Discusses seven examples of the influence of the "Ovide Moralisé" on Chaucer: HF 957ff., Anel 1-6, TC 5.1464-84, WBP 3.733ff., MLT 2.633-35, ParsT 10.261ff., and the recurrent phrase "alone, withouten any compaignie" (KnT1.2779, MilT 1.3204, and…
Suggests that when referring to St. Peter's sister in MilT 1.3486 and to Thomas's combination of wrath and frigidity in SumT 3.1825-31 Chaucer was influenced by Robert Grosseteste.
Considers evidence that January's knife-image ("Ne hurte hymselven with his owene knyf"; MerT 5.1840) when commenting on sexual relations with his wife may have indicated to some members of a medieval audience that he was "a sexual pervert of the…
Proposes a reading for PF 215-16: "and with a harde file / She couched hem." "Couched" comes from French "cocher," meaning "to cut a notch or groove," a necessary step in arrow-making.
A short list of caveats for users of the 1977 photographic facsimile of the Findern manuscript, together with transcriptions of marginalia previously unprinted. Note 1 includes an extensive bibliography of scholarship on the manuscript.
Argues that Maximian's Third Elegy inspired the figure of Pandarus in TC. In Maximian, Boethius is a character who is "astonishingly iconoclastic" and "richly ironic," anticipating Pandarus in several ways.
Prints handwritten summaries from a copy of the 1550 edition of Chaucer's works (Cambridge University Library Peterborough B.6.13) and discusses their usefulness for a history of the literary argument, documenting one reader's response to CT and…
Argues that Chaucer had direct knowledge of Vendôme's text and suggests a possible manuscript source of it: Florence, Biblioteca Medicea-Laurenziana, Pluteus 33.31.
Lot 1543 is "Chaucer (black letter): printed by Wyllyam Bonham, at the sign of the Reed [sic] Lyon," given to Rogers (1763 - 1855) by his friend Horne Tooke.
The antecedent of "hyre" in PF 284 must be Venus rather than Diana. This reading reveals the logic of Chaucer's placement of Callisto and Atalanta at the head of his list of famous lovers and leads "inexorably to the conclusion that one wastes one's…
The white eagle of Criseyde's dream of TC 2.925-931 is a "superimposition of the eagle of Purgatorio IX and the doves of Inferno V"; it links the love affair of TC with that of Dante's ruined Paolo and Francesca. The mating of doves and eagles in…
When Absolon "froteth" his lips upon realizing the real target of his kiss in MilT, he acts in accordance with his training as a barber-surgeon. More than a synonym for "to rub," the verb "froten" connotes a range of medical and surgical approaches…
Peter G. Beidler identifies "Heile van Beersele" as a likely source for MilT, supporting his argument with seventeen words he ascribes to Middle Dutch origin in MilT. Only one "or perhaps two" of those words prove to be "distinctively Dutch,"…
A heretofore unrecognized reference to KnT in the "Index Britanniæ Scriptorum," compiled by sixteenth-century antiquarian John Bale, provides evidence of a lost manuscript containing Hoccleve's "Regiment of Princes" plus at least Chaucer's KnT and…
Sallust's association of avarice with effeminacy in "The War with Catiline" and Aulus Gellius's subsequent reiteration of the link in his "Attic Nights" are two possible sources for the combination of avarice with effeminacy in Chaucer's Pardoner.
In the opening poem of "Fables Ancient and Modern," Dryden draws a parallel between himself and Chaucer. The "fairest Nymph" in that parallel should be identified as the Duchess of Lancaster, as proposed by Walter Scott in 1808, rather than Joan of…
The Vulgate's sheer availability offers compelling evidence that Chaucer used the Vulgate Bible, while faint lexical echoes of the "Bible historiale" suggest ancillary use of the "historiale." The Wycliffite Bible's candidacy may be ruled out on a…
Analysis of Bo, Mel, and ParsT reveals that preverbal "ne" unsupported by a postverbal "not" appears most often with "forms of be, will, and witen"; moreover, this construction is more likely to appear in subordinate clauses than in main clauses.
Oxford, Christ Church College, MS 152 encloses Gamelyn in an inserted quire and supplies the long ending of MerT and Link 17 on substitute bifolia. Considered in relation to corresponding "fault lines" in Hengwrt and Ellesmere, this evidence suggests…
Given the numerous verbal parallels between Greene's work and "The Cobbler of Canterbury" (an avowed imitation of CT, published anonymously in 1590), it would seem that Greene "fibbed" when, in a separate publication, he "informed the spirits of…
Taking its editor's preface as a cue, an examination of this edition, which has heretofore been labeled a reprint of John Bell's 1782 edition, reveals that it is in fact "a considerable re-evaluation of Chaucer's works."
In referring to St. Margaret of Antioch in this poem, Hoccleve draws out her "implied presence" in the form of the marguerite in the prologue to Chaucer's LGW.
