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

Ebin, Lois A. "The Theme of Poetry in Dunbar's 'Goldyn Targe.'" 7 (1972): 147-59.
Focused on skillfully creating poetry, Dunbar examines poets and poetry in terms of the natural world and the artistic world. In the 'Goldyn Targe,' Dunbar probes the extremes possible in a dream vision. Section I shows how the sun affects the countryside. In the dream portion, the poet makes this effect analogous to the poet's effect on his subject. References to Homer and Cicero shift the readers' focus to the allegory. In Section III, light becomes good writing: the poet should elucidate his matter in the same way which the dream section has examined poets and poetry. Dunbar's view of the relationship between the two appears in his other works as well.

Heidtmann, Peter. "A Bibliography of Henryson, Dunbar, and Douglas, 1912-1968." 5 (1970): 75-82.
This bibliography provides a general list of the critical materials available on the medieval Scottish poets Henryson, Dunbar, and Douglas and suggests that criticism of Douglas might be the most productive pursuit for scholars interested in this literature.

Lynn, Karen. "Chaucer's Decasyllabic Line: The Myth of the Hundred-Year Hibernation." 13 (1978): 116-27.
For 100 years after Chaucer, the iambic pentameter line seems to have disappeared. Careful examination, however, reveals that it was merely camouflaged by meter and style. Later writers like Lydgate, Skelton, and Dunbar employed an expanded license and added possibilities to the language and meter they used. When subjected to computer analysis, Chaucer's lines seem less metrically complex, whereas those of later authors consistently use more intricate stress patterns.