The narrator of BD serves a therapeutic role: he helps the Black Knight talk out his grief and in the process purges himself of his own sorrow. In light of recent psychological studies, Chaucer's insights into bereavement are astute. BD warns…
Cleary, Barbara A.
Delta Epsilon Sigma Bulletin 24 (1979): 108-12.
There are several contrasts and incongruities in tone, style, and ideas in Chaucer's PF, as for example the naive narrator vs. condescending Scipio, ideal love vs. natural love, the love garden vs. the discordant parliament held therein, courtly…
Wilhelm, James J.
Chaucer Review 1.4 (1967): 201-06.
Comments on the tripartite structure of PF, its shifting tone and three styles (religious/philosophical, romantic, realistic), the sad plight of the narrator who is left without love, and the predominance of Nature, the poem's "heroine" who fails to…
Reilly, Robert.
University of Portland Review 20.3 [for 21.1] (1969): 23-36.
Considers love in TC in light of medieval understandings of "caritas" and "cupiditas," identifying several specifically Christian details in the poem, and assessing tensions between its Christianity and the "religion" of courtly love. Argues that the…
Symes, Ken Michael
Dissertation Abstracts International 28.09 (1968): 3650-51A.
Examines point of view, presentation, plot, and characterization in ShT, MilT, RvT, SumT, and FrT, comparing and contrasting these techniques with those found in Old French fabliaux, and arguing that Chaucer supersedes his predecessors in complexity,…
Discusses Chaucer's narrative techniques in TC, focusing on two points of view: one intrinsic, in the relationship between the narrator and the story; the other extrinsic, between the narrator and the audience.
Irvin, Matthew W.
Chaucer Review 56.1 (2021): 1-32.
Using Michel de Certeau's idea of the tactic, argues that the Monk represents the monastic estate, and that he uses tragedies to attack the Host, representative of the city, and the Knight, representative of the nobility. Explores the Monk's own…
Clogan, Paul M.
Medievalia et Humanistica 8 (1977): 217-33.
The narrative of MLT depends less on organic structure to develop the story than on exemplary episodic narrative sequence. Lack of descriptive detail is an effect of the narrator's interest in action, and the mode of presentation and the style of…
Argues that Thop can be read as a didactic narrative that breaks off at the "point most effective for developing the theme of salvation" which is brought to conclusion in Mel. The tales share similar concerns with vice and with the world, the flesh,…
Gordon, Ida L.
F. Whitehead, A. H. Diverres, and F. E. Sutcliffe, eds. Medieval Miscellany Presented to Eugene Vinaver by Pupils, Colleagues and Friends (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965), pp. 146-56.
Explains various kinds of irony evident in TC, and argues that the character of Criseyde is not ironic; she is consistent with Chaucer's sources, but "controlled by the manners and ideals of courtly love" even though these ideals are shown to be…
Attributes the aesthetic success of the three-rioters account in PardT to Chaucer's suggestive "economy" of characterization and narrative and to the double perspective ("drunken fantasy" and "sober calculation") that irrevocably leads to death,…
Bishop, Ian.
London and Melbourne: Everyman's University Library, 1987.
Reviews various theories about the overall design of CT, warning that individual tales can be ignored, though CT is greater than the sum of its parts, and that Chaucer's final intentions concerning the order of the tales are unknown. In an analysis…
Nelles, William.
John Deely and Jonathan Evans, eds. Semiotics 1986 (Lanham, New York, and London: University Press of America, 1987), pp. 15-23.
Reviews interpretations of MerT. To use Genette's terminology, the Merchant as teller is an "intradiegetic" narrator among other narrators--extradiegetic (Chaucer the pilgrim), hypodiegetic (Justinus, Pluto), hypo-hypodiagetic (Solomon)--whose…
The intended audience of the Naples manuscript was secular females, evidenced by its internal style and content of four romances and inclusion of medical recipes. The advice to wives in ClT points to the instruction of women—and thus to the intended…
Frese, Dolores Warwick.
Juliette Dor, ed. A Wyf Ther Was: Essays in Honour of Paule Mertens-Fonck (Liege: University of Liege, 1992), pp. 155-66.
The tradition of involucrum explains the Second Nun's preoccupation with the name Cecilie, associates the Prioress and the Monk with Abelard, associates the Wife of Bath with Bathsheba, and relates the Clerk's references to Petrarch and "Poo" to…
Assesses the paucity of names given to the pilgrims in CT and comments on those that are given; Eglyntine, John (Nun's Priest), Piers (Monk), Harry Bailly (and his wife Goodelief), Huberd, Hodge, Robin, Oswald, Alisoun, and Chaucer himself, who is…
Steimatsky, Noa.
Hebrew Unviersity Studies in Literature and the Arts 15 (1987): 36-43.
PardT contains a series of mirror paradoxes: the rioters' quest to slay Death becomes Death's quest to slay them; the Old Man claims he cannot find Death but directs the rioters to it; and the rioters' success in their quest proves to be their…
"Kayrrud," the home of Arveragus in FranT, refers not to a "red fort," as Tatlock suggested (1914), but to "Kairiud," a fishing village "one mile east of Penmarch Head." Chaucer's knowledge of Middle Breton was more precise than commentators have…
Luft, Joanna, and Thomas Dilworth.
F. Scott Fitzgerald Review 8 (2010): 79-91.
Rejects a previous attempt to link Fitzgerald's Daisy Fay and Alceste of LGWP, arguing instead that, via imagery, Gatsby's love for Daisy in the novel resonates with the love of Chaucer's narrator for the daisy in the poem.
