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-   -   The Clerk’s Forgotten Tale: Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer (http://forum.barrowdowns.com/showthread.php?t=19348)

Morthoron 10-11-2019 05:10 PM

The Clerk’s Forgotten Tale: Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer
 
I don't believe this particular tome has been discussed previously, but I am genuinely intrigued to read noted Medievalist John M. Bowers' latest effort Tolkien’s Lost Chaucer, in which Dr. Bowers uses Tolkien's notes from an abandoned project (a Clarendon edition of selected works of Chaucer), and intersperses additional biographical intersections of Tolkien and Chaucer.

https://interestingliterature.com/20...VAuaKOMCw_zuqo

I wonder if Chaucer's corrupted and wholly incorrigible Pardoner ever made his way into some of Tolkien's more vile characters.

Morthoron 10-19-2019 03:39 PM

Hmmm...and given the lack of discussion, it would seem my theory that Tolkien's work on 14th century Middle-English text -- save for Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, and Sir Orfeo -- is not a point of interest, and has largely gone undiscussed in online Tolkien circles (at least to my recollection).

Has anyone ever analyzed Tolkien's A Middle English Vocabulary? It was originally meant to accompany Kenneth Sisam's Fourteenth Century Verse and Prose, but for some unexplained reason Tolkien's supplement was included in only a few of the subsequent impressions of Sisam's book, and has remained a standalone publication for the most part.

In any case, It is Tolkienesque to the core, reflecting his attention to detail (some would insist it was his belaboring minutiae). The poems and prose in Sisam's tome finish at 203 pages (300 with notes), while Tolkien's supplement equates to 176 pages in the edition I have. An enlightening little book I have used for the thornier passages in both "Vision of Piers Plowman" and "The Canterbury Tales".

William Cloud Hicklin 10-20-2019 08:21 AM

Well, somebody has "analyzed" his note on sigelhearwan and found it racist.....

:mad:

Morthoron 10-20-2019 09:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by William Cloud Hicklin (Post 720784)
Well, somebody has "analyzed" his note on sigelhearwan and found it racist.....

:mad:

Well, if they made a film out of the analysis, I suppose it would be termed a "black comedy".

William Cloud Hicklin 11-20-2019 09:24 AM

It's often forgotten today that Tolkien was considered one of his generation's leading Chaucer scholars- not for nothing did Masefield choose him to recite Nun's Priest's and Reeve's* at the 1938 and 39 Summer Diversions. Unfortunately, hardly a word on Chaucer by Tolkien ever reached publication- what a dragon-hoard of unfinished works Tolkien accumulated!

*Yes, in the original. From memory.


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