Davis N[orman].
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 58-84.
Comments on the limited impact of Chaucer's prose on later tradition, and explores the stylistic dexterity of his verse in light of contemporary linguistic features: his use of open and close vowels in rhyme and the impact of rhyme on his diction;…
Donaldson, E. T[albot].
Derek Brewer, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer. Writers and their Background (London: G. Bell, 1974), pp. 85-108.
Describes the editorial practices necessary to produce a modern edition of Chaucer's works, commenting on spelling, punctuation (especially virgules), meter (especially final -e), and distinguishing scribal and authorial forms. Summarizes the number…
Brewer, Derek.
Derek Brewer, Tradition and Innovation in Chaucer (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1982), pp. 1-21.
Characterizes several differences between the archaic (prescientific) and modern mindsets: literal vs. relative, oral vs. literate, mythic vs. scientific. Includes a brief discussion of Chaucer's mixture of the two.
Koretsky, Allen C.
Derek Cohen and Deborah Heller, eds. Jewish Presences in English Literature (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1990), pp. 10-24.
Chaucer uses the anti-Semitism of PrT to depict pernicous innocence.
Hanna, Ralph,III.
Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987), pp. 87-94.
The grounds for "best-text" editing are uncertain. In following a "best-text," an editor may seek to "place the modern audience in the position" of the Ur-audience. Hanna questions Hengwrt as basis for "best text" and Manly-Rickert's method of…
Morse, Charlotte C.
Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987), pp. 122-29.
Reviews the development of CT editing from 1960 onward. The "Variorum is designed to control and reassess secondary literature and to test Manly-Rickert (very reliable). Rejects Manly-Rickert's theory of early versions of CT and ClT. Reviews…
Cowen, Janet M.
Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987), pp. 26-33.
In editing Chaucer, the problem of the final "-e" can be resolved "in a conservative edition by retaining the spelling of the base manuscript and in a modernised edition by regularising it." Cowen and George Kane, editors of LGW (in progress), treat…
Smith, Jeremy J.
Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 104-12.
Demonstrates how specific linguistic features can be used to disclose "scribal attitudes to the text being copied," using as a primary example a number of linguistic forms from "one of the most notorious manuscripts" of CT, British Library MS Harley…
Boffey, Julia.
Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 3-14.
Investigates the "manuscript context" of courtly love lyrics, identifying their incidence and the implications of their groupings and solo occurrences. Recurrent mention of Chaucer's lyrics, and discussion of manuscripts that include "clusters" of…
Mooney, Linne R.
Derek Pearsall, ed. New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays from the 1998 Harvard Conference (York; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, in association with Boydell and Brewer, 2000), pp. 131-41.
Surveys the techniques and functions of identifying manuscripts produced by the same scribe (especially manuscripts relating to Chaucer and Gower) and calls for a digital archive of known hands to help identify related manuscripts.
Blake, N. F.
Derek Pearsall, ed. New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays from the 1998 Harvard Conference (York; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, in association with Boydell and Brewer, 2000), pp. 29-40.
Summarizes the aims and methods of the Canterbury Tales Project, describes recent improvements in the analytic programs affiliated with the Project's data (SplitsTree rather than PAUP), and suggests ways the data may help to clarify manuscript…
Driver, Martha [W.]
Derek Pearsall, ed. New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays from the 1998 Harvard Conference (York; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, in association with Boydell and Brewer, 2000), pp. 53-64.
Assesses the Internet and CD-ROMs as tools in the study and teaching of manuscript research, summarizing the potential and limitations of each. Comments on the impact of a number of projects, products, and Web sites, focusing on the Canterbury Tales…
Edwards, A. S. G.
Derek Pearsall, ed. New Directions in Later Medieval Manuscript Studies: Essays from the 1998 Harvard Conference (York; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, in association with Boydell and Brewer, 2000), pp. 65-79.
Edwards surveys attempts to "historicize" the representation of Middle English texts, from black letter type to computer transcription, focusing on the nineteenth-century efforts of Frederic Madden. Includes recurrent references representing the…
Hacht, Anne Marie, and David Kelly, eds.
Detroit: Gale, 2002.
Includes a brief biography of Chaucer, plot summaries of the frame and the tales of CT, discussion of themes and style, a description of historical context, a critical overview, a selection of sixteen critical essays or excerpts, and suggestions for…
Hacht, Anne Marie, and Dwayne D. Hayes, eds.
Detroit: Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009.
This encyclopedia of world authors describes how the works of individual authors "fits with the context of the author's life, historical events, and the literary world"; it includes a comprehensive index, printed in each of the four volumes. The…
Figg, Kristen Mossler, and John Block Friedman, eds.
Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005.
An encyclopedic survey of medieval arts and humanities. The section on Literature, by Lorraine Stock, includes a summary analysis of CT (pp. 199-201) and a description of Chaucer's life and works (p. 205).
Lewis, James R., and Evelyn Dorothy Oliver.
Detroit: Visible Ink, 2009.
A popular handbook to dream psychology, dream lore, the history of interpretations of dreams, and dreaming in various cultures, with an entry on Chaucer (pp. 38-40) that comments on his biography and his dream-vision poetry. First published in 1995.
Rumble, Thomas C., ed.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1965.
Presents eight Breton lays in Middle English, each with bottom-of-page glosses, a facsimile manuscript page, a bibliography, and a general Introduction (pp. xiii-xxx) that describes the nature of the genre, its history, and French sources of the…
Aers, David, ed.
Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992.
Six essays by various hands explore and critique the notion of a steady rise of individualism underlying the traditional historical periodiztion of the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Human identities in all times are functions of humans interacting in…
Mehl, Dieter.
Deutsche Shakespeare-Gesellschaft West Jahrbuch 120 : 111-27, 1984.
TC inspired both Albert Brooke's The Tragicall Historye of Romeus and Juliet and Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare's play is a "more serious and comprehensive reading" of TC, particularly its fusion of comedy and tragedy, than is…
Rudat, Wolfgang E. H.,and Patricia Lee Youngue.
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 55 (1981): 19-43.
The Virgilian "Iuppiter descendens" in CT combines the sacred and the profane. Sexual motivation governs the behavior and storytelling of some of the pilgrims. Medieval man was able to integrate the serious with the comical because he possessed a…
McDonald, William C.
Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fur Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 60 (1986): 543-71.
ParsT's statement of the medieval idea (of Peraldus) that true virtue derives from nobility of the spirit rather than from nobility of birth is examined in relation to its treatment by the late-medieval German authors Heinrich von Langenstein and…
Barney, Stephen A.
Dewey R. Faulkner, ed. Twentieth Century Interpretations of The Pardoner's Tale: A Collection of Critical Essays (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 83-95.
Commends the "harmony" of PardT and "its capacities to elicit responses," discussing it as a tale that is "eloquent," intelligent, significantly expressive, unified, and instructive." Includes contrasts with PhyT.
