Sources and Analogues of The Canterbury Tales, Vol. 2 ed. by Robert M. Correale, Mary Hamel (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER Robert M. Correale and Mary Hamel, eds. Sources and Analogues of The Canterbury Tales, Vol. 2. Chaucer Studies, 35. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005. Pp. xvi, 824. $145.00. With this second volume, Robert Correale and Mary Hamel complete the long-delayed updating of Bryan and Dempster’s Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (hence B&D). Like Volume 1 (reviewed by Helen Phillips, SAC 26 [2004]: 372–75), all Chaucerians will want this book at their ‘‘beddes heed.’’ In general, the contributors improve the new S&A by addition, subtraction, or substitution. ‘‘The General Prologue,’’ for instance, which B&D omitted, now has a very welcome chapter by Robert Raymo. After briefly surveying opinion about the frame narrative, Raymo offers concise yet rich surveys of each pilgrim, the narrator’s apology for his unseemly language, Harry Bailly’s taletelling proposal, and the drawing of lots. Although Raymo sometimes uses the word ‘‘influence’’ loosely (e.g., Chaucer owes the sexual overtones of the first eighteen lines to the Georgics), his synopses should become the starting point for future studies of the ‘‘Prologue.’’ In B&D, Robert Pratt was able to provide only brief summaries of Boccaccio’s Teseida; no passages from the Thebaid or any of the lesser sources of The Knight’s Tale were cited. These omissions are brilliantly remedied by William Coleman. With Edvige Agostinelli he has prepared an excellent edition and translation of all passages in the tale that come from the version of the Teseida closest to the one Chaucer knew. Coleman’s comments on the manuscript tradition of the Italian poem contain an extraordinary amount of information about important issues. Coleman also prints relevant passages from Statius, Ovid, and Boethius. His chapter is indispensable. Peter Beidler’s contribution on The Miller’s Tale improves by subtraction . Of the five analogues Stith Thompson published in B&D, only a newly edited version of the Middle Dutch Heile van Beersele remains. Beidler casts doubt on the long-held belief that Chaucer modeled The Miller’s Tale on one or more lost French fabliaux. Based primarily on seventeen words in the Tale that ‘‘have Middle Dutch origins,’’ Beidler goes on to argue that the Heile is a ‘‘hard analogue with near source status’’–that is, Chaucer could have known and used it. Although I feel ‘‘parallels’’ describes more accurately than ‘‘origins’’ the relation between Chaucer’s English and the Heile’s Dutch, Beidler strengthens our understanding of Chaucer’s connection to Flanders. PAGE 476 476 ................. 16596$ CH13 11-01-10 14:08:16 PS REVIEWS Robert Correale usefully prints the passages from Innocent III’s De Miseria that the Man of Law mangles in his prologue and provides a newly edited and translated text of Trevet’s tale of Constance from the manuscript whose version is closest to Chaucer’s (in contrast to the manuscript Schlauch made her base text in B&D). Correale also includes Gower’s rendering of the tale and judiciously summarizes opinion about its relation to Chaucer’s. Ralph Hanna and Traugott Lawler draw on their excellent Jankyn’s Book of Wicked Wives: The Primary Texts to revise Whiting’s chapter on The Wife of Bath’s Prologue. They helpfully separate Theophrastus from Jerome and add passages from the Roman de la Rose. New are short passages from five minor sources and an ample excerpt from Matheolus’s Lamentations. Their introduction succinctly covers all major issues; they are especially good in pointing the reader to more general sources like the Bible or Jean de Meun’s Nature. John Withrington and P. J. C. Field give new transcriptions of the three analogues of the Wife’s tale that appeared in B&D. Christine Richardson -Hay reprints the ‘‘Priest’s Bladder’’ analogue of The Summoner’s Tale and wisely replaces Seneca’s De Ira with passages from John of Wales’s Communiloquium as the source for Friar John’s three exempla. By adding selections from Jerome, Albertano of Brescia, and the Sarum Manual to the selections Dempster printed from Deschamps’s Miroir, N. S. Thompson sharpens the picture of advice about marriage in The Merchant’s Tale. Thompson follows Dempster in citing passages from Boccaccio’s Comedia delle ninfe fiorentine, which, ‘‘if not...