Comments on the five contributions to SAC 25's "Colloquium: The Manciple's Tale," reading them as a "snapshot of some of the ways . . . Chaucerians read today" and exploring how the interruptions and reversals in ManT efface moral distinctions.
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…
Combines psychoanalysis, ethnography, and "queer theory" to examine pilgrimage, travel, and specific locations as narrative devices that undermine and assert masculinities in CT, especially those of the Pardoner, the Host, and the Knight in the…
By "acknowledging and exploiting the affections of [its] female characters," RvT "fashions a masculine collective." By excluding Symkyn from this collective, the Tale demonstrates that "cherl" identity after the uprising of 1381 was ethically and…
The two portions of SqT align the cultural differences between the Mamluk emissary and the Mongol court with the species differences between the falcon and Canacee. Capitalizing on symbolic, metonymic connections between animals and humans and…
Hard and soft analogues to Dorigen's conversations with Aurelius in FranT indicate that she is less a victim than someone playfully complicit in "flirtation." Offering "positive rhetorical models," Boccaccio and Christine de Pizan depict women who…
Comments on twenty-first century adaptations of CT on stage and screen, in rap performance, and in imitative fiction, e.g., Peter Ackroyd's ""Clerkenwell Tales," Baba Brinkman's "Rap Canterbury Tales," RSC and BBC productions, David Dabydeen's "The…
Assesses Hoccleve's use of an "enfeebled persona" as a means to compete seriously with the "tasteful silences" of Chaucer and the "guilty fulminations" of Langland on the topic of vernacular poetic identity. Compares Hoccleve's "Male Regle" with…
Goldstein considers Custance of MLT and Alisoun of WBP in relation to the Augustinian theology of perfection, particularly in light of late fourteenth-century adaptations of Augustine, both orthodox and heterodox. MLT exemplifies the deterministic…
Interrogates the "ghost of judgment" that haunts the study of Chaucerian manuscripts as well as formalist analysis of Chaucer's works, commenting on implications for editing and teaching.
DeMarco clarifies the classical and medieval distinctions between "public" and "private" violence and explores efforts to justify each type of violence, showing that Prudence's advice to Melibee is "secular," "pragmatic," and ultimately Ciceronian.…
The artist of the Fairfax frontispiece manipulates similarities between traditional depictions of Venus "rising from the sea" (anadyomene) and Christ in baptism. The visual echoes express a form of "Christian skepticism" that parallels questions…
Surveys commentary on the frontispiece to TC in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge University, MS 61, and argues that it was commissioned by Henry V as part of his program to promote Lancastrian legitimacy and English vernacular writing.
Allen, Mark, and Bege K. Bowers.
SAC 30 (2008): 425-516.
Continuation of SAC annual annotated bibliography (since 1975); based on contributions from an international bibliographic team, independent research, and MLA Bibliography listings. 302 items, plus listing of reviews for 90 books. Includes an author…
Analogous to orientalism, the "philologism" of RvT is rooted in "North-South binaries" that partake of and help to constitute southern condescension to northerners in England, even before the rise of a Standard Written Dialect. Informed by the…
Allen, Mark, and Bege K. Bowers.
SAC 31 (2009): 399-497.
Continuation of SAC annual annotated bibliography (since 1975); based on contributions from an international bibliographic team, independent research, and MLA Bibliography listings. 302 items, plus listing of reviews for 90 books. Includes an author…
Proposes that historical thinking can be productively conceived of as recombinative fantasy rather than as empirical recollection. Uses several medieval examples of imaginative fantasy as exemplary models: Chaucer's House of Rumour in HF, Dante's…
Argues that the frontispiece to TC in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College 61, was modeled on the scene in which Genius addresses Nature in the "Roman de la Rose." Focuses on the "lower register" of the frontispiece, arguing that it depicts Chaucer as a…
Through its "nostalgic" recollection of an idealized "bygone era," CYPT "casts a shadow" on the reformist thinking of SNT. Like many advocates of ecclesiastical reform, the Nun idealizes the primitive Church, but the Canon's Yeoman's performance…
Summarizes Roy Vance Ramsey's (1994, 2010) defense of the Manly-Rickert text of CT, including Ramsey's recognition of the "piecemeal" production of the eight-volume work and his assessment of the dates and scribes of the Hg, El, and Dd manuscripts.
Critiques the Manly-Rickert text of CT for inconsistency in treatment of orthographic accidentals and failure to maintain a consistent, identifiable copy-text. Recommends, nevertheless, judicious use of the Manly-Rickert table of variants.
Critiques Roy Vance Ramey's defense of the Manly-Rickert text of CT and castigates Ramsey's own methods and practices. The Manly-Rickert edition is valuable for its demonstration that "recension" cannot be used to construct a reliable text of CT, and…
The "textual-critical ferment" of the 1980s prompted two "editorial ideas" that have largely (and sadly) been ignored by Chaucer editors and teachers: Derek Pearsall's suggestion that an edition of CT should allow the fragments to be arranged…
Explores how the Manly-Rickert edition of CT "undoes its own arguments about textual history by noting its own textual history of doubt and contingency," suggesting that Manly and Rickert "tell stories" about the composition of CT and that the death…
Comments on questions of "prior circulation and authorial revision" that were disclosed by the Manly-Rickert edition of CT and suggests that recent advances in codicology and the history of the book may offer future editors new perspectives from…
