Robinson, Peter.
Lou Burnard, Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe, and John Unsworth, eds. Electronic Textual Editing (New York: MLA, 2006), pp. 74-91.
Generates five general "propositions" about the nature and practice of electronic editing, explaining how the propositions developed from work of Robinson and others on The Canterbury Tales Project and indicating the applicability of the propositions…
Thomas, Paul, ed.
Birmingham, UK : Scholarly Digital Editions, 2006.
Includes interlinked images and transcriptions of all fifty-five pre-1500 versions of NPT, with complete collations (linked to variant maps), commentaries on family relationships of the versions, and stemmatic commentary on key readings. The search…
Boffey, Julia, and A. S. G. Edwards.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 34-50.
The essay describes the "complex exercises in historical reconstruction" essential to bridge the distance between modern readers and Chaucer and his contemporary audience. Discusses Chaucer's literary production, his revisions, and scribal…
Mooney surveys the manuscripts and life records of Adam Pinkhurst, identified as the scribe addressed in Chaucer's Adam and as the scribe of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts, among others. Includes a chronology of manuscripts Pinkhurst is known…
Scattergood, John.
Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006.
Reprints fifteen previously published essays by Scattergood, plus a sixteenth, original essay, "The Copying of Medieval and Early Renaissance Manuscripts" (pp. 21-82). The latter--which discusses the habits and status of medieval scribes, early…
Trinity College, Dublin, MS 389 (formerly D.2.8) includes three alchemical texts that are Chaucerian apocrypha. Timmerman corrects Gareth W. Dunleavy's 1965 discussion of this manuscript.
Beidler, Peter G.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 225-30.
Beidler proposes a refined taxonomy of terms to designate the relationships between a work and its sources (hard source, soft source, hard analogue, soft analogue, and lost source) and argues that--for lack of evidenc--criticism should dispense with…
Cites Chaucer's self-awareness in attention to his sources, comments on the role of "source study" in Chaucer criticism, and introduces eight brief essays first presented at the 2004 congress of The New Chaucer Society in Glasgow. For the eight…
Evans, Ruth.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 28 (2006): 263-70.
Considers the implications of source study and its revitalization in response to recent theory, raising questions about its (possibly irreconcilable) relationships with intertextuality, "genetic criticism," invention, translation, and electronic…
Heffernan, Carol F.
Neophilologus 90 (2006): 333-49.
Heffernan discusses the nature, origins, and development of Italian "novelle"; Boccaccio's innovations with the form; and the likelihood that Chaucer had direct knowledge of The Decameron. Argues that the influence of Italian novelle generally, and…
Mann, Jill.
Jill Mann and Maura Nolan, eds. The Text in the Community: Essays on Medieval Works, Manuscripts, Authors, and Readers (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), pp. 41-74.
Mann describes the composition and influence of the "Liber Catonis," a composite of six Latin texts that served as a school-text in medieval education, and considers it in light of other medieval school-texts. Identifies places where works that…
Simpson, James.
Seth Lerer, ed. The Yale Companion to Chaucer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 55-86.
Simpson explores Chaucer's absorption of and reactions to Continental influences (Latin, French, and Italian), emphasizing the recurrent influence of Ovid as a source and a model. BD is a poem of deference to Gaunt and to French tradition; HF and PF…
Smith, D. Vance.
Seth Lerer, ed. The Yale Companion to Chaucer (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006), pp. 87-121.
Smith traces various threads of Chaucer's relationships with English poetic tradition: GP and Langland's "Piers Plowman"; Th and native romance; echoes of Sir " Orfeo"; alliterative verse in Chaucer; and the complex concerns of native tradition,…
Yeager, R. F.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 51-67.
Yeager summarizes Chaucer's education and career for the purpose of identifying the books, languages, and classical and vernacular literatures with which Chaucer was clearly acquainted. Discusses Chaucer's strategies for keeping literary authority at…
Anderson, Judith H.
Zachary Lesser and Benedict S. Robinson, eds. Textual Conversations in the Renaissance: Ethics, Authors, Technologies (Aldershot, Hampshire; and Burlington, Ver.: Ashgate, 2006), pp. 71-89.
Explores intertextual relations between Spenser's Faerie Queene and Chaucer's PardPT and FranT. Archimago and Despair from Spenser's Book 1 gain dimension in light of the Pardoner and the Old Man of PardT; in Book 3, Spenser explores the "emotional…
Bawcutt, Priscilla.
Helen Cooney, ed. Writings on Love in the English Middle Ages (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 179-96.
Bawcutt surveys love poetry of medieval Scotland in various genres, emphasizing the variety of tones and exploring the importance of Chaucer's influence.
Bawcutt, Priscilla, and Janet Hadley Williams, eds.
Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y. : D. S. Brewer, 2006.
Thirteen essays by various authors and an introduction by the editors. Topics include studies of individual poets and poems (Henryson, Dunbar, Douglas, Lyndsay, Richard Holland's "Buke of Howlat," Gilbert Hay's "Buik of King Alexander the…
Behrens investigates the problems of authorship surrounding the dedicatory poem "Go litel boke, go litel tregedie" addressed to the four wardens of the mercer guild: John Olney, Geoffrey Feldyng, Geoffrey Boleyn, and John Burton. Alluding to TC, the…
Besserman, Lawrence [L.]
Chaucer Review 41(2006): 99-104.
Given his interest in Chaucer and his ownership of a copy of TC, Dickens's "comic literary use of the motif of 'Christ-forgives-his-killers'" may be an echo of Chaucer's use of the motif, which is based on Luke 23.34, in TC 3.1577.
Cooper, Helen.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006.
Explores the continuities of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, emphasizing the inventiveness of the Middle Ages and the rootedness of the Renaissance in medieval traditions, focusing on drama and on Shakespeare in particular. Recurrent references to…
Dimmick, Jeremy.
Review of English Studies 57 (2006): 456-73.
Greene uses Chaucer and Gower to represent licentious comedy and moral literature, respectively. In manipulating the debate between the medieval authors, Greene displays subtle awareness not only of his own literary persona but also of the authorial…
