Cayley, Emma, and Susan Powell, eds.
Liverpool, Liverpool niversity Press, 2013.
Foreward by Derek Pearsall. Essays address issues of packaging, presentation, and consumption of manuscripts. Also discusses producers, owners, and readers of manuscripts and early printed books. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for…
Scattergood, John.
Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2006.
Reprints fifteen previously published essays by Scattergood, plus a sixteenth, original essay, "The Copying of Medieval and Early Renaissance Manuscripts" (pp. 21-82). The latter--which discusses the habits and status of medieval scribes, early…
Boffey, Julia, and A. S. G. Edwards.
Corinne Saunders, ed. A Concise Companion to Chaucer (Malden, Mass.; Oxford; and Victoria: Blackwell, 2006), pp. 34-50.
The essay describes the "complex exercises in historical reconstruction" essential to bridge the distance between modern readers and Chaucer and his contemporary audience. Discusses Chaucer's literary production, his revisions, and scribal…
Gillespie, Alexandra.
Marion Turner, ed. A Handbook of Middle English Studies (Chichester: Wiley, 2013), pp. 171-85. 1 b&w fig.
Assesses relations between the "idealizing tendencies" of formalist literary studies and the practicalities of studies in book history, reading PF as a "Chaucerian theory of the book" that is similar to the theory of Maurice Blanchot. Explores how a…
Boenig, Robert, and Kathleen Davis, eds.
Lewisburg, Penn. :
Eleven essays by various authors, a bibliography of Bolton's publications, and an index. For four essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Manuscript, Narrative, Lexicon under Alternative Title.
Interrogates the "ghost of judgment" that haunts the study of Chaucerian manuscripts as well as formalist analysis of Chaucer's works, commenting on implications for editing and teaching.
Da Rold, Orietta.
Essays and Studies 63 (2010): 43-58.
Suggests that analysis of the physical makeup of manuscripts is a way to understand the production and use of Middle English texts. Focuses on the multilingualism in texts, the different functions of texts in a single book, and scribal output.…
The eight manuscript portraits of Chaucer and the three of Hoccleve are described. Those of Chaucer in Ellesmere and Harley 4866 are possibly independent copies of a common ancestor, now lost. All other portraits of Chaucer depend on their…
The introduction treats contents, date, material and structure, ruling, layout and presentation of texts, handwriting, punctuation, correction and annotation, decoration, binding, and the history of the volume bequeathed to Magdalen College by Samuel…
Robinson, Pamela, intro.
Suffolk: Boydell and Brewer, 1982.
Written by various hands in the fifteenth century, Bodley 638,the latest of the so-called Oxford Group, contains HF and BD, found in only two other manuscripts, as well as Anel, LGW, PF, Pity, ABC, For, and Compl d'Am. Includes a bibliography.
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…
Crocker, Holly A.
Medieval Feminist Forum 39 (2005): 29-37
The proverbs signed "Impingham" in Harley 7333 derive from Chaucer, but the emphases and arrangement of the proverbs present a more reductive view of women than is found in Chaucer's works.
Lightsey, Scott.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Considers classical and medieval attitudes toward automata and mirabilia as context for analyzing their presence and depictions in late medieval English culture, especially in works by Langland, Chaucer, Gower, and Mandeville. Chapter 2, "Chaucer and…
Mosser, Daniel W.
Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 79 (1985): 235-40.
Deals with Manly and Rickert's erroneous procedures and conclusions regarding classification of manuscripts, scribal procedures, the Ellesmere MS, the Cardigan MS, HM 144, and the order of the tales.
Critiques the Manly-Rickert text of CT for inconsistency in treatment of orthographic accidentals and failure to maintain a consistent, identifiable copy-text. Recommends, nevertheless, judicious use of the Manly-Rickert table of variants.
Investigates the "active tension" between the characterization of the Manciple and the nature of ManT, analyzing differences between the Tale and its sources and analogues (especially characterizations and moralizations) to show how Chaucer…
Written by various hands in the fifteenth century, the Bodleian MS Tanner 346, the earliest of the Oxford Group, is indispensable in establishing the canon of the minor poems, especially Anel, Mars, Ven, and Pity. In addition, it contains BD, PF,…
Bohne, Amanda Marie.
Dissertation Abstracts International A81.05 (2019): n.p.
Chapter 2 discusses the Wife of Bath's "unique approach to her fourth husband's death as she balances her postmortem responsibilities to him with her immediate remarriage,' acting with "concern" while also "tending to her own wishes."
Chaucer, possibly familiar with the concept of the "poeta-theologus" current in fourteenth-century Italian poetics, actually structures KnT "in a fashion which parallels or imitates divine creation"; perfection of structural order counters the…
Thompson, N. S.
Piero Boitani and Anna Torti, eds. The Body and the Soul in Medieval Literature (Woodbridge, Suffolk; Rochester, N.Y.: D. S. Brewer, 1999), pp. 17-29.
CT and Boccaccio's Decameron depict a variety of social and moral transgressions committed by male characters; these transgressions constitute the ills of society. Female characters in the works are less likely to be transgressive, and only female…
Fyler, John M.
Robert R. Edwards and Stephen Spector, eds. The Olde Daunce: Love, Friendship, Sex, and Marriage in the Medieval World (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991), pp. 154-76, 276-84 (notes).
Argues that "Chaucer--drawing on a long tradition of Biblical commentary--is well aware of the sexual dimensions of word choice, even of the double meaning of 'man'." He "plays on the relationship between naming and sexual differentiation";explores…
The magical pageant of the Briton clerk (FranT) is imitated in Shakespeare's masque of Ceres ("The Tempest"); Humbert Humbert ("Lolita") is an analogue of Prospero. The image of the magician in each work points to the activity of the creative artist…
Sparrow, Edward Harrison.
Dissertation Abstracts International 57 (1997): 3952A.
The proof of masculinity by man-to-man combat continues to fascinate modern writers, though as early as Chaucer the duel had been perceived as inherently wrong.
Ridyard, Susan J., and Robert G. Benson, eds.
Sewanee, Tenn.: University of the South Press, 1995.
Fourteen essays from the seventeenth Sewanee Mediaeval Colloquium, on late-classical and medieval ideas of Nature, science, and human perception. For two essays that pertain to Chaucer, search for Man and Nature in the Middle Ages under Alternative…
