiction of alchemy and its practitioners in CYPT, and John Gower's positive view in "Confessio Amantis."
