Examines the grove in KnT in the context of hunting and forest laws; reveals how Chaucer alters Boccaccio's "Teseida" to turn the grove first into a politicized space of human discord and then into a space of destruction, evoking warfare among men…
Munro, Lucy.
New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013.
Explores the use of "archaic linguistic and poetic style" in poetry and drama, 1590–1674, analyzing how combinations of anachronism and nostalgia help to influence the idea of English "nationhood." Includes recurrent comments on lexical…
Test, George A.
American Notes and Queries 2.5 (1964): 67-68.
Adduces the testimony of modern archer, Robert P. Elmer, corroborating that peacock feathers are high quality material for fletching, and a notion thought to underlie Chaucer's reference in the GP description of the Yeoman (1.104).
Herold, Christine.
Charlotte Spivack and Christine Herold, eds. Archetypal Readings of Medieval Literature (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 2002), pp. 47-65.
Herold reads WBT as an "individuation myth" in which the knight gains "wisdom and self-empowerment" in his encounters with the anima, manifested in the "triple-aspect of the Great Mother Archetype": maiden, queen, and loathly lady.
Spivack, Charlotte, and Christine Herold, eds.
Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen, 2002.
Nine readings by various authors of archetypal patterns in medieval works. Topics include Marie de France, Christine de Pizan, Julian of Norwich, Joan of Arc, Gottfried von Strassburg, Chrétien de Troyes, the Spanish "Shriek of the Sage Merlin,"…
Psychoanalytic analysis of WBT and ClT, reading the two as parallel transformation stories. The first "seems to commemorate the event of the separation of consciousness"; in the second, Griselda "achieved individuation by recognizing her animus."…
Lloyd-Kimbrel, Elizabeth D.
Mediaevistik 1 (1988): 115-24.
Discusses the "Gothic" aesthetics of Chaucer's work: duality, complexity, progression, juxtaposition of jarringly opposite elements, exposure of structural features, audience participation, incompleteness, ambiguity, and physicality of thought.
Braswell, Mary Flowers.
Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 11 (1981): 101-12
Far from being "entirely tropological" or imaginative, the descriptions of the Temple of Venus and the House of Fame and Rumor accurately reflect the forms and details of contemporary structures. As Clerk of the Works and perhaps an acquaintance of…
Twomey, Michael W., and Scott D. Stull.
Chaucer Review 51.3 (2016): 310-37.
Analyzes the two houses in RvT and MilT and contends that Chaucer's precise description of architectural setting displays how architecture shaped medieval social life and communicated social and class satire.
Jardillier, Claire.
Bulletin des Anglicistes Médiévistes 71 (2007): 35-41.
Explores connections between text and places (landscapes, architecture, textual architecture) in KnT, focusing on Theseus's efforts to organize space and events and on the narrative's introduction of original motifs and discrepancies.
Green, Richard Firth.
English Language Notes 18 (1981): 251-57.
Chaucer's digression from Boccaccio concerning Arcite's career at court should be interpreted not biographically but rather in the context of the career of Havelock the Dane. Both tales show the social stigma of being a page; Arcite's role…
Explores how the figure of a drunken man, originating in Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" and "De topicis differentiis," and used by Chaucer in Arcite's complaint in KnT, I.1260–67, "blurs the line between universal and particular" and…
Infusino, Mark H., and Ynez Viole O'Neill.
Paul Strohm and Thomas J. Heffernan, eds. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, Proceedings, No. 1, 1984 (Knoxville, Tenn.: New Chaucer Society, 1985), pp. 221-30.
The bitterest controversy between "ancients" and "moderns" in fourteenth-century medicine concerned the treatment of wounds. Whereas Boccaccio in "Teseida" aligns his "medici" with the ancients and prolongs Arcita's death, Chaucer in KnT aligns…
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Douglas Gray and E. G. Stanley, eds. Middle English Studies Presented to Norman Davis in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 65-67.
The traditional reading is that Arcite's horse pitches him to the ground so that Arcite, falling on his head, has his chest shattered by the saddlebow. The words "pomel" and "pighte," however, show that Arcite is not thrown from his horse but is…
Explores prosimetrum in the Arthurian "Tristan en prose" as a way to understand Palamon's actions after he overhears Arcite's "formally elegant rondeau" in KnT 1.1510ff.
"Grene" in many contexts in Middle English poetry including Chaucer implies fertility and sexual desire. Hence, the line "In hope that I som grene gete may" may mean "In hope that I may get some sex."
Spencer, William
Chaucer Review 4.3 (1970): 147-70.
Tallies evidence that the "twelvefold pattern of [zodiacal] signs and planets" of medieval astrology is the "hidden ground plan" of GP, underlying its sequence of characters and some details of their descriptions.
Kuhn, Wiebke.
Dissertation Abstracts International 61: 2705A, 2001.
Medieval idealizations of motherhood developed alongside the rising emphasis on the suffering of Christ and the saints. Kuhn discusses works by Jacobus de Voragine, Chaucer (LGW, MLT, ClT, and PrT), Osbern Bokenham, and Margery Kempe. The tradition…
Argues that in their ordering of Chaucer's text and in their various and dynamic forms, manuscripts of CT successfully instantiate Chaucer's dynamic idea of his text, the complex conditions for pre-print book production, and the disaggregated forms…
Maíz Arévalo, Carmen.
Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre and M. Nila Vázquez González, eds. Medieval English Literary and Cultural Studies (Murcia: Universidad de Muscia, 2004), pp. 81-94.
Discusses linguistic pragmatics to disclose parallels between WBPT and PardPT, focusing on the relationship between the characters' uses of speech and the two works.
The "accumulation of Chaucerisms" in Henryson's Orpheus encourages readers to posit a fallible narrator; the gap between tale and moralization can be seen as an artful effort to dissuade readers from too easily accepting the premise that meaning is…
Mack, Peter.
Scott D. Troyan, ed. Medieval Rhetoric: A Casebook (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), pp. 109-26.
Mack examines public and private oratory in Book 4 of TC, exploring the emotional emphases that Chaucer adds to Boccaccio and focusing on the relationship between emotion and argument in rhetorical theory. Mack's essay tallies Chaucer's various ways…
Chaucer defines characters through both natural and conventional theories of etymology. Argyve, related to Argus and foresight, succintly describes the wife of Calchas the visionary. Convention, not inherent association, connects Criseyde with…
Fumo, Jamie C.
Alison Keith and Stephen Rupp, eds. Metamorphosis: The Changing Face of Ovid in Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 2007), pp. 129-50.
The Wife of Bath's "manipulations of the Argus and Midas myths" reflect her Ovid-like "delight in sensuality and embeddedness of narrative" and her recognition of the power of story to "control and deceive." The myths help unify WBPT; through them,…
