Hatton, Thomas J.
Papers on Language and Literature 7 (1971): 72-75.
Summarizes the Scriptural tradition in which spiritual fame is associated with sweet tastes and good odors, and suggests that Absolon's association with their opposites in MilT reinforces his humiliation and his concern with "fame among men."
Explains how the scene that involves Gerveys the smith (1.3772-89) is "structurally crucial" to MilT by creating an effective lull between "two bits of explosive comedy," helping to characterize Absolon, and gathering the threads of several important…
Boenig, Robert.
English Language Notes 28:1 (1990): 7-15.
Medieval convention and iconography support the view that the rebec is associated with the female voice (and thus suited to Absolon's effeminate character). It is implied that Absolon neither sings nor plays very well.
Contemplates the possible range of meanings of tragedy for Chaucer, observing how consistently he associates it with misunderstanding and how he alludes to or invokes Boethius to defer explanation or certainty. Christian notions of grace disallow…
Assesses the relations between universality and particularity as epistemological modes in MLT, exploring allegory and individuality, realism and nominalism, and generalization and specification in the characterization of Custance and how she is…
Includes a study that details the bibliographical and physical instability of two variants of the 1542 Chaucer edition--the Reynes imprint and the Bonham imprint--as they exist in the Hoe, the Chew, and the Hagen-Clark copies, paying particular…
Justman, Stewart Martin.
Dissertation Abstracts International 37 (1976): 3607A.
Theoretical "auctoritee" and "auctoritee" as misunderstood by characters in Chaucer are worlds apart. Chaucer was more interested in the violability than in the inviolability of "auctoritee." Many of the Canterbury Tales depend on cases which…
Argues that writers or works or periods can offer alternatives to modern critical theory. O'Brien's view that Chaucer presents union (in particular, love and marriage) as an overarching theme of CT encourages us to see that views other than…
Bryant, Brantley L.
Glenn D. Burger and Holly A.Crocker, eds. Medieval Affect, Feeling, and Emotion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 118-38.
Argues that RvT reworks its fabliau sources alongside then-contemporary texts about manorial control and operation such as "Walter of Henley," and traces this depiction of an "affective economy." Analysis helps to foreground how the Reeve's manorial…
Discussing fiscal metaphors for the state of the soul in the Middle English period, O'Neill suggests that Ret is Chaucer's effort to escape "the imperatives of stewardship," evoking instead "a relationship of mutual intercession with his readers."
Parker, R. H.
Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal 12.1: 92-112, 1999.
Documents Chaucer's knowledge of medieval accounting practice, explaining the principal-agent relation of the Reeve and his lord in GP and discussing debt in the description of the Merchant. Examines the role of accounting in ShT and demonstrates…
León Sendra, Antonio R.
Alfinge: Revista de Filología 8 (1997): 151-62.
Presents HF as a poetic and rhetoric reflection, as well as a reaction to the desire to have (versus the desire to be) and the belief in popular opinion (versus the belief in truth).
Forni, Kathleen
.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 23 (2016): 107-14.
Utilizes Peter Ackroyd's "'The Canterbury Tales': A Retelling" and argues that modern English prose translations of CT are valuable teaching tools for contemporary students.
Anlezark, Daniel.
Elaine Treharne and Greg Walker, with the assistance of William Green, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Medieval Literature in English (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 297-317.
Explores differences between traditional "wisdom" literature and popular lore in Old and Middle English, discussing clashes between the "worlds of book learning and popular wisdom" in CT, especially in WBP and MilT.
Nolan, Maura.
Emily Steiner and Candace Barrington, eds. The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England (New York: Cornell University Press, 2002), pp. 136.53
MLP "stages a confrontation" between the legal and the poetic that reveals the "degree of Chaucer's investment in the latter as well as his need for the former." The textual uncertainties of MLE and the Host's appropriation of legal language reflect…
Read, Lee.
Once and Future Classroom 15, no. 1 (2019): 96-106.
Explores relations between word and deed, deception and truth in CT as examples of how fiction can help high-school students learn "critical thinking skills, self-reflection, perseverance, the value and danger of duplicity, and the power of…
Friedman, William F., and Elizebeth S. Freidman.
Philological Quarterly 38 (1959): 1-20.
Introduces literary acrostics and anagrams as examples of "unkeyed" transposition ciphers, clarifying some terminology of cryptography, and applying technical analysis to invalidate Ethel Seaton's claims (1957) about "so-called double acrostic…
Crampton, Georgia R[onan].
Medium Aevum 43 (1974): 22-36.
Argues that TC "gains psychological interest and what may be called a novelistic effect" through adaptation of the "to do and to suffer" topos. Troilus is "a man of passion who suffers," Pandarus is "a man of action who contrives," and Criseyde…
Patterson, Lee.
Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2010.
Ten essays by Patterson on historical criticism, teaching medieval studies, Clanvowe, Hoccleve, Lydgate, Chaucer, Saint Francis, etc.; nine of the ten essays are reprinted. For the one essay published here for the first time that pertains to Chaucer,…
Horobin, Simon.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 23 (2009): 61-83.
Palaeographical differences between the hands of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts of CT and of Additional 35287 are more compelling than are the similarities. Horobin suggests that Pinkhurst "was not Chaucer's personal copyist" and focuses on…
A petition in the hand of Pinkhurst requesting that a permanent deputy be appointed to relieve Chaucer of his duties as controller of the wool custom establishes their connection in 1385. However, codicological evidence suggests that the poet "was no…
