Boffey, Julia,and A. S. G. Edwards.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 20 (1998): 201-18.
Assesses John Shirley's role in the construction of the canon of Chaucer's shorter poems, using as test cases three poems attributed to Chaucer by Shirley but not by modern tradition: "The Chronicle [of Nine Women] Made by Chaucer" (Bodleian Library…
Boffey, Julia,and A. S. G. Edwards.
Thomas A. Prendergast and Barbara Kline, eds. Rewriting Chaucer: Culture, Authority, and the Idea of the Authentic Text, 1400-1602 (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1999), pp. 3-13.
Assesses orthographic and lexical "Scottishisms" and their effects on meter in the poems of Bodleian MS Arch Selden B. 24, including TC, PF, LGW, CT, Truth, and poems by Hoccleve, Lydgate, and others. The density of such Scottishisms is generally…
Boffey, Julia.
Publications of the Bibliographical Society of America, 85 (1991):11-26.
A study of the "traditions of lyric publication on which Tottel built" his 1557 collection, Tottel's Miscellany. Discusses early English printers' "Chaucerian anthologies"--Caxton's quarto volumes among them--that combine Chaucer's lyrics and longer…
Boffey, Julia.
Julia Boffey and Janet Cowen, eds. Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry. King's College London Medieval Studies, no. 5 (London: King's College Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1991), pp. 84-102.
Chaucer's various uses of the "structural, rhetorical, and metaphorical possibilities" of prison imagery reflect Boethian thought and influence later medieval English tradition, in particular The King's Quair of James I of Scotland.
"The Letter of Dido" is one of several Chaucerian apocrypha in Pynson's volume. Translated from a French version of the "Heroides" of the 1490s, it may owe a debt to one or more of Chaucer's treatments of the Dido story, and its inclusion in an…
Examines the lyrics embedded in BD, LGWP, PF, and TC, considering their functions in context and the extent to which textual and codicological evidence can clarify the process of their incorporation. Contrasts these lyrics with French models in…
Chaucer's lyrics were known to readers at an early date, even before they appeared in print in the early fifteenth century. Earlier references are apparently lists, but the emulation of Chaucer's rhetorical strategies, rhymes, and phrasing suggests…
Boffey, Julia.
Donald Maddox and Sara Sturm-Maddox, eds. Literary Aspects of Courtly Culture: Selected Papers from the Seventh Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 113-21.
Examines the provenance and contents of several fifteenth-century manuscripts, arguing that such compilations reflect interest in Chaucer's dream poems, acquaintance with a range of English and French texts, and a "lively awareness of current…
Boffey, Julia.
English Manuscript Studies, 1100-1700 05 (1995): 1-17.
Examines the layout and annotation of some of the sixteen surviving manuscripts of TC, focusing on Bodleian MSS Rawlinson Poet 163 and Selden B.24. Repetition of headings and glosses may indicate that some parts of TC existed as discrete fragments…
Boffey, Julia.
Stephen G. Nichols and Siegfried Wenzel, eds. The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998), pp. 69-82.
Discusses whether British Library MS Harley 116 and Cambridge University Library MS Hh 4.12 were meant to be anthologies or whether the quire signatures indicate discrete works that came together by accident.
Boffey, Julia.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. Mediaevalitas: Reading the Middle Ages (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1996), pp. 43-62.
Explores possible influences of Chaucer's dream poems on the works of Charles of Orleans, especially on the dream episodes in the English poems of British Museum MS Harley 682 attributed to Charles. Similarities in pattern and verbal detail may have…
Unique Scottish attribution of "Walton's Prosperity" (a copy of "Index" 2820) to Chaucer in British Library MS Cotton Vitellius E. xi suggests fifteenth-century reception of Chaucer as "fount of proverbial wisdom."
Boffey, Julia.
Helen Cooney, ed. Nation, Court and Culture: New Essays on Fifteenth-Century English Poetry (Dublin and Portland, Ore.: Four Courts Press, 2001), pp. 116-28.
Contrasts the parliaments or courts of love in PF and LGWP with those in Lydgate's Temple of Glas and the anonymous Assembly of Ladies. The later poems present "idealizing fantasies of social assimilation or integration."
Boffey, Julia.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Middle English Poetry: Texts and Traditions. Essays in Honour of Derek Pearsall (Woodbridge, Suffolk; and Rochester, N.Y.: York Medieval Press, 2001), pp. 279-97.
Boffey summarizes the various numbers of legends included in LGW and in references to the work and assesses concern with these numbers. She considers LGW in light of the tradition of nine female Worthies in literature and the visual arts and in light…
Boffey, Julia.
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. 53-64.
Discusses William Calverley's "Dyalogue Bitwene the Playntife and the Defendaunt" (ca. 1530-35?) in light of the "Boethian motif of the prisoner of fortune," discussing Chaucer's influence, especially among printers interested in religious or…
Boffey, Julia.
Ursula Schaefer, ed. The Beginnings of Standardization: Language and Culture in Fourteenth-Century England (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2006), pp. 61-70.
Analyzes the terms - "song," "dite," "tretyse," etc. - used for short poems in Middle English, including terms in Chaucer's works.
Boffey, Julia.
Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 3-14.
Investigates the "manuscript context" of courtly love lyrics, identifying their incidence and the implications of their groupings and solo occurrences. Recurrent mention of Chaucer's lyrics, and discussion of manuscripts that include "clusters" of…
Boffey, Julia.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Companion to Medieval Poetry (Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), pp. 538-54.
Boffey describes the nature and circulation of Middle English poetic manuscripts and early printed editions, with recurrent comments on manuscript production and traces of readers' responses. Draws examples from a wide variety of manuscripts and…
Boffey, Julia.
Studies in the Age of Chaucer 38 (2016): 265-73.
Explores the connections between two compilations produced by scribe John Shirley--Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.20 and British Library, Additional MS 16165--suggesting that the manuscripts indicate John Lydgate's two different reactions to the…
Boffey, Julia.
Julia Boffey and Christiania Whitehead, eds. Middle English Lyrics: New Readings of Short Poems (Cambridge: Brewer, 2018), pp. 189–200.
Transcribes a version of Lydgate's "Thoroughfare of Woe" from London, British Library, Additional MS 60577 (the "Winchester anthology") and discusses it in light of other versions, commenting on it as "an extended meditation on a proverbial saying""…
Boffey, Julia.
Elizabeth A. New and Christian Steer, eds. Medieval Londoners: Essays to Mark the Eightieth Birthday of Caroline M. Barron (London: University of London Press, 2019), pp. 55-70.
Includes discussion of the location and implications for readership of Chaucerian materials found among the fascicles of MS HM 140: ClT, Truth, and a selection from Anel.
Boffey, Julia.
Corinne J. Saunders and Richard Lawrie, with Laurie Atkinson, eds. Middle English Manuscripts and Their Legacies: A Volume in Honour of Ian Doyle (Leiden: Brill, 2022), pp. 55-68; 2 color illus.
Describes conjunctions--"many of them improbable or curious"--among the materials contained in manuscripts "which preserve just one or two of Chaucer's short poems," exploring what they "can tell us about the reception and transmission of Chaucer's…
Boffey, Julia.
Helen Cooper and Robert R. Edwards, eds. Oxford History of Poetry in English. Volume 2, Medieval Poetry, 1100–1400 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2023), pp. 457-69.
Examines the legacy and survival of fourteenth-century poetry and poetic innovations in the fifteenth century, emphasizing the influence of Chaucer and Gower, especially with regard to their shaping of the role of the poet.
