Subject Guide ~ Medieval and Renaissance Studies

These are often the best places to start your research.

The best way to find articles on Chaucer is to search the MLA International Bibliography or the Studies in the Age of Chaucer Bibliography (also available on BlackBoard). This list primarily includes influential articles that wouldn't necessarily show up on a database search.

Clerk's Tale

Wallace, David. "'Whan She Translated Was:' Humanism, Tyranny, and the Petrarchan Academy." Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Language and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.  PR1933 P64 W35 1997.

Man of Law’s Tale:

Dinshaw, Carolyn. "The Law of Man and it's Abhomynacions." in Chaucer's Sexual Poetics. E-book, Madison, Wis.: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1989,  

Geraldine Heng, “Beauty and the East, a Modern Love Story: Women, Children, and Imagined Communities in the Man of Law’s Tale and Its Others” pp. 180-237 in Empire of Magic. PR321 H46 2003

Sue Niebrzydowski, “Monstrous (M)othering: The Representation of the Sowdanesse in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale.” pp. 196-207 in Consuming Narratives: Gender and Monstrous Appetites in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Ed. Liz Herbert McAvoy and Teresa Walters. PR275 A67 C66 2002

Elizabeth Robertson, “Nonviolent Christianity and the Strangeness of Female Power in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale.” In Gender and Difference in the Middle Ages. Ed. Sharon Farmer and Carol Braun Pasternack. HQ1143 G44 2003

David Wallace, “‘Deyntee to Chaffere:’ Men of Law, Merchants, and the Constance Story.” In Chaucerian Polity: Absolutist Lineages and Associational Forms in England and Italy. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997.  PR1933 P64 W35 1997.

Manciple's Tale

Fumo, Jamie Claire. "Thinking Upon the Crow: The Manciple’s Tale and Ovidian Mythography” Chaucer Review 38 (2004): 355-75.

Ginsberg, Warren. Chaucer’s Italian Tradition. University of Michigan Press, 2002. PR1912.A3 G56 2002. Chapter 3 in particular.

Monk’s Tale

Peter Beidler, ed., Masculinities in Chaucer. PR1928 M45 M37 1998

Special issue of the journal Studies in the Age of Chaucer: volume 22, 2000. Burke Library Print Journal Collection, basement.

Pardoner’s Tale

Robert P. Merris, “Sermon Structure in the Pardoner’s Tale” Chaucer Review 17 (1982-3) pp. 235-49.

Lee Patterson, “Chaucer’s Pardoner on the Couch” Speculum 2001 (76) 638-80. A rebuttal to Carolyn Dinshaw’s essay, “Eunuch Hermeneutics,” in her book Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics.PR1933 S35 D56 1989

Prioress’s Tale

Bale, Anthony. The Jew in the Medieval Book : English Antisemitisms, 1350-1500. Cambridge University Press, 2006. PR151.J5 B35 2006

Blurton, Heather, and Hannah R. Johnson. The Critics and the Prioress : Antisemitism, Criticism, and Chaucer’s Prioress’s Tale. University of Michigan Press, 2017.

Shelia Delany, Chaucer and the Jews: Sources, Contexts, Meanings. Routledge: 2002. PR1928 J48 C48 2002

Eugene Anthony Petracca. "Ethics, Antisemitism and The Prioress’s Tale: A Reparative Approach." Exemplaria, 31:4 (2019): 293-314

Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews. BM585.4 R83 2004
  --doesn’t specifically discuss Chaucer, but provides useful historical and literary context

Sylvia Tomasch, “Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew,” in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. D113.5 P65 2000

(also search the MLA bibliography—there’s been much work done on the Prioress in recent years)

Squire's Tale

Heffernan, Carol Falvo. The Orient in Chaucer and Medieval Romance. D.S. Brewer, 2003. PR1933.O75 H44 2003

Lynch, Kathryn L. Chaucer’s Cultural Geography. Routledge, 2002, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203951347.

Tale of Sir Thopas:

Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “The Giant of Self-Figuration: Diminishing Masculinity in Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas.” pp. 96-118 in Cohen’s book, Of Giants: Sex, Monsters, and the Middle Ages. PR275 G47 C64 1999