Chaucer's Manuscript of Nicholas Trevet's Les Cronicles
Because it contains the fewest emendations and corresponds most closely to Chaucer's MLT, the version of Les Cronicles in the MS Paris, Bibl. Nationale, Franc. 9687, fols. 1va-114va (ca. 1340-50), will serve as a base text for the Chaucer Library edition of Trevet's work.
A Descriptive Catalog of British Library MS. Harley 7333
This first in-depth description of MS. Harley 7333 provides textual information, lists editions, and describes relationships to other medieval texts. The contents shed light on scribal editing in CT.
Editing, Orality, and Late Middle English Texts
Questions the role of orality in the recording and transmission of Middle English texts, suggesting that various attitudes and techniques of oral improvisation have left residues in these texts and that modern editors should use oral models. Draws examples from TC, PF, and elsewhere.
The Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales
Chronologically surveys CT manuscripts, highlighting the importance of Hengwrt and the "wide difference in the number of independent textual traditions for different parts" of the work. Rejects the notion of a single Chaucerian copy text, crediting the "Hengwrt editor" with the first impulse to collect the Tales from fragments.
Despite continued circulation of "booklets" of tales, the early fifteenth century witnessed the standardization of two orders for the Tales. Manuscripts of single tales or small groups increased steadily throughout the century, suggesting that modern notions of "complete" texts of CT are misguided.
Studies in the Vernon Manuscript
Thirteen essays by diverse hands discuss what Pearsall describes as the largest manuscript "the student of vernacular literature will ever be likely to have to deal with"--"a comprehensive programme of religious reading and instruction" (x). Five of the essays address the manuscript descriptively or codicologically; two each consider the romances included and refrain-lyrics; and four assess other literary forms or issues--homilies, Miracles of the Virgin, verse laments, and a tabular Pater Noster.
Throughout, comparison with contemporary materials is a dominant concern.
Scribes and Manuscript Traditions
Explores editorial implications of the South-West Midlands features of several London copyings of works by Chaucer, Gower, and Langland, including four manuscripts of the CT (Ha4, La, Cp, Pw).
Spelling and Tradition in Fifteenth-Century Copies of Gower's Confessio Amantis
Working from an "archetypal" corpus of Gower's spelling forms,Smith explores the continuity and dissolution of these forms in manuscript tradition, as well as the relation of the corpus to the progress of Standard Written English and to practice in manuscripts of PardT.
The Trinity Gower D-Scribe and His Work on Two Early Canterbury Tales Manuscripts
Analyzes the dialectical "Mischsprachen" (linguistic mixture) in Harley 7334 and Corpus Christi, Oxford, 198, and in products of the Gower D-Scribe. Since all three show an "idiosyncratic mixture of West Worcestershire forms and the learnt form, 'oughne'," they were evidently copied by the same person.
Chaucer's Treasure Text: The Influence of Brunetto Latini on Chaucer's Developing Narrative Technique
Latini's Li livres du tresor influenced the rhetoric and structure of CT and LGWP, providing theory and models from the tradition of ars dictaminis.
Rivalry, Rape, and Manhood: Gower and Chaucer
Discussions of the "quarrel" between Chaucer and Gower (anchored in MLP) pose a Chaucer who was free of base, ingratiating attitudes toward his sovereign and who was the source of pure poeticality--language and aesthetics unpolluted by self-interest. In contrast, the same discussions create a Gower who was an "ingrate" and a "sycophant" at court, content to "follow" and to imitate in his moralizing, unequivocally second-rate poetic endeavors. Gower plays the lumbering "fall guy" to the nimble and free-spirited Chaucer.
Dinshaw argues that such rivalry effaces women--that when "read in interaction," Gower's Philomela narrative and aspects of Chaucer's Criseyde "can be opened to reveal and resist the violent obliteration of the feminine."
Revised slightly in Anna Roberts, ed. Violence Against Women in Medieval Texts (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1998).
Chaucer's Landscapes: Language and Style
Compares the various landscape features in Chaucer's works with the walled garden of the Roman de la Rose. The merit of Chaucer's landscapes is that the poet tailored them to be part of an intimate, homey world.
Chaucer's Fabliaux as Analogues
Explores the phenomenon of literary analogues through a pragmatic and structuralist analysis of four salient components of narrative, each illustrated with examples from Chaucer's fabliaux and their analogues in various European languages. The conclusion calls attention to two aspects that set Chaucer's fabliaux apart from the analogues: their context in CT and their explicit intertextuality. The study ends with reflections on the concept of analogy.
Chaucer and the 'Woman Question'
For Chaucer, the literary traditions of Ovid and Jerome created a dual image of woman as predator or victim. Chaucer refines and deepens the "double-sidedness" of these traditions, bringing the polarized alternatives into complicating relation with each other. Mann discusses the mock encomium on marriage in MerT and the Wife's tirade against her first three husbands in WBP.
The Indebtedness of the Canterbury Tales to the Clerk-Knight Debates
Structurally, CT parodies the clerk-knight debate (an early type of courtly-love poem), especially The Council of Remiremont. The idea of a pilgrimage on horseback may derive from these debates as well.
De Vulgari Auctoritate: Chaucer, Gower and the Men of Great Authority
Chaucer is a poet with a highly developed sense of the relative--someone who instinctively shies away from those absolutes necessary for the creation of "auctoritas," who denies experience in love, and who claims to be a mere reporter. This stance receives its finest and fullest expression in CT, but is also found in HF and TC. Gower, on the other hand, implies that if one of his own poems were shown to be morally useful, it would have some claim on authority.
Presenting Chaucer as Author
English respect for vernacular authors anticipates the Renaissance. Chaucer created for our language and its heritage a conception of culturally significant authority based on textual correctness. More than other Middle English poets, Chaucer asserts the value of the author's ipsissima verba in CT.
Chaucer's Meter: The Evidence of the Manuscripts
Most Chaucer criticism fails to mention that Chaucer's poetry is written in verse. The way we read that verse and respond to its musicality, whether in our heads or when reading aloud, is an important part of our interpretation of and response to the pentameter couplets of CT.
Plenary Lecture: Aeneas' Journey to the New Troy
Surveys the typology of journeying in Beowulf, Abelard's Calamaties, Chretien's Eric and Lancelot, Roman de la Rose, Dante's Vita nuova, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and Troilus's rise through the spheres in TC.
An Annotated Index to the Commentary on Gower's Confessio Amantis
Line-by-line commentary on the Confessio that synthesizes criticism and scholarship. The introduction surveys critical tradition, and the notes clarify details, patterns,and literary relations of the work.
Middle English Romances. Second edition
Correction and update of 1987 edition. Volume 1 includes a general introduction and bibliography, plus texts and introductions to Havelok, Sir Orfeo, Chevelere Assigne, Sir Cleges, Rauf Coilyear, and The Grene Knight. Volume 2 includes explanatory notes, textual notes, a glossary, and a name list. Continuously paginated.
Latin Structure and Vernacular Space: Gower, Chaucer and the Boethian Tradition
There are significant differences between Chaucer's and Gower's appropriations of the Roman de la Rose and its Latin antecedents. Gower's priestly Genius is an authority figure in the tradition of Boethius's Consolation. Chaucer's rejection of authority figures is one of the most important signs of his modernity, giving point to the contrast commonly drawn between Gower's supposed conservatism and Chaucer's more open vision.
Chaucer and His French Contemporaries: Natural Music in the Fourteenth Century
A comprehensive analysis of the contemporary French influence on Chaucer, exploring lyric rather than narrative features and concentrating on the impact of "formes fixes." Wimsatt devotes individual chapters to Chaucer's literary relations with Jean de la Mote, Jean Froissart, Oton de Granson, and Eustache Deschamps. Three chapters assess the English poets connections with Guillaume de Machaut, which are basic to all Chaucer's verse from the lyrics and BD to TC and LGW.
In all cases, biographical and historical information provides context for comparison of individual poems, stylistic features, and musical qualities of French and English court poetry from 1350-1400.
Reason, Machaut, and the Franklin
Examines "the paradigm of consoler-consolation-consolee" in The Consolation of Philosophy, Roman de la Rose, Remede de Fortune, and TC. The Consolation is "sub-text or perhaps super-text." The other texts mediate in Chaucer's adaptation of Boethius. Wimsatt cites a passage on marital friendship in FranT as a case in which the Remede "acts as intermediary between the Roman and a work of Chaucer."
Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutability, Exchange
The seven essays assess Gower and Chaucer as joint recipients of an antique heritage, as readers of (and borrowers from) each other's works, and as writers whose work reveals much about late-medieval attitudes toward language and about the constantly shifting interrelations of women and men. All seek new ways to understand the poetic interaction between Gower and Chaucer.
For individual essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Chaucer and Gower: Difference, Mutability, Exchange under Alternative Title.
John Gower's Poetic: The Search for a New Arion
Examines Gower's efforts to establish his reputation as a poet. Frequently using Chaucer for comparison or contrast, Yeager explores Gower's stylistics, his concerns with audience, his relations with French tradition and particular sources, his so-called digressiveness, and his status as a social and moral writer. Yeager develops the views of previous Gower critics and considers the complete corpus of the poet, concentrating on Confessio Amantis.
Unlike Chaucer, who casts himself as a "maker," Gower sees himself as"auctor" or "poete"--self-consciously, a "new Arion."