Pardoner's Tale Bibliography

Miller’s Tale Suggested readings by Harriet Raghunathan

To start with:

Brewer, Derek. ‘The fabliaux’ in Rowland, Beryl, ed. Companion to Chaucer Studies. London and New York, 1968. (SDC)

Cooper, Helen. Oxford Guides to Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989, pp 92-107. (JMC, useful to xerox)

Donaldson, E. Talbot. "Idiom of Popular Poetry in the Miller's Tale." English Institute Essays 1950. Rpt in his Speaking of Chaucer (New York: W.W. Norton and Co.,1970), pp. 13-29; also in Chaucer--The "Canterbury Tales": A Casebook, ed. by J.J. Anderson (London: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 143-60. (Widely available. Essential)

Knapp, Peggy. Chaucer and the Social Contest. New York: Routledge, 1990. (JMC and elsewhere) pp. 32-44.

Kolve, V.A. Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative: The First Five Canterbury Tales. (Stanford, CA, 1984) pp. 158-216. In South Campus.

Neuss, Paula. "Double Entendre in the Miller's Tale." Essays in Criticism 24 (1974):325-40. [JMC]

Phillips, Helen. An Introduction to the Canterbury Tales: Reading, Fiction, Context. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000. (SDC) pp. 54-63. Useful introduction.

Other

Blum, Martin. Negotiating Masculinities: Erotic Triangles in the Miller’s Tale.in Peter Beidler ed. Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde. Boydell and Brewer: Woodbridge, 1998.  DU lib. Good and clear

Brown, Peter and Andrew Butcher. The Age of Saturn: Literature and History in the Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991 (Brit Council, DU. Probably has something good but I can’t recall.)

Hansen, Elaine Tuttle. Chaucer and the Fictions of Gender. Berkeley: Univ of California Press, 1992, pp. 223-36. (SSC) I believe you can get much of this online, probably at www. luminarium. Google it.

Knight, Stephen.  Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986.

Leicester, H. Marshall. ‘Newer Currents in Psychoanalytic Criticism and the Difference “It” makes: Gender and Desire in the Miller’s Tale.’ ELH 61 (1994) 473-499

Miller, Mark. Naturalism and its discontents in the Miller’s Tale. ELH 67 (2000) 1-44.

Patterson, Lee. “‘No Man His Reson Herde’ Peasant Consciousness, Chaucer’s Miller, and the Structure of the Canterbury Tales.” Literary Practice and Social Change in Britain 1380-1530, ed. Lee Patterson (1990) rpt in New Casebooks: Chaucer. Eds Valerie Allen and Ares Axiotis. Basingstoke:Macmillan, (1997) 167-92, a shorter version.

Rowland, Beryl "Chaucer's Blasphemous Churl: A New Interpretation of the Miller's Tale." In Chaucer and Middle English Studies in honour of Rossell Hope Robbins. Ed. by Beryl Rowland. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974, pp. 43-55. (SDC, I think. Focuses on Christian allusions and the sins represented in the main characters. Read alongside Kolve, above, who warns against taking Christian allusions too seriously.  If Rowland is not available, check the index to DW Robertson ‘s Preface to Chaucer (Princeton 1962) for refs to Miller’s Tale, to get an idea of the ‘Christian exegetical’ reading of the text.

The following are available in SDC if anyone wants to try them. (ChauR= Chaucer Review)

Kevin S. Kiernan, “The Art of the Descending Catalogue, and a Fresh Look at Alison” ChauR 10 (1975)1-16

Peter Beidler    ChauR 12 (1977)    Art and Scatology in MillT.

Jos. A. Dane    ChauR 14 (1980)    Mechanics of comedy in MillT

Patrick Gallacher    ChauR 18 (1983)    Perception & reality in MillT
Catherine T Kacz    ChauR 18 (1983)    Ch's beard-making

Stolen from JMC maybe available elsewhere.

Farrell, T. J.    “Privacy in the Miller’s Tale” ELH 56 (1989) On privacy, see also Peter Goodall, ‘Allone, withouten any compaignye’: Privacy in the first fragment of the Canterbury Tales.

Melissa Furrow    ELH 56 89   “ME fabliaux and modern myth” [fabliau elements appear in romance]

Harriet Raghunathan Reading list

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abbreviations

ChauR  The Chaucer Review

Cr Q   Critical Quarterly

ELH   A Journal of English Literary History

PMLA   Publications of the Modern Language Association of America.

Texts

The Riverside Chaucer. Gen. Ed. Larry D. Benson (3rd ed. Boston, Mass. and Oxford, 1987) is the standard volume containing Chaucer’s complete works in their original Middle English form.

The Canterbury Tales: Nine Tales and the General Prologue. Eds. V.A.V. Kolve and Glending Olson. New York and London: Norton, 1989. (My text and quotations from Chaucer follow the slightly modernized spelling of this edition).

Suggested Readings for Students

(i) General

Aers, David. Chaucer. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1986.

Brewer, Derek. A New Introduction to Chaucer. 2nd ed. Harlow: Longman, 1988.

Brown, Peter and Andrew Butcher. The Age of Saturn: Literature and History in the Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991.

Boitani, Piero and Jill Mann. Eds. The Cambridge Chaucer Companion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986.

Brown, Peter, Ed. A Companion to Chaucer. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000.

Brown, Peter. Chaucer at Work: The Making of the Canterbury Tales. Harlow: Longman, 1994

Cooper, Helen. The Structure of the Canterbury Tales. London: Duckworth, 1983.

Cooper, Helen. Oxford Guides to Chaucer. The Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989.

Dillon, Janette. Geoffrey Chaucer. Basingstoke and London: Macmillan, 1993.

Ellis, Steve. Ed. Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. Harlow, Middlesex: Longman, 1998.

Howard, D. R. The Idea of the Canterbury Tales. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976.

Knight, Stephen. Geoffrey Chaucer. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986

Patterson, Lee. Chaucer and the Subject of History. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991

Pearsall, Derek. The Canterbury Tales.1985; rpt. London and New York: Routledge, 1993.

Phillips, Helen. An Introduction to the Canterbury Tales: Reading, Fiction, Context. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000.

(ii) On the General Prologue

Allen, Mark. “Mirth and Bourgeois Masculinity in Chaucer’s Host.” Masculinities in Chaucer: Approaches to Maleness in the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Cressida. Ed. Peter G. Beidler. Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1998, pp. 9-21.

Andrew, Malcolm. “Context and Judgment in the General Prologue.” ChauR  23 (1988) pp. 316-337.

Blamires, Alcuin. “Chaucer the Reactionary: Ideology and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.” Review of English Studies 51(Nov 2000), pp. 523-39.

Bowden, Muriel. A Commentary on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 1948, 2nd ed. London: Macmillan, 1967.

Cookson, Linda and Bryan Loughrey, eds. Critical Essays on the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Harlow: Longman, 1989.

Cunningham, John. The Prologue to the Canterbury Tales: A Critical Study. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985.

Donaldson, E Talbot. “Chaucer the Pilgrim.” PMLA LXIX (1954), pp. 928-936. Rpt in Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales. Ed. J. J. Anderson. Casebook Series. Basingstoke:Macmillan, 1974.

Eberle, Patricia J. “Commercial Language and the Commercial Outlook in the General Prologue.”  ChauR 18, no. 2 (1983), pp. 161-74.

Higgs, Elton D. “The Old Order and the ‘Newe World’ in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.” Huntingdon Library Quarterly 45.2 (Spring 1982), pp. 155-173.

Hoffmann, Arthur W. “Chaucer’s Prologue to Pilgrimage: the Two Voices.” ELH 21 (1954), pp. 1-16.

Josipovici, G. “Fiction and Game in the Canterbury Tales: Cr Q 7 (1965), pp. 185-97.

Leicester, H. Marshall Jr. “The Art of Impersonation: A General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.” PMLA 95 (1980), pp.213-24.

Mann, Jill. Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973.

Martin, Loy D. “History and Form in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.” ELH 45 (1978), pp. 1-17.

Morgan, Gerald. “The Design of the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.” English Studies 59 (1978), pp. 481-98.

Moseley, Charles. “The General Prologue as Prologue.” in Cookson and Loughrey eds. above, pp. 105-118.

Nevo, Ruth. “Chaucer: Motive and Mask in the General Prologue.” Modern Language Review 58 (1963), 1-9. Rpt in Critics on Chaucer.  Ed. Sheila Sullivan. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970, pp. 105-110.

Nolan, Barbara. “ ‘A Poet Ther Was’: Chaucer’s Voices in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales.” PMLA 101 (1986), pp. 154-69.

(iii) On the controversy over Chaucer’s Knight

Aers, David. “Review of Terry Jones, Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary.” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 4 (1982), pp. 169-75.

Jones, Terry. Chaucer’s Knight: The Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.

Keen, Maurice. “Chaucer’s Knight, the English Aristocracy and the Crusade.”  English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages. Eds. V.J. Scattergood and J. W. Sherborne. London: Duckworth, 1983, pp. 45-61.

Pratt, John H. “Was Chaucer’s Knight Really a Mercenary?” ChauR  22 (1987), pp.8-26

(iv) Further reading: Historical and Social Background

Baugh, Albert C. A History of the English Language, 1968; rpt New Delhi: Allied Publishers, 1999.

Bloch, Marc. Feudal Society. 2 vols.Tr. L.A. Manyon 1962; rpt. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1975.

Brewer, Derek. “Class Distinction in Chaucer.” Speculum 43 (1968), pp. 290-305; rpt in his Tradition and Innovation in Chaucer. London, 1982, pp. 54-72.

Hilton, Rodney. Bond Men Made Free. 1973; rpt. London: Methuen, 1977.

Lambdin, Laura and Robert T. Lambdin, eds. Chaucer’s Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in the ‘Canterbury Tales.’ Westport Conn. and London: Greenwood, 1996.

Lindahl, Carl. “The Festive Form of the Canterbury Tales.” ELH  52 (1985), pp.531-75.

Postan, M. M. The Medieval Economy and Society: An Economic History of Britain in the Middle Ages. 1972, rpt. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975.

Strohm, Paul. “The Social and Literary Scene in England.” The Cambridge Chaucer Companion. Eds. Piero Boitano and Jill Mann. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986, pp. 1-18.

Strohm, Paul. Social Chaucer. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989.

Swanson, Robert. “Social Structures.” A Companion to Chaucer. Ed Peter Brown. Oxford: Blackwell, 2000, pp. 397-414.

 (v)

On Chaucer’s Life

Du Boulay, F. R. H. “The Historical Chaucer.” 1974; rpt in The Canterbury Tales: Nine Tales and the General Prologue. Eds V.A. Kolve and Glending Olson. New York, London: Norton, 1989, pp. 441-458.

Pearsall, Derek. The Life of Chaucer: A Critical Biography. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.