Taylor, Paul Beekman.
English Studies 64 (1983): 401-409.
The Parson offers religious and philosophical consolation by showing how sundered thought, word, and deed are conjoined in the salvific acts of contrition, confession, and satisfaction.
Lepine, David.
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. 334-51.
Provides historical background about the English Church in the late fourteenth century, and on several religious controversies, including the "culture of anticlerical complaint and the challenge of Wyclif and the Lollards," that contributed to…
Levitan, Alan.
University of Toronto Quarterly 40 (1971): 236-46.
Shows that Friar John of SumT is an "exemplar" of "reversals of apostolic qualities," essential to the anti-fraternalism of the Tale, rooted in the "Roman de la Rose." The description of the division of the fart that concludes the Tale adds to this…
Gellrich, Jesse M.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 73 (1974): 176-88.
Describes the "pervasive tone" of MilT as "comic irony" and explores how musical imagery contributes to this tone, especially through incongruous juxtapositions of profundity and profanity. Includes discussion of Nicholas's Annunciation song…
Chaucer's uses of parliamentary terminology throughout KnT, but especially in Saturn's counsel to Venus and in Theseus's "First Mover" speech, establish a parallel between divine and human realms, revealing "the abuse of power and authority" in…
Yamanaka, Toshio.
University of Saga Studies in English 20 (1992): 69-129.
The summary of "Somnium Scipionis" is closely linked with the dream, distinguishing the past narrator, who reads the "somnium" and dreams the dream, from the present narrator, who summarizes the "Somnium" and his dream. (In Japanese.)
Richmond, E. B., trans.
London : Hesperus Poetry, 2004.
Facing-page translation of PF and nineteen short poems and lyrics by Chaucer, with introduction and brief notes. The translations maintain Chaucer's metrical forms and, where possible, original rhymes, while normalizing spelling and modernizing…
McCall, John P., and George Rudisill, Jr.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 58 (1959): 276-88.
Argues that Chaucer's personal experience of the 1386 Parliament influenced his depiction of parliamentary activity in TC (4.141ff.), detailing events of the historical parliament, Chaucer's likely feelings about it, and changes and additions Chaucer…
Brewer, D. R., ed.
London and Edinburgh: Nelson, 1960.
An edition of PF based on University of Cambridge Library MS Gg.4.27, with end-of-text textual and explanatory notes, modern punctuation, and original spelling. The Introduction (pp. 1-68) presents the poem as the "best of Chaucer's shorter poems,"…
Bennett, J. A. W.
Oxford: Clarendon, 1957. 2d ed. 1965.
Reads PF as a thematic exploration of Christian love infused with Neoplatonic thought and imagery, and influenced by Cicero, Macrobius, Alain de Lille, John de Meun, and Dante. Demonstrates the poem's tight verbal structure and its allusiveness,…
Raymo, R. R.
Modern Language Notes 71.3 (1956): 159-60.
Identifies lines 1-4 of the "Speculum Stultorum" of Nigel de Longchamps as a source for the bird cacophony in PF 309-15, observing that Chaucer's "personal familiarity" with the "Speculum" is evident in the reference to "Daun Burnel the Asse" at NPT…
Kuntz, Robert Allen.
Dissertation Abstracts International 42 (1981): 1141A.
Critical views of the Pardoner range from total condemnation to interpretations of him as Christlike, with current views seeing him as evil. Interpretations can be immediate, direct, and simple, or complicated sociopsychologically or…
Middle English reading of PardPT (6.327-966), FranPT (complete), and NPT (complete), with introductory notes by Derek Brewer in accompanying booklet. Read by Richard Bebb; edited by Sarah Butcher. Recorded at Motivation Sound Studios, London.
Swortzell, Lowell.
Plays: The Drama Magazine for Young People 74.5 (2015): 23-28, 64.
One-act play for eight child actors adapted from PardT, with Chaucer speaking directly to the Pardoner at the opening and closing of the plot. Production notes indicate a running time of approximately 20 minutes.
Kelly, Henry Ansgar.
R. F. Yeager and Charlotte C. Morse, eds. Speaking Images: Essays in Honor of V. A. Kolve (Asheville, N.C.: Pegasus Press, 2001), pp. 411-44.
Kelly re-considers the Pardoner's sexuality in light of biblical imagery, medieval medical lore, and fifteenth-century reception of PardT, arguing that implications of effeminacy in GP suggest neither homosexuality nor sterility but sexual…
The headwear of the Wife of Bath and of the Pardoner, in light of I Cor. 11:3-12, links the two pilgrims symbolically, both rejecting their proper sex roles and thus simultaneously flouting Paul's distinction between male and female and literalizing…
The vernicle, an image of Christ, reminds us that man is made in God's image, and emphasizes the Pardoner's perversion of that image, both morally and spiritually. Yet it also provides hope that the Pardoner may reform himself.
Parsons, Ben.
Tatjana Silec, ed. Voix (et Voies) du Désordre au Moyen Âge. Volume Issu du Colloque du Centre d'Études Médiévales Anglaises de Paris-Sorbonne (22-23 Mars 2012). AMAES, no. 34. (Paris: Association des Médiévistes Anglicistes de l'Enseignement Supérieur, 2013), pp. 81-108.
Focuses on the popularity of the Pardoner's character and on the connection between Chaucer and the "Beryn"-poet.
Hearst, Katherine, illus. and trans.
Russ Kick, ed. The Graphic Canon of Crime & Mystery. Vol. 2, From “Salome” to Edgar Allan Poe to “Silence of the Lambs” (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2021), pp. 134-46.
Graphic version of PardT, newly adapted and illustrated in ink and watercolor, with a calligraphic, abbreviated text in modern verse.
A novel set in modern Kenya, involving three friends who find a cache of money that "disrupts their happy relationship." The epigraph quotes PardP 6.324-28.
Lawton, D. A.
G. A. Wilkes and A. P. Riemer, eds. Studies in Chaucer. (Sydney: University of Sydney, 1981), pp. 38-63.
Explicates PardT with a concern for the division between the tale proper (lines 463-903) and its frame. The tale is structurally a digression, theologically orthodox, but unconvenional in "tone," and is to be taken seriously.
