The Adorned Initials of Chaucer's ABC
- Author / Editor
- Pace, George B.
The Adorned Initials of Chaucer's ABC
- Published
- Manuscripta 23 (1979): 88-98.
- Description
- A device available to Chaucer, but no longer possible in the modern printed book, the illuminated initial, emphasizes the religious nature of the poem, an alphabetical sequence of eight-line stanza prayers to the Virgin. Fourteen of the seventeen early copies of the poem make some feature of the initials, often employing "Lombardic" capitals with their religious appropriateness. The language of the letter forms was one part of the charm of Chaucer's abecedarian poem.
- Chaucer Subjects
- ABC.
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies.