Looks for evidence that certain medieval writers were aware of the newly emerging "arithmetical mentality." Because of his work at the Customs House, Chaucer was much more aware than most writers. He knew counting boards and algorisms, the ancestor…
Blake, N. F.
Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library; Tokyo: Yushodo, 1995), pp. 205-24.
Since the text of the Ellesmere manuscript is highly edited, Hengwrt is superior to it and should be used as the basis for standard editions of CT.
Edwards, A. S. G.
Essays and Studies 63 (2010): 59-73.
Studies the reception of the Ellesmere manuscript of CT and its use by scholars, concluding that the manuscript is remarkable not only for the poem it records but also for the part it plays in development of modern ideas about the author.
Schulz, Herbert C.
San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1966.
Describes the Ellesmere manuscript, with particular attention to the illustrations of the pilgrims (here reproduced), the program of semi-vinet illumination, and the "Portrait of Chaucer." Also includes a description of the manuscript's text of CT, a…
Schulz, Herbert C.
San Marino, Calif. : Huntington Library, 1998.
Revised reprint of 1966 original; a description of the Ellesmere manuscript, its illuminations, and its history. Includes a new "Bibliographical Note" by Joseph A. Dane and Seth Lerer, plus their additions to Schulz's list of reproductions of…
Hanna, Ralph, III, intro.
Rochester: Boydell & Brewer, 1989.
A reproduction of the rare 1911 facsimile. Hanna's critical introduction treats manuscript preparation, accuracy, scribal practice, and the value of the Ellesmere in textual matters.
Discusses the two marginal dragons found in the Ellesmere manuscript of CT, arguing that, like dragons in bestiaries and iconography, they "symbolize the marvelous," but in addition they also "prompt readers to attend to the marvelous aspects of…
Examines the manuscript portrait of Chaucer in the Ellesmere manuscript (El) and its scribal rubrics as they reflect the poet’s status in his own age. Reviews historical study of the manuscript, its provenance, tale order, and text, accepting…
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."
Pearsall, Derek.
Martin Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds. The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library; Tokyo: Yushodo, 1995), pp. 263-80.
Situates the Ellesmere manuscript in the scribal production of "literary" manuscripts in London from 1400 to 1450-1475, i.e., manuscripts of "Chaucer, Gower, Langland, Walton, Hoccleve, and Lydgate (in verse), Trevisa and Nicholas Love--and ...…
Describes and exemplifies the Renaissance genre of epyllion (minor epic), including, as background, discussion of KnT and TC as examples of works that dramatize a hero's "confrontation with the tragedy of mutable love" presented by a distancing…
Wood, Chauncey.
Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1984.
Asks for a "Gowerian" reading of TC--by which is meant "moral Gower," the poet of "honeste," married love. "What Chaucer Really Did to Il Filostrato" was to re-shape the story of the besotted Trojan prince as a warning to the inhabitants of "New…
Bloomfield, Morton W.
Modern Language Review 53 (1958): 408-10.
Argues that the correct reading of TC 5.1809 is the eighth sphere (not seventh as in some manuscripts), and that Chaucer's "making use consciously or unconsciously of an old tradition, placed his hero for all eternity in the sphere of the fixed…
Jost, Jean E.
Albrecht Classen, ed. Death in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Times: The Material and Spiritual Conditions of the Culture of Death (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2016), pp. 193-237.
Discusses Chaucer's awareness of the plague and reference to it in his works, especially PardT.
Donaldson, E. Talbot.
Speaking of Chaucer (New York: Norton, 1970), pp. 30-45.
Reads MerT as an "intensely bitter story," dilating upon the "central juxtaposition of the seemingly, or potentially, beautiful with the unmistakably ugly," examining the nuances of several words, discussing the "vacuity" of the marriage encomium,…
Reads Theseus as a uniquely dynamic character in KnT and in CT more generally--able to "change over time in response to experience." In the course of the Tale, Theseus achieves some of the detachment and insight that characterize the Knight.
Reidy, John.
Harald Scholler, ed. The Epic in Medieval Society: Aesthetic and Moral Values (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1977), pp. 391-408.
In KnT Theseus usually acts honorably according to medieval military code. He gradually discovers, however, the insufficiency of such a code as he gains insight into Boethian philosophy.
Horobin, Simon.
Journal of the Early Book Society 12 (2009): 195-203.
Paleographical evidence and similarities of decoration establish that the Edmund-Fremund scribe, known for his work on manuscripts of John Lydgate, also worked on a CT manuscript which survives in two fragments: John Rylands Manuscript English 63…
On Manly-Rickert's faulty assumptions: prior circulation of individual tales among Chaucer's friends; two archetypes, O and O1; individual lines of textual transmission for separate tales; scribal use of several lost exemplars for some tales. It is…
Production, consumption, and profit have helped to define individuals in more recent eras; however, an "economy of need" was an aspect of late medieval identity. Galloway traces the economy of need in sermons and prose writing and comments on its…
Reads aspects of Theseus's stadium, tournament, and funeral arrangements in KnT as "performance of power" in response to the procession of his "regional rivals": Arcite and Palamon of Thebes, Emetreus of India, and Lygurge of Thrace. George…
Manzanas Calvo, Ana M.
Bernardo Santano Moreno, Adrian R. Birtwhistle, and Luis G. Girón Echevarria, eds. Papers from the VIIth International Conferenceo of SELIM (Caceres: Universidad de Extremadura, 1995), pp. 175-85.
Key figures of the pre-modernity and pre-capitalism of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Pardoner and Margery Kempe exemplify inverted values.
Assesses payment and revenge in MilT and RvT as economies of sexual exchange following Aristotelian notions of "distributive" justice, reflected in the "poetic" justice of the Tales. Women are the commodity in MilT and RvT, as in KnT and CkT. Edwards…
