Mapstone, Sally.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al., eds. Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain: Essays for Felicity Riddy (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2000), pp. 131-47.
Although the love affair between Criseyde and Troilus is a medieval invention, Criseyde had a significant literary ancestry. In Latin versions of the Iliad, in Ovid's Heroides and Ars amatoria, and in the later romance tradition,…
Erzgräber, Willi.
Joerg O. Fichte, ed. Chaucer's Frame Tales (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987),: pp. 11-33.
By applying it to BD, PF, HF, TC, and CT (MilT, WBP, and GP Monk), Erzgraber tests Karl-Heinz Stierle's thesis that the "object of comicality is anything that threatens a culture." Chaucer reflects the cultural complexity of his age.
Harris, Kate.
Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 8 (1983): 299-333.
Surveys what is known and what can be inferred about the origins of the so-called Findern manuscript, its scribes, manuscript affiliations, and codicological features, with recurrent comments on the works by Chaucer that are anthologized in it (PF,…
Scattergood, V. J.
Chaucer Review 11 (1977): 210-31.
ShT contradicts the usual view of merchants in the fabliaux. By setting the merchant against the monk and the wife, Chaucer defies tradition and presents the merchant in a generally favorable light.
Bruns, Gerald L.
Comparative Literature 32 (1980): 113-29.
Theorizes differences between grammatical/rhetorical invention and Romantic ideas of creativity and originality, commenting on Chaucer's TC and, passingly, on his Adam Scriveyn, as well as on Petrarch's adaptation of Boccaccio's tale of Griselda,…
Like Boccaccio's "Il Filostrato," TC is veiled literary autobiography. About love, TC is also about love poetry but rejects Boccaccio's philosophy and poetics.
Tieken-Boon van Ostade, Ingrid.
North-Western European Language Evolution 16 (1990): 3-52.
Through a largely comparative approach, the author draws on sources that have remained almost unexploited, whether dialectical or belonging to the standard language. Evidence from Dutch, Frisian, German, and Chaucer's English (a three-year-old boy's…
Kaylor, Noel Harold. Jr.
Medieval Perspectives 10 (1995-96): 133-47.
Chaucer's allusions to the Orient or to the East (e.g., to Turkey, Syria, and India) refer, on the one hand, to a practical knowledge of geography and, on the other--with ecclesiastical use of the "mappae mundi" in mind--to a symbolic spiritual goal,…
Heffernan, Carol F.
Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y. : Boydell and Brewer, 2003.
A series of studies focusing on depictions of the Orient and people from the Orient in medieval romances: MLT, Dido and Cleopatra from LGW, SqT, "Floris and Blauncheflur," and "Le Bone Florence." The introduction concentrates on how contact with the…
Donaldson, E. Talbot
Jerome Mandel and Bruce A. Rosenberg, eds. Medieval Literature and Folklore Studies: Essays in Honor of Francis Lee Utley (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1970), pp. 193-204.
Comments on the "impediments" to determining the order of CT with certainly, focusing on manuscript evidence, especially the problems evident in MLE and the "Rochester-Sittingbourne contradiction" in the Ellesmere order of the Tales. Suggests…
Cooper, Helen.
Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, Eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation (San Marino, Calif.: Huntingon Library; Tokyo: Yushodo, 1995), pp. 245-61.
The manuscripts and internal evidence of CT indicate that those who "put the various examplars of the tales, links, and fragments in order for Ellesmere did not have any manuscript consensus to work from, and indeed, they have helped create such…
Brown, Murray L.
Mediaevalia 11 (1989, for 1985): 219-44.
Conjectures that, while Deschamps may have met Chaucer in 1360, his "Ballade to Chaucer" was probably written in 1391 and reflects the association of Chaucer and Deschamps with the Order of the Passion of Jesus Christ in the late 1380s and early…
Markland, Murray F
Research Studies: A Quarterly Publication of Washington State University 33 (1965): 1-10.
Compares how and to what extent Theseus in KnT and Prospero in Shakespeare's "The Tempest" are responsible for the initial disorder and the final order of their respective stories. Theseus progresses from aggressive engagement in the world to…
Benson, Larry D.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 3 (1981): 77-120.
By analysis of manuscript traditions Benson argues that there were at most two early orderings of CT. All later orderings in manuscripts are scribal rearrangements or distortions of these two. Both orders, one of which is the Ellesmere order,…
Lindahl, Carl.
W. F. H. Nicolaisen, ed. Oral Tradition in the Middle Ages (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1995), pp. 59-75.
As a cultural mirror and cultural battleground, romance seems to blend voices from all ranges of society: secular and sacred, rural and urban, rich and poor. As a festive processional storytelling contest, Chaucer's CT successfully imitates the play…
Rosenberg, Bruce A.
Folklore Forum 13 (1980): 224-37.
The paucity of readers in the fourteenth century and explicit statements throughout Chaucer's works indicate that his poetry was recited aloud to a live audience, at least part of the time. Oral readings are most usefully appreciated by criteria one…
Bowden, Betsy.
North Carolina Folklore Journal 35 (1988): 40-77.
Examines traditions and analogues of the ballad "The Wanton Wife of Bath," a thirteenth-century Old French fabliau analogue, and post-Chaucerian versions. Texts included for various versions.
Wilcockson, Colin.
Review of English Studies 50: 345-50, 1999.
The initial thirty-four lines of GP divide into two sections of sixteen lines joined by a couplet and emphasized by capitalization in the Ellesmere manuscript. The first section treats general matters; the second, particulars. Chaucer structures the…
Barrington, Candace, Brantley L. Bryant, Richard H. Godden, Daniel T. Kline, and Myra Seaman, eds.
Website (2017). Available at https://opencanterburytales.dsl.lsu.edu/ (accessed March 7, 2020).
Comprises thirty-six "introductory essays for first-time, university-level readers" of CT, written by more than thirty "professional scholars," covering GP and each of the tales (two each for KnT, WBPT, and MerT), the Host and frame, Chaucer's…
Examines the motif of renunciation in CT, ranging from renunciation of poetry (MkT, ParsT, and Ret) to renunciation of music and high-flown rhetoric (ManT), renunciation of curiosity (MilT, CYT), and praiseworthy acts of renunciation (ClT, FranT).…
Robinson, Peter.
Literary and Linguistic Computing 15: 5-14, 2000.
Despite trends in textual theory and the capability of representing multiple versions of a text electronically, editors should present eclectic, reconstructed texts--not as representations of lost originals but as texts that best explain "all the…
The relations between diversity and unity, and between particular and general, are a major issue in CT, and emerge especially in the emphasis on profession, the sexes, and the relation of individual experience to normative authority. Emphasis on…
Haas, Renate.
Marie-Francoise Alamichel and Derek Brewer, eds. The Middle Ages After the Middle Ages in the English-Speaking World (Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1997), pp. 91-101.
Recognizing parallels between "The Wife of Bath and Her Tale" and contemporary female practice, Dryden intensified the elements of faery and magic in his version of the "Tale." In addition, he greatly reduced the lively presence of the Wife,…
