Severs, J. Burke.
Explicator 23.3 (1964): item 20.
Comments on the uses of "master" and "Rabbi" in SumT 3.2184-88 as a means to convey the hypocrisy of the Summoner's friar (along with Chaucer's Friar in GP 1.261). The references are rooted in the biblical source, Matthew 23:5-11.
Severs, J. Burke.
Mediaeval Studies 25 (1963): 355-62.
Locates in Old French love poems sources for various aspects of BD, citing previously unnoticed parallels with passages from Guillaume de Machaut and Jean Froissart, and arguing that similar parallels and the "general situation and conduct" of…
Severs, J. Burke.
Modern Language Notes 74 (1959): 193-98.
Compares Chaucer's version of Hermengyld's miracle in MLT 2.554-74 with analogous passages in Trevet's and Gower's versions of the Constance story, suggesting that one stanza is missing from Chaucer's account, perhaps due to scribal error.
Assesses manuscript variants and stemmata, relations with source material, and "scribal characteristics" of PhyT to explain that they indicate scribal rather than authorial alteration. Argues that similar evidence, plus comparison with alterations…
Severs, J. Burke.
Modern Language Notes 69 (1954): 472-78.
Argues that the version of the Clerk's Envoy (4.1177-1212) found in the Ellesmere manuscript is the original version, modified by a scribe to compensate for an eye-skip error. Reassesses earlier arguments that the Ellesmere version is itself the…
Seya, Yukio.
Koichi Kano, ed. An Invitation to Chaucer's Cosmos (Tokyo: Yushokan, 2022), pp. 155-86.
Surveys the history of Latin literature from Carolingian Renaissance to the twelfth century and enumerates the Latin texts that Chaucer undoubtedly read or his works directly draw on. The final passage focuses on Boccaccio, Petrarch, and ClT. In…
Collection of essays on classical Persian literature. Includes an article by F. D. Lewis, "One Chaste Muslim Maiden and a Persian in a Pear Tree: Analogues of Boccaccio and Chaucer in Four Earlier Arabic and Persian Tales" that links linking Arabic…
Chaucer completed CkT in approximately seven hundred lines, but since the final quire of the booklet containing the tales of the Miller, Reeve, and Cook was lost very early in the manuscript tradition, the Hengwrt scribe--writing in London or…
MkT is very likely a virtually unrevised early poem, the first to be written after Chaucer's return from Italy in 1372 and his first collection of stories. As such, it deserves a separate existence, as Chaucer's early poem 'De casibus vivorum…
N. F. Blake's various arguments for the authenticity of the text of Hengwrt are not persuasive, though his thesis regarding a single developing author's copy for CT remains valuable.
Seymour, M. C.
Review of English Studies 37 (1986): 528-34.
Argues that missing quires, rather than Chaucer's abandonment of LGW, account for its incompleteness and that a redactor, not Chaucer, revised LGWP in MS Gg.4.27.
Surveys the sixteen extant manuscripts of TC, dividing them into four subgroups and commenting on their dates and relationships. Describes each manuscript, giving information on codexes, collations, scribal hands, corrections, marginalia,…
Describes eighty-eight manuscripts and fragments that include "all known copies of Chaucer's work," except CT and "a few stray lyrics and short poems." Excludes Equat and apocrypha, although these, along with portraits of Chaucer, are discussed in…
Surveys issues in the textual history of LGW, e.g., its production in booklets and evidence of readership. Also describes codicological details of the ten surviving manuscripts that include the poem. Does not address the two versions of LGWP.
Surveys the issues in the textual history of "Parlement of Fowls," e.g., the role of Cambridge University Library MS Gg 4.27; the status of the roundel; and the influence of the poem. Also describes codicological details of the fourteen surviving…
Seymour, M. C.
Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press, 1997.
Describes fifty-six manuscripts of "The Canterbury Tales," providing detailed contents and collations, plus briefer comments on binding, decoration, glosses, rubrics, scribes, and provenance. Follows Manly and Rickert's classifications of the…
Seymour, M. C.
Modern Language Review 92 (1997): 832-41.
Compares the original (F) version with the revised (G) version of LGWP, commenting on stages of transmission of G--from its composition to the extant manuscript Cambridge University Library Gg 4.27. Hypothesizes that Chaucer revised LGWP as a…
Examines the manuscript and editorial traditions of BD to argue for a new edition, based on MS Tanner 346, sensitive to the poem's octosyllabic meter and aware of scribal contamination. Suggests a number of emendations.
Seymour, Michael C.
Medium Aevum 87.1 (2018): 23-40
Demonstrates the need for a reexamination of the physical description and linguistic analysis of University of Glasgow, MS Hunter 409 (MS V.3.7) of Rom. Manuscript study reveals the "canard" that a northerner translated Fragment B. Refutes the…
The eight manuscript portraits of Chaucer and the three of Hoccleve are described. Those of Chaucer in Ellesmere and Harley 4866 are possibly independent copies of a common ancestor, now lost. All other portraits of Chaucer depend on their…
