Tambling, Jeremy.
London and New York: Routledge, 2010.
Examines allegory as a mode in English and American literature (and art), surveying its roots in classical and medieval traditions, exploring its relations with other literary devices and forms (irony, personification, apostrophe, prosopopoeia,…
Gellrich, Jesse M.
Germanic Review 77: 146-59, 2002.
Modern notions of the "key role of materiality in allegory," as theorized by Walter Benjamin and echoed by Paul de Man, have clear precedents in patristic and medieval commentaries on allegory and supposition, although the sense of "material" is more…
Defines the medieval literary modes/genres of personification allegory and mirror, using them to analyze various works of Middle English literature and their models in Latin, French, and Italian. Treats HF as a personification allegory; aspects of…
Tambling, Jeremy.
Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004.
Tambling reads several late medieval and Renaissance texts in relation to Walter Benjamin's notions of melancholy and Freudian concepts of death, as well as allegory and history. Individual chapters treat "Piers Plowman," Hoccleve's "Complaint and…
Miller, Robert P.
Beryl Rowland, ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), pp. 326-51.
The much-disputed allegorical criticism of CT is a fairly recent phenomenon. Chaucer's allegories maybe either "formal" (e.g., ClT) or "informal" (e.g., KnT)--both styles deriving from "a reservoir of established menaings shared by the poet and his…
Quilligan, Maureen.
Morton W. Bloomfield, ed. Allegory, Myth, and Symbol. Harvard English Studies, no. 9 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 163-83.
Distinguishing the process of allegory from the nature of allegoresis, Chaucer deallegorizes his sources. He addresses not a reader but an "auditor," who is not asked to judge his own interpretive procedures. Jean de Meun defends the use of slang…
Anderson, Judith H.
Zachary Lesser and Benedict S. Robinson, eds. Textual Conversations in the Renaissance: Ethics, Authors, Technologies (Aldershot, Hampshire; and Burlington, Ver.: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 71-89.
Explores intertextual relations between Spenser's Faerie Queene and Chaucer's PardPT and FranT. Archimago and Despair from Spenser's Book 1 gain dimension in light of the Pardoner and the Old Man of PardT; in Book 3, Spenser explores the "emotional…
Explores the interplay between allegory as a "strategy for interpreting texts" and allegory as a "method for composing" in classical and medieval literature. Touches on HF, MerT, and PF.
Mason, Tom.
In Michael Edson, ed. Annotation in Eighteenth-Century Poetry (Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 2017), pp. 129–50.
Describes a kind of annotation used by eighteenth-century editors that links an edited poet to literary tradition by reference to or quotation from other poets. Focuses on the practice in Speght's 1687 edition of Chaucer; Dryden's Fables (1700); and…
Brown, Emerson Lee, Jr.
Dissertation Abstracts International 28.10 (1968): 4118A.
Investigates the "plurality of meaning" in a number of Biblical and classical allusions in MerT, comments on sources, and discusses the setting of the Tale and the names of its characters, arguing that the cultural context of the Tale is a major…
Waggoner, George R.
Notes and Queries 201 (1956): 462.
Locates three references to Chaucer in Stow's 1570 "Summarye," not found in the 1565 edition and not included in Caroline Spurgeon compendium of Chaucer's allusions. Points out that death dates given for Chaucer vary in two of the reference (1400 and…
Boenig, Robert.
Notes and Queries 244: 321-26, 1999.
Discusses Chaucer's use of "Alma Redemptoris" rather than "Gaude Maria" in PrT, arguing that the choice may have influenced his characterization of the clergeon. The option was available in Chaucer's sources.
Similarities abound in the writings of Chaucer and Joyce, e.g., concern with English as an appropriate language for literature and with authorial presence in fiction. Most importantly, Chaucer and Joyce, both immersed in the Catholic ethos, share a…
Donavin, Georgiana.
Scott D. Troyan, ed. Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 25-39.
ABC is intended not for private prayer but as a pedagogical "English-teaching" text. The poem's manuscript illuminations, visual imagery, and rosary-like structure reinforce the general medieval association of the Virgin with the education of youth…
Williams, Franklin B., Jr.
English Literary Renaissance 6 (1985): 351-68.
An edition of the fragments that survive from Thomas Alsop's Tudor adaptation of MLT, "The Breuyate and shorte Tragycall hystorie of the fayre Custance, the Emperours daughter of Rome." About 30 percent of the adaptation survives in British Library…
Treats WBP, hermeneutics, and Chaucer and Wycliffism. Investigating whether and why Chaucer might have given Wycliffite traits to the Wife of Bath, Martin argues that he did in order to explore both faults and virtues of literal-minded…
Purdon, Liam O.
Parentheses: Papers in Medieval Studies 1 (1999): 187-204. [Web publication.]
Considers theories that Alison conspired with Jankyn to murder her fourth husband, assessing matters of criminal intent and liability, and exploring ways that WBP situates the reader as a victim of the Wife's special pleading.
Kellogg, Alfred L.
Alfred L. Kellogg. Chaucer, Langland, Arthur: Essays in Middle English Literature (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1972), pp. 59-107.
Examines the occasion, structure, and humor of BD, its possible reflections of Chaucer's marriage to Philippa, and the legacy of its heart imagery that derives from Platonic and Arabic thought (Averroes and Ibn Hazm) and the courtly love tradition. …
Item not seen. WorldCat records indicate that the volume is intended for a juvenile audience and includes narrative accounts of the lives and works of Chaucer, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Leo Tolstoy, and Rudyard Kipling. The Chaucer…
Baynes-Ross, Felisa.
Kristina Mendicino, ed. Playing False: Representations of Betrayal (New York: Peter Lang, 2013), pp. 313-36.
Examines the "conditions that allow for [Criseyde's] betrayal" in TC, including the "structure of courtship" which establishes the duplicity of the relationship between the lovers, the deceptions upon which it is based, and the fundamental…
Nelson, Ingrid.
ELH: English Literary History 88 (2021): 551-78.
Argues that, rooted in "medieval theory of mediated perception" and concerned with perceptual distortion, HF shows how a "sensing body" participates in an "ambient mediascape"--one that includes environmental media (air, water, architecture) as well…
Yasui, Michael.
Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities (Tokyo Metropolitan University) 479 (2013): 1-10.
Discusses how origins of the meaning of TC are "decentred" on different levels. Argues that complicated use of external sources obfuscates the meaning of the text and that the subject-positions of Pandarus and the narrator create a "disruption" in…
Patterson, Lee.
Speculum 54 (1979): 297-330. Reprinted as Chap. 4 in Lee Patterson. Negotiating the Past (Madison and London: University of Wisconsin Press, 1987), pp. 115-53.
Literary meaning is not an "atemporal constant but a historical variable." The appropriate challenge to exegetical criticism comes through a history of reading. Examines TC in light of the medieval understandings of love articulated as the "seven…
Nakao, Yoshiyuki.
English and English-American Literature (Yamaguchi University) 26 (1991): 55-75.
Explores Chaucer's ambiguities in light of rhetorical tradition, the state of the language, Chaucer's poetic self-consciousness, and the textual history of his works. (In Japanese)
