Bibliographical Citations and Annotations

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Bibliographies, Reports, and Reference

1. Amsel, Stephanie. “An Annotated Chaucer Bibliography, 2017.” SAC 41 (2019): 447–535. Continuation of SAC annual annotated bibliography (since 1975); based on contributions from an international bibliographic team, independent research, and MLA Bibliography listings. 336 items, plus listing of reviews for 40 books. Includes an author index.

2. Parsons, Ben, and Natalie Jones. “Chaucer.” YWES 97 (2018): 286–305. A discursive bibliography of Chaucer studies for 2016, divided into five subcategories: general, CT, TC, other works, and reputation and reception.

3. Twu, Krista Sue-Lo, Lindsey Simon-Jones, and Derrick Pitard. “Chaucer.” YWES 98 (2019): 267–90. A discursive bibliography of Chaucer studies for 2017, divided into six subcategories: general, CT, TC, LGW, other works, and reputation and reception.

See also no. 98.

Recordings and Film

4. Laidlaw, Martin. “Brand Chaucer.” In Marina Gerzic and Aiden Norrie, eds. From Medievalism to Early-Modernism: Adapting the English Past (New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 52–66. Assesses the emphases of four modern adaptations of CT: Brian Helgeland’s 2001 movie A Knight’s Tale (focusing on Chaucer’s character as a “PR” man); the 2011–12 Tacit Theatre touring drama The Canterbury Tales (bawdy comedy); Pier Paolo Pasolini’s 1972 movie I racconti di Canterbury (bawdry and social criticism); and the collected stories Refugee Tales [I] (2016), edited by David Herd (the plight of refugees, especially in Dragan Todorovic’s “The Migrant’s Tale” and MLT). Includes recurrent attention to Chaucer as a “central figure” in the “creation of the English nation.”

5. Lanzarini, Ilaria. “Pictorial Allusion as a Distancing Technique from the Chaucerian Hypotext in The Canterbury Tales.” In Ryan Calabretta-Sajder, ed. Pasolini’s Lasting Impressions: Death, Eros, and Literary Enterprise in the Opus of Pier Paolo Pasolini (Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2018), pp. 177–90. Argues that, for Pasolini, “Chaucer presages the spiritual corruption of the nascent bourgeoisie” in the style and content of CT; yet, to “represent [the] spoiled fruits” of bourgeois corruption visually in I racconti di Canterbury, the filmmaker emulated Pieter Bruegel’s paintings.

See also nos. 46, 168.

Chaucer’s Life

6. Dane, Joseph A. “Coda: Godwin’s Portrait of Chaucer.” In Mythodologies: Methods in Medieval Studies, Chaucer, and Book History (SAC 43 [2021], no. 99), pp. 105–10. Comments on anachronisms in the portrait of Chaucer included in William Godwin’s Life of Chaucer (1803) and on the reception of the portrait and the biography, suggesting that the portrait is “more sincere” than other Chaucerian anachronisms and that such sincerity is “precisely what stands between us and the history we seek.”

7. Seal, Samantha Katz. “Chaucer’s Other Wyf: Philippa Chaucer, the Critics, and the English Canon.” ChauR 54, no. 3 (2019): 270–91. Presents survey of critical and historical treatments of Philippa Chaucer, showing both the ahistorical nature of much of this work and the common, negative approach in her characterization. Emphasizes that gender plays a significant role in how these judgments produce community between the male critics and Chaucer.

8. Sobecki, Sebastian. “Wards and Widows: Troilus and Criseyde and New Documents on Chaucer’s Life.” ELH 86, no. 2 (2019): 413–40. Introduces four previously unknown documents, including a Chaucer life record connected to his guardianship of Michael Staplegate, which offer new perspectives on Chaucer’s life and poetry. Implies that Chaucer’s wardship of Staplegate extended as late as 1382, creating a new context for Cecily Chaumpaigne’s 1380 charge of raptus against Chaucer; suggests that the dispute may have been the result of Chaucer’s match-making efforts for Staplegate. These documents also open a new interpretation of TC, which was composed during or after the time of the events in the documents. Argues that Chaucer’s experience as guardian, and possible matchmaker, creates new implications for TC’s treatment of widowhood, wardship, marriage, and the character of Pandarus. Includes new evidence on Chaucer’s relationship with John Gower and with London lawyer Richard Forster.

9. Turner, Marion. “Chaucer.” In Richard Bradford, ed. A Companion to Literary Biography (Oxford: Wiley, 2018), pp. 375–90. Describes the “ideological investments” that underlie the history of Chaucer biographies, explores authorial...