Chaucer's Tale of Melibee and the Failure of Allegory
Abstract When Chaucer calls his Melibee “a litel thyng in prose,” he signals a key formulation for understanding his inclusion of a translation as his contribution to the Canterbury Tales. This article argues that Chaucer draws upon the legal model of ownership and use developed in Henry de Bracton's De legibus et consuetudinibus Angliae as an analogue to literary ideas about textual ownership and borrowing. In doing so, he posits that the central problems the Melibee addresses revolve not around the specific political circumstances of Ricardian England, as has long been assumed by critics, but around the possibility of a vernacular author “owning” and “using” allegory.
Sources and analogues of the Canterbury tales
The publication of this volume completes the new edition of the sources and major analogues of all the "Canterbury Tales" prepared by members of the New Chaucer Society. This collection, the first to appear in over half a century, features such additions as a fresh interpretation of Chaucer's sources for the frame of the work, chapters on the sources of the General Prologue and Retractions, and modern English translations of all foreign language texts, with glosses for the Middle English. The chapters on the individual tales contain an updated survey of the present state of scholarship on their source materials. Several sources and analogues discovered during the past fifty years are found here together for the first time, and some other familiar sources are re-edited from manuscripts closer to Chaucer's copies. Besides the General Prologue and the Retractions, this volume includes chapters on the Miller, Summoner, Merchant, Physician, Shipman, Prioress, Sir Thopas, Canon's Yeoman, Manciple, the Knight and the prologues and tales of the Man of Law and Wife of Bath. The contributors include: Peter Beidler, Kenneth A. Bleeth, Laurel Broughton, Joanne Charbonneau, William E. Coleman, Carolyn P.Collette, Vincent Di Marco, Peter Field, Traugott Lawler, Anita Obermeier, Robert Raymo, Christine Richardson-Hey, John Scattergood, Nigel S. Thompson, Edward Wheatley, and, John Withrington.
The Diminishing Role of Social Work Administrators in Social Service Agencies
ABSTRACT The social service industry in the United States has experienced tremendous growth and change since the early 1970s. Unfortunately, the social work profession has not kept up with this growth and change. This article explores several issues that have emerged in social work administration that may contribute to the seemingly diminished role of social workers in administrative positions in social service agencies. They include the role that schools of social work play in educating social workers for administration, competition for administrative positions in social service agencies, and the differences which exist between administration in social service agencies and other types of organizations.