Bawcutt, Priscilla, and Janet Hadley Williams, eds.
Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y. : D. S. Brewer, 2006.
Thirteen essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors. Topics include studies of individual poets and poems (Henryson, Dunbar, Douglas, Lyndsay, Richard Holland's "Buke of Howlat," Gilbert Hay's "Buik of King Alexander the…
Bawcutt, Priscilla.
Helen Cooney, ed. Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 179-96.
Bawcutt surveys love poetry of medieval Scotland in various genres, emphasizing the variety of tones and exploring the importance of Chaucer's influence.
Woolf deleted a description of Chaucer and one of the Pointz Hall library when revising materials for "Between the Acts," reflecting her growing belief that books were no longer the center of culture in 1939-40. Traces references and allusions to…
Anderson, Judith H.
Zachary Lesser and Benedict S. Robinson, eds. Textual Conversations in the Renaissance: Ethics, Authors, Technologies (Aldershot, Hampshire; and Burlington, Ver.: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 71-89.
Explores intertextual relations between Spenser's Faerie Queene and Chaucer's PardPT and FranT. Archimago and Despair from Spenser's Book 1 gain dimension in light of the Pardoner and the Old Man of PardT; in Book 3, Spenser explores the "emotional…
Yeager, R. F.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 51-67.
Yeager summarizes Chaucer's education and career for the purpose of identifying the books, languages, and classical and vernacular literatures with which Chaucer was clearly acquainted. Discusses Chaucer's strategies for keeping literary authority at…
Victims of lovesickness, lovers who commit suicide in Chaucer and Gower do so by stabbing themselves in the heart, an action not found in their sources. Nor is there medical precedent for regarding the heart as the central organ of the circulatory…
Smith, D. Vance.
Seth Lerer, ed. The Yale Companion to Chaucer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 87-121.
Smith traces various threads of Chaucer's relationships with English poetic tradition: GP and Langland's "Piers Plowman"; Th and native romance; echoes of Sir " Orfeo"; alliterative verse in Chaucer; and the complex concerns of native tradition,…
Simpson, James.
Seth Lerer, ed. The Yale Companion to Chaucer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 55-86.
Simpson explores Chaucer's absorption of and reactions to Continental influences (Latin, French, and Italian), emphasizing the recurrent influence of Ovid as a source and a model. BD is a poem of deference to Gaunt and to French tradition; HF and PF…
Mann, Jill.
Jill Mann and Maura Nolan, eds. The Text in the Community: Essays on Medieval Works, Manuscripts, Authors, and Readers (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), pp. 41-74.
Mann describes the composition and influence of the "Liber Catonis," a composite of six Latin texts that served as a school-text in medieval education, and considers it in light of other medieval school-texts. Identifies places where works that…
Heffernan, Carol F.
Neophilologus 90 (2006): 333-49.
Heffernan discusses the nature, origins, and development of Italian "novelle"; Boccaccio's innovations with the form; and the likelihood that Chaucer had direct knowledge of The Decameron. Argues that the influence of Italian novelle generally, and…
Gutierrez Arranz, José María.
Juan Camilo Conde Silvestre and M. Nila Vázquez González, eds. Medieval English Literary and Cultural Studies (Murcia: Universidad de Muscia, 2004), pp. 71-80.
Discusses the uses and functions of classical myth in Chaucer's works from a double perspective: Chaucer's knowledge of the different stories and his creative adaptations of this material.
Evans, Ruth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 263-70.
Considers the implications of source study and its revitalization in response to recent theory, raising questions about its (possibly irreconcilable) relationships with intertextuality, "genetic criticism," invention, translation, and electronic…
Cites Chaucer's self-awareness in attention to his sources, comments on the role of "source study" in Chaucer criticism, and introduces eight brief essays first presented at the 2004 congress of The New Chaucer Society in Glasgow. For the eight…
Collette, Carolyn P.
Christoph Huber and Henrike Lähnemann, eds. Courtly Literature and Clerical Culture / Höfische Literatur und Klerikerkultur / Littérature courtoise et culture cléricale. Selected Papers from the Tenth Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Universitat Tübingen, Deutschland, 28 Juli-3 August 2001 (Tübingen: Attempto, 2002), pp. 177-94.
Collette reads the end of CT against Philippe de Mézières' "Songe du vieil pelerin," indicating Chaucer's connections with contemporary Anglo-French literature and exploring the relations between politics and morality in four Tales: alchemy as a…
Caie, Graham D.
Special Issue Nordic Journal of English Studies 3.1 (2004): 125-44.
Caie describes how lay people gained access to the Bible in the late Middle Ages through sermons, compendia, and florilegia. Explores how Chaucer characterizes speakers through their uses of the Bible in CT (e.g., quotation, misquotation, selection,…
Beidler, Peter G.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 225-30.
Beidler proposes a refined taxonomy of terms to designate the relationships between a work and its sources (hard source, soft source, hard analogue, soft analogue, and lost source) and argues that--for lack of evidenc--criticism should dispense with…
Trinity College, Dublin, MS 389 (formerly D.2.8) includes three alchemical texts that are Chaucerian apocrypha. Timmerman corrects Gareth W. Dunleavy's 1965 discussion of this manuscript.
Scattergood, John.
Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006.
Reprints fifteen previously published essays by Scattergood, plus a sixteenth, original essay, "The Copying of Medieval and Early Renaissance Manuscripts" (pp. 21-82). The latter--which discusses the habits and status of medieval scribes, early…
Mosser, Daniel W.
Journal of the Early Book Society 8 (2005): 215-28.
A combination of linguistic and paleographical evidence suggests a single scribe for Egerton 2864 who differs from the scribes of Additional 5140. Mosser documents his article with illustrations.
Mooney surveys the manuscripts and life records of Adam Pinkhurst, identified as the scribe addressed in Chaucer's Adam and as the scribe of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts, among others. Includes a chronology of manuscripts Pinkhurst is known…
