The "Cattes Tale:" A Chaucer Apocryphon.

Description: Offers perspective on affiliations of Elizabeth and Alice Chaucer with Barking Abbey; comments on cats in late-medieval literature (CT, “Piers Plowman,” and more); identifies “Gyb” as a conventional name for a cat; and explores international versions of the folk-tale “Dick Whittington’s Cat.” Frames these materials with a whimsical explication of a “lost” (fabricated?) description—quoted here—of the Prioress’s cat in GP and a related “Catte’s Tale,” reputedly found by John Leland in a manuscript once held at Barking. The Chaucer Review editors forewarn readers of the whimsy.