Mitchell, Charles.
College English 27 (1966): 437-44.
Asks why the Pardoner "always preaches against his own sin" and why he admits to doing so to the Canterbury pilgrims, using the questions to argue that he is a con-man rather than a hypocrite, and one who considers himself morally superior to his…
Hieatt, Constance B.
Studia Neophilologica 42 (1970): 3-8.
Identifies nine aphoristic statements in NPT and assesses the extent to which they can be considered the "moralite" referred to by the narrator in 7.3440. Considers analogous fables and claims that Chaucer's version demonstrates "a common Chaucerian…
Johnson, Bruce A.
David G. Allen and Robert A. White, eds. Subjects on the World's Stage: Essays on British Literature of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1995), pp.54-61.
The geographic references in PardT, of which the stile is the central figure, represent a loosely symbolic, "moral" landscape that adds to the moral tone of the tale.
Tavormina, M. Teresa.
Ball State University Forum 22 (1981): 14-19.
The lunar calendar and imagery of TC 4, though inspired by a similar device in "Filostrato," are far more elaborate than those in the source. The title characters are often directly correlated to these images, which deepens their development.
In this last book Chaucer uses a number of devices inexorably to distance the reader from the personages in the poem. He suggests astral influence that brings about the inevitable movement of joy-to-sorrow in love.
Drake, Gertrude C.
Papers on Language and Literature 11 (1975): 3-17.
Negative elimination, sources, and proleptic passages isolate the moon, both symbol for inconstancy and threshold to immutability, as Troilus's port of death, logically compatible with the variants. Venus, traditionally combining the poem's themes…
Braswell, Laurel.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 8 (1986): 145-56.
A survey of medieval medical documents indicates that GP's Physician conforms accurately to expected medical practice; the astronomical position and astrological meaning of the moon provide a basis for medieval medical theory and practice.
Kendrick, Laura.
South Atlantic Quarterly 91 (1992): 835-64
Writing fixes texts, inviting marginal explication and commentary. Dante, Boccaccio, Deschamps, Langland, Gower, and Chaucer annotate their own texts to "authorize" them, although modern scholarship has been reluctant to accept glosses as…
Friedman, John Block.
Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981.
Drawing from art, iconography, literature, canon law, theology, and cartography, Friedman examines the impact upon European culture of monstrous races.
Yıldız, Nazan.
[Yildiz, Nazan]
Selçuk Üniversitesi Edebiyat Fakültesi Dergisi/Selçuk University Journal of Faculty of Letters 41 (2019): 127-42.
Explores the rebelliousness and animal imagery associated with the GP Miller and Symkyn of RvT, the in-between social status of medieval millers, and depictions of millers in accounts of the Revolt of 1381, arguing that medieval millers were depicted…
Waller, Martha S.
Indiana Social Studies Quarterly 31 (1978): 46-55.
Though the authentic detail of Nero's golden fishnets passed unchanged into medieval tradition, the fiction of Julius Caesar's low birth is peculiar to English historians of the later Middle Ages. It apparently arose in "exempla" of Caesar's…
Kim, Jung-Ai.
Medieval English Studies 07: 93-123, 1999.
Although the Monk seems to suggest that the tragedies he relates can be explained by the action of Fortune, there is no consistent concept of Fortune. As a result, MkT is a failure.
Thomas, Paul R., dir.
[Provo, UT] : Chaucer Studio, 2002.
Middle English audio recording of MkP, MkT, and NPP (through line 2807), read by Alan T. Gaylord. Recorded at the 36th International Congress of Medieval Studies.
Neuse, Richard.
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 247-77.
As KnT is a reduction of the Teseida, MkT is a miniature imitation of Boccaccio's "De casibus virorum illustrium." The Monk, Boccaccio's ironic double, interrogates newly emergent forms of tragedy and contests with the other pilgrims within the…
Lepley, Douglas L.
Chaucer Review 12 (1977): 162-70.
Despite recent arguments to the contrary, parallels (such as the depiction of Fortune) between MkT and Books II-IV of "The Consolation of Philosophy" show that the Monk's tragedies are philosophically sound in Boethian terms.
Grennen, Joseph E.
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 82 (1988): 337-40.
Taking "olde thyngs" (GP 175, Monk's sketch) as a scribal corruption or emendation of the unattested "alder-thynge" eliminates problems of syntax, semantics, and meaning.
Garbáty, Thomas Jay.
Modern Philology 67 (1969): 18-24.
Argues that the Monk was the original teller of the MerT, a response directed against the ShT as told originally by the Wife of Bath. Discusses puns and implications in the GP description of the Monk to characterize the Monk is an "amorous man," a…
Heale, Martin.
Stephen H. Rigby, ed., with the assistance of Alastair J. Minnis. Historians on Chaucer: The "General Prologue" to the "Canterbury Tales" (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 137-55.
Explores how recent scholarship of late medieval monastic practices informs a deeper understanding of the characterization of Chaucer's Monk. Contends that the Monk can be viewed as a "target of Chaucer's satire."
Norako, Leila K.
Valerie B. Johnson and Kara L. McShane, eds. Negotiating Boundaries in Medieval Literature and Culture: Essays on Marginality, Difference, and Reading Practices in Honor of Thomas Hahn (Boston: De Gruyter; Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2022), pp. 49-76.
Explores how SqT and "The Book of John Mandeville" “traffic in fantasies of cultural, religious, and racial annihilation . . . in a quieter, more subtextual way than that seen in other works of crusades-inspired literature" Argues that the Squire…
Harrow, Kenneth.
Kofi Anyidoho, Abioseh M. Porter, Daniel Racine, and Janice Spleth, eds. Interdisciplinary Dimensions of African Literature (Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1985), pp. 75-87.
Harrow explores social criticism in Sembene Ousmane's novella "Le Mandat" (film version "Mandabi") with references to thematic similarities in Chaucer's PardT. Both Ousmane and Chaucer portray the effects of unexpected treasure on its beneficiaries…
Gaylord, Alan T.
Chaucer Review 16 (1982): 311-29.
Readers have been too ready to dismiss Th as a parody of popular romances. Chaucer's achievement is something much more subtle: he invents his own English, his own literary idiolect, and then goes on to parody not merely the romances but also the…
Shimonomoto, Keiko.
Keiko Shimonomoto. The Use of Ye and Thou in the Canterbury Tales, and Collected Articles (Tokyo: Waseda University Enterprise, 2001), pp. 64-71.
Originally published in English Literature (Waseda University) 70 (1994). Ambiguities of speech and thought in TC, particularly Criseyde's, are more likely functions of narrative strategy than reflections of individuated consciousness or…
