A Lost Chaucerian Stanza?
- Author/Editor
- Severs, J. Burke.
- Title
- A Lost Chaucerian Stanza?
- Published
- Severs, J. Burke. "A Lost Chaucerian Stanza?" Modern Language Notes 74.3 (1959) 193-98.
- Review
- Severs takes for granted here that Nicholas Trivet's Anglo-Norman "Chronicle" is the immediate source of Chaucer's Man of Law's Tale and of Gower's "Tale of Constance" in the "Confessio Amantis," and that Chaucer's "general correspondence" to Trivet is "closer than Gower's" (196). Comparing and quoting passages from the three versions, he argues that an original stanza has been lost from Chaucer's poem in the scene where Hermengyld's prayer miraculously cures the blindness of the old man. He also suggests that if Chaucer "borrowed bits of his tale from Gower's prior version, he certainly would have eked out any defective account in his Trivet MS by adopting the climactic events . . . from Gower, for these events are more striking and artistically more important than any of the minor touches which Chaucer did borrow from Gower" (197n4). [MA. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 1959
- Gower Subjects
- Confessio Amantis
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations