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Virgil and the Gawain-Poet

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Coolidge Otis Chapman
Coolidge Otis Chapman*
Affiliation:
College of Puget Sound
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Extract

The reading habits of the author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Pearl, Purity, and Patience remain a fascinating and fruitful field of study. Much has been written about the books the poet read, or may have read, but it is unlikely that the catalogue of books owned or read by him has by any means been completely reconstructed. Of the books he certainly knew, the Vulgate is of first importance for its influence upon the poet's thought and style. Certain, but less important, are the Romance of the Rose and the French text of Mandeville. Of the books very probably read by him the Divine Comedy stands first, followed by the Vita Nuova and the Convivio, Boccaccio's Olympia, and the Consolation of Philosophy of Boethius. Less probable is his reading of Tertullian's De Patentia and De Jona et Ninive, the Travels of Marco Polo, Peter Comestor's Historia Scholastica, the Book of the Knight of La Tour-Landry, the French lapidaries, and a few others still less certain.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 60 , Issue 1: Number 1 Part 1 , March 1945 , pp. 16 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1945

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References

1 C. Brown, PMLA, xix (1904), 118n., 149–153.

2 Osgood, Pearl (Boston, 1906), p. xxxvi.

3 Gerould, PMLA, li (1936), 31-36.

4 Schofield, PMLA, xix (1904), 203–215.

5 Schofield, ibid., 179.

6 Emerson, PMLA, x (1895), 242–248; S. B. Liljegren, Englische Studien, xlviii (1914), 337–341; Bateson, Patience (Manchester, 1918), pp. xli–xlviii.

7 Schofield, PMLA, xx (1909), 168.

8 Holthausen, Archiv cvi, 349.

9 Gollancz, Cleanness (Oxford, 1921), pp. xiii–xv; 83, 84.

10 Schofield, PMLA, xix (1904), 163.

11 Pearl (1906), p. xxviii.

12 Pearl (New York, 1932), p. xxi.

13 Cam. Hist. Eng. Lit., i (1907), 369.

14 Patience (Oxford, 1924), p. 39; Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, EETS, #210 (1940), p. 98.

15 Patience (Manchester, 1918), p. xli.

16 Cf. Aeneid iii, 239,240:

dat signum specula Misenus ab alta
aere cavo.

17 Cf. Aeneid xi, 426, 427:

multos alterna revisens
lusit et in solido rursus Fortuna locavit.

18 Osgood, Pearl (1906), p. 94; Chase, Pearl (1932), p. xxxiv.

19 E. Moore, Studies in Dante, First Series (Oxford, 1896), pp. 347, 362.

20 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, EETS, #210 (1940), xiv.

21 Wells, Manual, p. 103, followed by Menner, Purity (New Haven, 1920), pp. xxii-xxvii, dates the Wars, 1400–50.

22 Sir Gawayne, Bannatyne Club (1839), p. 309.

23 Sir Gawayne, p. 309.

24 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Oxford, 1925), p. 79.

25 EETS, #210 (1940), 76.