Nowlin, Steele.
Dissertation Abstracts International A79.04 (2018): n.p.
Argues that the "creative potential of understanding invention at once as a textual and historical concept . . . receives its fullest treatment in the poetic exchanges of Chaucer and Gower," examining how in MLT and MkT Chaucer undercuts Gower's…
Magnani, Roberta, and Diane Watt.
Postmedieval 9 (2018): 269-88.
Examines glosses of John Gower's English text of "Confessio Amantis" and Chaucer's CT, especially MLT, and claims that Chaucer and Gower "are acutely aware of the risks, and sometimes the pleasures, of misprision or queer (mis)interpretation" as they…
Johnson, Ian.
Sabrina Corbellini, Giovanna Murano, and Giacomo Signore, eds. Collecting, Organizing and Transmitting Knowledge: Miscellanies in Late Medieval Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), pp. 23-38.
Considers late medieval miscellanea and the "sensibility of the miscellaneous," using the concept of "heterarchy," and assessing Nicholas of Lyre's discussion of the Psalter, the :Biblically licensed diversity" of CT (evident in ParsT, Ret, and…
Ensley, Mimi.
Yearbook of English Studies 32 (2018): 333-51.
Argues that the scriptural glosses found in Thomas Godfray's 1535 publication of "The Ploughman's Tale" are similar to Langland's techniques in "Piers Plowman," as are the "poem's anticlericism and alliteration"; when Godfray republished the tale in…
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 289-313.
Identifies food-chain predation and ecosystemic competition as formal elements of animal fables; then examines these dynamics in NPT, the Rat Parliament of Langland's "Piers Plowman," and their respective allusions to the Uprising of 1381 and to the…
Cannon, Christopher.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 315-31.
Argues that Mel and Langland's "Piers Plowman" share common features that derive from medieval school texts: axioms and proverbs, recurrent attention to the "Distiches of Cato," and citational and translational practices grounded in school exercises.…
Batkie, Stephanie L.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 245-70.
Assesses speech and silence in the characterizations and functions of the narrators of GP and the Prologue to "Piers Plowman." Both narrator-figures are introduced "through tropological silencing," but the "muted contact" of the GP narrator with the…
Warner, Lawrence.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 353-74.
Reviews critical studies that offer, accept, or defend arguments that Chaucer knew and was influenced by William Langland's "Piers Plowman," challenging them on the grounds of weak logic, uncertain assumptions, lack of evidence, and/or the…
Grady, Frank.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 271-87.
Identifies various ways Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy" influenced Langland's "Piers Plowman" formally and thematically, and suggests in conclusion that, unlike other late medieval English writers, Langland and Chaucer "are interested in…
Cooper, Helen.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 375-89.
Comments on the studies included in a cluster of essays entitled "Chaucer's Langland" (YLS 32 (2018) and, acknowledging the difficulties of establishing direct influence between Langland and Chaucer, describes a variety of dissimilarities between…
Batkie, Stephanie L., and Eric Weiskott.
Yearbook of Langland Studies 32 (2018): 237-44.
Tallies several differences and similarities between Chaucer's and Langland's works and worlds, comments on the relative prominence of Chaucer studies, and introduces the seven essays in a special section of YLS entitled "Chaucer's Langland." For…
Explores connections between authority and production/distribution in Bodley 861. Briefly compares the Bodley scribe and scribe B in the Hengwrt CT, discusses Chaucer's shorter poems and their dependence on external evidence, and discusses John…
Pratt, Karen, Bart Besamusca, Matthias Meyer, and Ad Putter, eds.
Göttingen: V&R Academic, 2017.
Twenty-three essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors, all of which pertain to the study of medieval short narratives as they appear in multi-text manuscripts, addressing concerns such as "miscellaneity," paratexts, genres,…
Connolly, Margaret.
Karen Pratt, Bart Besamusca, Matthias Meyer, and Ad Putter, eds. The Dynamics of the Medieval Manuscript (Göttingen: V&R Academic, 2017), pp. 81-100.
Assesses the value of John Shirley's attribution of Adam Scriveyn to Chaucer in the only manuscript where it appears, arguing on the grounds of Shirley's "other statements about Chaucer" that the attribution is reliable and, on more general external…
Pratt, Karen.
Karen Pratt, Bart Besamusca, Matthias Meyer, and Ad Putter, eds. The Dynamics of the Medieval Manuscript (Göttingen: V&R Academic, 2017), pp. 257-85.
Traces the emphases and manuscript contexts of Latin and vernacular versions of the Pyramus and Thisbe story from Ovidian origins to Chaucer's narrative in LGW, with emphasis on the comic or bathetic elements of Chaucer's account and on its place in…
Pérez-Fernández, Tamara.
Karen Pratt, Bart Besamusca, Matthias Meyer, and Ad Putter, eds. The Dynamics of the Medieval Manuscript (Göttingen: V&R Academic, 2017), pp. 242-56.
Summarizes and extends recent scholarship on Guildhall scribe Richard Osbarn, and assesses his work, focusing on two TC manuscripts to which he contributed: San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 114, and London, British Library, MS Harley 3943.…
Koppy, Kate.
Karen Pratt, Bart Besamusca, Matthias Meyer, and Ad Putter, eds. The Dynamics of the Medieval Manuscript (Göttingen: V&R Academic, 2017), pp. 147-64.
Examines the arrangement and composition of two of the booklets of the Findern manuscript (Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.1.6) for the ways they may be seen as "the record of interactions within the community of readers and scribes who had…
Drimmer, Sonja.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019.
Examines the importance of visual images in late medieval manuscripts, and the significance of manuscript illuminators in the development and spread of English literary culture. Discusses illuminated manuscripts of Chaucer's CT, and illustrated works…
Wonders how the transgender experience allows a "trans textuality" and offers an example of this proposed theoretical approach to manuscripts via a consideration of the Ellesmere manuscript.
Brooks, Freya Elizabeth Paintin.
Open access Ph.D. dissertation. University of Leicester, 2018. Available at EThOS: E-Theses Online Service (registration required). Accessed February 5, 2021.
"[R]evisits" the manuscripts of CT "in order to piece together the evidence of women's involvement in the consumption and circulation of this work," using "visualisations to map the social networks of women connected to the manuscripts and explore…
Besamusca, Bart.
Amsterdamer Beiträge zur älteren Germanistik 76 (2016): 89-122.
Offers six case studies of multi-text manuscripts to investigate "medieval concepts of authorship and . . . constructions of authority." Shows that Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden B.24 (including TC, PF, Truth, Mars, Venus, LGW, and…
Examines Cambridge University Library, MS Ff. 1.6 (the Findern manuscript), which includes extracts from PF and part of LGW, and considers its "taste for writings relating to female desire." Argues that "expression of female same-sex desires must be…
Stewart, Vaughn.
Dissertation Abstracts International A77.11 (2017): n.p.
Examines "the paratextual, literary, historical, and physical ways print books serve as brokers of authority," including discussion of how William Caxton, in his editions of Chaucer, "inaugurates the printer as a necessary intermediary between the…
Robinson, Bonnie J., and Laura J. Getty, eds.
Dahlonega: University of North Georgia Press, 2018.
E-book designed as a classroom anthology, downloadable as a PDF, with Learning Outcomes and introductory backgrounds for each chronological period, and introductions to selected works and authors from "The Dream of the Rood" to Olaudah Equiano. The…
Ransom, Daniel J.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 118 (2019): 517-43.
Observes that the glossary of Speght's 1598 edition of Chaucer's works lists "yape" for "jape"/"iape," meaning "trick," "joke," or sexual activity, but the 1602 edition does not; historical and contemporary word lists do not include "yape" unless…
