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This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
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Chaucer and rape
He was mentioned in law papers of 4 May 1380, involved in the raptus (rape or seizure) of Cecilia Chaumpaigne.[1] What was meant is unclear, but the incident seems to have been resolved quickly with an exchange of money in June 1380 and did not leave a stain on Chaucer's reputation. His won attitude may be seen in two of his stories:
1) In the Reeves tale a student takes revenge on a theiving miller by raping the Miller daugther=an experience he has a good laugh about.
2) In the Wife of baths tale a squire rapes a milkmaid and escapes execution only because he acknowledges to a fairy woman tht men should b esubject to their wives.
Regarding the meaning of the surname, it's good to have the reference to the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland. However, the correct meaning of chaucier was already established by Gustav Fransson, Middle English surnames of occupation 1100-1350 (Lund: 1935) p.115. Maybe this could be cited as well? (It's pretty poor scholarship that the modern biographies of Chaucer keep repeating the faulty 'shoe-maker' etymology.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.182.169.126 (talk) 09:14, 23 February 2022 (UTC)[reply]
Big new paper on this based on new documentary research. Apparently the lawsuit was actually not about rape, but whether or not Chaucer persuaded Chaumpaigne to leave her previous employer to work for him-Chaumpaigne and Chaucer argued she'd left that job before starting work for him. Blythwood (talk) 10:36, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I think we ought to incorporate this new paper into the article. I would favor using the Chaucer Review paper (which is currently open access) as a source, rather than the press coverage of the story, such as the New York Times or Telegraph articles. I would just need to find a version with page numbers to make sure we're providing as-accurate-as-possible citations.
A couple of stray thoughts: @CH Ahens: reverted @BrEdWhite:'s attempt to change the article to reflect the new paper, and I think there are couple of problems with both versions that we should discuss. The version CH Ahens reverted to uses Waymack's "De raptu meo" blog as a source, which is very explicitly a compilation of WP:PRIMARY sources without any secondary-source-level interpretation, and the "(rape or seizure)" is problematic because it doesn't properly gloss the full meaning of "raptus" which can include kidnapping or, according to the new paper, poaching someone else's employee at a higher wage. At the same time, BrEdWhite's seems to lean a bit into WP:RECENTISM. I don't know if we need the "In 2022, further documents were discovered..." bit. Maybe a historiographic footnote at the end of the sentences about Chaumpaigne would serve better; after all, Champagne's alleged rape has appeared in 150 years of biographical sketches of Chaucer and is one of the pillars of feminist Chaucer criticism of the 1990s through early 2020s. Sorry for the wall of text. Thoughts? CoatGuy2 (talk) 16:23, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
I'm with you on this. Even the reference to the matter being "resolved quickly with an exchange of money" is unfounded. Here is a link to the Chaucer Review special issue [1]Thomas Peardew (talk) 18:09, 16 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]
"The firste fyndere"
Could someone add some context and a translation to the sentence "The firste fyndere of our fair langage"? The term doesn't even exist in Wiktionary. Is there even a reason to include the original Middle English instead of just translating it to modern English? 130.208.182.103 (talk) 21:37, 21 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I see there is some scholarly discussion about this. Apparently the description is fairly technical and has confused many [2][3]. I tried to summarize these sources but perhaps someone else can find a better way to word this. 130.208.182.103 (talk) 12:58, 22 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Original manuscripts
"Even the earliest surviving manuscripts are not Chaucer's originals": Do we even know if there were any "originals"? Chaucer was an oral performer and may have never written them down. His recitals may have differed from one to another, explaining why the written versions differ so much. Additionally, many or all (save apparent copies) may have been written by an audience member from memory rather than a scribe as it was being spoken. This could also explain the "fragments" as he likely did not tell all the tales at a single performance. Are there "original" manuscripts for his other works? Obviously I am not an expert ;-) but I hope this entry is helpful and if appropriate an expert could amend the text to be more clear. Ealtram (talk) 11:40, 25 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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