Edition and Translation of a Medieval "Treatise on the Virtues"

FAIN: FA-11234-75

Siegfried Wenzel
University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, PA 19104-6205)

To prepare a critical edition and translation of a medieval "Treatise on the Virtures". This work, which is in Latin and exists only in manuscripts, has recently been shown to be the source of Chaucer's Parson's Tale. This critical edition will be a part of the "Chaucer Library", a scholarly project to publish all works now known to have been used by Chaucer. The edition will provide new insights into Chaucer's knowledge of contemporary writing and into his poetic working habits, and it will make accessible a representative of a literary genre which was very popular in the later Middle Ages, but is unfamiliar to modern students.