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

Cherniss, Michael D. "Chaucer's Anelida and Arcite: Some Conjectures." 5 (1970): 9-21.
Based on the introductory material in Anelida and Arcite, readers expect more than a "framed complaint," and it seems difficult to believe that Chaucer would put so much effort into the early portions of Anelida merely to create a frame. A number of similarities between Anelida and Chaucer's dream poems suggest that Chaucer may have planned to finish the work as a dream vision. These likenesses include the style of the opening, the "complaint," the description of the temple, and the immutability of the lovers. In addition, Anelida's situation seems too complex for her, thus demanding a vision which will help her resolve her state. The difficulty of Anelida is intensified by its cloudy relationship to the Knight's Tale and Boccaccio's Teseida. Chaucer may have planned to include the tale of Palamon and Arcite, but his intentions remain unknown.

Favier, Dale A. "Anelida and Arcite: Anti-Feminist Allegory, Pro-Feminist Complaint." 26 (1991): 83-94.
Anelida and Arcite provides the first evidence of a major conflict in Chaucer's poetry, "a genuinely pro-feminist impulse" (83) pitted against the ingrained anti-feminist tradition represented in allegory. Women's betrayal by men is reflected in the betrayal of meaning by poetic language. The invocation draws attention to two conflicts in the poem, that between Mars's roles as sustainer and destroyer and that between the author and his literary fathers. Furthermore, the invocation also posits that poets are not faithful lovers. Mars is the false lover, and Arcite is associated with him. The complaint makes Anelida a real person, and "demonstrates how much of the spell of poetry depends upon holding things in place, or at least appearing to" (91).

Wimsatt, James I. "'Anelida and Arcite': A Narrative of Complaint and Comfort." 5 (1970): 1-8.
Anelida and Arcite is related to both Boccaccio's Teseida and to Statius's Thebiad. The emotion which fills each stanza unifies the poem. The set complaint and the rhyme scheme indicate the strong influence of French sources, which also suggest the kind of ending Chaucer would have written: a "comfort" in which the lovers are reunited.