Through extensive use of "multiple dialogue introducers," Chaucer creates a "mimetic representation of speech" in Mel and thus invites a listening audience to be part of the fictional conversation and, beyond that, to emulate it by taking time to…
Farrell, Thomas J.
Textual Cultures 9.2 (2015): 27-45.
Cautions editors against eclectic emendation, assessing George Kane's method and observing how its rigor is undercut by subjectivity, particularly notions of authorial "genius." Uses WBP 3.838 (the Summoner jeering at the Friar) as a case study to…
Depicting nature as an "active force," Chaucer encourages the reader to explore nature's "effects on social institutions and human drives." In so doing, he balances "a dis-enchanted skepticism about nature's benevolence" with "a canny understanding"…
Douglass, Rebecca M.
Studies in Medievalism 10: 136-63, 1998.
Ecocriticism is "a discipline that examines (criticizes) the relationship of texts to literal and figurative environments." Douglass's test case is an examination of how metaphors of nature are used in KnT and MilT to set off the person of Emilye,…
Describes how Chaucer reaches beyond the phallocentrism and "human parochialism" of his time by giving voice to the feminine and the animal in PF, even though the poem ends with a return to masculinist, human-centered subjectivity.
Kordecki, Lesley.
New York: Palgrave Mcmillan, 2011.
Assuming a consistent narrative voice across the Chaucer canon, this study treats Chaucer's use of animal, specifically, avian, discourse as a means of exploring subjectivity. The author emphasizes the role of non-humans and women in "challenging…
Schwebel, Lana.
Dissertation Abstracts International 62: 1828A, 2001.
In fourteenth-century England, the sale of indulgences was supported by orthodoxy and attacked by Wycliffites. Poetic fictions transcend this simple opposition, as seen in the artful deviousness of PardT and the revitalized idealism of "Piers…
Siewers, Alfred K.
Stephanie LeMenager, Teresa Shewry, and Ken Hiltner, eds. Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century (New York: Routledge, 2011), pp. 105-20.
Views "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Malory's "Morte Darthur," and CT through the lens of ecopoetics, contending that they all rely upon the interdependence of author, text, and audience; employ metonyms rather more than metaphors; play with…
Critical review of two applied textual theories, exposing their weaknesses in light of recent theory and revealing their ongoing utility. Includes discussion of Laura Hibbard Loomis's arguments that Th indicates Chaucer's firsthand knowledge of the…
Solopova, Elizabeth.
W. Speed Hill, ed. New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, II: Papers of the Renaissance English Text Society, 1992-1996. Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, no. 188 (Tempe, Ariz.: Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, with the Renaissance English Text Society, 1998), pp. 121-32.
A description of questions raised in the process of producing the first installment of the computer-assisted "Canterbury Tales" Project (SAC 20 [1998], no. 11), and a justification of the project. The first installment made possible Solopova's…
Wakelin, Daniel.
Vincent Gillespie and Anne Hudson, eds. Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2013), pp. 241-59.
Discusses the importance of "corrections" in Middle English manuscripts. In particular, addresses scribal errors and corrections in the Ellesmere and Hengwrt manuscripts.
Comments on the critical reception of Manly and Rickert's "The Text of the Canterbury Tales" (1940), exploring underlying assumptions about textual theory and gender politics. Uses Tom Stoppard's play "The Invention of Love" (1997) to reveal…
Utz, Richard [J.]
Wladyslaw Witalisz, ed. "And Gladly Wolde He Lerne and Gladly Teche": Studies on Language and Literature in Honour of Professor Dr. Karl Heinz Göller (Kraków: Wydawnictno Uniwersytetu Jagiellonskiego, 2001)
Argues that John Koch ought to be considered one of the great editors of Chaucer's works, even though he is largely forgotten by Anglophone Chaucerians who downplay German contributions to the field.
Ruggiers, Paul G., ed.
Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books, 1984.
A collection of essays on the editorial practices of great editors of Chaucer: Caxton, by Beverly Boyd; Thynne, by James E. Blodgett; Stow, by Anne Hudson; Speght by Derek Pearsall; Urry, by William L. Alderson; Tyrwhitt, by B. A. Windeatt; Wright,…
McGillivray, Murray.
Florilegium 27 (2011 for 2010): 159-76.
Proposes that a "computer facilitated re-spelling of a reconstructed archetype" ought to be the basis for future editions of LGW, Anel, HF, PF, and BD because the textual situations of these poems are "precarious." The reconstruction would use the…
Pearsall, Derek.
Jerome J. McGann, ed. Textual Criticism and Literary Interpretation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 95-106.
Use of the Robinson second edition based on the Ellesmere MS has encouraged the neglect of many textual problems in critical studies concerning "unity" or "idea" of CT; Manly and Rickert's monumental edition is virtually ignored. Hengwrt is a vastly…
Blake, N. F.
Norman Blake and Peter Robinson, eds. The 'Canterbury Tales' Project Occasional Papers, Volume I (Oxford: Office for Humanities Communication Publications, 1993), pp. 5-18.
Surveys textual issues that confront editors of CT, presenting the issues as background to the "Canterbury Tales" Project. Considers problems of lineation, the incompleteness of the text, the role of the links, questions of early circulation,glosses,…
Referring to "The Wife of Bath's Prologue on CD-ROM" (Studies In the Age Of Chaucer 20 [1998], no.11), Blake concludes that Hengwrt should be used as the base text for the "Canterbury Tales" Project. He proposes three areas in which Hengwrt might be…
Moorman, Charles.
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 1975.
A pedagogical introduction to the practices involved in preparing a critical edition of a Middle English text, with commentary on paleography, the language of Middle English, and the processes of textual criticism. Includes reproductions of the…
Machan, Tim William.
A.N. Doane and Carol Braun Pasternack, eds. Vox Intexta: Orality and Textuality in the Middle Ages. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1991), pp. 229-45.
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…
Surveys the "editions and translations of Chaucer currently in print" (in 1965) and designed for college courses, commenting on their strengths and weaknesses.
Considers textual issues that pertain to the "Host stanza" at the end of ClT (4.1212a-g) and several passages in MkT and NPT: the "Adam stanza" (7.2007-14), the "Modern Instances" (7.2375-2462), and the short versus long versions of NPP. Discusses…
