Viper into Weasel: (A Note on a Line in Chaucer's Melibee).
- Author / Editor
- Brereton, Georgine E.
Viper into Weasel: (A Note on a Line in Chaucer's Melibee).
- Published
- Medium Aevum 27 (1958): 173-74.
- Description
- Proposes that an error of transmission in Chaucer's source (Frère Renaud de Louens' "Livre de Mellibee et Prudence") accounts for the inaccurate claim in Mel: that Ovid says a weasel can slay a bull. The proposed error confuses Ovid's "viper" (vipera) with a fur-bearing animal, a kind of ermine.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Tale of Melibee
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations