Krummel, Miriamne Ara.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. "The Canterbury Tales" Revisited--21st Century Interpretations (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars, 2008), pp. 88-109.
The violent anti-Semitism of PrT attracts critical attention, but a variety of brief, positive depictions of Jews occurs elsewhere in CT, reflecting the dynamic nature of medieval attitudes.
Grennen, Joseph E.
English Language Notes 25:2 (1987): 18-24.
The potential medieval etymologizing of "envoluped" and the association of "fundament" with Christ and his Church deepen the significance of the exchange between the Host and the Pardoner.
Pettibon, Robin.
Sigma Tau Delta Review 8 (2011): 121-28.
Uses details of the Pardoner's description in the GP and his interactions with other pilgrims to support the hypothesis that Chaucer depicts him as a castrato and satirize an aspect of corruption in the medieval Church.
Sturges, Robert S.
Jeffrey Cohen and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. Becoming Male in the Middle Ages (New York and London: Garland, 1997), pp. 261-77.
Provides Freudian and Lacanian analysis of two references to veils in the GP sketch of the Pardoner and the Host's threat at the end of PardT. The Pardoner's vernicle signifies his collusion with masculinist equations of penis and word, while his…
The reception of the Pardoner can be more fully understood by examining medieval preachers' and orators' uses of examples, or stories that would "excite" an audience to behave virtuously. By "laying bare" his own selfish desires, the Pardoner elicits…
Sturges, Robert S.
College Literature 33 (2006): 52-76.
Sturges assesses the Pardoner and Kit from the Prologue to Beryn as "comic critiques" of fifteenth-century urban concerns about class and gender. Three metaphors define urban space in the narrative: cathedral, walls, and tavern.
Gardiner, Alan.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 86-95.
Assesses the rhetorical power of PardT in light of the conventions and stylistic features of medieval sermons. The Pardoner adheres to most conventions effectively, but his "delight in his own powers of persuasion and the purpose of his preaching"…
Evanoff, Alexander.
Brigham Young University Studies 4.3-4 (1962): 209-17.
Treats the Pardoner as a "foot-in-the-door salesman" who is confident in his own skills and believes that his "frankness is disarming." The "agonized sincerity" that George Lyman Kittredge perceived in lines PardT 6.916-18 is not "agonized" but…
Wilson, James H.
Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 74 (1973): 292-96.
Argues that the theme of idleness and the triads of characters in PardT and SNT encourage us to read these tales in sequence--a feature of the ordering of the fragments of CT proposed by Henry Bradshaw.
The Pardoner's motivation is understandable if we hear his prologue and tale through the ears of Harry Bailly; the Pardoner's performance is not merely one more ad hominem attack by one of the pilgrims but a questioning of the story-telling rules…
Lavezzo, Kathy.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020), pp. 166-77.
Catalogues the contours of criticism of the Pardoner in PardT, including critical praise of the tale’s alleged “superiority as a tale.” Argues that the pilgrims' revulsion toward the Pardoner is rooted in his homosexual identity, which is connected…
Horrox, Rosemary.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 443-59.
Surveys current and past scholarship on Chaucer's Pardoner. Provides historical background on the office and practices of pardoners in the late medieval Church and reviews debate over Pardoner's "sexual ambiguity."
López Santos, Antonio.
Viorica Patea, ed. Short Story Theories: A Twenty-First Century Perspective. DQR Studies in English, no. 49 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012), pp. 25-48.
Argues that Chaucer's innovations in CT "announce the ulterior evolution of the modern short story," focusing on NPT and WBPT as "unequivocal precursors" to the modern genre in their techniques of representing time, space, characters, and narrators,…
Manning, Stephen.
Journal of Narrative Technique 15 (1985): 29-42.
The traditional paratactic style of folktales and a literary style emphasizing causation and motivation relate to allegorical themes: Walter's self-centeredness and Griselda's self-effacing love. A markedly different style in the Envoy relates to…
Jenkins surveys scriptural, Latin patristic, Anglo-Saxon, and late-medieval English representations and appropriations of mysticism, arguing that "medieval indeterminacy" is in many ways epistemologically and theologically grounded in mysticism.…
Herzman, Ronald B.
Papers on Language and Literature 10 (1974): 339-52
Several features of KnT indicate that the rules and forms of chivalry can dignify conduct but at the same time threaten to overwhelm or undercut what they are intended to achieve. Similar threats of form overwhelming content are evident in the tale's…
Mosser, Daniel W.
Journal of the Early Book Society 13 (2010): 63-93.
Mosser assesses the watermarks and paper stock of the ten manuscripts attributed to the "Beryn Scribe," to establish their dates and relative chronology.
Brandom, Lisa, ed.
Siloam Springs, Ark.: Moon Lake Publishing, 2005.
Presents the personal and pedagogical diary of Dr. John Panage, including his teaching career at John Brown University. The CD records a class session of October 9, 1972, conducted by Panage, that pertains to Chaucer's GP, including the teacher's and…
Pandarus does not commit incest with Criseyde. Chaucer's contemporaries would not have allowed it, and the text itself, while titillating, does not admit of it. One discerns the narrator expressing his own involvement with the heroine, but there is…
Honeyman, Chelsea.
Kathleen A. Bishop, ed. Standing in the Shadow of the Master? Chaucerian Influences and Interpretations (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010), pp. 65-81.
Honeyman situates Palice of Honour within the development of an autonomous tradition of Scottish poetry, addressing the work as a self-aware response to HF.
Andrew, Malcolm.
New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Lists and describes Chaucer's works, major characters, sources, influences, themes, genres, and allusions; several manuscripts, editions, and scholars; and people and places in Chaucer's life. Alphabetical arrangement of some 720 entries, with a…
Beidler, Peter G.
Chaucer Review 3.4 (1969): 275-79.
Compares the plots and characters of FranT and PhyT, arguing that they share parallels that are "significant" and "quite possibly intentional." Focuses on Dorigen and Virginia.
Binski, Paul.
Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 74 (2011): 121-54.
Discusses biblical kings represented in the "camera depicta" of the Westminster Chamber, also treated in several literary works on kingship, including MkT and a short passage in ParsT. The Chamber's murals proclaim the Plantagenet kings to be "ideal…
Mills, John.
A. E. Christa Canitz and Gernot R. Wieland, eds. From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui on His 75th Birthday (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), pp. 253-64.
Examines the pageant of sins in the first book of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene as a reflection of one stage in the development from the Pauline "theological" notion of sin to a "material-psychological" understanding. Compares Spenser's depiction…
Hume, Kathryn.
Studia Neophilologica 44 (1972): 289-94.
Argues that Dorigen's lament is "not necessarily Christian," derived as it is from Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" and "spiced with reminiscences" of Ovid's "Metamorphoses." Reads the lament as "completely consonant with what Chaucer regarded…
