Hanna, Ralph, [III].
Medium Ævum 69: 279-91, 2000.
Discusses the "household book" of Humphrey Newton and its relation to "central literary culture." MS Lat. Misc. C.66 includes a section of ParsT (10.601-29), a section of KnT (1.3047-56), and a letter imitating Troilus upon seeing Criseyde.
Hanna, Ralph, [III].
Studies in Bibliography: Papers of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia 53: 163-72, 2000.
Examines variants in WBP 3.115-17 (especially "wight" versus "wright") to identify flaws in applying cladistic theory to manuscript stemmatics. Cladistic analysis underlies the Canterbury Tales Project.
Hanna, Ralph, III
Paul Ruggiers, ed. Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition (Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1984), pp. 191-205.
Explains Root's dependence on William Symington McCormick's theory of Chaucer's seriatim revisions of TC, and castigates the "illogical rationalism" of Root's editorial methods, especially his treatment of scribal error. Root's "longing for an…
Hanna, Ralph, III, and Traugott Lawler, eds., using materials collected by Karl Young and Robert A. Pratt.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1997.
Critical edition of the three Latin antifeminist works that influenced Chaucer most significantly, especially his WBP, MerT, and FranT. Includes a complete version of Map's "Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum" and portions of Jerome's "Adversus Jovinianum"…
Hanna, Ralph, III, intro.
Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 1989.
A reproduction of the rare 1911 facsimile. Hanna's critical introduction treats manuscript preparation, accuracy, scribal practice, and the value of the Ellesmere in textual matters.
Hanna, Ralph, III.
Tim William Machan, ed. Medieval Literature: Texts and Interpretation. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies,no. 79. (Binghamton, N.Y.: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1991), pp. 17-39.
English respect for vernacular authors anticipates the Renaissance. Chaucer created for our language and its heritage a conception of culturally significant authority based on textual correctness. More than other Middle English poets, Chaucer…
Hanna, Ralph, III.
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 173-88.
Though they are continuous copies, made without hesitation, surviving manuscripts of TC contain embedded features of their predecessors. The features we infer from extant copies may belong to immediate exemplars used by the scribes of those copies…
Hanna, Ralph, III.
A. J. Minnis and Charlotte Brewer, eds. Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992), pp. 109-30.
Calls for an editing approach that attempts to replicate the contextual and intertextual aspects of manuscripts. Suggests various editions for various purposes, each sensitive to the radical differences of variants, the importance of the manuscript…
Hanna, Ralph, III.
South Atlantic Quarterly 91 (1992): 793-812.
The "peasant voice" of Chaucer's Miller resembles the voices of John Shirley and Wat Tyler as represented in aristocratic accounts of the times. Chaucer's narrator criticizes the Miller's narrative voice, reinforcing chroniclers' depictions of…
Hanna, Ralph,III.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Latin and Venacular Studies in Late-Medieval Texts and Manuscripts. York Manuscripts Conferences: Proceedings Series, University of York, Centre for Medieval Studies, vol. 1. (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Wolfeboro: Boydell & Brewer, 1989), p. 1-11.
Considers WBP as a compilation, "pieced together of verbatim translation" from a fuller text by Jerome. WBP represents "Englished" Latin, cut free from "control and indoctrination" of a closed Latin tradition and thus "seditious and dangerous,"…
Hanna, Ralph,III.
English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700 1 (1989): 64-84.
Largely ignored for forty years, Manly and Rickert's "The Text of the 'Canterbury Tales'" is being reconsidered because it favors the Hengwrt. Chaucer's text is now being reconstructed by "Hengwrtism." The soft approach takes Hengwrt as a guide but…
Studies the national and regional prominence of the Gloucestershire magnate Sir Thomas Berkeley (1352-1417) in relation to his literary patronage, especially of John Trevisa and of John Walton's verse translation (partly based on Chaucer's Bo) of…
Hanna, Ralph,III.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 10 (1988): 23-40.
Focusing on Chaucer's 'Truth', Hanna examines external evidence, individual variations, and the condition of the manuscripts themselves to illustrate the difficulty of distinguishing authorial revisions from scribal errors and alterations in…
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…
In WBP, Alison asserts the primacy of "experience" but is challenged by Jankyn's "authority." Alison's greatest enemy is Heloise, whose arguments against marriage inspired Abelard to make the first antigamous collection, prototype of Jankyn's book…
The "Index of Middle English Prose" identifies and locates every prose text in English, 1200-1500. The initial volume in the series, Hanna's "Handlist I" describes 444 texts. Search under title for additional volumes.
Hanna, Ralph,III.
Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Whole Book:Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1996), pp. 37-51.
Using Winchester College MS 33 as a touchstone for examining the difficulties of apprehending medieval texts, Hanna attributes the miscellaneous nature of collections of vernacular works in manuscripts to the difficulties of textual supply rather…
Hanna encourages more refined analysis of Chaucer's lexical practice, especially examination of patterns of choices between English and French synonyms.
Hanna, Ralph.
Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2005.
Analyzes the cultural conditions of literary production and the books produced in England, 1300-1380, focusing on English vernacular works but also attending to Latin and French ones, seeking to understand the textual communities defined by such…
In juxtaposition to D. W. Robertson's comprehensive historicist method, E. Talbot Donaldson's "fundamentally rhetorical mode of analysis" also constituted a historicist approach, but one that moved from philological detail "toward some larger whole,"…
Hanna, Ralph.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry ((Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 196-215.
Hanna discusses late medieval English "textual culture," commenting on the production and disposition of manuscripts, habits of collecting and anthologizing individual works, the vagaries of manuscript survival, reading practices, etc. Cites examples…
Hanna, Ralph.
Review of English Studies 66, no. 275 (2015): 449–64.
Proposes that when Langland revised B into C, the literary landscape was very different (from Edwardian to Ricardian poetry). Chaucerian dream vision, especially PF with its "emphasis upon the poetic figure who seeks to understand the world through…
Hanna, Ralph.
Ralph Hanna, Introducing English Medieval Book History: Manuscripts, Their Producers and Their Readers (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2013), pp. 132-65.
Chapter 5 in Hanna's book-length introduction to the study of English medieval books and manuscripts, revisiting and offering new and revised opinions of the nature, value, and relations between the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts of CT. Includes…
Hanna, Ralph.
Journal of the Early Book Society 23 (2020): 141-73.
Investigates the "material conditions" that underlie the fictional book of "wikked wyves" described in WBP, 669-73, analyzing extant manuscripts that "most closely resemble Jankyn's volume" and have other Chaucerian and Oxonian associations. Explores…
