Chaucer's "Book of Fame": An Exposition of "The House of Fame."
Reads HF as Chaucer's "vindication of poetry," even though he comically proposes to eschew it. Identifies the various echoes of classical and medieval sources in HF, particularly Virgil's "Aeneid," Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Alain de Lille's "Anticlaudianus," and Dante's "Divine Comedy," arguing that Chaucer manipulates them self-consciously as part of assertion of the value of poetry, depicted ironically in the structure and activities of Fame's palace. Treats the Dreamer's quest as a search for a new kind of poetry, reflected in the hurly-burly of the house of Rumor, as, perhaps, Chaucer's declaration of a new subject matter.
The Secte of the Wife of Bath.
Identifies the legal denotations of the word "secte" (suit at law) and argues that the Clerk's use of it when referring to the Wife of Bath (4.1170-71) indicates that his Tale is a reply to hers.
An Annotated Chaucer Bibliography, 1989
Continuation of SAC annual bibliography (since 1975); based on 1989 MLA Bibliography listings, contributions from an international bibliographic team, and independent research. A total of 359 items including reviews.
Chaucer Research, 1990: Report No. 51
The 1990 report of the Committee on Chaucer Bibliography and Research; lists 304 Chaucer studies.
Chaucer's Knight's Tale: An Annotated Bibliography, 1900-1985
Annotated entries are alphabetized in five chronological periods (1900-30, 1931-60, 1961-70, 1971-80, 1981-85) under two headings: Knight in the GP (and Links) and KnT.
Additional sections include editions and translations; sources (subdivided under Teseida, Thebaid, and Roman de Thebes); and backgrounds and general studies (subdivided under Chaucer and Italy, Romance and Romances, Courtliness and Courtly Love, Chaucer and Women, Paganism and the Gods, Chaucer and Science, Estates and Social Satire, and Chivalry). Entries total 1,134. Also includes a twenty-seven-page chronological survey of criticism and a forty-nine-page index.
Middle English: Chaucer
Discursive review of Chaucerian scholarship and research published in 1989.
International Bibliography for 1990
Annual bibliography of the International Courtly Literature Society, listing 806 items, briefly annotated in some cases. The subject index lists thirty-two Chaucerian works and topics.
A Complete Concordance to the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 10 vols
Supplies every form of every word in the Chaucer corpus of The Riverside Chaucer, using KWIC format. Presents the headword in the center of the page and provides about two lines of context for the poetry. Variant spellings are listed separately, and compounds are treated as single words.
Volumes 1-4 include a concordance, a ranked word-frequency list, a reverse-word list, and a hyphenated-word list for CT, as well as a word index for each individual tale. Volume 5 supplies similar lists for BD, HF, Anel, and PF; volume 6, for Bo; volume 7, for TC; volume 8, for LGW, short poems, Astr, and"poems not ascribed to Chaucer in the manuscripts"; and volume 9, for Rom. Volume 10 is a word index of the entire corpus, i.e., a list of all occurnces of all words without accompanying context.
An Annotated Critical Bibliography of Langland
A selective, annotated bibliography of 614 entries, indexed rather than cross-listed, covering 1900-1988. Entries are arranged under descriptive and topical categories such as Bibliography, Date, Meter, Literary Relationships, Allegory,and Dream Vision. Under "Chaucer, Geoffrey," there are twenty-two entries.
The House of Chaucer & Son: The Business of Lancastrian Canon-Formation
Thomas Chaucer continued the lease on his father's house in the garden at Westminster Abbey to provide a repository for Geoffrey Chaucer's literary remains. His motive was to help form a Lancastrian poetic canon committed to social stability and religious orthodoxy.
Thomas Hoccleve and the Chaucer Portrait
Hoccleve's hopes for preferment depended upon his claim to personal acquaintance with Chaucer and to his "consail and reed." Hoccleve's patrons had known Chaucer by sight and could verify the image of Chaucer that accompanies Hoccleve's poems. Hence the Ellesmere-Hoccleve type portraits show Chaucer's true image.
Chaucer's Ancestry: Historical and Philological Re-Assessments
An examination of Chaucer's original family name, Malyn, casts doubt on previous claims that Chaucer's family was involved in leather making. For social and commercial reasons, Chaucer was a more acceptable surname. Chaucer used Malyn or its variations in his writing in a "self-deprecatory" way.
Problems of Writing a Life of Chaucer
Justifies writing a new biography of Chaucer despite objections that it may be impossible, useless, or superfluous. The exceptional nature of Chaucer's life and the richness of his historical context make the undertaking worthwhile.
Letters to the Dukes of Lancaster in 1381 and 1399
The letters provide a new perspective on the uprising of 1381,the usurpation of 1399, and exploitation of the language of love.
Early Printers and English Lyrics: Sources, Selection and Presentation of Texts
A study of the "traditions of lyric publication on which Tottel built" his 1557 collection, Tottel's Miscellany. Discusses early English printers' "Chaucerian anthologies"--Caxton's quarto volumes among them--that combine Chaucer's lyrics and longer works.
Transcript Error and the Text of Troilus
Furnivall's printed transcriptions of TC manuscripts have created a legacy of errors, especially in editions based on Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, 61 (Cp). Hewett-Smith identifies errors in Robinson's edition and exemplifies the transmission of error into other editions, particularly the first printing of The Riverside Chaucer.
Eighteenth-Century Modernizations from the Canterbury Tales
A collection of thirty-two eighteenth-century modernizations of CT by at least seventeen authors, known and anonymous. Valuable in an exploration of reception aesthetics and reader-response theory.
Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales
Reprint of 1958 edition, with slight revisions in bibliography.
Chaucer: Les contes de Cantorbery
Introduction, bibliography, and French translations of WBP, WBT, ClT, MerT, FranT, PhyT, PardT, ShT, PrT, NPT, SNT, CYT,and ManT.
Chaucer's Boece
Japanese translation of Bo based on Larry Benson, gen ed., The Riverside Chaucer, with notes.
Geoffrey Chaucer: Die Canterbury-Erzahlungen: Mittelenglisch und Deutsch, 3 vols
Facing-page German prose translation of the Riverside text of CT. Original German apparatus includes notes, introductions to Chaucer's life and to the tales, a guide to pronunciation, a history of criticism, and a bibliography.
On Making an Edition of The Canterbury Tales in Modern Spelling
Challenges existing editions of CT and proposes an alternative that would include the old-spelling version of Hengwrt with new spelling, glossing, and annotations.
The Canterbury Tales: The General Prologue and Twelve Major Tales in Modern Spelling
An edition of the Middle English text for nonspecialist students and general readers. Neither a normalization nor a translation, it retains--in all respects except spelling--the language of Hengwrt, with variants from other manuscripts of the Six-Text edition and Manly-Rickert. Introductions, full side-page glossing, and end-page notes.
Selecting the Text: Rawlinson C.86 and Some Other Books for London Readers
Rawlinson C.86 contains ClT and portions of PrT and LGW. Analysis of the manuscript reveals interests of the contemporary London audience and suggests that several booklets in the manuscript may have been produced on speculation.
Recapturing Readings: Middle English Literature in Its Manuscript Contexts
On the basis of insights provided by manuscripts (especially Harvard MS English 530), certain works by Hoccleve and Lydgate reveal unifying themes. To fifteenth-century readers, Chaucer's PF treated the relationship of common profit and individual will.