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'Whilom, As Olde Stories Tellen Us' : The Discourse Marker Whilom in Middle English
Brinton, Laurel J.
A. E. Christa Canitz and Gernot R. Wieland, eds. From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui on His 75th Birthday (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), pp. 175-99.
Documents the development of whilom from its origins as an Old English adverb, to a discourse marker associated with orality, to an adjective. Although this development does not challenge the "unidirectionality hypothesis of grammaticalization," it…
The Pageant of the Sins
Mills, John.
A. E. Christa Canitz and Gernot R. Wieland, eds. From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui on His 75th Birthday (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), pp. 253-64.
Examines the pageant of sins in the first book of Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene as a reflection of one stage in the development from the Pauline "theological" notion of sin to a "material-psychological" understanding. Compares Spenser's depiction…
The Compulsions of Honour
Brewer, Derek.
A. E. Christa Canitz and Gernot R. Wieland, eds. From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui on His 75th Birthday (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), pp. 75-92.
Surveys medieval and modern understandings of honor as background to discussing the concept in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight," Malory's "Le Morte Darthur," and PhyT. Virginius "rightly kills" Virginia "to protect his own honour as well as her…
Another Look and an Old 'Science' : Chaucer's Pilgrims and Physiognomy
Wurtele, Douglas (J).
A. E. Christa Canitz and Gernot R. Wieland, eds. From Arabye to Engelond: Medieval Studies in Honour of Mahmoud Manzalaoui on His 75th Birthday (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1999), pp. 93-111.
Surveys Chaucer's uses of physiognomic detail in descriptions of the Canterbury pilgrims, especially in GP. Chaucer uses these details in various, often ironic ways.
Chaucer and Skelton
Gilbert, A. J.
A. J. Gilbert, Literary Language from Chaucer to Johnson (London and Basingstoke: Macmillan; New York: Barnes & Noble), 1979, pp. 29-62.
Close reading of KnT, focusing on elements such as syntax, diction, and imagery, shows Chaucer's dexterous use of high, middle, and low styles. The variety and combination of elements produce the tone of the poem and "naturalize" its philosophical…
Middle English Text Production and Modern Textual Criticism
Machan, Tim William.
A. J. Minnis and Charlotte Brewer, eds. Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992), pp. 1-18.
Challenges traditional distinctions between "auctor" and "scribe," associating their strict separation with New Criticism and affiliating it, in turn, with the methods of George Kane. Calls for a textual method sensitive to medieval notions of…
Producing Manuscripts and Editions
Hanna, Ralph, III.
A. J. Minnis and Charlotte Brewer, eds. Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992), pp. 109-30.
Calls for an editing approach that attempts to replicate the contextual and intertextual aspects of manuscripts. Suggests various editions for various purposes, each sensitive to the radical differences of variants, the importance of the manuscript…
Geoffrey Chaucer: Textual Transmission and Editing
Blake, N. F.
A. J. Minnis and Charlotte Brewer, eds. Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992), pp. 19-38.
Critiques Root's and Windeatt's editions of TC for their lack of a clear and consistent theory of textual transmission and explores the problems of producing a valid edition of CT, exposing difficulties by examining the limitations of the Riverside…
Authorial Revision in Some Late-Medieval English Texts
Pearsall, Derek.
A. J. Minnis and Charlotte Brewer, eds. Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1992), pp. 39-48.
Surveys how editions of Chaucer, Gower, Langland, and others have banished the notion of authorial revision from their textual methods and replaced it with attention to scribal practice, thereby paralleling deconstructive criticism.
A Ricardian 'I': The Narrator of 'Troilus and Criseyde'
Spearing, A. C.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarenden, 1997), pp. 1-22.
Surveys critical opinion about the narrator of TC, arguing that the narrator is not best regarded as unreliable, that it is difficult to separate narrator from author, and that is is unwise or impossible to construct a single stable narratorial…
Anglo-Latin in the Ricardian Age
Rigg, A. G.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarenden, 1997), pp. 121-41.
Explores how English displaced Latin as a literary language in the court of Richard II and assesses meter, Anglicization, and historical topics as common features of Anglo-Latin verse by Gower and Thomas Barry.
Ricardian Romance? Critiques and Vindications
Jacobs, Nicholas.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarenden, 1997), pp. 203-21.
The romances of Chaucer and of the "Gawain" poet are similar in treating the genre as a decaying or decadent form. Chaucer treats the genre and its traditional themes lightly, at times parodically, while the "Gawain" poet seeks to redeem the genre…
Looking for a Sign: The Quest for Nominalism in Chaucer and Langland
Minnis, A. J.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), 142-78.
Belief in the salvation of virtuous pagans (the "'facere quod in est' principle") has been associated with nominalist thought. Minnis examines Chaucer's praise of Cambuyskan in SqT to argue that there is no real evidence of nominalist influence on…
Ricardian 'Trouthe': A Legal Perspective
Green, Richard Firth.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 179-202.
Documents the medieval legal understanding of "trouthe" as an aspect of personal "oathworthiness" rather than of verifiability of facts; argues that this early sense obtains in MLT 2.630 even though it was fast becoming an archaic sense.
The World and Heart of Thomas Usk
Medcalf, Stephen.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 222-51.
Summarizes Usk's life and career. While assessing the fusion of various levels of meaning in "The Testament of Love," Medcalf observes what Usk borrows from Chaucer (HF and TC) and Langland, as well as from Boethius and Anselm.
Pre-empting Closure in 'The Canterbury Tales': Old Endings, New Beginnings
Pearsall, Derek.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 23-38.
Addresses issues of the order of CT and, following the discussion of Charles A. Owen, Jr. (1977), argues that ParsT was once intended to complete the work. However, Chaucer revised his plan when he "evolved a new and impossibly grandiose scheme for…
From 'Ricardian Poetry' to Ricardian Studies
Morse, Charlotte C.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 316-44.
Traces the history and reception of J. A. Burrow's term "Ricardian" as an alternative to "Age of Chaucer," considering its use and its future in light of the present critical climate.
Women's Pity and Women's Power: Chaucer's Prioress Reconsidered
Meale, Carol M.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 39-60.
Argues that Chaucer was familiar with the realities of female monastic existence but chose to create his GP sketch of the Prioress from literary satire. The spirituality of PrT, however, is particularly apt for females, and many discussions of the…
Muses and Blacksmiths: Italian Trecento Poetics and the Reception of Dante in 'The House of Fame'
Havely, Nicholas R.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 61-81.
The Dantean aspects of HF, especially its invocations, not only recall the "Divine Comedy" but also reflect contemporary Italian reception and performance of Dante's masterpiece.
French Culture and the Ricardian Court
Butterfield, Ardis.
A. J. Minnis, Charlotte C. Morse, and Thorlac Turville-Petre, eds. Essays on Ricardian Literature: In Honour of J. A. Burrow (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 82-120.
Assesses aspects of the social and political exchange between France and England as background to their poetic exchange. Focuses on how lyric refrains (especially "Qui bien aimme," found in PF and elsewhere) were "common currency" between the two…
'Compilatio' and the Wife of Bath: Latin Backgrounds, Ricardian Texts
Hanna, Ralph,III.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Latin and Venacular Studies in Late-Medieval Texts and Manuscripts. York Manuscripts Conferences: Proceedings Series, University of York, Centre for Medieval Studies, vol. 1. (Woodbridge, Suffolk, and Wolfeboro: Boydell & Brewer, 1989), p. 1-11.
Considers WBP as a compilation, "pieced together of verbatim translation" from a fuller text by Jerome. WBP represents "Englished" Latin, cut free from "control and indoctrination" of a closed Latin tradition and thus "seditious and dangerous,"…
The 'Boece' as Late-Medieval Translation
Minnis, A. J., and Tim William Machan.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Chaucer's "Boece" and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 167-88.
Assesses Bo and its fifteenth-century reception in light of the "well-defined and distinctive" tradition of "academic translation," i.e., as a reflection of the late-medieval interest in semiotics and textual explication. Although Chaucer never…
Chaucer's Commentator: Nicholas Trevet and the 'Boece'
Minnis, A. J.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Chaucer's "Boece" and the Medieval Tradition of Boethius (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1993), pp. 83-166.
Surveys scholarly discussion of Chaucer's sources for his extrapolatory glosses in Bo, arguing that he was indebted to "some version of the Remigian glosses," to Jean de Meun's "livres de confort," and to a complete version of Nicholas Trevet's…
The Gower Tradition
Pearsall, Derek.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Gower's "Confessio Amantis": Responses and Reassessments (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 179-97.
Surveys the "history of Gower's reputation," beginning with Chaucer's reference to him as "moral Gower" at the end of TC and his possible allusions to Gower's works in ManT and MLP. The idea of a "quarrel" between the two poets is perhaps…
The Portrayal of Amans in 'Confessio Amantis'
Burrow, J. A.
A. J. Minnis, ed. Gower's "Confessio Amantis": Responses and Reassessments (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 5-24.
In an analysis of Gower's combination of confession, "dits amoreux," and concern with old age in the "Confessio Amantis," observes a number of comparisons and contrasts with Chaucer: the individuation of Amans and of the lovers in TC, uses of the…