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). Relocated 2025 at https://opencanterburytales.lsusites.org/
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,…
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…
