Blamires, Alcuin, ed. With Karen Pratt and C. W. Marx.
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.
Documents the details and development of medieval generalizations about women, translating from biblical, classical, patristic, Latin, and vernacular works a wide variety of antifeminist and profeminist selections, each with a brief introduction. …
In Chaucer's England, the legal term "homicide" ("deliberate infliction of death," justified or not) was distinct from "murder," which carried negative moral connotations but had no legal definition. In CT, Chaucer uses the terms precisely and…
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History ser. 3, vol. 8 (2011): 81-195.
Surveys some 5,000 wills available at the Guildhall Court of Hustings, documenting that, even though the practice was formerly prohibited, property was regularly acquired by wives in late medieval London through the deaths of their husbands. Observes…
Eleazar, Edwin.
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. 220-42.
Describes medieval medical education and explains the theory and practice of medieval physicians and surgeons as background to the GP sketch of the Physician. Some details of the sketch accord well with typical medieval medical activities, while…
Stallcup, Stephen.
Bonnie Wheeler, ed. Feminea Medievalia I: Representations of the Feminine in the Middle Ages (Cambridge: Academia Press, 1993), pp. 43-68.
Examines Anelida's complaint in relation to the genre of amatory complaint, considering the role of gender in the genre. Anelida reclaims lyric space for herself by reworking the courtly, traditionally masculine form, balancing the illogic of…
Pigg, Daniel F.
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. 263-70.
The GP sketch of the Plowman reflects the ambiguities of late-medieval attitudes toward labor. It depicts ideals of working-class spirituality and the social realities of agriculture.
Smith, Elton E.
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. 314-23.
Briefly describes the history of confession and the granting of indulgences in church tradition. Also explicates details of PardPT.
Peterson, Joyce E.
Chaucer Review 10 (1976): 326-36.
Like Vice of morality drama, the Pardoner plays a part calculated to lure his audience toward sin by making them treat wickedness as a joke they can innocently enjoy, but the Host thwarts this gibe. Thus the Pardoner, again like Vice, becomes the…
Baker, Donald C.
South Central Bulletin 21.4 (1961): 33-36.
Suggests that "traditions of witchcraft" are "the source of some of the language and . . . part of the motivation of the dispute" between the Friar and the Summoner, adducing late-medieval associations of friars and sorcery and the Summoner's diction…
Clark, Roy Peter
Annuale Mediaevale 17 (1976): 48-57.
Developing from the Pentecostal parody in the poem, Chaucer's use of the word "wit" in SumT 1789, 2291 may suggest a submerged allusion to the contemporary controversy surrounding the Wycliffite translation of the Bible.
Toole, William B. III.
South Atlantic Bulletin 35.2 (1970): 3-8.
Mentions that Browning's Fra Lippo Lippi is "perhaps the most Chaucerian of his creations," whose vitality and sensuality "may well remind us" of the Wife of Bath or Shakespeare's Falstaff.
Kohl, Stephan.
Frankfurt am Main: Akadermische Verlagsgesellschaft, 1973.
Assesses Chaucer's knowledge of medieval sciences, especially astrology and medicine, arguing that CYPT and the Physician's materials indicate that Chaucer "had no expert knowledge of these sciences." Seeks nevertheless to gauge his attitude toward…
Brown, Richard Danson.
Rachel Stenner, Tamsin Badcoe, and Gareth Griffith, eds. Rereading Chaucer and Spenser: Dan Geffrey with the New Poete (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019), pp. 113-36.
Argues that the Spenserian stanza "rebuilds Chaucerian rhyme royal" and that it "demands to be read as a form which takes its syntactic impetus more from rhyme royal than elsewhere." Examines aspects of rime riche, "interconnected" rhymes across…
ManT is central to understanding the CT. Its primary theme is a warning against the danger of intentional blindness to sin or vice. Through comparison with Machaut's "Voir dit," we see that the bird in ManT illustrates the folly of self-deception.
Rigby reads KnT as a mirror for princes, comparing it with Giles of Rome's "De regimine principum" and finding Theseus of KnT to be an ideal ruler by this standard. Theseus's personal ethics, his treatment of his household, his political and military…
Turner, Joseph
Chaucer Review 55, no. 3 (2020): 298-316.
Argues that "through the Nun's Priest's portion of Fragment VII Chaucer navigates much of the theories of characterization found in the late medieval rhetorical treatises known as the 'artes poetriae,' or the arts of poetry," and offers "a critique…
Treanor, Lucia.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 3553A, 2001
The traditions of patristic and Franciscan fourfold allegorical interpretation and radical puns are evident in Dante's letter to Can Grande and in Boccaccio, Chaucer (MkT), and Marguerite de Navarre.
Ketterling, Bernadean,
[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. 253-62.
Impressionistic comments on WBT in light of various critical concerns--genre, theme, etc.
Gambera, Disa.
Andrew Galloway and R. F. Yeager, eds. Through a Classical Eye: Transcultural and Transhistorical Visions in Medieval English, Italian, and Latin Literature in Honour of Winthrop Wetherbee (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009), pp. 316-38.
Connections among figurative wounds, literal wounds, and architectural "apertures" in Fragment 1 teach "us to notice the narrative dissonance of bodies and spaces" in CT (334).
Spicer, Paul.
In Paul Spicer. Sir George Dyson: His Life and Music (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2014), pp. 160-87.
Includes appreciative summary-description of Dyson's 1931 choral arrangement, "The Canterbury Pilgrims," with comments on its reception and relationship with GP.
Pugh, Tison.
Chaucer’s Losers, Nintendo’s Children, and Other Forays in Queer Ludonarratology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), pp. 71-98.
Approaches the tale-telling contest of CT as its "ludonarrative framework" and analyzes its "gaming elements," arguing that--complicating the win/loss binary--the work queers victory, depicts the "abundant pleasures of defeat," and reformulates "the…
Barr, Jessica.
Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2010.
In chapter 7, "Discrediting the Vision: The House of Fame" (pp. 184-207), Barr argues that HF portrays an active, unreliable visionary, one who unsuccessfully employs cognitive faculties to try to understand the contents of divinely granted vision.…
Carter, Susan Ann.
Dissertation Abstracts International 62: 1403A, 2001.
Examines loathly ladies in Irish myth, Chaucer (WBT), Gower ("Florent"), Dame Ragnell, Thomas of Erceldoune, and ballads, focusing on two loci--court and forest--and kinds of power. Also examines the political significance of the refiguration of…
Baker, Donald C.
Studies in Bibliography 39 (1986): 125-32.
William Thynne used manuscripts in addition to printed texts for his edition of SqT. Evidence suggests at least two manuscripts very similar to extant texts, a fact that reinforces Thynne's claim to being "editor" as well as "printer" of CT.
