Chaucer's "Squire's Tale," "Franklin's Tale," and "Physician's Tale": An Annotated Bibliography 1900–2005 ed. by Kenneth Bleeth (review)

Reviewers of Variorum Chaucer fascicles have observed that readers know what to expect in each of those volumes. The same is true for the Chaucer Bibliographies series, the ninth volume of which has now appeared. Having reviewed Monica McAlpine's bibliography of The Knight's Tale (SAC 15 [1993]: 229–32), I certainly had a fair idea of what I would find upon opening Kenneth Bleeth's excellent addition to the Toronto series. Indeed, most Chaucer scholars have the same anticipations, but since they also have expectations of book reviews, let me begin by providing the requisite thumbnail sketch of the contents of Professor Bleeth's volume.

Because the book treats more than one tale, and because two of the tales, those of the Squire and the Franklin, constitute a single "fragment" or "group," Bleeth deploys the following system of organization in the first fifth of his book. He puts the introductions to The Squire's Tale and The Franklin's Tale in sequence (3–19 and 20–33, respectively). Each of these is divided into topics. For The Squire's Tale, he includes the categories of "Source Study," "Genre," "Teller and Tale," "Orientalism and the Exotic," "Magic, Science, and Technology," and "The Squire's Tale, Part 2." Last in this sequence is "The Tale as Fragment," itself subdivided into two sets of bullet points. The first set surveys opinions on the story's incompleteness as expressed before 1990. The second set summarizes responses to these earlier assessments, positive and negative. Following this section is the introduction to The Franklin's Tale, which identifies the following topics: "Sources and Analogues," "The Franklin's Tale and the Marriage Debate," "The Teller and the Tale," "Characterization," "Astrology and Magic," "Setting," and "Six Passages" (each passage a focus of commentary). In all of these sections, Bleeth paints with a broad brush and supplies cross-references (bold-face entry numbers) where summaries of the individual treatments are to be found. Then follows a joint section on "Editions and Modernizations" (34–59), which treats the two tales as a unit. Thereafter, Bleeth lists and summarizes publications focused on "Sources, Analogues, and the Posterity of The Squire's Tale" (60–82). Next appears "The Franklin's Tale: Sources, Analogues, and Later Influence" (83–111). In each of these last three sections, as in the general surveys of criticism that follow, items are arranged chronologically; items published in the same year are presented in alphabetical sequence.

Given the careful subdivisions of most of the sections mentioned above, it is surprising that the section on "Editions and Modernizations" has no subdivisions at all; mere chronology and alphabetization are its principles of arrangement. The editor has, I think, missed an opportunity. It would be easy to introduce categories. One could simplify the model employed in Eleanor Hammond's Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual (1908). By separating the thirty-six comprehensive editions (including editions both of the complete works and of the Canterbury Tales alone) and the eighteen more-or-less complete translations (of the works or of CT), one could more readily see the relative prominence of The Squire's Tale and The Franklin's Tale over the last hundred or so years. There are twenty-six editions of selected works; SqT and FranT appear in six of them, SqT without FranT in seven, and FranT without SqT in thirteen. Sifting further, one finds seven editions dedicated to SqT alone and eight to FranT alone. Among translations of selected works, there are four that have both SqT and FranT, seven with SqT but not FranT, and eighteen with FranT but not SqT. Furthermore, there are three freestanding translations of FranT (items 76, 94, and 119), and one (item 44, omit the erroneous "the" from the title as printed) that includes The Clerk's Tale but...