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Fun With Palamon And Arcite: Rationale And Strategies For Teaching The Two Noble Kinsmen As The Culmination Of The Shakespearean Canon, Joanne E. Gates

Presentations, Proceedings & Performances

Hardly noticed in the reception of Harold Bloom's Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human several years ago was his hint that not The Tempest but The Two Noble Kinsmen makes an appropriate final accomplishment. On one level, the play is merely a stage adaptation of Chaucer's The Knight's Tale, with a rather crude couple of subplots thrown in, perhaps to please the commoners. In an undergraduate forum, I am less inclined to evaluate Fletcher's contribution as distinct from Shakespeare, but I do think the play important for how it is representative of many of the co-authored English Renaissance plays …

Glimpsing Medusa: Astoned In The Troilus, Timothy D. O'Brien

Quidditas

In these pages I would like to consider the role of Medusa in Chaucer's Troilus—a modest enough enterprise except for the fact that there is not a single reference to this puzzling figure in the entire work, or in any of Chaucer’s other works for that matter. Such an absence does not of course mean absence of influence. After all, Chaucer does not mention Boccaccio, even though his Il Filostrato supplies the narrative material for and fundamental shape of the Troilus. Obscuring authorial indebtedness because of some “anxiety of influence” is one thing; alluding to a figure from …

Review Essay: Richard Utz. Chaucer And The Discourse Of German Philology: A History Of Reception And An Annotated Bibliography Of Studies, Anita Obermeier

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Richard Utz. Chaucer and the Discourse of German Philology: A History of Reception and an Annotated Bibliography of Studies, 1793–1948. Making the Middle Ages 3. Turnhout: Brepols, 2002. xxi + 446 pp.

Review Essay: David Wallace. Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages And Associational Forms In England And Italy, Stanley Benfell

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David Wallace. Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. xix + 555 pp.

Sympathy For The Monastery: Monks And Their Stereotypes In The Canterbury Tales, Shiela Pardee

Quidditas

The two monks that appear in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, the pilgrim Daun Piers and Daun John in the Shipman's Tale, seem to be everything one would expect from medieval estates satire. They are attractive outdoorsmen with sophisticated appetites, fine clothing, and healthy complexions; in spite of their vows of poverty, they are the very image oof medieval prosperity. Although Chaucer conforms to the image of the worldly monk familiar to his audience, his intentions are more complex than simply to replicate and confirm the stereotype. In addition, he calls attention to the effects of the stereotype on the clerics …

Review Essay: Frese, Dolores Warwick. An Ars Legendi For Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Re-Constructive Reading, Charles R. Smith

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Frese, Dolores Warwick. An Ars Legendi for Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Re-Constructive Reading. University of Florida Press, Gainesville 1991. x + 238 pp. $34.95 / $17.95.

Review Essay: Kiser, Lisa J. Truth And Textuality In Chaucer's Poetry, Katharine S. Gittes

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Kiser, Lisa J. Truth and Textuality in Chaucer's Poetry. University Press of New England, Hanover, N.H. 1991. 201 pp. $35.00.

Hill, John M. Chaucerian Belief: The Poetics of Reverence and Delight. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn. 1991. 204 pp. $27.50.

Review Essay: Lois Roney, Chaucer's Knight's Tale And Theories Of Scholastic Psychology, Charles R. Smith

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Lois Roney, Chaucer's Knight's Tale and Theories of Scholastic Psychology, University of South Florida Press, 1990, xviii, 376 pp., ill., biblio., index, $36.95 (cloth), $16.95 (paperback).

Review Essay: Karla Taylor, Chaucer Reads "The Divine Comedy", Sandy Feinstein

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Karla Taylor, Chaucer Reads "The Divine Comedy," Stanford University Press, 1989, vi, 289 pp., biblio., index, $29.50.

Mythological Lovers In Chaucer's Troilus And Criseyde, Katherine Heinrichs

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Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde is often criticized by modern scholars for the abruptness of its epilogue rejecting earthly love. Paull Baum objects that the moral of the epilogue is not, in fact, the moral of the tale and suggests that Chaucer might better have concluded in the manner of the stilnovisti, with Criseyde as a transfigured "gloriosa donna." J. S. P. Tatlock protests that "the feeling of the Epilog is in no way foreshadowed at the beginning or elsewhere; it does not illumine or modify; it contradicts. The heartfelt worldly tale is interpreted in an unworldly sense." He is …

Review Essay: Robert R. Edwards, The Dream Of Chaucer: Representation And Reflection In The Early Narratives, Sigmund Eisner

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Robert R. Edwards, The Dream of Chaucer: Representation and Reflection in the Early Narratives, Duke University Press, 1989, xvi, 192 pp., biblio., $34.95.

Review Essay: Guillaume De Machaut, Le Jugement Du Roy De Brehaigne And Remède De Fortune, Josette Britte-Ashford

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Guillaume de Machaut, Le jugement du roy de Brehaigne and Remède de fortune, ed. James I. Wimsatt and William W. Kibler, The Chaucer Library, University of Georgia Press, 1988.

Chaucer's Sense Of An Ending, Colleen Donnelly

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The problem of closure plagued Chaucer throughout his career, and critics have continued to point out his 'inability" to end or finish many of his poems. This lack of closure often frustrates the casual reader and perplexes the serious scholar, leaving both to wonder if Chaucer was incapable of bringing his poems to an end or if he simply intended to tease his audience with such inconclusiveness. Neither answer is quite satisfactory. To understand that this inconclusiveness was deliberately created by Chaucer the master poet, and not by Chaucer resignedly handing the pen over to the befuddled persona whoo records …

Review Essay: Jeorg O. Fichte, Ed., Chaucer's Frame Tales: The Physical And The Metaphysical, Sigmund Eisner

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Joerg O. Fichte, ed., Chaucer's Frame Tales: The Physical and Metaphysical, Tübinger Beiträge zur Anglistik 9, D. S. Brewer, 1987.

"Hevest Up The Dore": Overcoming Obstacles To Meaning In Chaucer's Miller's Tale, David Fuller

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The tantalizing obliquity E. M. W. Tillyard observes in the Miller's Tale cannot be avoided if we look beyond the popular humor and artistry of the structured plot. It is difficult to accept the Miller's joke as merely Chaucer's joke, especially when Chaucer includes frequent and indeed ambiguous references to "Goddes pryvetee" and repeated remarks that seriousness and harm have been turned into a joke.

Natural Law And Chaucer's Physician's Tale, Jay Ruud

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Of all the Canterbury Tales, the Physician's Tale may well be the least appreciated. Its subject matter is distasteful in itself–a despicable judge abuses his position of public trust and authority by deliberately setting out to obtain an innocent young virgin as an object of lust, while too frustrate the even the victim's father beheads her after cold-blooded premeditation. But if that were not enough, the tale contains at least two apparently incongruous digressions, and the storyteller appends a moral that must make the reader suspect the Narrator has not been listening to his own story. Perhaps a modern …

Dreams, Stress, And Interpretation In Chaucer And His Contemporaries, David G. Hale

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As is well known, dreams are important components of many works of medieval literature. one or more dreams can be the subject of most of a poem, as in the Roman de la Rose, Pearl, Piers Plowman, the Book of the Duchess, and the House of Fame. Or one or more dreams can be a relatively small yet important part of a work; Dante's Vita nuova and Purgatorio are familiar examples, as are Chaucer's Nun's Priest's Tale, Knight's Tale, and Troilus and Criseyde. In many cases the transitions into or out of these dreams …

The Wife Of Bath And The Scholastic Concept Of Operatio, Joseph E. Grennen

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The loathly lady of Chaucer's Wife of Bath's Tale delivers a lecture to her reluctant swain which is remarkably gracious and persuasive, although hardly unconventional. Her sentiments, which find a parallel in Dante's Convivio, may be summed up in a phrase: Virtue is the true nobility. True virtue, furthermore, is a legacy from Christ, not an inheritance passed on with titles and wealth. The chief difficulty facing a reader is to find a way of reconciling this view with the cynical, maverick personality established for Alice of Bath in her own prologue. We might suppose that Chaucer is here …

Review Essay: V. A. Kolve, Chaucer And The Imagery Of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales, Charles R. Smith

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V. A. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales, Stanford University Press, 1984. $39.50

Adam's Dream: Fortune And The Tragedy Of The Chester 'Drapers Playe', George Ovitt Jr.

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In glossing a passage from his translation of Boethius's De consolatione philosophiae, Chaucer provides a definition of tragedy which would have been familiar to any fourteenth-century reader and which, perhaps, still seems adequate to the twentieth-century reader: "What other thyng bywaylen the cryinges of tragedyes but oonly the dedes of Fortune, that this unwar strook overturneth the realmes of greet nobleye? (Glose. Tragedye is to seyn a dite of a prosperite for a tyme, that endeth in wrecchidnesse.)" The substance of this gloss is repeated in the 'Prologue' to the "Monk's Tale": "Tragedie is to seyn a certeyn storie, …

Chaucer And The Three Crowns Of Florence (Dante, Petrarch, And Boccaccio): Recent Comparative Scholarship, Madison U. Sowell

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Chaucer and the Italian Trecento. Ed. Piero Boitani. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 313 p. $49.50.

Howard H. Schless, Chaucer and Dante: A Revaluation. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1984. 268 p. $85.00.

R. A. Shoaf, Dante, Chaucer, and the Currency of the World: Money, Images, and Reference in Late Medieval Poetry. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1983. 313 p. $39.95.

Chaucer's Physicians: Their Texts, Contexts, And The Canterbury Tales, Elizabeth Penley Skerpan

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In the Canterbury Tales, the pilgrim Chaucer lists an impressive series of medical authors whom his fellow pilgrim the Physician is supposed to have read. As we continue past the General Prologue, we discover that these writers do not merely embellish the PHysician's claims to a well-rounded medical education: two are actually mentioned in the course of story-telling, though, oddly, not by the Physician, but by the Pardoner and Parson. These two pilgrims' references appear in tales more concerned with spiritual than physical healing and health, and indeed the Parson preaches on the "cure" of sins as a necessary …