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…
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.
Echard, Siân.
Kathleen Coyne Kelly and Tison Pugh, eds. Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the "Canterbury Tales" (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2016), pp. 167-83.
Explores the "unexpected points of contact between" Brian Helgeland's "A Knight's Tale" and Chaucer's poetry, discussing ways that the film and KnT focus on tilting arenas and order, their affinities with pastiche, their concern with the power of the…
Delany, Sheila.
Mediaevalia 13 (1989, for 1987): 275-94.
A twelfth-century "lai" and its fourteenth-century moralization, both in the 'Ovide moralise,' provided Chaucer verbal details and a general concept for his treatment of "Thisbe" in LGW. Echoing the fissure between the 'lai' and the…
Delany, Sheila.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.
Analyzes LGW as an under-appreciated work, using an ecletic combination of approaches derived from semiotic, historicist, and feminist theories. LGWP and the separate legends are coherent but not organic; they combine in their recurrent…
Heinrichs, Katherine.
University Park and London : Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990.
Examines "conventions governing allusions to certain Ovidian and Virgilian tales of love in the works of Boccaccio, Machaut, Froissart, and Chaucer," addressing "questions of narrative voice, thematic unity, and purpose" and concentrating on…
Rehyansky, Katherine Heinrichs.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1987): 123A-124A.
Rehyansky studies classical allusions Chaucer introduced into TC: they underscore its themes. Oenone, Daphne, Europa, and Venus represent the folly and tragedy of love; Niobe, Tantalus, Ixion, and Tityus show the folly of pride, greed, and…
Though Chaucer obliquely refers to the positive interpretation of the Mars-Venus-Vulcan myth (in the gift by Vulcan to Harmonia of a brooch), he stresses the negative--that the martial man is best advised to avoid the temptations of love. The…
Explores political implications of PF, commenting on the theme of common profit and on Chaucer's political situation. Examines the role of Nature as an advocate of hierarchy and a suppresser of rebellion.
Chance, Jane.
Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota Press, 1995
Examines Chaucer's astrological and mythological allusions in light of medieval mythographic commentaries, arguing that such analysis discloses "embarrassing secrets."
Chance, Jane, ed.
Gainesville : University of Florida Press, 1990.
A collection of articles covering mythographic art in the literature of early France, early England (Chaucer), and Renaissance England (Shakespeare). Chance defines mythography as "the explanation of classical mythology that often involves…
Freer, Scott.
Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 27 (2007): 357-70.
Freer examines modernist uses of the past in Eliot's "The Waste Land" and the English movie "A Canterbury Tale," directed by Michael Powell. Explores several allusions to Chaucer.
