INFO | TEXTS | SCHEDULE | REQUIREMENTS & EVALUATION

Texts

[The Riverside can be purchased at the Tech Bookstore / 118 S. Main St. / 552-6444]

Required:

Benson, Larry, gen. ed. The Riverside Chaucer. Third Ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Robert Henryson, Testament of Cresseid (TEAMS text, available online)

Secondary readings (online or on Reserve), some listed here:

Derek Pearsall, "'Quha Wait Gif All Tthat Chauceir Wrait Was Trew?': Hennryson's Testament of Crisseid," New Perspectives on Middle English Texts: A Festschrift for R. A. Waldron (2000), 169-182. Reserve PDF file.

David Anderson, "Theban History in Chaucer's Troilus," Studies in the Age of Chaucer 4 (1982): 109-133. Reserve PDF file.

R. A. Shoaf, ed., Troilus & Criseyde: "Subgit to alle Poesye" (1992). Reserve

Stephen A. Barney, "Troilus Bound" (1-16)
C. David Benson, "The Opaque Text of Chaucer's Criseyde" (17-28)
Shiela Delaney, "Techniques of Alienation in Troilus and Criseyde" (29-46)
Carolyn Dinshaw, "Reading Like a Man: The Critics, the Narrator, Troilus, and Pandarus" (47-73)
Robert R. Edwards, "Pandarus's 'Unthrift' and the Problem of Desire in Troilus and Criseyde" (74-87)
Louise O. Fradenburg, "'Our owen wo to drynke': Loss, Gender and Chivalry in Troilus and Criseyde" (88-106)
John M. Fyler, "The Fabrications of Pandarus" (107-119)
Robert W. Hanning, "Come in Out of the Code: Interpreting the Discourse of Desire in Boccaccio's Filostrato and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde" (120-137)
John P. Hermann, "Gesture and Seduction in Troilus and Criseyde" (138-160)
Leonard Michael Koff, "Ending a Poem Before Beginning It, or The 'Cas' of Troilus" (161-178)
Rosemarie P. McGerr, "Meaning and Ending in a 'Paynted Proces': Resistance to Closure in Troilus and Criseyde" (179-198)
Richard Neuse, "Troilus and Criseyde: Another Dantean Reading" (199-210)
Larry Scanlon, "Sweet Persuasion: The Subject of Fortune in Troilus and Criseyde" (211-223)
Sarah Stanbury, "The Lover's Gaze in Troilus and Criseyde" (224-238)
Karla Taylor, "Inferno 5 and Troilus and Criseyde Revisited" (239-256)
David Wallace, "Troilus and the Filostrato: Chaucer as Translator of Boccaccio" (257-268)

Julian N. Wasserman and Robert J. Blanch, eds., Chaucer in the Eighties (1986). Reserve

Larry D. Benson, "The 'Love-Tydynges' in Chaucer's House of Fame" (3-22)
Renate Haas, "Chaucer's Use of the Lament for the Dead" (23-38)
Russell A. Peck, "Chaucerian Poetics and the Prologue to the Legend of Good Women (57-74)
Ruth M. Ames, "The Feminist Connections of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women" (75-92)
Sheila Delaney, "Rewriting Woman Good: Gender and the Anxiety of Influence in Two Late-Medieval Texts" (75-92)
Allen J. Frantzen, "The 'Joie and Tene' of Dreams in Troilus and Criseyde" (105-120)
Margaret Jennings, C.S.J., "To Pryke or to Prye: Scribal Delights in the Troilus, Book III (121-134)
Beryl Rowland, "Chaucer's Working Wyf: The Unraveling of a Yarn-Spinner" (137-150)
Martha Fleming, "Repetition and Design in the Wife of Bath's Tale" (151-163)
Shinsuke Ando, "The English Tradition in Chaucer's Diction" (163-174)
Robert J. Blanch and Julian N. Wasserman, "White and Red in the Knight's Tale: Chaucer's Manipulation of a Convention" (175-193)
William Kamowski, "Varieties of Response to Melibee, and the Clerk's Tale" (193-208)
Laurel Braswell, "Chaucer and the Art of Hagiography" (209-222)
Edward C. Schweitzer, "The Misdirected Kiss and the Lover's Malady in Chaucer's Miller's Tale" (223-234)
Thomas Hahn, "Money, Sexuality, Wordplay, and Context in the Shipman's Tale" (235-250)

Robert Edwards, The Dream of Chaucer (1989). Reserve

"Introduction" (1-16)
"The Practice of Theory" (17-40)
"The Narrator in Chaucer's Early Poem" (41-64)
"Imagination and Memory (I): The Book of the Duchess and the Beginnings of Chaucer's Narrative" (65-92)
"Imagination and Memory (II): The House of Fame" (93-122)
"Intellect: The 'Certeyn Thing' in the Parliament of Fowls" (123-146)
"A Chaucerian Prospect: From 'wonder thynges' to 'olde apreved stories'" (147-160)

Margaret Hallissy, Clean maids, true wives, steadfast widows : Chaucer's women and medieval codes of conduct (1993). Reserve

"The Three Estates of Women's Lives"
"'As men in bokes rede': The Giving of Rules to Women"
"Suffering Women and the Chaste Ideal"
"Perfect Virgin, Perfect Wife: Transition"
"'Silent tongue and still': Women's Speech and Domestic Harmony"
"The Gossip and the Shrew"
"The Good, the Bad, and the Wavering: Women and Architectural Space"
"'Superfluitee of clothynge': Women and Sartorial Excess"
"'Wel at ese': Widowhood"
"Summa Feminarum: The Archwife"
"Authority and Experience, Books and Life"

Carolyn Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics (1989). Reserve

"Chaucer's Sexual Poetics" (3-27)
"Reading Like a Man: The Critics, the Narrator, Troilus, and Pandarus" (28-64)
"'The naked text in English to declare': The Legend of Good Women" (65-87)
"The Law of Man and Its 'Abhomynacions': (88-112)
"'Glose/bele chose': The Wife of Bath and Her Glossators" (113-131)
"Griselda Translated" (132-155)
"Eunuch Hermeneutics" (156-184)

Web Links

Other

Muscatine, Charles. The book of Geoffrey Chaucer: an account of the publication of Geoffrey Chaucer's works from the fifteenth century to modern times. [San Francisco]: Book Club of California, 1963. [PR1939 M8 1963 SPEC/FOLIO]

Microfilms of the manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales: PR 1865 1986, reels 1-16
Microfilms of early printed books: Early English Books 1475-1640 [Z2002 U575]:

  • STC 5082: Caxton's 1477[?] ed. of the Canterbury Tales [Reel I-4]
  • STC 5083: Caxton's 1483[?] ed. of the Canterbury Tales [Reel I-1]
  • STC 5084: Pynson's 1492[?] ed. of the Canterbury Tales [Reel I-1]
  • STC 5085: Wynkyn de Worde's 1498 ed. of the Canterbury Tales [Reel I-4]
  • STC 5086: Pynson's 1526 ed. of the Canterbury Tales [Reel I-1]
  • STC 5087: Caxton's 1483 ed. of the House of Fame [Reel 1]
  • STC 5088: Pynson's 1526 ed. of the Boke of Fame [Reel 149]
  • STC 5098: "Jack vp Lande compyled by the famous G. Chaucer" 1536? [Reel 132]
  • STC 5099.5: Godfray's 1535[?] ed. of The Ploughman's Tale [Reel 1748]
INFO | TEXTS | SCHEDULE | REQUIREMENTS & EVALUATION

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Allegory and the 'Fourfold Method'

Beyond the literal meaning of the text, medieval methods of reading detected three levels of meaning that "could refer to any (or all) of the three aspects of Christian truth. Hence arises the idea of 'fourfold allegory.' The literal meaning is often called the 'historical,' and may express the entire content of a text, as in the works of historians. Ulterior aspects of meaning were labeled allegorical, tropological (or moral), and anagogical. Allegorical meanings…referred to the mission of the Church on earth; tropological meanings referred to the moral duties and struggles of human nature; while anagogical meanings concerned mysteries of faith, such as the afterlife or the operation of Grace, known only through revelation" (Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds , p. 42).

Dante provides us with an example in his "Letter to Can Grande": "'When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a barbarous people, Judea was made his sanctuary, Israel his dominion.' Now if we look at the letter alone, what is signified to us is the departure of the sons of Israel from Egypt during the time of Moses; if at the allegory, what is signified to us is our redemption through Christ; if at the moral sense, what is signified to us is the conversion of the soul from the sorrow and misery of sin to the state of grace; if at the anagogical, what is signified to us is the departure of the sanctified soul from bondage to the corruption of this world into the freedom of eternal glory." (Chaucer: Sources and Backgrounds, p. 81).

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