DOCSLIB.ORG

Full Screen View

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Full Screen View THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OLD FRENCH MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE FOR SEEKING ALL SOURCES OF THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE by Nathaniel Co gswell Balis A Thesis Submitted t o the Faculty of The Schmidt Co llege o f Arts and Humanities i n Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master o f Arts Florida Atlantic University Boca Raton, Florida Augus t 1994 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF OLD FRENCH MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE FOR SEEKING ALL SOURCES OF THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE by Nathaniel Co gswell Balis This thesis was prepared under the direction of the candid- ate's thesis adv isor, Dr. Nancy Vine Durling, Department o f Languages and Linguistics, and has been approved by the members o f his supervisory committee. It was submitted to the faculty of The Schmidt College of Arts and Humanities and was accepted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts. TK~Advisor (2~QG£f2 ·. .. '·~~~~~~~----~--G airperson, Department~---- --­ o Languages and Linguistics ~ru~du:& \( \0~ chmidt College Human i ties dies Date ii ABSTRACT Author: Nathaniel Cogswell Balis Title: The Significance of Old French Manuscript Evidence for Seeking All Sources of The Romaunt of the Rose Institution: Florida Atlantic University Thesis Advisor: Dr. Nancy Vine Durling Degree: Master of Arts Year: 1994 The search for all sources of The Romaunt of the Rose, the fourteenth-century English version of Le roman de la Rose, focuses on Geoffrey Chaucer. The authorship contro­ versy is so divisive that prominent medievalists like Huot, Hult, Robertson, and Badel write long volumes on the Roman's influence without mentioning the Romaunt. Comparing Geiss­ man's list of rime-borrowings with both poems' concordances is the only way to end the debate, because Chaucer is the likeliest author and one must start with the most compatible French and English texts. At present, the best way to test Geoffrey Chaucer's authorship of the Middle English Romaunt is through close examination of the French rime-borrowings most orthoepically comparable in both languages that the Middle English writer occasionally chose to translate rather than borrow. This selective borrowing suggests the trans­ lator's attempt to bring each term slowly into the English mainstream, by using it at first only in its literal sense. iii Table of Contents Part I: Scholarship on Classifying Roman Manuscripts ....... 1 Part II: Comparative Efforts to Conflate OF Versions ....... 9 Part III: Parallel Texts Guiding Authorship Searches ...... 13 Part IV: Comparing the Romaunt with Possible Sources ...... 17 Part V: Scholarship Seeking the Romaunt's Authorship ...... 34 Appendices Appendix A: Geissman's Facultative Rime-Borrowings ........ 36 Appendix B: Courtly Rime-Borrowings from Appendix A ....... 39 Appendix C: Worldly Rime-Borrowings from Appendix A ....... 40 Notes ..................................................... 42 Works Cited ............................................... 44 Part I: Scholarship on Classifying Roman Manuscripts The first problem in identifying the author of the Mid­ dle English translation of Le roman de la rose is choosing an authentic Romaunt text to contrast with possible sources. There remains only one manuscript for scholars to compare with William Thynne's 1532 edition, whose source might have been another manuscript that has since vanished. An obsta­ cle in seeking the best reading(s) is the editors' need to cite the exact words inspiring the translators' imitations. Ernest Langlois, in his 1910 edition of the Roman, be­ gins the task of classifying texts David describes as "116 of the oldest French MSS" (666). Langlois uses only MSS he considers chronologically closest to "le ms. primitif," but Sutherland notes "more-than-300 existing Roman codices" (v). Sutherland reports that Langlois spent "many years of his life" studying, cataloguing, and classifying Roman manu­ scripts, rejecting many as too recent, late, or new (xiv). Preparing his French Parallel Text sixty years later, Sutherland makes a composite Roman using just one criterion: readings that "most closely correspond to the Middle-English translation" (v). The important difference between the two authors' aims is that Langlois seeks all the sources of the Roman, where Sutherland examines only the process of trans­ lation into Middle English. Chaucer used one or more prob­ ly new manuscripts, possibly combining very different scrib­ al traditions, and the success of his translation must have been as important to him as its accuracy, so Sutherland's two texts must both vary greatly from Langlois's edition. David condemns what he calls "Sutherland's faith in the purity of the MS tradition, his belief that MSS can be clas­ sified into more or less homogeneous families" (669). Even so, David insists that "any contribution made by the edition is owing to its French text" (667). His reason for praising the Parallel-Text Edition's Roman is that Sutherland pro­ v ides readings he derives from Roman codices to "shed light on the translation" (667). The main purpose of Sutherland's edition was to illuminate the way in which Chaucer prepared the translation for his readers' appreciation and enjoyment. The term translation had many applications in medieval texts. As Nancy Durling relates, in early Old French texts the etymon translater could indicate "translation into the vernacular" (14) by modernizing Latin classics into one of Latin's contemporary daughter languages, such as Old French. The Old French infinitive translater came from the Latin past participle translatus, meaning literally any material that someone had brought past any boundaries, such as lan­ guage barriers, restricting its accessibility. Therefore, translater meant to reveal its objects as items that their translator had brought past their previous obscurity. Dur­ ling notes that Geoffrey of Monmouth, in a sentence claiming his own work will transferre ("translate," the Latin infi­ nitive of translatus ) another writer's Old English text into Latin, "claims the freedom to change or transform the rhe­ torical style of the work" (18). Wace, whose source for his "translation" in his poem Le Roman de Brut remains obscure, also demands "the right to modify the matiere itself" ( 19). 2 The ability to translate effectively requires familiar­ ity with voluminous and various contextual source materials, necessary for producing any type of text. Geoffrey of Mon­ mouth, for example, to validate his own work, tries to show that his own Anglo-Norman "oral tradition can be authentic and, once it has been transcribed into a book, can contri­ bute to authoritative history" (Durling 17). Wace also in­ sists on the necessity of ''interpretation" (22), that is, on comparison within various contexts, of material that one in­ tends to translate, providing more comprehensive insights. The instances of Wace and Geoffrey of Monmouth reveal a variance between continental and insular methods of transla­ tion. The European translators were recreating material whose deceptive lexical similarities with texts in their own first languages required extremely cautious translations. The major risk in their work may have been an excessive zeal to understand their sources' intentions, which could occur whenever they encountered any term whose meaning had shifted at all while it persisted in their own languages. English translators had the exact opposite problem: until Chaucer's era, their work, like Geoffrey of Monmouth's, almost always required comparisons between two very different languages. The Norman Conquest had eliminated nearly everyone's inter­ est in Old English literature: in fact, very few people could understand it at all by the fourteenth century because the French influence had made English a whole new language. Clerics and other literati thought so little of English that two of Gower's three major poems are in foreign languages. 3 The risk, then, for English readers, was in perceiving the texts that they translated as linguistically altogether alien to their work. Though continental translators mecha­ nically ignored any apparent similarity between sources' terms and their own, insular translators had to use their imaginations adroitly to unite their two informing cultures. Therefore, Geoffrey of Monmouth recognizes that he must use Latin to attain the continental acclaim that his work's suc­ cess requires, but Wace rejects the Latin idiom though he knows that his French style will affect his text's meaning. Steiner explains that medieval writers often imply the idea that an "interpreter" can also mean a "translator" (28). 1 Interpretation, whether it seeks differences or similarities between cultures, draws on knowledge from many sources; through comparison, writers and readers clarify their texts. Labeling this type of conflation "internal translation," Steiner further indicates that "When we read or hear any language-statement from the past, be it Leviticus or last year's bestseller, we translate" (28). Comprehension as translation means applying previous values and postulates to interpretations. Translation thus becomes a search for au­ thority as first audiences perceived it in the text, but at the same time interpretations bring translators' ideas into MS traditions. Alfred Foulet and Mary Speer ask critics to read e ven the manuscript interpretively: "the editor should envisage translating it into English or Modern French. for the purpose o f controlling the logical flow" (58). Ed­ iting , like close readi ng, is also a kind of translation. 4 Chaucer himself
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Rest, Sweet Nymphs: Pastoral Origins of the English Madrigal Danielle Van Oort Olson25@Marshall.Edu
    Marshall University Marshall Digital Scholar Theses, Dissertations and Capstones 2016 Rest, Sweet Nymphs: Pastoral Origins of the English Madrigal Danielle Van Oort olson25@marshall.edu Follow this and additional works at: http://mds.marshall.edu/etd Part of the European History Commons, History of Religion Commons, and the Music Commons Recommended Citation Van Oort, Danielle, "Rest, Sweet Nymphs: Pastoral Origins of the English Madrigal" (2016). Theses, Dissertations and Capstones. Paper 1016. This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by Marshall Digital Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses, Dissertations and Capstones by an authorized administrator of Marshall Digital Scholar. For more information, please contact zhangj@marshall.edu, martj@marshall.edu. REST, SWEET NYMPHS: PASTORAL ORIGINS OF THE ENGLISH MADRIGAL A thesis submitted to the Graduate College of Marshall University In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Music Music History and Literature by Danielle Van Oort Approved by Dr. Vicki Stroeher, Committee Chairperson Dr. Ann Bingham Dr. Terry Dean, Indiana State University Marshall University May 2016 APPROVAL OF THESIS We, the faculty supervising the work of Danielle Van Oort, affirm that the thesis, Rest Sweet Nymphs: Pastoral Origins of the English Madrigal, meets the high academic standards for original scholarship and creative work established by the School of Music and Theatre and the College of Arts and Media. This work also conforms to the editorial standards of our discipline and the Graduate College of Marshall University. With our signatures, we approve the manuscript for publication. ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author would like to express appreciation and gratitude to the faculty and staff of Marshall University’s School of Music and Theatre for their continued support.
    [Show full text]
  • The Knight's Tale”
    The Hilltop Review Volume 8 Issue 2 Spring Article 3 May 2016 Philosophical Romance: Figures of Venus in “The Knight's Tale” Caleb Molstad Medieval Institute Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/hilltopreview Part of the Literature in English, British Isles Commons, and the Medieval Studies Commons Recommended Citation Molstad, Caleb (2016) "Philosophical Romance: Figures of Venus in “The Knight's Tale”," The Hilltop Review: Vol. 8 : Iss. 2 , Article 3. Available at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/hilltopreview/vol8/iss2/3 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in The Hilltop Review by an authorized editor of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact wmu- scholarworks@wmich.edu. 3 Philosophical Romance: Figures of Venus in “The Knight’s Tale”1 First Place Paper, Spring 2016 By Caleb Molstad Medieval Institute caleb.d.molstad@wmich.edu The Roman goddess Venus seems an unlikely figure to survive the transition from Roman antiquity to the Middle Ages. Catholic Christianity, which grew to be the dominant religion in medieval Europe, is monotheistic. Pagan gods were potential idols and/or rivals to the one God. Furthermore, Venus is a goddess, a powerful female pagan figure. A society in which men were almost exclusively responsible for defining and defending orthodox belief would ostensibly be hostile to goddesses. In spite of this, Venus had a remarkable career in the literature of the Middle Ages, as noted in Theresa Tinkle's Medieval Venuses and Cupids, which emphasizes the presence of not one, but multiple medieval Venuses.2 Though there are commonalities between these Venuses, each particular Venus varied according to the aims of the individual writer.
    [Show full text]
  • Geoffrey Chaucer As Witness
    Cleveland State University EngagedScholarship@CSU English Faculty Publications English Department 1993 Interpreting Guillaume de Lorris’ Oiseuse: Geoffrey Chaucer as Witness Gregory M. Sadlek Cleveland State University, G.SADLEK@csuohio.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/cleng_facpub Part of the French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! Publisher's Statement Copyright © 1993 The Johns Hopkins University Press. This article first appeared in South Central Review, Volume 10, Issue 1, 1993, 22-37. Original Published Citation Sadlek, Gregory M. “Interpreting Guillaume de Lorris’ Oiseuse: Geoffrey Chaucer as Witness.” South Central Review 10.1 (1993): 2 2-37. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English Department at EngagedScholarship@CSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of EngagedScholarship@CSU. For more information, please contact library.es@csuohio.edu. InterpretingGuillaume de Lorris'sOiseuse: GeoffreyChaucer as Witness GREGORY M. SADLEK UniversityofNebraska at Omaha Certes,the hevene is yevento hem that wol labouren,and natto ydel folk -Chaucer's Parson Near the opening of theRoman de la Rose,Guillaume de Lorrisintroduces the firstallegorical character in Deduit's garden,the garden's gatekeeper. She is an attractiveyoung woman, picturedwith a mirror,whose carefree lifeincludes no morework than her own daily toilet.' The interpretation of this character,Oiseuse, presentsa textualcrux. The Old Frenchword "oisose" or "uiseuse" indicates"inaction," "leisure," "laziness," or "folly."2 Nevertheless,twentieth-century critics have been unable to agree on the character'sexact import.
    [Show full text]
  • Chaucer and the Roman De La Rose
    '""^"' ^IfHLiiii G^_l^ltl^LZwr?, /i /^ - Book f €l. Gop)iighl]^'.__Zi/^ COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY STUDIES IN ENGLISH AND COMPARATIVE LITERATURE CHAUCER AND THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE :: COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS SALES AGENTS NEW YORK: LEMCKE & BUECHNEE 30-32 West 27th Street LONDON HUMPHREY MILFOED Amen Corner, E.G. TORONTO HUMPHEEY MILFOED 25 Richmond Street, W. CHAUCER AND THE ROMAN DE LA ROSE BY DEAN SPRUILL FANSLER, Ph.D. u Nrw fork COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 1914 All rights reserved 71? 11'^ l-^lAr Copyright, 1914 By Columbia University Press Printed from type, January, 1914 FEB 21 I9i4 ©CI.A362662 i T r- • ^ ji f f 1 T/wa' Monograph Jms been approved hy the Department of English and Comparative Literature in Columbia Uni- versity as a contribution to knowledge worthy of publi- cation. A. H. THORNDIKE, Executive Officer. To My Father and Mother This hook is affectionately dedicated PREFATORY NOTE I take pleasure in acknowledging in print my indebted- ness to Professor Harry M. Ayres, Professor George P. Krapp, and Professor William W. Lawrence, of Columbia University, who have generously read both the manuscript and the proof-sheets of this book and have made many suggestions of value. My greatest obligation is to Professor Lawrence, under whose immediate direction this disserta- tion has been prepared. He has unselfishly at all times given me the benefit of his wide acquaintance with medieval literature, and has been most courteous and helpful. I am also grateful to Professor William E. Mead, of Wesleyan University, for a number of useful bibliographical refer- ences.
    [Show full text]
  • OF the ROMAUNT of the ROSE Cornell University “Chaucer's Translation of the Roman De La Rose Repres
    JOURNAL OF ENGLISH STUDIES - VOLUME 3, (2001-2), 217-236 CHAUCER’S “MAKYNG” OF THE ROMAUNT OF THE ROSE JORDI SÁNCHEZ MARTÍ Cornell University ABSTRACT. Despite its being the first testimony of Chaucer’s genius, the interest of modern criticism in the Romaunt has mainly focused on the issue of authorship, whereas the efforts to assess this text as a translation have been limited both in their number and in their scope. This paper discusses Chaucer’s translation of the Roman de la Rose, and provides an evaluation of Fragment A from a modern traductological perspective, while taking account of contemporary theoretical positions. First, this article compares the Romaunt with Chaucer’s later translating practice. Second, taking into account that the immediate audience of the Romaunt would have been cognizant of French, this essay considers the pragmatic function of this translation. Finally, I reconstruct some of Chaucer’s decisions in the translation process, and then I present the translation strategies he adopted in order to create an English metapoem which replicated the spirit of the Roman, thus proving the adequacy of English for poetic expression. “Chaucer’s translation of the Roman de la Rose represents his first significant literary endeavor”1. Undertaking a poetical translation of the French original must have been a challenging project if we take into consideration the situation of the English language and literature in the second half of the fourteenth century: the contact of English with French since 1066 had promoted a unidirectional movement of literary imitation by English writers of 1. A shortened version of this article was read at the 36th International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, May 3-6, 2001.
    [Show full text]
  • 69-4996 WEAVER, John Joseph William, 1935- RHETORIC AND
    This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 69-4996 WEAVER, John Joseph William, 1935- RHETORIC AND TRAGEDY IN THOMAS SACKVILLE'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1968 Language and Literature, m odem University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan ® Copyright by John Joseph William Weaver 1969 RHETORIC AND TRAGEDY IN THOMAS SACKVILLE'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By John Joseph William Weaver, A.B., M.A. ****** The Ohio State University 1968 Approved by Adviser Department of ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Like most students, I am immeasurably indebted to those who have taught me. Although a listing of all of them here would be more tedious than, though not as dreary as, Bucking­ ham's catalogues, I take special pleasure in thanking those who made this dissertation possible: Professor Huntington Brown, of the University of Minnesota, who taught me how to write; Professors John B. Gabel and Robert M. Estrich, of The Ohio State University, who taught me how to re-write. But my most enduring and profound gratitude must go to Professor Ruth W, Hughey, my adviser and friend, who by precept and example has taught me that scholarship and scholars can be and must be humane. ii VITA November 18, 1935 B o m - Pittsfield, Illinois 1958 . ........... A.B., Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1958-1960 .... Teacher, Sewickley Academy, Sewickley, Pennsylvania I9 6 0-I96 2 .... Teaching Assistant, Department of English, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 1 9 6 2............
    [Show full text]
  • Chaucer, Books, and the Poetic Library
    University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal) Libraries at University of Nebraska-Lincoln October 2010 Chaucer, Books, and the Poetic Library David C. Kupfer University of North Texas, DavidKupfer@my.unt.edu Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac Part of the Library and Information Science Commons Kupfer, David C., "Chaucer, Books, and the Poetic Library" (2010). Library Philosophy and Practice (e- journal). 429. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/libphilprac/429 Library Philosophy and Practice 2010 ISSN 1522-0222 Chaucer, Books, and the Poetic Library David C. Kupfer, MLS Graduate student College of Professional Education Texas Woman's University Denton, TX 76205 Introduction Though books have a prominent role in Chaucer‟s fiction, the library does not. Chaucer coins the word “library” in his translation of The Consolation of Philosophy – known as the Boece – and uses that word just twice throughout his fictional corpus. He uses the word “study” as a synonym but employs that word just twice also, both times in The Canterbury Tales. As Chaucer is perceived as a great commentator on the pains and salvations of reading, and since libraries are a fountainhead for medieval reading, there is an interesting discord in his benchmarking literacy while invalidating the reading center. That Chaucer should be almost incognizant of the preservers of textual knowledge shows the library as a virtual nonentity for English readers of the 14th century. It is as though the library is an empty estate, a medieval orphan to a new birthright of reading reestablished by Chaucer by a melding of thought between traditions of classical and Christian reading.
    [Show full text]
  • On Editing Troilus and Criseyde Now
    On Editing Troilus and Criseyde Now Steve Guthrie Abstract This essay advertises an interactive online edition of Troilus and Criseyde designed to offer student readers in particular access to the poem and to Chaucer’s Middle English without modernized spelling or translation. The essay describes the textual method of the edition and its approach to online publication and language instruction. Many years ago, I made a study of the text and language of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde as the basis for a metrical analysis (Guth- rie 1988).1 At the time, a new edition of the poem was a tempting thought, but two perfectly good and relatively new scholarly editions were available in John Fisher’s Complete Poetry and Prose and Stephen Barney’s text in Larry Benson’s Riverside Chaucer. As these volumes increased in price, the thought returned, but Barry Windeatt’s freestanding paperback edition of the poem became widely available in this country in 2003, and once again the ground seemed to be have been covered. I returned to the idea a third time in the present decade because it seemed clear, even to an analogue mind more or less at sea in a digital age, that a real online edition of the poem could be useful to medievalists, and at the same time more useful to students, including Middle English lan- guage learners, than either a print edition or the currently available online texts, which were merely .pdf files scanned from older print editions.2 1. Detailed results of the study are in my unpublished 1985 Brown University dis- sertation, “Chaucer’s French Pentameter”.
    [Show full text]
  • John Keats's Response to Chaucerian Dream Poems in the Fall Of
    1 John Keats’s Response to Chaucerian Dream Poems in The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream By Molly Williams Thoresen A Thesis Presented to the Department of Literature, Area Studies and European Languages, University of Oslo, in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts Degree Spring Term, 2007 2 For out of olde feldes, as men seyth, Cometh al this newe corn from yer to yere, And out of olde bokes, in good feyth, Cometh al this newe science that men lere. - Geoffrey Chaucer, The Parliament of Fowls But let a portion of ethereal dew Fall on my head, and presently unmew My soul; that I may dare, in wayfaring, To stammer where old Chaucer us’d to sing. - John Keats, Endymion Whoever aspires to a lasting name among the English poets must go to the writings of Chaucer, and drink at the well-head. - Robert Southey, Select Works of the British Poets 3 Acknowledgements First and foremost, a heartfelt thanks to my most excellent advisor, Juan Christian Pellicer, for his constant encouragement, sound advice, helpful ideas and infinite patience. My husband, Leif Olav Williams Thoresen, deserves special recognition for his tolerance of the heaps of books and papers that have bedecked every flat surface in our home for the last months, as well as my deepest gratitude for his unending support. I also wish to thank my father, Gregory Williams, for always believing in me, even when I did not. Finally, I wish to thank my mother, Denise Williams, who first read to me, and who continues to inspire children, including my own, to love books.
    [Show full text]
  • Considering Chaucer's Romaunt of the Rose
    Lette Vos 3695107 BA Thesis English Language and Culture, Utrecht University. Begeleider: dr. Anita Auer. Juni 2013 8645 woorden Considering Chaucer’s Romaunt of the Rose: Principles and Processes of Medieval and Present-day Translations Folio 57v from the Hunter Manuscript, c. 1440-1450, Glasgow University Library 2 Acknowledgements I would like to express my gratitude to dr. Anita Auer for her enthusiasm in the development of this thesis, and for helping me find a suitable scope to address this topic. Despite the physical distance, I felt that you were always close at hand in times of uncertainty. As they say in Manchester: ta! I would also like to thank Ingmar Bloemendal, for being eternally kind and witty in evaluating my work, and dr. Gerda van der Weele, my most critical and constructive reader, for always taking the time to appreciate and improve whatever I produce. You are an indispensable part of my writing process. Finally, thank you to dr. Marcelle Cole for kindly agreeing to assist in correcting my thesis. I am proud to present this work as the result of not only the last couple of months, but three years of great courses at two great universities. 3 Table of Contents 1. Introduction 4 2. Identifying Chaucer’s Hand in the Romaunt of the Rose 2.1. Walter W. Skeat 7 2.2. Fragment B and C 8 2.3. Fragment A 10 3. Chaucer’s Style of Translation 12 4. Comparison to Modern Translations 4.1. Introduction to Modern Translations 17 4.2. Chaucer in Robbins and Dahlberg 18 4.3.
    [Show full text]
  • The Chaucer Review
    Bibliography Search Results http://library.northwestu.edu/chaucer/all.php?listname=chaucer Abraham, David H. "Cosyn and Cosynage: Pun and Structure in the Shipman's Tale." 11 (1977): 319-27. The structure of the Shipman's Tale can be understood in terms of Chaucer's puns on "cosyn," referring to relationship (between the monk and the merchant, and, indirectly, between the monk and the merchant's wife), and "cosynage," referring to deception. Used no fewer than sixteen times, the two meanings of "cosyn" take on different emphases in the two parts of the tale. In the first part the "relationship" aspect of "cosyn" dominates, with the "deception" aspect submerged. In the second part, the deception aspect dominates. The structure of the tale depends, then, on the structure of the pun. Acker, Paul. "The Emergence of an Arithmetical Mentality in Middle English Literature." 28 (1994): 293-302. Arithmetical methods passed from Pythagoras to Boethius, who passed these ideas on to Cassiodorus and Isidore. Bartholomaeus Anglicus picks up these ideas in De proprietatibus rerum, translated by Trevisa into Middle English. In the twelfth century, algorism began to replace arithmetic. Gower refers to this new arithmetic in the Confessio amantis in a stanza borrowed from Brunetto Latini. The Court of Sapience also reveals a shift in mathematical models. The Art of Nombryng and Mum and the Sothsegger give evidence that even those writers not concerned with mathematics were becoming aware of it. Adams, Robert. "The Egregious Feasts of the Chester and Towneley Shepherds." 21 (1986): 96-107. The playwrights of the Chester and Towneley cycles include feasts at the beginning of each play in order to dramatize the difference between Christ, the coming Good Shepherd, and the poor shepherds who disregard the law by eating what is specifically forbidden in the Levitical codes and who are more interested in their own dinners than in feeding their sheep.
    [Show full text]
  • Game’ in the Tale of Gamelyn
    MEDIUM ÆVUM, VOL. LXXXV, No. 1, pp. 97–117 © SSMLL, 2016 ‘GAME’ IN THE TALE OF GAMELYN It is often said that the protagonist of the fourteenth-century Tale of Gamelyn has a name that means ‘son of the old man’, deriving from the Icelandic gamalll or ‘old’.1 Th is reading speaks to Gamelyn’s status as the child of his father’s old age, and the fact that it is his position as a son among other sons that sets the narrative in motion. But Gamelyn’s name also bears a signifi cant relationship to the word ‘game’ in its multiple senses of amusement, delight, and pleasure; wild animals hunted for sport; the act of hunting them; and structured play, of the sort explored by Johan Huizinga in his classic 1938 study of ‘the play element of culture’, Homo ludens. Th ese resonances have been noted by a number of diff erent critics, but so far as I am aware no one has yet developed them into a structured account of the text.2 This article investigates the extent to which the dynamics of the Talee can be thrown into relief by inserting it into a late medieval culture of ‘game’. This engagement has a double character. In the fi rst place, game and play are characterized by rule-boundedness. ‘All play’, Huizinga argues in Homo ludens, ‘has its rules.’ Hence his comment, that play ‘creates order’ – more than that, that it ‘is order’.3 Consideration of ordered ‘game’ in Gamelyn leads towards late medieval conduct books and household manuals – books of ‘game’ and of ‘nurture’ – and their codifi cations of rules for proper behaviour.
    [Show full text]