Argues that medieval allegory and "much of science fiction" share a common "presupposition" of conveying an "abstract message" or "vision of truth," comparing various themes and devices of science fiction with examples drawn from medieval…
Addresses the "existence of a tradition that attributes 'Piers Plowman' to Chaucer." Surveys notes and items that contribute to Chaucer's and Langland's "reception histories."
Vitto, Cindy L.
Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1989.
Treats the debate over the problem of salvation for the virtuous pagan and the solutions of theologians in the medieval Church and then concentrates on Dante, "St. Erkenwald," and "Piers Plowman."
Beadle, Richard.
Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt, eds. Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990) pp. 213-33.
In 1635, Sir Francis Kinaston published a translation into Latin verse of the first two books of Chaucer's TC under the title "Amorum Troili et Creseidae libri duo priores Anglico-Latini". This is best described as a parallel-text edition,for a…
Blake, N. F.
Loren C. Gruber, ed. Essays on Old, Middle, Modern English and Old Icelandic in Honor of Raymond P. Tripp, Jr. (Lewiston, N.Y.: Mellen Press, 2000), pp. 361-86.
Concludes that either the virgule replicates Chaucer's own mark, or its rather uniform placement signals a scribal practice not yet fully understood.
Killough, George (B.)
Dissertation Abstracts International 39 (1979): 5496A.
Virgule placement in the Hengwrt and Ellesmere mss. is highly regular. Syntactic and metrical rules can be used to predict 80 percent of the placements. The two mss agree in virgule placement 77 percent of the time. The 23 percent rate of…
Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn.
Ruth Evans and Lesley Johnson, eds. Feminist Readings in Middle English Literature: The Wife of Bath and All Her Sect (London and New York: Routledge, 1994), pp. 165-94.
The early Middle English "Letter on Virginity" and the "Katherine Group" saints' lives critique male desire and the violation of female will, challenging conventions of courtly love. In WBP, SNT, and PhyT, Chaucer's use of "virginity material"…
Robbins, Rossell Hope.
Kibler, William W., ed. Eleanor of Aquitaine: Patron and Politician (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1976), pp. 147-72.
Surveys the density and intensity of French influence on the literature of medieval England, focusing on courtly romance and how its plots and "interest in love's finesse" affected the English tradition separately. Outlines some possible connections…
Although allegorical and historical justifications have been given for Griselda's suffering in ClT, the story is Chaucer's attack on the tyranny and injustice of her situation. In a different way, Webster condemns tyrannical persecution in the…
Barber, Charles,and Nicolas Barber.
Leeds Studies in English 21 (1990): 81-101.
Through a computer count of the syllabic length of 15,294 verses of CT, Barber challenges J. G. Southworth's hypothesis that unstresses final "-e" was not pronounced in Chaucer's verse. The results suggest that syllabic symmetry could have been…
Vulic, Kathryn.
Susanna Fein and David Raybin, eds. Chaucer: Visual Approaches (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2016), pp. 59-85.
Posits that the Paternoster diagram in the Vernon manuscript, transcribed in an appendix, as an example of a "supplementary text" that performs devotional work in dialogue with ParsT's call to prayer. Examines the visual and verbal structure of the…
Loomis, Dorothy Bethurum,
James L. Rosier, ed. Philological Essays: Studies in Old and Middle English Language and Literature in Honour of Herbert Dean Meritt (The Hague: Mouton, 1970), pp. 182-95.
Argues that Chaucer "was deeply influenced by the Platonism of the School of Chartres," focusing on how he and Alanus "treated the figure of Venus." Alanus presents Venus as "the efficient cause of creation," and while this view is mediated for…
Keyburn, Karen.
Dissertation Abstracts International 58 (1997): 861A.
"Second Nun and Her Tale" as prepared for the "Variorum Chaucer," based on the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts, with explanatory notes and critical commentary to 1994.
Kennedy, Beverly.
Lesley Smith and Jane H. M. Taylor, eds. Women, the Book and the Worldly: Selected Proceedings of the St. Hilda's Conference, 1993, Volume II (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1995), pp. 85-101.
Documents the manuscript evidence of the authenticity of six passages in WBP (44a-f, 575-84, 605-08, 609-12, 619-26, 717-20) and surveys justifications for their inclusion in various editions.
Farrell, Thomas J.
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 120.1 (2021): 93–129.
Contends that data from the Canterbury Tales Project have not been widely used in Chaucer studies, partly on account of misunderstanding the project's purpose and function. That function is to produce evidence through analysis of witness groups, not…
Morse, Charlotte C.
Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987), pp. 122-29.
Reviews the development of CT editing from 1960 onward. The "Variorum is designed to control and reassess secondary literature and to test Manly-Rickert (very reliable). Rejects Manly-Rickert's theory of early versions of CT and ClT. Reviews…
Forni, Kathleen.
Studia Neophilologica 70 (1998): 173-80.
The black-letter editions of Chaucer from 1532 to 1721 are "valuable books with worthless texts." However, their financial value may give some indication of their readers and their readers' socioeconomic status.
The medieval chivalric practice of ransom illuminates the preoccupation with double sense, surrogacy, and substitutions in TC. Working with the poem's depiction of character, its narrative structure, and its insistently metaphoric language, the…
Close analyses of grammar and diction, including shifts in verb tense, show a considerable range of both poetic role playing and distancing between author and speaker--self-mockery and travesty (Buk, For, Lady, Pity, Ros, Scog).
Surveys problems with critical editions that distort readers' ideas of medieval literature and indicates directions for the scholarly study of manuscripts. The article refers repeatedly to manuscripts of Chaucer and of Langland.
Yvernault, Martine.
Claire Vial, ed. 'Gode is the lay, swete is the note': Résonances dans les lais bretons moyen-anglais / Echoes in the Middle English Breton Lays (2014): n.p. (web publication).
Although courtly love, magic, and supernatural situations make up the framework of FranT, the role played by binding agreements, contracts, and consent in the Tale alters the traditional definition of magic. Claims that fourteenth-century society was…
