Sleeth, Charles (R.)
Chaucer Newsletter 1.2 (1979): 20-21.
In GP the Franklin and the Man of Law are presented as companions, but they have antithetical views on astrology: the Man of Law insists on its value, the Franklin condemns it as "supersticious cursednesse."
Hendricks, Thomas J.
Dissertation Abstracts International 48 (1987): 1199A-1200A.
The strictly medieval method of casting and interpreting horoscopes shows--in the developing dialectic of free will, Providence, and neccessity--the shortcomings of some CT pilgrims too worldly for ideal pilgrimage.
Huntsman, Jeffrey F.
Notes and Queries, 227 (1982): 237.
Although N. F. Blake (N&Q 224:110-11 and Thomas W. Ross N&Q 226:202) assert that the Miller's use of "astromye" reflects his literacy, it seems likely that the form existed as a plausible variant. The B text of "Piers Plowman" also contains sixteen…
Laird, Edgar S.
English Language Notes 25:3 (1988): 23-26.
The use of the word "proportionals" by the Clerk of Orleans in FranT shows "how very up to date" Chaucer was in astronomy. Corresponding to the Latin "minuta proportionalia," proportionals were a measure for calculating celestial positions in the…
Kennedy, Victor.
ELOPE: English Language Overseas Perspectives and Enquiries 2.1-2 (2005): 139-54.
Draws examples and discussion from Astr to argue that modern teachers of literature should "look to history, cross boundaries between academic fields, and use practical, as well as theoretical,teaching methods" (quotation from abstract at …
Olson, Donald W.
Investigating Art, History, and Literature with Astronomy: Determining Time, Place, and Other Hidden Details Linked to the Stars (Cham: Springer, 2022), pp. 288-323; illus.
Includes discussion of the reference to Boetes (the constellation Boötes) in Bo, IV, met. 5, explaining the astronomy underlying the "puzzle" found in Boethius's original reference and in Chaucer's translation.
Robinson, Michael.
American Journal of Physics 90 (2022): 745-54.
Explains the practical utilities and operations of astrolabes, reporting on several years' use of a homemade instrument. Includes recurrent references to Astr as a helpful guide, describing it as "apparently the earliest known technical manual…
Deals with Chaucer's technical knowledge, ambivalence toward astrology and magic, and literary uses. Studies ambiguities, confusion, complexities, and conflicting attitudes of the Franklin toward astrology, astronomy, and magic.
Hsy, Jonathan
Suzanne Conklin Akbari and James Simpson, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Chaucer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 43-62. "This chapter also appears in a modified and expanded form in Jonathan Hsy, Trading Tongues: Merchants, Multilingualism, and Medieval Literature (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2013), 27–57," where the title is "Chaucer's Polyglot Dwellings: Home and the Customs House."
Examines the way connections of polyglot London and England trace how "London's polyglot character informs Chaucer's fictive portrayal of urban living" in HF and ShT. Connects Chaucer’s work at the customs house and his house in Aldgate with HF and…
Breckenridge, Jay.
Pennsylvania English 15:1 (1990): 37-48.
Breckenridge discusses his stage dramatization of Geoffrey Chaucer and the problems regarding Chaucer's life and personality engendered by life records and critical appraisal of Chaucer the man and Chaucer the persona.
Bennett, Kristen Abbott.
Upstart: A Journal of English Renaissance Studies, August 10, 2015: n.p.
Includes discussion of the influence of Chaucer's Purse and Thomas Hoccleve's "La male regle" on Thomas Nashe's "Pierce Penilesse," examining the elements of comedy and "moral uncertainty" in Chaucer's poem and its "accretion of polygeneric…
A verbal/visual social history of late-fourteenth-century England, particularly London and Canterbury, organized by topics drawn from Chaucer's life and works, especially CT. Topics include various social types, pilgrimage, plague, war with France,…
Surveys the presence of Arabic culture in CT, focusing on the plots and sources of SqT and PardT, the frame-tale structure of CT, allusions to Arabic personages, and uses of words that derive from Arabic.
Considers translation as theory and inspiration in the writings of four English authors, including discussion of Chaucer’s translations of Boethius in Bo and in TC, and John Dryden’s translations of CT. Wahlen’s Ph.D. dissertation,…
Raby, Michael B.
Dissertation Abstracts International A77.03 (2015): n.p.
Considers medieval understandings of the relationship between attention and distraction or diversion, using several texts, ranging from Augustine to Walter Hilton, Julian of Norwich, and TC.
Phillips, Helen.
Susanna Fein, ed. The Auchinleck Manuscript: New Perspectives (York: University of York, 2016), pp. 139-55.
Examines "what looking from Auchinleck to Chaucer might reveal about Chaucer." Considers how in Th Chaucer may have been influenced by the "romance formulae exemplified in Auchinleck."
Goedhals, Antony.
Studia Neophilologica 90.2 (2018): 206-24.
Highlights the "creative disruptions of Chaucerian parody" and argues that BD satirizes the language of courtly complaint to privilege more naturalistic expression of mourning. Through his conversation with the dreamer, the knight's language moves…
Luengo, Anthony E.
Chaucer Review 11 (1976): 1-10.
The form and style of the Pardoner's sermon are affected by its two audiences. The moral tale is related for the benefit of the Pilgrims; the "ensamples" (the brief Biblical stories against various sins) are for the "lewed people" in his rustic…
Mack, Peter.
In Rhetoric's Questions: Reading and Interpretation (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 7-18.
Explores questions of audience, occasion, and a writer's control in classical and early modern western rhetoric, and applies these questions in a "sample reading," examining TC, 3.1324–36 for the ways that it encourages readers "to re-experience…
Covella, Sister Francis Dolores.
Chaucer Review 2.4 (1968): 235-45.
Considers the tone and attitude of the seventeen-stanza "Epilogue" of TC (5.1751-1869), observing a shift between the first five stanzas and the last twelve and suggesting that the latter are addressed to a reading audience rather than the original,…
Coleman, Joyce.
Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 155-69. 2 b&w figs.
Outlines an "ethnography of reading" and describes "audienceship" as a field of study of "how people actually read (and heard) texts," including examples drawn from Chaucer's fiction and its reception. Closes with a brief survey of reading and…
A variety of essays, reprinted and original, by Ewald Standop, including reprinted versions of two essays that pertain to Chaucer: "Zur Allegorischen Deutung der 'Nonnes Preeste Tale'" (1961) and "Chaucers Pardoner: Das Charakterproblem und die…
Harbin, Andrea R., Tamara F. O'Callaghan, Alan B. Craig, and Ryan W. Rocha.
In Jennifer E. Boyle and Helen J. Burgess, eds. The Routledge Research Companion to Digital Medieval Literature (Florence: Taylor and Francis, 2017; New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 63-81; 8 b&w illus.
Describes augmented-reality texts for the ways they differ from both print and digital texts, and explains a project called The Augmented Palimpsest, where a digital version of GP is augmented by links to auxiliary audio and visual data, including 3D…
Besserman, Lawrence [L.]
Sanford Budick and Wolgang Iser, eds. The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between. (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1996), pp. 68-84.
Augustine's emphasis on charity and cupidity in "De doctrina Christiana" and his discussion of the relations among gospel narratives in "De consensu evangelistarum" suggest that he equates secular and biblical poetics. Similarly, Chaucer justifies…
Argues that in ClT Chaucer "has successfully humanized the psychological motivation of both Walter and Griselda," de-emphasizing the "supernatural" aspects of the characterizations found in analogous narratives, and depicting his protagonists with…
