Nothing in the textual tradition of the three MSS of BD supports a thesis of differing exemplars. The lines of BD that are found in Thynne's edition but not in the MSS--lines 31-96, 288,480, 886--should be considered spurious until convincingly…
Clogan, Paul (M.)
Medievalia et Humanistica 5 (1974): 183-89.
The exensive emendations in the text of "Lady" are unjustified. The poem is a series of unfinished metrical innovations, showing Chaucer experimenting and practicing his art. The search for metrical regularity has in this lyric deprived the poem of…
Strohm, Paul.
James M. Dean and Christian Zacher, eds. The Idea of Medieval Literature: New Essays on Chaucer and Medieval Culture in Honor of Donald R. Howard (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1992), pp. 129-48. Also in Paul Strohm. Hochon's Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth-Century Texts (Princeton University Press, 1992), pp. 57-74.
Sted reflects the same ideology as Richard II's contemporaneous program to disenfranchise the Lords Appellate. Both manipulate the assumption that sworn-oath, liveried affinities threaten social stability. Strohm delineates the political and social…
Walker, Greg.
Anne Marie D'Arcy and Alan J. Fletcher, eds. Studies in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Texts in Honour of John Scattergood (Dublin: Four Courts, 2005), pp. 375-401.
Argues that The Plowman's Tale was composed in a complex process of interpolations and revisions (evident in various metrical schemes) that reflect various political and doctrinal agendas. Walker suggests a five-stage process of composition that…
McGann, Jerome J.
New Literary History 12 (1981): 269-88.
William Blake avoided the normal publisher-author relationship. "To know the publishing options taken (and refused) by Chaucer...enables the critic to explain the often less visible, but more fundamental, social engagements which meet in and…
Comparison of manuscripts of CT enables inferential conclusions about their exemplar (which does not survive), but the complexity of these conclusions justifies reliance on the Hengwrt manuscript. Blake considers the likelihood that the manuscripts…
Windeatt, Barry.
Mary Salu, ed. Essays on Troilus and Criseyde (Cambridge: Brewer, 1979), pp. 1-22.
Root's contention that his alpha, beta, and gamma classifications represent stages of Chaucer's revisions of TC is untenable. The ms evidence must be judged for itself,not in comparison with other "revision" problems such as those in Gower and…
Aita, Shuichi.
Studies in Medieval Language and Literature 19: 37-49, 2004
Aita compares textual variants of ParsT in the Selden MS with British Library MS Lansdowne 851, showing how scribes attempted to clarify meaning by altering vocabulary and syntax.
Edwards clarifies the indeterminacies of the "editorial process" by questioning several textual issues pertaining to the manuscripts of HF: uncertain authority of individual manuscript and manuscript groupings, and the implications of this…
Bordalejo, Bá́rbara.
International Journal of English Studies 5.2 (2005): 133-48
Bordalejo compares variant readings of Caxton's first and second editions of CT, explores affiliations of these variants in the manuscript tradition of the poem, and argues that the readings in the second edition are useful for understanding the…
Kane, George.
Douglas Gray and E. G. Stanley, eds. Middle English Studies Presented to Norman Davis in Honour of His Seventieth Birthday (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), pp. 39-58.
The text of LGW in the G manuscript is different from that of other manuscripts; it is much corrupted, containing 200 unoriginal variant readings. The pattern of scribal variations makes it unlikely that this version is the result of authorial…
Bedford, Ronald.
Philippa Kelly and L. E. Semler, eds. Word and Self Estranged in English Texts, 1550-1660 (Burlington, Vt.: Ashgate, 2010), pp. 167-81.
Bedford explores the development of the term "irony" and interpretive issues surrounding its use, focusing on Chaucer's use of irony as reflected in Milton's interpretations of SqT.
Olson, Glending.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 6 (1984): 103-19.
In WBP the Friar promises to tell a tale or two at the expense of summoners by journey's end; the Summoner, not to be outdone, brags that he will do the same at the expense of friars before the pilgrims reach Sittingbourne, i.e., "before" journey's…
Taylor, Davis.
Speculum 51 (1976): 69-90. Reprinted in Stephen Barney, ed. Chaucer's Troilus: Essays In Criticism (Hamden, Conn.: Shoestring Press, 1980), pp. 231-56.
Lyric conventions, syntax, and verb usage in Troilus's style show his role as traditional lyric hero. As a static but vigorous representative of conventional moral virtues, he characterizes values Chaucer tests, ironizes, and finally praises as…
Storm, Melvin.
English Language Notes 14 (1977): 172-74.
Various medieval sources establish the image of the tiger as a figure of hypocrisy. Chaucer's description of the tercelet as a "tiger, full of doublenesse" (5.543) is no accident.
Lewis, Lucy.
John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong, eds. Printing Places: Locations of Book Production & Distribution Since 1500 (Newcastle, Del.: Oak Knoll; London: British Library, 2005), pp. 1-14.
Lewis assesses challenges confronted by printer Thomas Richard when, in 1525, he produced John Walton's translation of Boethius's "Consolation of Philosophy," especially those challenges that resulted from interspersing intermittent commentary in a…
Bertolet, Craig E.
Brian Gastle and Erick Kelemen, eds. Later Middle English Literature, Materiality, and Culture: Essays in Honor of James M. Dean (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2018.), pp. 167-88.
Compares ShT and FranT as works that assign different values to "the transaction for a woman's body . . . couched in the tale-teller's understanding of his own economic system." ShT reflects the coin-based economy of the "Atlantic maritime commercial…
Rogers, H. L.
G. A. Wilkes and A. P. Riemer, eds. Studies in Chaucer (Sydney: University of Sydney, 1981), pp. 3-27.
An explication of the MerT and FranT using the Hengwrt manuscript order, the article surveys some critical interpretations of the two tales, concerning the clerical or secular nature of the tellers.
Severs, J. Burke.
Companion to Chaucer Studies (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979): pp. 271-95.
Chaucer's romances include KnT, SqT, WBT, FranT, and Th; but "Chaucer's realism, humor, and interest in character all tend to transform his romances into something beyond what one usually finds in the genre."
Pratt, Robert A., ed.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974.
Edits CT, with marginal glosses, bottom-of-page notes, and an additional "Basic Glossary." The text is based on Robinson's 1957 edition, with variants explained and listed in a "Comment on the Text" (pp. 561-79). The Introduction (pp. ix-xxxiv)…
Read, Michael.
Linda Cookson and Bryan Loughrey, ed. Critical Essays on The Pardoner's Prologue and Tale (Harlow: Longman, 1990), pp. 55-64.
Explores the psychological realism of the conflict at the end of PardT between the Host, a "bully" who rejects the power of language, and the Pardoner, a "conscious artist" who has attacked the Host's "coarse masculinity." Ironically, the Host's…
Friend, Albert C.
Medievalia et Humanistica 1 (1970): 57-65.
Late twelfth-century English stories by Alexander Nequam and Berechiah haNakdan provide context for the caged bird episode in SqT, indicating that Chaucer may have intended to complete the episode with the falcon reuniting with her own kind. Also…
