Gower's Source Manuscript of Nicholas Trevet's Les Cronicles
- Author/Editor
- Correale, Robert M.
- Title
- Gower's Source Manuscript of Nicholas Trevet's Les Cronicles
- Published
- Correale, Robert M.. "Gower's Source Manuscript of Nicholas Trevet's Les Cronicles." In John Gower: Recent Readings. Papers Presented at the Meetings of the John Gower Society at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, Western Michigan University, 1983-88. Ed. Yeager, R.F.. Studies in Medieval Culture (26). Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University, 1989, pp. 133-57.
- Review
- Correale is preparing a long-awaited edition of the entire Cronicles for the Chaucer Library. The editorial policy of the series requires him to choose as his base the MS that is closest to the one that Chaucer evidently used, and to try to reconstruct the text as Chaucer saw it. In this essay he applies the same method to determine which of the surviving MSS is closest to the one that Gower used in his version of the tale of Constance. Though the forms of the characters' names that Gower used pose a special problem, the variants that Correale considers indicate persuasively that Gower's source MS belonged to the same branch in the stemma as the MS that Chaucer used and "was probably not very different from Chaucer's" (p. 152). One of the consequences, as Correale points out, is that we will be able to consult the Chaucer Library edition for the study of Gower's use of his source as well as Chaucer's. [PN. Copyright The John Gower Society. JGN 9.2]
- Date
- 1989
- Gower Subjects
- Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
- Confessio Amantis