Viper into Weasel: (A Note on a Line in Chaucer's Melibee).

Author / Editor
Brereton, Georgine E.

Title
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