The Chaucer Review: An Indexed Bibliography (Vols. 1-30)

Andreas, James R. "'Wordes betwene': The Rhetoric of the Canterbury Links." 29 (1994): 45-64.
Bakhtin's theories of discourse are presaged in the works of Geoffrey of Vinsauf from which Chaucer borrows in the Canterbury Tales. This foreshadowing is most clear in Chaucer's views of language in which the word becomes a magical illusion allowing "the living and the dead [to] speak to one another through the magical medium of the utterance" (45). Such conversation is most apparent in the links between the Canterbury Tales. The feast metaphor accurately describes the amplificatio present throughout the tales. Chaucer also seems to use Vinsauf's trope of expolitio, in that Chaucer implies something is more important that what he says. Both Vinsauf and Bakhtin posit that the "most crucial aspect of languge . . . is the fact that it can . . . replicate itself with ever finer gradations of meaning and expression" (50). For Chaucer the activity of translation provides an opportunity for renewal which creates delight. The links between the tales not only provide the opportunity for dialogue, but they also characterize and aculturate each speaker. The nature of speech as dialogue is most apparent in the Man of Law's Prologue. The links also provide a space in the narrative for laughter to occur.

Andreas, James. "'Newe science' from 'Olde bokes': A Bakhtinian Approach to the Summoner's Tale." 25 (1990): 138-51.
In the Summoner's Tale Chaucer festively inverts tradition so as not to present a perversion of Christianity. Authorities in the Middle Ages approved the romance form for tales, and the fabliau was a comic, carnivalesque inversion of the romance. In Chaucer's use of these forms, laughter is produced by placing the past in the present. The Summoner develops a conflict between a friar and a layman. The Summoner fits the profile of a carnival tale-teller as a parody of his profession who is damned according to tradition. Numerous other associations and details connect the Summoner with carnival tradition. Throughout the Summoner's Tale and the following tales, the attitude of carnival allows the Summoner and other pilgrims such as the Squire to parody Christian traditions.

Ganim, John M. "Carnival Voices and the Envoy to the Clerk's Tale." 22 (1987): 112-27.
The Envoy to the Clerk's Tale does not function as either a "dramatic device or a mere aside" (113), but as a parodic remark about literary criticism. Several elements in the Envoy indicate that Chaucer wrote it after he had written the tale, and in the Envoy Chaucer quotes from and parodies himself. Close reading reveals a number of carnival qualities in the Envoy, including a sense of play, puns, animal imagery, and a reversal of the seriousness of the preceding tale.