Hultin, Neil C.
Annuale Mediaevale 9 (1968): 58-75.
Considers the courtly conventions that are used in Mars, and argues that they are deployed ironically and comically to "show the moral deficiencies" of the courtly "system" and lead the reader to judge it accordingly. Considers the allusive…
Narinsky, Anna.
Partial Answers: Journal of Literature and the History of Ideas 14.2 (2016): 187-216.
Treats "the operations and qualities of fictional minds" in ClT, "as well as the narrative means through which they are conveyed," examining Griselda, Walter, and the "group consciousness" of the Saluzzan people in light of "modern cognitive…
Kruger, Steven F.
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 147-65.
Questions "to what extent might late medieval Christian intellectual and historical engagements with Judaism be productive for readings of Chaucerian texts not only when Jews are directly represented but also in the absence of such explicit…
Estelle Epinoux and Nathalie Martinière, eds. Rewriting in the 20th-21st Centuries: Aesthetic Choice or Political Act? (Paris: Michel Houdiard, 2015), pp. 105-18.
Argues that in her experimental novel "Ryder," Djuna Barnes wrote "under the influence of Chaucer by employing a similar style," that her "use of glosses" in Chapter 10 "demonstrates an intertextuality" with CT, and that in Chapter 22 she "rewrites a…
Chaucer criticizes not anti-Semitism but rather the Prioress herself. The Prioress does not believe in New Testament attitudes on accepting Jews. Despite being a nun, she is unyielding in her belief that Jews are evil.
Simpson, James.
Troianalexandrina: Anuario sobre literatura medieval de materia clásica 19 (2019): 293-312.
Traces elegiac, tragic, and pseudo-historical traditions in late medieval English narratives of Troy, arguing that they are all "anti-Virgilian, and therefore anti-imperialist" and "also somber, monitory, skeptical and intimately sensitive to the…
Emmerson, Richard Kenneth.
Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1981.
Presents apocalyptical, exegetical, iconographic, and literary traditions of the Antichrist. Warns against conflation of Antichrist and devil in the canon of CYT (p. 147).
In SumT, anticlerical polemic serves the religious argument of Chaucer's conservative faith. The caricature of the Friar is purposeful and schematic: the tale mocks his carnality and literalness and calls into question the administration of penance…
Georgianna, Linda.
Leonard Michael Koff and Brenda Deen Schildgen, eds. The Decameron and the Canterbury Tales: New Essays on an Old Question (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2000), pp. 148-73.
Examines the complexity of anticlericalism. Clerical figures are prominent in the works of both Boccaccio and Chaucer, but CT redirects the potential disruption of anticlerical complaint away from dissent and toward self-evaluation. Georgianna gives…
Weissman, Hope Phyllis.
George D. Economou, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer: A Collection of Original Articles (New York: McGraw Hill, 1976), pp. 93-110.
The depiction of women in CT stems from the medieval presentation of four main female archetypes. Chaucer employs and experiments with these types, occasionally seeming sympathetic to women. Nonetheless, the women in the tales perpetuate the…
Brady, Lindy.
Notes and Queries 257 (2012): 163-66.
"Arthur and Gorlagon" and WBPT share numerous misogynist topoi as well as the plot element of a mission to understand women. The Latin romance is thus "a more significant analogue for the combined Prologue and Tale . . . than has been recognized."
Borthwick, Sister Mary Charlotte.
Modern Language Quarterly 22 (1961): 227-35.
Reads Antigone's song (TC 2.827-75) as a "reply to Criseyde's objections to love" which precedes it in the narrative. Much of the song derives from Guillaume de Machaut's "Paradis d'Amour," but its sequence and several ideas mirror Criseyde's earlier…
Ladd, Roger A.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.
Studies the development of mercantile practice in the late Middle Ages and depictions of merchants in English literature, from early satires to greater acceptability. Includes sections on merchants in Langland's "Piers Plowman," Gower's "Mirour de…
Arrathoon, Leigh A.
Language and Style 17:1 (1984): 92-120.
Throughout MerT synonyms for the Boethian values of true bliss and sorrow are juxtaposed to develop the theme of the woe that is in marriage--parallel to the "contemptus mundi" theme of the "Consolation." The protagonist of MerT uses Boethian…
Boitani, Piero.
Piero Boitani, ed. The European Tragedy of Troilus (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), pp. 1-19.
In the earliest Troilus myths, Troilus is "not primarily a character but a 'function'": his murder early in the Trojan War is an "omen" of Troy's impending fall. In later works, Troilus's character is more fully developed, and his death--late in…
Opens with an account of teaching PrT in comparison with Patience Agbabi's adaptation of it in "Telling Tales" (2015), helping to introduce the goal of the entire volume: promoting resistance to racist, xenophobic, and homophobic distortions and…
Johnson, Hannah.
Holly A. Crocker and D. Vance Smith, eds. Medieval Literature: Criticism and Debates (New York; Routledge, 2014), pp. 192-200.
Responds to two critical analyses of PrT by Aranye Fradenburg and Lee Patterson, which highlight "methodological and ethical concerns" with historical analysis of the Tale. Promotes the need to "theorize and historicize" in order to gain deeper…
Kelley, Michael R.
Chaucer Review 14 (1979): 61-73.
Antithesis is the major source of PF's aesthetic unity. It arranges the poem's structural levels in a pattern of oppositions: antithetical word pairs are joined by antithetical arrangements of style, description, characterization, plot, narrative,…
Friedman, John Block.
Emma Cayley and Susan Powell, eds. Manuscripts and Printed Books in Europe 1350-1550: Packaging, Presentation, and Consumption (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), pp. 169-86..
Analyzes Chaucer and Wittenwiler from the "perspective of anxiety at the table." Explores how "food- and drink-conveyed class anxieties are used as plot devices" to develop action in MlT, RvT, and "Der Ring." Also mentions possible connections…
Argues that, rooted in "animality" that is "carefully performed and constructed," the humor of MilT "functions to erect a conception of humanity over and against the ostracized and inferior semi-human." The Miller performs his animality, and,…
The feminist film criticism theory of the "male gaze" articulates the "triangulated" male-female relationship of KnT and MilT as they arise in response to Boccaccio's elucidation of the gaze in his "Teseida" and in relation to two classical…
Long, Rebekah.
Dissertation Abstracts International 66 (2005): 2206A
Considers BD and Pearl as case studies in the search for "an appropriate, adequate language of commemoration," as opposed to prior models of elegiac language.
