Gesta Romanorum Critical Essay | Critical Essay by James D. Johnson

Critical Essay by James D. Johnson

SOURCE: Johnson, James D. “Walter W. Skeat's Canterbury Tale.” The Chaucer Review 36, no. 1 (2001): 16-27.

In the following essay, Johnson shows how Chaucer scholar W. W. Skeat used a tale from the Gesta Romanorum as the basis for an additional tale he composed for The Canterbury Tales.

All Chaucerians are familiar with the scholarly publications of the Reverend Walter W. Skeat (1835-1912).¹ Although Skeat ranged widely in medieval studies—producing numerous editions of Old and Middle English texts and writing a seemingly endless stream of articles and notes—some of his most significant work was in Chaucer studies. Skeat did much to establish the Chaucer canon, clearing away the dense growth of spurious works that over the centuries had been attributed to Chaucer.² He also translated several of The Canterbury Tales into rhyming verse and prepared separate editions of many of them.³ Certainly his crowning contribution to Chaucer studies, however,...
(read more)