Greentree, Rosemary.
Rochester, N.Y.; and Cambridge : D. S. Brewer, 2001.
Descriptive, annotated bibliography of editions and criticism of Middle English lyrics and short poems, focusing on 1900-1995 but including several editions and studies outside this range. Excludes works dedicated exclusively to Chaucer and other…
Salisbury, Eve.
Dissertation Abstracts International 56 (1996): 3950A.
Despite the apparent variablility of the genre in English, six Breton lays demonstrate distinctive characteristics, influenced by the turbulent fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England that produced them. Though they deal with difficult issues of…
Petricone, Sister Ancilla Marie.
DAI 34.03 (1973): 1251A.
Examines the progressions of events in various French and English Breton Lays; includes commentary on repetition as a narrative technique that leads to closure in FranT.
Vial, Claire.
Leo Carruthers, Raeleen Chai-Elsholz, and Tatjana Silec, eds. Palimpsests and the Literary Imagination of Medieval England (New York: Plagrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 175-91.
Awareness of generic ancestry offers evidence of the palimpsestuous nature of the "true" Middle English Breton lays. Reference is made to Chaucer's FranT among other so-called Breton lays.
Keiser, George R.
Thomas J. Heffernan, ed. The Popular Literature of Medieval England (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1985), pp. 167-93.
Through the "Planctas Mariae," Keiser illuminates the pathetic mode that governs MLT, PrT, ClT, and PhyT. Griselda, Custance, and Virginia resemble the Virgin in the "Planctas." The anti-Semitism of PrT is common in the "Planctas," and the tale of…
Winstead, Karen.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018.
Examines life-writing in the European Middle Ages, with commentary on late antique prototypes and focus on England, ranging widely in languages and forms: Latin and vernacular, history and fiction, poetry and prose, biography and autobiography,…
Bildhauer, Bettina, and Chris Jones, eds.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
Collection of essays that address medieval and medievalism themes and how they continue to impact contemporary perspectives. The introduction includes a history of medievalism from the fourteenth to the twenty-first centuries, and remarks how…
Alamichel, Marie-Francoiseand Derek Brewer,eds.
Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1997.
Eleven essays study the influence and impact of the Middle Ages on Western life and culture from the sixteenth century to the present. The essays cover a wide range of topics--literature, stylistics, lexicography, art, the cinema, philosophy,…
Bolton, W. F., ed.
London: Barrie & Jenkins; Sphere, 1970.
Comprises eight chapters by various authors surveying English literature from the Old English period through Middle English prose. The chapter pertaining to Chaucer includes four sections: 1) a brief account of Chaucer's life (pp. 159-62), by W. F.…
Ariza-Barile, Raúl.
Literature Compass 15.6 (2018): n.p.
Contemplates the concept of "of a 'medieval Mexico' as a historically significant paradigm" in light of the nation's colonial past. Considers various translations of CT into Spanish and comments on Chaucer studies in Mexico, including the lack of…
Uses the Halle-Keyser theory of meter to discover a "pattern of heavy stresses in the initial syllables" of twenty-one of the twenty-three stanzas of ABC that "illuminate the poem aurally."
Pearsall, Derek.
Ad Putter and Judith A. Jefferson, eds. The Transmission of Medieval Romance: Metres, Manuscripts and Early Prints (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2018), pp. 33-49.
Describes Middle English metrical predecessors to "The Tale of Gamelyn" and assesses its regularities and place in the tradition of alliterative long-line verse. Also comments on its status as an example of Chaucerian apocrypha.
Condren, Edward Ignatius.
DAI 31.05 (1970): 2338-39A.
Assesses the history and criticism of the concept of courtly love, contending that it is a "complicated metaphor for the poet's commitment to the craft of poetry." Then considers the occasions and philosophical implications of BD, PF, and HF, arguing…
Twelve chapters assess why so many poets have been drawn to Ovid's Metamorphoses as a source of inspiration. Although its intrinsic richness and complexity provided the original impetus for its popularity, its permeation of so much English literature…
The "byjaped fol," to whom Chaucer refers in TC 1.526-32, is not a specific person but rather a mistranslation of Boccaccio's word "musorno," which Chaucer took to refer to a well-known person--a particular "fool"--rather than to the foolish quality…
Wright, Constance S.
Constance S. Wright and Julia Bolton Holloway, eds. Tales Within Tales: Apuleius Through Time: Essays in Honor of Professor Emeritus Richard J. Schoeck (New York: AMS Press, 2000), pp. 55-72.
Compares depictions of Cupid and Psyche in Plato's Phaedrus, Apuleius's Metamorphoses, Origen's Commentary on the Song of Songs, and ClT (Walter and Griselda), noting their different constructions of gender and viewing them as reflections of…
Palmer, R. Barton.
Studies in the Literary Imagination 20 (1987): 23-39.
Palmer reviews modern critical methods (including Robertsonianism) designed to close "the gap between the pastness of ancient texts and the modern context of their reading and analysis."
Huws, Daniel.
National Library of Wales Journal 25:1 (1987): 114-18.
Now renamed NLW MS 21972D, the early-fifteenth-century Merthyr Fragment, containing NPT, is described and compared to other manuscripts. The Merthyr Fragment is about 200 lines of text now visible, in whole or in part, about 20 more than previously…
Friedman, John B.
Marlene Villalobos Hennessy, ed. Tributes to Kathleen L. Scott. English Medieval Manuscripts: Readers, Makers and Illuminators (London: Harvey Miller), pp. 83-100.
CYPT shares details and concerns found in other late medieval and early modern English alchemical treatises, part of the genre of "alchemical autobiography." Like CYPT in considering the function of organic material (especially excrement) in…
An intertextual study of Margery Kempe and May in MerT reveals how language, sex, and money, considered as "media of exchange," affect medieval discourse concerning women and merchants, and especially merchants' wives. All three media are recognized…
Limited art edition (200 copies printed) of MerPT, translated by Nevill Coghill (1960), illustrated by Derek Cousins, and designed by Thomas Simmonds. Coghill's translation is interleaved for comparison with the text from the Ellesmere manuscript,…
Modernizes MerPT in iambic pentameter couplets, with brief notes and facing-page text in Middle English. The introduction (pp. vii-xv) emphasizes the bitter tone of the tale and its satire
Pittock, Malcolm.
Essays in Criticism 17 (1967): 26-40.
Reads MerT as a "striking example" of the "tension between the tale and its teller" insofar as the Merchant fails to understand the "true significance" of the Tale. His "moral perception has been disturbed by anger and by a ludicrous…
The combination of genres in MerT (fabliau, encomium, moral allegory, mock-heroic, and parody) satirizes the social institutions and literary genres within which sex and love are contained and represented. The encomium fuses reality and idealization;…
