Chaucer's Miller's, Reeve's, and Cook's Tales: An Annotated Bibliography 1900 to 1992 (review)

Reviews 163 Brundage and Pierre Payer provide important surveys of source material for the study of sexuality in canon law (Brundage) and penitentials and summas for confessors (Payer). Bullough's discussion of cross dressing and Salisbury's account of the relationship between biology and gender also offer a number of insights into gender attitudes in several medieval contexts. The volume, which includes an index and notes on contributors, is handsomely produced. Although the font size is rather small, the layout is pleasing and the organisation of bibliographies helpful. This is a useful Handbook, full of fascinating material, in which every reader is bound to find something of interest. Judy Quinn Department of English University of Sydney Burton, T. L., and Rosemary Greentree, ed., Chaucer's Miller's, Reeve' and Cook's Tales: An Annotated Bibliography 1900 to 1992, (The Chaucer Bibliographies 5) Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1997; cloth; pp. xxxvi, 287; R.R.P. CAN$75.00, £56.00. With fellow annotators David Biggs, H u g h McGivern, David Matthews, Greg Murrie and Dallas Simpson, Burton and Greentree here examine twentieth-century critical commentary on the three fabliaux of the Canterbury Tales. A helpful layout begins with the General Editor's Preface (to which w e shall return), followed by a volume-specific Preface. This outlines the structure: eight separate sections, each chronologically ordered (editions, translations and modernisations; sources and analogues; items of linguistic and lexicographical interest; the narrators considered as characters; tales considered together; Miller's Tale; Reeve's Tale; Cook's Tale). Potential difficulties, such as what has been done when a work deals with two or more of the tales, are foreseen and the policy adopted is explained. Appropriately, a list of abbreviations is next (languages; literary works cited; journals and reference works cited). Abbreviations for literary works, principally Chaucer's, are standard, as in The Riverside Chaucer. 164 Reviews The Introduction is divided into short essays covering five- to tenyear intervals of criticism. For each interval, the essays point out the critical, linguistic and bibliographic highlights as well as the major publications (Bryan and Dempster's Sources and Analogues, 56 and 57; the Robinson edition, 14; the Hengwrt M S facsimile, 43, for instance). Inevitably, since these essays are by several authors, there are some differences in approach, but those differences also reflect usefully the changing nature of the scholarship—sometimes very varied, sometimes concentrating on one or two themes—during particular decades. The chronological approach also draws together articles otherwise separated by the subject divisions and thus offers an additional way to approach the study of critical attitudes and their development. Each of the eight sections of annotations is introduced by a brief but especially informative essay. In the case of items of linguistic and lexicographical interest, for example, the introductory piece sorts them further into categories such as studies on language in general and in specific instances; analyses of Chaucer's manipulation of styles; studies on Northernisms. Item numbers are given at all times. Crucial to the successful use of volumes of this kind is the index; this one is detailed and easy to follow. (The first sentence of the prefacing explanatory note might better read: 'All references, whether in bold or regular typeface, are to item numbers.' This is not quite clear from what follows in the note, but is soon understood with use of the index.) A m o n g the excellences of the index are the following: A particular literary critic's work on the fabliaux m a y be traced with speed. The entry, 'Rowland, Beryl', for example, yields ten widely separated entries, including her 'Blind Beasts', 363, but also some less familiar work, such as the interesting-looking article in Marche Romane, 399. M a n y specific words, subjects and ideas concerning these tales (accidence; adultery; exegesis: biblical; marriage; second sight; sin; translation, 'coltes tooth') receive individual entries. Further material on a great m a n y topics m a y be located by a scan of subdivisions under major entries such as 'Miller' or 'Nicholas'. (There are also some cross-references.) Literary works other than Chaucer's are given separate entries (Le Cuvier, Dame...