Author Archives: Christene

Dear Allyson

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Dear Allyson,

Happy birthday, baby girl! Today you are four, and next thing I know you will be fully grown. Before time flies and I forget to tell you, there are some things I want you to know.

You are going to try many things in life, and I will encourage every one of them, yet when you find that one thing you want most, give it everything you have. But know that sometimes, everything you have may not be enough. You are special, wonderful, amazing, brilliant and almost perfect, but that still may not be what you need. You will sometimes fail. As long as I am alive I will be here to help you through it. I will give you as much advice as I have, which you may take as you see fit. Or I will just come over and bring ice cream. I will tell you that this too shall pass, and  you won’t believe me.

And when enough time passes, you will try again. Try as many times as you need. But always remember that years are numbered. It may not seem like it, and it won’t for a very long time, but they are. Yet this is not an excuse to give up because time will pass whether you are doing anything or not. So it is never too late. If you miss your chance, you can have it back in other ways. If you really want something, there is always a way. Don’t let anyone ever talk you out of pursuing those things most precious to you because they are what make you who you are.

You are beautiful, and I don’t just say this as your mother. You seem to have taken the best from me and your father, and then added some of your own. Your frame is tiny like mine, and you have got your father’s height. Your face is all yours, and gorgeous. You will grow up a stunning young woman and will be tempted to use these features in various ways. Do, and don’t. Don’t ever let anyone make you feel ashamed for being beautiful, and don’t let others treat you like it’s your greatest and only asset. That is all I can say because it is something you have to figure out. Unfortunately there is only one way to figure it out, and you will be grappling with it the rest of your life.

Next year I will start teaching you the piano, and honestly I am terrified that you will hate it. You love banging on it at Grandma’s house, but actual playing takes a lot of work and discipline. I also want to teach you how to swim, and speak different languages, and all the conventional stuff like math and history and science…. So you see, you may not like me very much over the next few years. Partly because I am going to push, and partly because we are both feisty which means you will probably push back. Neither of us are going to win this one, so let’s just enjoy the time we are going to spend together.

Your personality and candid nature are going to get you into a lot of trouble at school, and it has already started. Yes, I am going to have to punish you for it. No, I am not mad. Secretly I am laughing, but I can’t tell you that for another 20 years.

Today you are four and I have already told you a lot. Maybe more than you immediately understand. Over the years I will have many more things to tell you. But for now, enjoy today because you will never be four again.

Works

I know I mentioned several months ago when I first started my Chaucer Project that I would list my works cited (consulted/influenced by/on the same topic, etc.) at the end, but I honestly didn’t realize the size this project would take. Since I do not foresee myself finishing it in the near future and a few of you asked, here is my more or less working bibliography.

I will edit this periodically as the project continues (while I stare at the vast sea of post-it notes with titles and authors hurriedly jotted down). When I eventually do something more with the project as a whole, all the references will be placed accordingly. Yes, I have notes as to where everything goes, but in blog format it would have just appeared entirely too cluttered. Also, this list is incomplete for a secondary reason – my sources are currently split up between my office, my living room, and my car. As I begin consolidating them, the list will grow.

These works are currently not in any decipherable order, nor formal format.

(I am not listing the manuscripts, as all access to them is in digitized format available from the various institutions that house them).

Benson, David C. Chaucer’s Drama of Style: Poetic Variety and Contrast in The Canterbury Tales.

Dempster, Germaine.  “The Fifteenth-Century Editors of The Canterbury Tales and the Problem of Tale Order.”

Seymour, M.C. “Hypothesis, Hyperbole, and the Hengwrt Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales.” 

Hanna, Ralph. Ellesmere Manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: A Working Facsimile.

Owen, Charles A. The Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales.

Doyle, A. I. and M. B. Parkes. “A Paleographical Introduction.”

Mandel, Jerome. Building the Fragments of the Canterbury Tales. 

Lerer, Seth. Chaucer and His Readers: Imagining the Author in Late Medieval England.

Ramsey, Roy Vance. The Manly and Rickert Text of the Canterbury Tales.

Dempster, Germaine. “On the Significance of Hengwrt’s Change of Ink in the Merchant’s Tale.” 

Blake, N.F. “The Ellesmere Text In Light of the Hengwrt Manuscript.”

Cooper, Helen. “The Order of the Tales in the Ellesmere Manuscript.”

Doyle, A. I. “The Copyist of the Ellesmere Canterbury Tales.”

Hanna, Ralph. “(The) Editing (of) the Ellesmere Text.”

Parkes, M. B. “The Planning and Construction of the Ellesmere Manuscript.”

Smith, Jeremy J. “The Language of the Ellesmere Manuscript.”

Boffey, Julia. “Proverbial Chaucer and the Chaucer Canon.”

Howard, Donald R. “Where Did Chaucer Get His Idea For The Canterbury Tales?”

Windeatt, B. A. “The Scribes as Chaucer’s Early Critics.”

Condren, Edward I. Chaucer and the Energy of Creation.

Schulz, Herbert. The Ellesmere Manuscript of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Powell, Stephen. “Game Over: Defragmenting the End of The Canterbury Tales.”

Morse, Charlotte C. “Popularizing Chaucer in the Nineteenth Century.”

Spencer, Matthew. et al. “Analyzing the Order of Items in Manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales.”

Edwards, A. S. G. “A New Text of The Canterbury Tales?”

Purdie, Rhiannon. “The Implications of Manuscript Layout in Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas.”

Mininis, Alastair. Medieval Theories of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages.

Edwards, A. S. G. “The Ellesmere Manuscript: Controversy, Culture, and The Canterbury Tales.”

Horobin, Simon. “Adam Pinkhurst, Geoffrey Chaucer, and the Hengwrt Manuscript of The Canterbury Tales.”

Orietta, Da Rold. “Manuscript Production Before Chaucer: Some Preliminary Observations.”

Bradshaw, Henry. The Skeleton of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.

Tatlock, John S. P. “Boccaccio and the Plan of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.”

Brusendorff, Aage. The Chaucer Tradition.

McCormick, Sir William, and Janet E. Heseltine. The Manuscripts of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales: A Critical Description of Their Contents.

Tatlock, John S. P. “The Canterbury Tales in 1400.”

Manly, John Matthews, and Edith M. Rickert, eds. The Text of the Canterbury Tales, Studied on the Basis of all Known Manuscripts. 8 Vols. 

Root, Robert K. “The Text of The Canterbury Tales.”

Dempster, Germaine. “Manly’s Conception of The Canterbury Tales.”

Pratt, Robert. “The Order of The Canterbury Tales.”

Stevens, J. Burke. “Did Chaucer Rearrange the Clerk’s Envoy?”

Baldwin, Ralph. The Unity of The Canterbury Tales.

Luminiasky, R. M. Of Sondry Folk: The Dramatic Principle in the Canterbury Tales.

Pratt, Robert and Karl Young. “The Literary Framework of The Canterbury Tales.”

Clawson, William H. “The Framework of The Canterbury Tales.”

Owen, Charles A. “The Earliest Plan of The Canterbury Tales.”

McCall, John P. “Chaucers May 3.”

Grennen, Joseph E. “Saint Cecilia’s ‘Chemical Wedding:’ the Unity of The Canterbury Tales, Fragment VIII.”

Berger, Harry. “The F-Fragment of The Canterbury Tales.”

Gardfgvner, John. “The Case Against the Bradshaw Shift; or, The Mystery of the Manuscript in the Trunk.”

Whittock, Trevor. A Reading of The Canterbury Tales.

Donaldson, E. Talbot. “The Ordering of the Canterbury Tales.”

Howard, Donald R. “The Canterbury Tales: Memory and Form.”

Fisher, John H. “Chaucer’s Last Revision of The Canterbury Tales.”

Kean, P.M. Chaucer and the making of English Poetry: The Art of Narrative. Vol. 2.

Donaldson, Talbot E. “The Manuscripts of Chaucer’s Works and Their Use.”

Doyle, A. I. “The Production of The Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century.” 

Lawrence, William W. Chaucer and The Canterbury Tales.

Allen, Judson Boyce, and Theresa Anne Moritz. A Distinction of Stories: The Medieval Unity of Chaucer’s Fair Chain of Narratives for Canterbury.

Blake, N. F. “Critics, Criticism and the Order of The Canterbury Tales.”

Cooper, Helen. The Structure of The Canterbury Tales.

Traversi, Derek. The Canterbury Tales: A Reading.

Kane, George. “John M. Manly and Edith Rickert.”

Dean, James. “Dismantling the Canterbury Book.”