Smith, Esther M. G.
Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer's Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the "Canterbury Tales" (Westport, Conn.; and London: Greenwood, 1996), pp. 256-62.
Comments on ecclesiastical reform of the late Middle Ages as background to the Parson's sketch in GP and presents ParsT as a confessional manual.
McMahon, Patrick J., and Allen J. Frantzen.
Essays in Medieval Studies 27 (2011): 133-47.
Explores some possible uses for newly developed digital technologies in the teaching of CT, presenting the data for "and," Chaucer's most used word, suggesting the types of questions that might arise from word count and word usage data. This data can…
Garbáty, Thomas Jay.
Romances Notes 9 (1968): 325-30.
Assesses the gate in PF, exploring "remarkable parallels which the inscriptions on the gate and the further description of the garden" in PF "have to certain sections of the Fifth Dialogue" of Andreas Cappellanus's "Art of Courtly Love."
Presents a theory of irony, examines various ironic interpretations of "De amore," including those by Alfred Karnein, Betsy Bowden, and D. W. Robertson, Jr., and concludes that the numerous inconsistencies in the work either were unintentional on…
In Anel, Chaucer worked out his strategy of pitting profeminist impulses (the poet assumes the voice of the betrayed woman) against antifeminist allegory "in which men's betrayal of women represents poetic language's necessary betrayal of literal…
Waters, Claire M.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.
Conflicted cooperation between authority and authorization is a manifestation of the fundamentally hybrid nature of the preacher's calling, one recognized in medieval handbooks as standing between earth and heaven. Significantly, women's preaching…
Lavezzo, Kathryn Marie.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 603A., 1999.
The remoteness and insularity of England led to the belief that its people were different, both barbarian and angelic. Lavezzo discusses Aelfric, Higden, Chaucer (MLT), and the alliterative "Morte Arthure." Use of the English language contributed to…
Stevens, John.
P. L. Heyworth, ed. Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 297-328.
A valuable edition based on British Library Arundel 248 with variants from other texts of the late-thirteenth-century Latin song sung by "hende Nicolas" in MilT. In addition to its sources, Stevens discusses it as a type of canto that eventually…
Mann, Jill.
Proceedings of the British Academy 76 (1990): 203-23.
Anger and glossing--linked by their common "refusal to accommodate the self either to events in the world outside, or to the autonomous meaning of the text"--are evident in SumT and throughout CT. The Marriage Group centers around patience, the…
Griffith, John Lance.
Fu Jen Studies: Literature and Linguistics 41 (2008): 13-45.
Reads KnT as a "tale of anger rather than (as is often the case) a tale of pity" which reveals Chaucer's ambivalence about anger as both "necessary and destructive" in human affairs. Explores Thomistic and Stoic notions of anger and assesses the…
Griffith, John Lance.
Dissertation Abstracts International 66 (2005): 173A.
Anger "rises to the level of a philosophical and ethical problem for Chaucer." An understanding of the role anger plays in the formation of self and community is useful in understanding the communities Chaucer creates and examines in CT.
Reads Mel as a narrative of anger and anger management in which Prudence's "transformative" advice helps Melibee resolve his personal and political anger, even though his fundamental anger against God is not reconciled.
Purdie explores "how and why" tail-rhyme romance developed in Middle English and defines the "temporal and geographical limits" of the subgenre. The book includes a version of Purdie's "The Implications of Manuscript Layout in Chaucer's Tale of Sir…
Rothwell, W[illiam].
English Studies 87 (2006): 511-38.
Identifies in RvT lexical evidence of a culture permeated with French linguistic influence, evidence that could be reinforced by a more thorough linguistic study of RvT and the rest of Chaucer's corpus: "Far from being 'ephemeral and localized' or…
Rigg, A. G.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarenden, 1997), pp. 121-41.
Explores how English displaced Latin as a literary language in the court of Richard II and assesses meter, Anglicization, and historical topics as common features of Anglo-Latin verse by Gower and Thomas Barry.
Discussion of Anglo-Norman fabliaux and their Latin antecedents. Elements of Anglo-Norman fabliaux are found in MerT, while MilT, RvT, and ShT follow Continental French fabliaux. Assessments of Anglo-Norman fabliaux are needed.
Jeffery, C. D.
Jean-Jacques Blanchot and Claude Graf, eds. Actes du 2e Colloque de langue et de litterature ecossaises (moyen age et renaissance) (Universite de Strasbourg, 1978), pp. 207-21.
By means of vocabulary items, characteristics of Chaucerian English as found in the "Kingis Quair" are noted in passing.
MacDonald, A[lasdair] A.
Studies in Scottish Literature 26 (1991): 172-84.
The method for studying literary relations between Scotland and England has been too simplistic. Even the best work, such as Gregory Kratzman's Anglo-Scottish Literary Relations 1430-1550, suffers from a narrow referentialism that must be rethought.…
The absence of holographs and of other early manuscripts, along with other evidence, suggests that Chaucer left only "foul papers" or copies of his works, especially CT and TC, in a state of more or less continual revision, from which different…
Judkins, Ryan R.
Carolynn Van Dyke, ed. Rethinking Chaucerian Beasts (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 159-72.
Although anthropocentric, BD emphasizes the similarity of animals and humans under the law of "kynde." They share an "embodied state and an ethical system as a result of their shared creation." The hart, object of the hunt, parallels the Black…
Crane, Susan.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013.
Deconstructs the human/animal binary once useful in the emerging field of animal studies by casting anew these relationships into a "multiplicity of intersecting and competing distinctions that better reflect medieval ways of thinking." Through close…
