Chapter 1 Introduction: Prologue and Tale Chapter 2 Prologues
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Notes Chapter 1 Introduction: Prologue and Tale 1 The 'lost' works include some of the 'hymns', certainly the 'vyrelayes' (normally in French a poem ofthree stanzas in short lines, with a long refrain ofthree or more lines), though this list ofshort poems may be merely conventional in its contents; no Chaucerian translation of Innocent Ill's De miseria condicionishumane is known, though The Man ofLaw's Prologue uses material from it; the reference to Origen is to an attributed homily on Mary Magdalene - another lost translation presumably.The two works included in The Canterbury Tales are The KnightJs Tale ('al the love ofPalamon and Arcite' ) and The Second NunJs Tale ('the lyf ofSeynt Cecile'). 2 J. A. Cuddon, A Dictionary ofLiterary Terms, London, 1977; K. Beckson and A. Ganz, Literary Terms: A Dictionary, London, 1990. 3 See D. S. Brewer (ed.) Chaucer: The Critical Heritage, 1978, Vol. I, pp. 39-42 for the whole poem in which Deschamps praises Chaucer as the modern Socrates, Seneca, Ovid. See also James 1. Wimsatt, Chaucer and his French Contemporaries: Natural Music in the Fourteenth Century, Toronto, 1991, pp. 248-51. 4 R. H. Robbins, 'Geoffroi Chaucier, Peete Francais, father of English poetry', ChauR 13 (1978),93-115. 5 James 1. Wimsatt, Chaucer and the Poemsof'ChJin Univ.ofPennsylvania MS.15, Cambridge, 1982. 6 Distinguished exceptions to this are Burrow RP, and Kean. 7 See Pearsall OE&MEP, pp. 189-91 and The Life ofGeoffrey Chaucer, London, 1992, pp. 63-77, on the use of French at court and the nature ofChaucer's choice in using English. 8 See W Rothwell, 'Stratford atte Bowe and Paris', MLR 80 (1985 ), 39-54. 9 Elizabeth Salter, 'Chaucer and internationalism', SAC 2 (1980), 71-9, considers how the style and narrative strategy ofthe poem may have been influenced by distinguished French visitors to England in Edward Ill's time. Chapter 2 Prologues I Medieval Prologues 1 Burrow RP, pp. 57ff. 2 Barry Windeatt, Oxford Guides to Chaucer: 'Troilus and Criseyde', Oxford, 1992, p. 185. 218 Notes 219 3 Cicero, De Intentione with an English translation by H . M. Hubbell, Loeb ClassicalLibrary, Cambridge, Mass., 1949. Rhetorica ad Herennium (De Ratione Dicendi) with an English translation by Harry Caplan, Loeb ClassicalLibrary, Cambridge, Mass., 1954. 4 Rbetoricaad Herennium, I, vi, 9; Caplan, op. cit., p. 19. 5 Rbetorica ad Herennium, I, vi, 10; Caplan, op. cit., pp. 19-20. 6 Geoffrey de Vinsauf, Poetria Nova 126-131, translated by Ernest Gallo in The 'Poetria Nova)and its Sources in EarlyRhetorical Doctrine, The Hague, 1971. 7 Alberic ofMonte Cassino, Dictaminum radii; see Gallo, op. cit., p. 73. 8 Traugott Lawler (ed.) The Parisiana Poetria ofJohn of Garland, Yale Studies in English 182, New Haven and London, 1974. 9 See A. J. Minnis, MedievalLiterary Theory and Criticism) c.1100-c.1375: the Commentary Tradition , Oxford, revised edition 1988, p. 43. 10 Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan, translated by A. T. Hatto, Harmondsworth,1960. 11 Hennig Brinkmann, 'Der Prolog im Mittelalter als literarische Erscheinung', Wirkendes Wort 14 (1964), 1-21. 12 Samuel Jaffe, 'Gottfried von Strassburg and the rhetoric of history, in J. J. Murphy (ed.), MedievalEloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice ofMedievalRhetoric, Berkeley; Los Angeles, London, 1978, pp. 288-318. 13 A. J. Minnis, 'The influence ofacademic prologues on the prologues and literary attitudes oflate-rnedieval English writers,' MS 43 (1981), 342-83. 14 Margaret Galway,'Chaucer's hopeless love',MLN 60 (1945),431-9; see also Fisher]G, pp. 243-4, who suggests that a passage in Mirour de l'Omme about the tyrants of Lombardy is as likelya source. 15 See Charles A. Owen Jr, Pi!!Jrimage and Storytelling: the Dialectic of 'Ernest)and 'Game), Norman, Oklahoma, 1977, pp. 25-31, and 'The alternative reading ofThe Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's text and the early MSS,' PMLA 97 (1982), 237-50. 16 Fisher]G pp. 27-32,117-21, reviews the evidence for Chaucer's and Gower's supposed quarrel. See below, Chapter 5. II Gower, Langland and Chaucer's General Prologue 17 J. A. W Bennett, 'Chaucer's contemporary', in S. S. Hussey (ed.), 'Piers Plowman): CriticalApproaches, London, 1969, pp. 310-24. Elizabeth Salter,Fourteenth-Century English Poetry, Oxford, 1983. 18 Helen Cooper, 'Langland's and Chaucer's prologues', The Yearbook of Langland Studies 1 (1987) , 71-8l. 19 It seems first to have been used by E N. Robinson in his edition ofThe Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, 1933. 20 See M. Andrew, C. Moorman and D. J. Ransom (eds),A ~riorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Vol. II. The Canterbury Tales. The General Prologue, Part IA, Norman, Oklahoma and London, 1993, p.127. 220 Chaucer and His English Contemporaries 21 Jill Mann, Chaucer andMedieval Estates Satire: the Literature ofSocial Classes and the General Prologue to 'The Canterbury Tales', Cambridge, 1973, p. l. 22 Ibid ., p. 27. 23 Mann herself makes the comparison in her Appendix B: 'Chaucer, Langland and Gower'; op. cit., pp. 207-12. 24 Mann, 'Excursus: The "General Prologue" and the "Descriptio" Tradition', op. cit., pp. 176-86. III Prologues in The Canterbury Tales 25 R. A. Pratt, 'Chaucer borrowing from himself,' MLQ 7 (1946),259-64. 26 Cooper OGCT, p. 288. 27 For example by Cooper OGCT, pp. 108-9. 28 Ernest Gallo, 'The Poetria Nova ofGeoffrey de Vinsauf' in J. J. Murphy (ed.), Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice ofMedieval Rhetoric, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1978, pp. 68-84. Chapter 3 Tales I Ideas of Narrative 1 A point made by Cooper OGCT, p. 115, where she speaks ofChaucer's 'reluctance to impose any single scheme for arranging the stories'. 2 Definition of'narrative' in Gerald Prince, A Dictionary ofNarratology, Aldershot, 1987, p. 58. 3 See the full summary in James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in the M iddle Ages, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, 1974, pp. 10-15. 4 J. A. Mosher, The Exemplum in the Early Religious and Didactic Literature ofEngland, New York, 1911. 5 See discussions of tale collections in Cooper Structure) pp. 8-55; and Piero Boitani, English Medieval Narrative in the 13th and 14th Centuries, trans. J. Krakover Hall, Cambridge, 1982, Chapter 1, 'The religious tradition'. 6 See Pearsall OE&MEP, p. 106; Bennett and Gray MEL, p. 35. 7 R. Morris (ed.), EETS (os) 57,59,62,66,68,99, 101, 1887-93. 8 Bennett and Gray MEL, pp. 46-7. 9 Ruth Crosby, 'Robert Mannyng of Brunne: a new biography', PMLA 57 (1942), 15-28. 10 Pearsall OE&MEP, p. 108. 11 The word trotevale occurs only in Mannyng and in Walter Map; compare Langland's word for idle nonsense: waltrot. 12 Idelle Sullens (ed.), Binghamton, New York, 1983. 13 See the works by Mosher and Bennett and Gray cited in this chapter. 14 For fuller discussion of tale collections see Chapter 6 below. Notes 221 II Tales and Preachers 15 Longer speeches in prose are given to Dame Prudence in Melibee, whose role is entirely devoted to sententious reasoning. 16 That is, 'Radix malorurn est cupiditas' as quoted in the prologue from 1 Timothy 6, 10. 17 Pearsall argues that Chaucer's prose paraphrases (Melibee and The Parson's Tale) provide basic material which is elaborated in the other tales; see Pearsall CT, pp. 287-8. 18 Burrow RP, pp. 83-4. 19 The examples I use are both cited by Charles Runacres in his discussion of the history and working of narrative exemplification ~rt and ethics in the exempla ofConfessio Amantis', in A. J. Minnis (ed.), Gower's 'Confessio Amantis': Responses and Reassessments, Cambridge, 1983, pp. 106-34. 20 Kurt Olsson,john Gower and the Structures of Conversion:A Reading of the 'Confessio Amantis', Cambridge, 1992, pp. 23-4. III Fabliau, Confession, Satire 21 See P. Nykrog, LesFabliaux: Etude d' histoire litteraireet de stylistique medievale, Copenhagen, 1957; John Hines, The Fabliau in English, London, 1993. 22 Burrow RP, p. 106. 23 Malcolm Godden, TheMaking of <PiersPlowman', London, 1990, p. 43. 24 P. Nykrog, LesFabliaux, cited in note 21 above. 25 J. A. Burrow, Medieval Writers and their Work, Oxford, 1982, p. 84. 26 See Steve Ellis, Geoffrey Chaucer; Writers and their Work Series, Plymouth, 1996, pp. 43-6. Chapter 4 Romances I Romance as a Medieval Genre 1 Cooper OGCT, p. 309. II The Case ofThomas Chester 2 Martin M. Crow and Clair C. Olson (eds), ChaucerLife Records, Oxford, 1966, pp. 23-4. 3 Derek Pearsall, The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer, London, 1992, p. 41. 4 J. A. Burrow, 'The Canterbury Tales 1: Romance' in P. Boitani and J.Mann (eds), The Cambridge Chaucer Companion, Cambridge, 1986, p.113. 5 Maldwyn Mills (ed.), Lybeaus Desconus, EETS 261, London 1969, p. 21. 6 Ibid., p. 64. 7 Maldwyn Mills, 'The compositional style ofthe "Southern" Octavian, Sir Launfal and Lybeaus Desconus',.MA.e 31 (1962) ,88-109 - quotations from p. 89. 222 Chaucer and His English Contemporaries 8 A. C. Spearing, 'Marie de France and her Middle English adaptors', SAC 12 (1990), 117-56 - quotations from 148, 156. 9 Dieter Mehl, TheMiddle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries, London, 1968, p. 246. 10 PearsallOE&MEP, p. 116. 11 K. Brunner (ed.), IUchard Coeur deLion, WienerBeitriige zur Englischen Philologie 42, Vienna, 1913. 12 E. Kolbing (ed.), Arthour and Merlin, Altenglische Bibliotek 4, Leipzig, 1890. 13 Derek Pearsall, 'The development of Middle English romance', first published in Mediaeval Studies 27 (1965), 91-116, reprinted in Derek Brewer (ed.), Studies in Medieval English Romances, Cambridge, 1988, pp.11-35. 14 G. V. Smithers (ed.), KJ'ng Alisaunder,Vol. II, EETS (os) 237, London, 1957, Introduction, pp.