Haller, Robert S.
Ph.D. Dissertation. Princeton University, 1960.
Explores a variety of sources, analogues, and backgrounds to WBPT and to the characterization of the Wife of Bath: the Bible (including St. Paul), St. Jerome, Philippe de Meziere's "Presentation Play," the tradition of the Ovidian "vetula" and La…
Allen, Judson Boyce.
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 3 (1973): 255-71.
Reads ParsT as "just another tale" (rather than the crescendo of CT), adducing Boethian aesthetic and moral attitudes, Aristotelian poetics, and the sequence of the last four tales as evidence that we should read the penitential message of ParsT…
Thompson, Charlotte Barclay.
Dissertation Abstracts International 40.08 (1980): 4612-13A.
Reads KnT as a veiled, enigmatic "literary game," disclosing it to be a "pagan analogue of the Old Testament" and a prefiguration of the New, ripe with figurative characters and events, and deeply inscribed with archteypes.
Considers "Trohetvisan" and Sted in light of their possible historical allusions and literary conventionality, exploring similarities and differences, and concluding that Chaucer's poem is best regarded as "undated and unaddressed," a poem "written…
Higgs, Elton D.
Huntington Library Quarterly 45 (1982): 155-73.
The Knight and the pilgrims in his group represent the physical world and its transformation, the Clerk and his group reflect the changes in the intellectual sphere of society, and the Plowman and the Parson are the ideal representatives of the…
Richardson surveys various interpretations of the Old Man in PardT. Concentrates on the imagery of Mother Earth and of suicide, arguing that the Old Man can be seen as the Pardoner's undying soul.
Saito, Isamu.
English Studies in Doshisha University 67 (1996): 1-25.
Compares the old man and the three rioters in PardT, reading the old man as an Everyman figure with the problem of old age as he searches for permission from God to be penitent.
Sato, Noriko.
Thought Currents in English Literature (Tokyo) 54 (1981): 11-36.
The Old Man in PardT represents a fusion of divine force with the sense of futility and remorse that accompany physical aging--a motif found in medieval lyrics, Villon, and in later writers.
Boitani, Piero.
Piero Boitani. The Tragic and the Sublime in Medieval Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1989), pp. 1-19.
Comparing the old man in Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" and the old man in PardT, Boitani explores the medieval "other" or "discarded image of the universe," which depends on a "hermeneutic openness" that makes the modern reader perceive the…
Cooke, Thomas D.
Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1978.
The comic climax, marked by carefully prepared effects of surprise, is the distinctive feature of the fabliaux. Action more than character development or setting characterizes the preparation. As regards genre, the fabliaux have relatively little…
Newton, Allyson.
John Carmi Parsons and Bonnie Wheeler, eds. Medieval Mothering (New York and London: Garland, 1996), pp. 63-77.
Classical and medieval theories of sexual reproduction privilege the male role as active and occlude the female as passive. This occlusion is paralleled by the plot and language of ClT, in which mothering is subordinated to paternalistic concerns…
Benson, Larry D.
Larry D. Benson and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Wisdom of Poetry (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Western Michigan University, 1982), pp. 123-44.
Offers new support for the old theory that PF represents Anne of Bohemia as the "formel eagle" and King Richard, Charles of France, and Friedrich as her three suitors, presenting new ararguments for dating the poem in 1380 and new evidence that both…
Explores the unity of HF evident in the "evolution of the narrator, Geffrey," arguing that the poem "is essentially a humorous and all-embracing review of man's frantic quest for fame, learning, and love" that follows the educating of [a] drudging…
Dunton-Downer, Leslie Linam.
Dissertation Abstracts International 53 (1992): 1508A.
In contrast with Augustinian models, the poetic use of obscenity provides a nontraditional method of self-definition. For Rutebeuf, the obscene served to establish his own poetic identity; for Chaucer, it provided a means for characters to establish…
Chickering, Howell.
Jenny Adams and Nancy Mason Bradbury, eds. Medieval Women and Their Objects (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017), pp. 56-68.
Focuses on materiality and objects in PrT, specifically the corpse, the antiphon, and the "greyn," and their "transcendence of the miraculous object." Claims that these objects illustrate Carolyn Bynum's notion of material objects involved in…
Robb, Candace [M.]
New York: St. Martin's; London: Heinemann, 1995.
Murder mystery involving a nun who apparently comes back to life; Chaucer figures as a secondary character. Translated into Italian as "La Reliquia Rubata: Thriller Medioevale" (Casale Monferrato: Piemme, 2001).
Bose, Mishtooni.
Frank Grady, ed. The Cambridge Companion to "The Canterbury Tales" (Cambridge: Caambridge University Press, 2020, pp. 191-204.
Surveys the critical history of NPT, including the scant comments focused on the tale between the fifteenth and nineteenth centuries. Argues that the "tale's interest in direct experience acts as means of liberations from the plethora of discourses…
Mack, Peter, and Andy Hawkins, eds.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.
Textbook edition of NPPT. Includes glosses and discursive notes (at the back of the book) and discussion of approaches to the text: sources and analogues, characterization, assessment of theme and topic, and analysis of poetic technique. Also…
Thomas, Paul, ed.
Birmingham, UK : Scholarly Digital Editions, 2006.
Includes interlinked images and transcriptions of all fifty-five pre-1500 versions of NPT, with complete collations (linked to variant maps), commentaries on family relationships of the versions, and stemmatic commentary on key readings. The search…
Elliott, Ralph W. V.
New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965.
Introductory, descriptive analysis of NPPT and PardPT, "designed primarily for the school, college, and university student." Summarizes the places of the two Tales in CT and explains their poetic and thematic concerns, focusing on the artful…
Chamberlain, David
Modern Philology 68 (1970): 188-91.
Suggests that Chauntecleer is Chaucer's satiric target when he refers to Boethius in NPT 7.3294; the rooster apparently is not familiar with Boethian music theory found in both "De Musica" and the "Consolation of Philosophy."
Summary (without text) and commentary on NPPT, arranged in sections, accompanied by glosses to Middle English phrases. Also includes a brief introduction to Chaucer and his literature; commentary on source materials of NPT, its characterization and…
