The Crow's "Cokkow!": Bird Debates and Chaucer's "Manciple’s Tale."

Author / Editor
Stanbury, Sarah.

Title
The Crow's "Cokkow!": Bird Debates and Chaucer's "Manciple’s Tale."

Published
Valerie B. Johnson and Kara L. McShane, eds. Negotiating Boundaries in Medieval Literature and Culture: Essays on Marginality, Difference, and Reading Practices in Honor of Thomas Hahn (Boston: De Gruyter; Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute, 2022), pp. 265-88.

Description
Explicates the "cukkow"/cuckoo/cuckold pun in ManT by identifying the role of the cuckoo (versus the nightingale) in bird-debate poems, analyzed here, particularly in Sir John Clanvowe's "Boke of Cupide." Argues that, by engaging themes of signification, class, and truth-telling, ManT "lobs an attack on the courtly good life of song, poetry, and pleasure," “signaling” the end of the CT and “making that end happen.”

Alternative Title
Negotiating Boundaries in Medieval Literature and Culture

Chaucer Subjects
Manciple and His Tale
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations