Linkinen, Tom.
Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015.
Includes a chapter, "Sharing Laughter" (pp. 205-32), that identifies examples from late medieval art and literature where laughter constitutes "moral censorship" of same-sex desire or actions, then focuses on the Pardoner; his relation with the…
Treats the Old Man of PardT as a figure of the Wandering Jew, exploring relations between the figure and the transtemporal materiality of relics, and linking it with "other explicit and implicit references to Jews" in the depiction of the Pardoner…
da Costa, Alex.
Critical Survey 29.3 (2017): 27-47.
Reconsiders the possibility that the Pardoner is a woman passing as a man in PardT, which raises anxieties about the relation of outward appearance and inner substance. These parallel anxieties about the authenticity of relics and the validity of…
Spearing, A. C.
Digital Philology 4.1 (2015): 59-105.
Questions the "narrator theory of narration," critiquing the "concept of the internal, potentially unreliable narrator"; examining "the history of the term narrator"; studying "the theories of narration implied by scribal annotations in some medieval…
Schiff, Randy P.
Randy P. Schiff and Joseph Taylor, eds. The Politics of Ecology: Land, Life, and Law in Medieval Britain (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016), pp. 82-103.
Argues that the narrator's comments on poachers and governesses in PhyT are not digressive, but part of a broader "biopolitical" concern that "clearly condemns the parental absolutism that leads to Virginius's murder of his daughter" and aptly…
Ponce, Timothy.
Sigma Tau Delta Review 13 (2016): 25-31.
Traces the Jewish and Christian understandings of crucifixion, arguing that the image underlies the "didactic nature" of PhyT where "repeated images of injustice" are "placed in dialogue with the symbolism of the cross," reminding the reader of…
Sweeney, Michelle.
Essays in Medieval Studies 30 (2015): 165-78.
Examines how "knights are reformed" and some are "even saved by the women who tempt them" in several medieval romances, including Chretien's "Knight of the Cart"; Marie de France's "Lanval"; "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"; and FranT, where Dorigen…
Includes discussion of FranT (pp. 282–93), tabulating historical astronomical data and arguing that Chaucer "used the configuration of the Sun and Moon in December 1340 as the inspiration for the time of year [late December] and for the central plot…
McGraw, Matthew Theismann,
Dissertation Abstracts International A75.05 (2014): n.p.
Includes discussion of FranT as one among several examples of late medieval English romances that explore "noble identity and chivalric values" and use magic to place these values in starker relief than can be accomplished realistically.
Lesler, Rachel.
Sigma Tau Delta Review 13 (2016): 40-47.
Explores the alignment of "trouthe" and freedom in FranT, particularly as they relate to gendered honor, arguing that Dorigen's efforts to honor her marital "trouthe" limit her freedom.
Coats, Kaitlin.
Sigma Tau Delta Review 11 (2014): 90-99.
Considers the ambivalent role of magic in FranT, arguing that vacillation "between belief and skepticism, truth and illusion, nature and sorcery" help Chaucer to create "a divide between perception and reality" and undermine the "purported moral…
Christopher, Joe R.
Salwa Khoddam, Mark R. Hall, and Jason Fisher, eds. C. S. Lewis and the Inklings: Reflections on Faith, Imagination, and Modern Technology (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2015), pp. 121-32.
Explores why C. S. Lewis chose not to discuss FranT in his "Allegory of Love," arguing that Lewis made the decision because he wanted to attribute the "final defeat of courtly love by the romantic conception of marriage" to Edmund Spenser in his…
Bonazzi, Nicola.
Heliotropia: Forum for Boccaccio Research and Interpretation 11 (2014): 181-97.
Traces the development of the relations between illusion and courtliness from Boccaccio to James Lasdun's story in the "The Siege," including a discussion of FranT that focuses on the "demande d'amour" that concludes the Tale.
Argues that two of Chaucer's emphases in SqT modify source material from Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" and thereby undo the "binary divide between humankind and animal kinds." The "falcon's species vacillation" and Canace's "cross-species…
Wicher, Andrzej.
Text Matters: A Journal of Literature, Theory and Culture 3 (2013): 42-57.
Discusses MerT; Boccaccio's "Decameron," 7.9; and "Sir Orfeo" as "slightly different" varieties of the enchanted-tree motif, emphasizing their structural similarities, their uses of enchantment, and the relative happiness of their endings.
Argues that Proserpina's angry response to Pluto in MerT (4.2264–70) "highlights the historical relationship between Chaucer's depiction of women's speech, medieval grammatical [classroom] instruction, and theories of delivery" that derive from…
Kendrick, Laura.
S. Douglas Olson, ed. Ancient Comedy and Reception: Essays in Honor of Jeffrey Henderson (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), pp. 377-96.
Investigates the performative nature of Deschamps's "relatively faithful French translation," "Geta et Amphitrion," and proposes an occasion when it might have been performed. Contrasts Deschamps's treatment of Plautus's Latin original with those of…
Tabulates and analyzes the "gender-based" nouns used of the marital couple in MerT, compared with uses elsewhere in CT, focusing on uses of "wyf" and "housbonde" (61 versus 4 uses in MerT), and on the locution of "taking" a wife. Such usages connect…
Normandin, Shawn.
Texas Studies in Literature and Language 58 (2016): 235-55.
Reads ClT closely as a "fundamentally enigmatic parable" that, as part of the "glossing group" of the CT, focuses on interpretation and hermeneutic resistance. Chaucer alternately abbreviates and amplifies his Petrarchan source "so that interpretive…
Narinsky, Anna.
Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 14.2 (2016): 187-216.
Treats "the operations and qualities of fictional minds" in ClT, "as well as the narrative means through which they are conveyed," examining Griselda, Walter, and the "group consciousness" of the Saluzzan people in light of "modern cognitive…
Argues that Chaucer raises questions in ClT about relations between poverty and the nature of the self, gauging the extent to which Griselda's agency, selflessness, and lack of "things" are factors in Walter's "inhuman" treatment of her, and asking…
Tambling, Jeremy.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016.
In a chapter entitled "Medieval and Early Modern Devils: Names and Images" (pp. 45–74), assesses the devil-dressed-in-green of FrT and its associations with the fairies in WBT; also comments on the characters in PardT and CYT "who are already…
Analyzes the grotesque Bahktinian realism of inversions and bodily functions in medieval narratives; includes comments on the "prayer-belch" and farting in SumT and on ass-kissing and farting in MilT, compared and contrasted with analogous materials.
