Although both were Londoners, Chaucer and Langland did not share a common readership. Chaucer was acknowledged as a founder of a literary tradition; Langland was appropriated less often and more in ideological than aesthetic terms. Ownership of…
Conlan, J. P.
Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography 10: 120-47, 1999.
Reexamines the "paradoxical evidence" of Ha4, arguing that Manly and Rickert's discussion of it was distorted by their a priori assumptions and their concluding that Chaucer's foul papers "served as the exemplar" of the manuscript. The affiliations…
Boffey, Julia,and A. S. G. Edwards.
Thomas A. Prendergast and Barbara Kline, eds. Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), pp. 3-13.
Assesses orthographic and lexical "Scottishisms" and their effects on meter in the poems of Bodleian MS Arch Selden B. 24, including TC, PF, LGW, CT, Truth, and poems by Hoccleve, Lydgate, and others. The density of such Scottishisms is generally…
Blake, N. F.
A. J. Tops, Betty Devriendt, and Steven Geukens, eds. Thinking English Grammar: To Honour Xavier Dekeyser, Professor Emeritus (Leuven: Peeters, 1999), pp. 3-13.
Variants among pragmatic markers-"items which add to the feel of the line or to the organization of the text rather than directly to the sense of the passage"-in the manuscripts of WBP indicate that scribes changed them freely, even subconsciously.…
Windeatt, Barry, trans.
Oxford and New York : Oxford University Press, 1998.
Prose translation of TC aimed at the general reader, with introduction (30 pp.), explanatory notes (35 pp.), and indices of proverbs and names. The introduction comments on themes, date, sources, genre, and characterization.
Pearsall, Derek, ed.
Oxford, and Malden, Mass. : Blackwell, 1999.
Selections from "what is best and most representative" in English and Scottish writers from the period. Includes PF, selections from TC and CT (GP, MilPT, WBPT, FranPT, PardPT), and several shorter works (Adam, Truth, Scog, Purse). Also includes…
León Sendra, Antonio R., and Jesús Serrano Reyes, trans.
Córdoba : Universidad de Córdoba, 1999.
Spanish translation of HF, with facing-page Middle English. Includes a brief introduction (pp. 1-8) and extensive notes (pp. 195-346), with lists of bibliographical references and proper names.
Jimura, Akiyuki.
Hiroshima University Studies, Faculty of Letters 59: 112-29, 1999.
Tallies instances of variant spellings in modern editions of Chaucer's works, focusing on the loss of letters initially, medially, and finally. Data are derived from editions by Blake, Benson, and Robinson for CT, and Benson, Robinson, Windeatt, and…
Brown, Murray.
R. Barton Palmer, ed. Chaucer's French Contemporaries: The Poetry/Poetics of Self and Tradition (New York: AMS Press, 1999), pp. 187-215
Deschamps's "Ballade" dates from Sir Lewis Clifford's diplomatic mission to the French court in 1391, when France and England were closer to peace than they had been in almost a decade. Both Chaucer and Deschamps were associated with the Order of the…
An entry on a "boke of schrift" found in a commonplace book compiled by Cheshire gentleman Humphrey Newton (1466-1536) contains the section against swearers and flatterers from ParsT (600-21, 626-27). Humphrey perhaps chose this passage for its…
Turville-Petre, Thorlac.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 21: 301-14, 1999.
Chaucer's Truth and Gentilesse (and other English works) were added into the Rushall Psalter (Nottingham University Library, MS Me LM1) when it was owned by John Harpur. The additions reflect Harpur's anxiety about the contingencies of his social…
Shonk, Timothy A.
Essays in Medieval Studies 15: 81-91, 1999.
Produced in Leicester, Harley 7333 supplies information about how Chaucer was known in the "provinces" outside of London. Shonk disagrees with several of Manly and Rickert's (1940) ideas about the manuscript and challenges their suggestion that it is…
Schulz, Herbert C.
San Marino, Calif. : Huntington Library, 1998.
Revised reprint of 1966 original; a description of the Ellesmere manuscript, its illuminations, and its history. Includes a new "Bibliographical Note" by Joseph A. Dane and Seth Lerer, plus their additions to Schulz's list of reproductions of…
Robinson, Peter,M. W.
Kathryn Sutherland, ed. Electronic Text: Investigations in Method and Theory. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), pp. 145-77.
Compares the advent of electronic editions with the revolution in editing effected by Aldus Manutius in c.1495-1515. Surveys the growing utility of digital photography, the difficulties of machine-readable transcriptions, and the potential for…
Robinson, Peter.
Geoffrey Lester, ed. Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honour of Norman Blake (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 194-217.
Surveys evidence-from publications of the Canterbury Tales Project-affirming that the Hengwrt manuscript "has the best text [of the poem], where it has text, but it may not have all the text which Chaucer wrote, nor have it all in the best order, nor…
Examines historical and symbolic features of the costumes of select Ellesmere portraits (Squire, Knight, Merchant, Prioress, Monk, Parson, Cook, and Chaucer), arguing that the sequence is an "informed response" to CT, especially GP. Chaucer is…
Mosser, Daniel W.
Geoffrey Lester, ed. Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honour of Norman Blake (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 161-77.
Surveys instances in which portions of manuscripts of CT were copied from Caxton's first edition of the poem and identifies instances where watermarks show that the paper stock in CT manuscripts is the same as that in Caxton. Such evidence has…
Marx, William.
Cambridge; and Rochester, N.Y. : D. S. Brewer, 1999.
Describes, among others, five manuscripts that contain Chaucer material: National Library of Wales MSS 3049 and 3567 and Peniarth MSS 359, 392, and 393.
Kline, Barbara.
Thomas A. Prendergast and Barbara Kline, eds. Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), pp. 116-44.
Examines scribal interventions in the CT portion of British Library MS Harley 7333 (produced at Leicester Abbey) as examples of "ideological editing." Its corrections, variants, and omissions indicate efforts to suppress Chaucer's criticism of the…
Ishiharada, Masahiro.
Hisayuki Sasamoto et al., eds. Hearts to the English-American Language and Literature: Essays Presented to Emeritus Professor Sutezo Hirose in Honour of His 88th Birthday (Osaka: Osaka Kyoiku Tosho, 1999), pp. 19-39 (in Japanese)
Collates variants between manuscripts and modern printed editions of GP, based on the catalog of variants in Manly and Rickert and the Variorum GP.
Cannon, Christopher.
Cambridge and New York : Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Historical analysis of Chaucer's complete lexicon, arguing that his English is traditional rather than innovative. Chaucer naturalizes French and Latin words in ways similar to those of his English predecessors, often fusing foreign and native forms.…
Philmus, Maria R. Rohr.
Spenser Studies 13: 125-37, 1999.
Although a scheme identical to that of the Spenserian sonnet was used by Scots sonneteers before Spenser, the rhyme scheme of the "Spenserian" sonnet and the stanza form used in The Faerie Queene derive from Chaucer's Monk's Tale stanza.
