Best Chaucer Critics

Pugh on women and desires

“A woman speaks in defence of desires”

Lee on women as food

“Women are repeatedly compared to food”

Pearsall on Damyan’s indentity

“Damyan is no more than a poodle to this lady dog-trainer”

Zedolik on husband and wife

“Comedic inversion of the inequal dichotomy of husband/wife”

Robertson on sacred ideals

“Useful distortion of scared ideals”

Thorne on religious authority

“January’s bending of religious authority to his own selfish purposes”

Dillon on amorality

“Forcing a genre characterised by its amorality into a moral framework”

Tolliver on women as goods

“January shops for his bride”

Pearsall on possession

“Sexual posessesion […] with an undertone of disgust and repulsion”

Olsen on January’s view of May”

“Januarie sees May as not a person but a thing”

Hathaway on January’s desire

“The prison of his own desire”

Smith on the trustworthiness on the narrator

“No one is fully, least of all the narrator”

Shoof on on May’s betrayel

“His private property has betrayed”

Stevens on deceit in women

“Intending to show the deceitfulness of women”

Harrington on January’s happiness

“Left to believe that a level of happiness is possible through folly and self-deception”

Davidson on May’s victory

“Youth’s victory over age”

Lee on characters as seasons

“Winter should give way, graciously, to spring”

Beidler on January’s selective sight

“January sees only ‘what he wants to see’”

Neuse on Merchant’s blindness

“The merchant surely has more than a touch of his (Janauary’s) blindness”