Stevens, John.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 139-54.
The "Fayrfax Manuscript" (ca. 1505) is one of the three major song books containing virtually all that survives of English secular songs from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. A study of this manuscript's technique of setting English…
Stevens, John.
P. L. Heyworth, ed. Medieval Studies for J. A. W. Bennett (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), 297-328.
A valuable edition based on British Library Arundel 248 with variants from other texts of the late-thirteenth-century Latin song sung by "hende Nicolas" in MilT. In addition to its sources, Stevens discusses it as a type of canto that eventually…
Stevens, John.
London: Hutchinson University Library, 1973
Describes the plots and concerns of medieval romances, especially those produced in France and England, seeking to characterize the genre and demonstrate its "pervasiveness" in medieval culture. Identifies a number of recurrent motifs, including…
Focuses on three extant Tudor song-books to chart the relations between lyric and song in early English tradition, including discussion of popular and courtly works, late-medieval and early modern music, and the impact of the Reformation. Two issues…
Stevens, Martin
Chaucer Review 7.2 (1972): 118-31.
Rejects readings of MerT as "savage and mordant self-revelation" of the Merchant, characterizing the Merchant's wife as more similar to the Wife of Bath and the Host's Goodelief than to May. MerP is an extension of the Clerk's Envoy, the Merchant…
Stevens, Martin, and Daniel Woodward.
Chaucer Newsletter 12:1 (1990): 1-3.
A report on plans to publish a facsimile volume of Huntington MS El 26 C9 and an accompanying volume of essays on the Ellesmere, both volumes to be edited by Daniel Woodward, librarian at the Huntington.
Stevens, Martin, and James Paxson.
Studies in Iconography 13 (1989-90): 48-79.
The conflation of the fool with the devil in medieval representation reflected unstable boundaries between the witless man, who had the protection of the Church, and his imitator, the artificial fool. The Wakefield Satan, an artificial fool, is…
Readers frequently imagine the Pardoner to be a real person. He is, of course, Chaucer's fiction, and the poet shows his mastery of narrative by combining the "Prologue" and the "Tale," underscoring the unity of the two by iterative imagery,…
Review article covering six recent books: B. Boyd's Variorum edition of PrT; R. Jordan's Chaucer's Poetics and the Modern Reader; L. Kendrick's Chaucerian Play; L. Koff's Chaucer and the Art of Storytelling; C. Lindahl's Earnest Games; and L.…
Stevens, Martin.
Saul N. Brody and Harold Schecter, eds. CUNY English Forum 1 (New York: AMS, 1985), pp. 155-74.
Argues, from the symmetrical structure of TC, binary rather than the popular five-part interpretation. Manuscript studies suggest that Chaucer originally wrote TC as a two-part poem and later changed it. Shakespeare had the same conflict.
The rhyme royal stanza takes its name from the fact that it was used in ballade contests in the fourteenth century to address real or imaginary royalty. Chaucer employed the stanza first for royal address in PF and TC. In MLT he used it to create a…
Chaucer uses "the winds of Fortune" as a metaphor to organize the genre and to define the characters. Troilus' perception of Fortune shifts from the divine to Criseyde, assuring his fall. The narrator opposes Pandarus' attitude in accepting the…
Stevens, Martin.
Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation (San Marino, Calif.: Huntingon Library; Tokyo: Yushodo, 1995), pp. 15-28.
Describes the inadequacy of the 1911 facsimile of Ellesmere and introduces the new facsimile--"as accurate a photographic copy of the original as modern technology allows."
Stevens, Martin.
John M. Hill and Deborah M. Sinnreich-Levi, eds. The Rhetorical Poetics of the Middle Ages: Reconstructive Polyphony. Essays in Honor of Robert O. Payne (Madison, N.J., and London: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press and Associated University Presses, 2000), pp. 130-48.
Th, MkT, and SqT are "double-voiced"; they reveal CT's central concerns with "narratological competence" and Chaucer's self-awareness about his storytelling.
Stevens, Martin.
Leeds Studies in English 1 (1967): 1-5.
Argues that "Malkyn" in MLP (2.30) refers not to a generic "lewd woman" as suggested by W. W. Skeat but to the character Malyne in RvT, Symkyn's daughter, hypothesizing that Chaucer intended to cancel CkPT and follow RvT with MLPT.
Treats the narrator-dreamer of BD as the poem's "central character" and a device of unity and dramatic irony. The character does not "develop" psychologically, but his polite good nature--comically limited by his ignorance of courtly idiom--enables…
Stevenson, Barbara Jean.
Dissertation Abstracts International 47 (1986): 896A-897A.
Controversy has arisen over Derek Price's theory that Chaucer wrote Equat. Apparently, Chaucer did not. Although Morton's "stylometry" test supports this view, the test itself reveals weaknesses.
Stevenson, Barbara.
Miriamne Ara Krummel and Tison Pugh, eds. Jews in Medieval England:Teaching Representations of the Other (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), pp. 209-27.
Describes a classroom practice of encouraging students to explore emotional responses to PrT by asking them to illustrate any scene from the tale and then compare these illustrations with historical illustrations, from the Vernon manuscript to modern…
Stevenson, Kay Gilliland.
Chaucer Review 24 (1989): 1-19.
In BD, Chaucer examines the reader and the poet within the fiction of his narrative, while at the same time rereading and rewriting contemporary French poets.
Stevenson, Kay Gilliland.
Michel Bitot, ed., with Roberta Mullini and Peter Happe. Divers Toyes Mengled: Essays on Medieval and Renaissance Culture in Honour of Andre Lascombes (Tours: Universite Francois Rabelais, 1996), pp. 27-42.
Explores literary and historical contexts that complicate reception of ABC, including works by Jean de Meun, Guillaume de Deguileville, and John Lydgate. Chaucer's stand-alone translation initiates an immediacy with its audience that is not apparent…
