^{Note 1 in page 307} J. S. P. Tatlock, The Development and Chronology of Chaucer's Works (Chaucer Society, London, 1907), p. 66. Cf. W. J. Wager, “The So-called Prologue to the Knight s Tale,” MLN, l (1935), 296–307, who substantiates Tatlock's suggestion.

^{Note 2 in page 307} Op. oil., p. 83.

^{Note 3 in page 307} The Canterbury Tales, ed. J. M. Manly (New York, 1928), pp. 539–540; The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson (Cambridge, 1933), pp. 770–771.

^{Note 4 in page 307} These lines have no counterpart in Chaucer's source, the Teseide. All citations are from Robinson's edition.

^{Note 5 in page 308} Cf. W. C. Curry, Chaucer and the Mediaeval Sciences (New York, 1926), 128–130; Mark H. Liddell, Chaucer (New York, 1901, 1932), 171–172; who cite Alchabitius, Albumasar, Albohazen Haly, Guido Bonatus, and Claudius Ptolemy. Almost all these dispensations of Saturn are found in Francisco Junctinus' very scholarly compendium entitled Speculum Aslrologiae (Basle, 1581), i, 477–479.

^{Note 6 in page 308} Op. cit., p. 129. Cf. also Skeat (v, 88), although I believe the value of Skeat's note on this line is dubious. He cites the 66th Aphorism in Hermetis Aphorismorum Liber: “Terribilia mala operatur Leo cum malis; auget enim eorum malitiam.” My copy of Hermes (in Francisco Junctinus Speculum Aslrologiae [Basle, 1582], I, 842) has Caput Draconis instead of Leo; and an investigation of Renaissance texts on astrology reveals that the symbol () for Leo is identical with that for the Caput Draconis. I believe that Skeat, examining a copy of Hermes containing the symbol rather than the word, thus misread his text; for the expression “Leo cum malis” (“Leo with the evil planets”) does not make sense, whereas “Caput Draconis cum malis” does.

^{Note 7 in page 308} See Introductorium in astronomiam Albumasaris abalachi octo continens libros partialis (Venetiis, 1489), sig. h3v; Albumasar de magnis coniunctionibus annorum revolutionibus ac eorum profectionibus octo continens traclatus (Venetiis, 1489), sigs. C6r, C8r, H1v–H2r, H3v, K4v, K7v, L1v, L6v, O3r; Alchabitius, Libellus ysagogicus … (Venetiis, 1482), sigs. a6v, b3r–b4r; Albohazen Haly filius Abenragel, Liber compleetus in iudiciis stellarum (Venetiis, 1485), fols. 2–4, 64–65, 96–96, 101, 103, 135–136, 140, 143; Claudius Ptolemy, Tetrabiblos sive Quadripartitum ed. Melancthon (Basle, 1553; cf. also Ashmand's trans., London, 1822), Bk. ii, ch. ix; Bk. iii, ch. xviii; Bk. iv, ch. ix; Guido Bonatus, Tractatus astrologicus (Venice, 1491), sigs. f5r–f7r, m1v, J5r–v, K1r–K.3r, CC4r. Cf. also Junctinus, op. cit., i, 842, 1051, 1216, 1297, and esp. 1175 ff. and 1188 ff.; Jerome Cardan, Opera Omnia (Lyons, 1663), v, 374 ff. (The last two authors draw largely upon the mediaeval astrologers, and cite their authorities.)

^{Note 8 in page 309} Scorpio seems to be the most malignant sign Saturn can be in, although his position anywhere is generally conducive to evil.

^{Note 9 in page 309} For these calculations I have used the directions and tables in Dr. Paul V. Neugebauer's Tafeln sur Astronomischen Chronologie (Leipzig, 1912), vol. ii, recommended to me by the Director of the Nautical Almanack at the United States Naval Observatory. The (geocentric) positions in true longitude I have changed to positions in the zodiac; e.g., the sign Cancer occupies the space of 90°–120° of the zodiac; Leo occupies 120°–150°, etc.; Neugebauer's tables give the position of Saturn on July 20, 1387, to be 122°30^′, which I record accordingly as 2°30^′ in Leo. The dates are according to the Julian calendar.

^{Note 10 in page 310} Op. cit., sigs. C8v, H3v. Albohazen Haly (op. cit., p. 140r) concurs: “Quando saturnus… fuerit retrogradus significat defectum hominis boni: et augmentum hominis mali.”

^{Note 11 in page 310} Op. cit., pp. 2r, 4r. Cf. Bonatus (op. cit., sig. K1v): “Si Saturnus fuerit in leone … fuerit retrogradus significat gravitates venturas ex accidentibus que venient hominibus et que prolongabuntur et erunt duribiles. Si autem fuerit directus significat levitatem eorum.”

^{Note 12 in page 310} For a bibliographical reference to some of the published astrological prognostications undoubtedly bandied about during this time, I have searched in vian through Lynn Thorndike's History of Magic and Experimental Science, 6 vols., and his Catalogue of Incipits of Mediaeval Scientific Writings in Latin (Cambridge, 1937). Thorndike lists innumerable prognostications for other periods in the fourteenth century, but none for the 1380's.

^{Note 13 in page 310} Cf. Lynn Thorndike, History, iii, chs. 20, 21, 34, et passim.

^{Note 14 in page 310} Cf. Manly, op. cit, pp. 3–44; Robinson, op. cit.,pp. xv–xxiv.

^{Note 15 in page 311} Margaret Galway, “Geoffrey Chaucer, J. P. and M. P.,” MLR, xxxvi (1941), 1–36.

^{Note 16 in page 311} Cf. Raphael Holinshed's Chronicles (1802 ed.), ii, 775 ff.; John Froissart's Chronicles, trans. Thomas Johnes (New York, 1849), pp. 428–429, 440 ff.; Sir Charles Oman, The History of England, 1377–1485 (New York, 1930), chs. iv, v. Cf. also Galway, op. cit., and Florence R. Scott, “Chaucer and the Parliament of 1386,” Speculum, xviii (1943), 80–86.

^{Note 17 in page 311} Cf. especially Holinshed, op. cit., p. 793.

^{Note 18 in page 312} The phrase is Oman's (op. cit., p. 109).

^{Note 19 in page 312} Ibid., p. 111.

^{Note 20 in page 312} Among these favorites of Gloucester, incidentally, was Thomas Pynchbeck, whom Professor Manly would have as Chaucer's model for the poet's unsympathetic portrait of the Sergeant of the Law. See Manly, Some New Light on Chaucer, pp. 152, 155.

^{Note 21 in page 312} Cf. Oman, pp. 111–114.

^{Note 22 in page 312} Curiously enough, one Chaucer critic, writing recently about the politics of Gloucester, uses the word itself: “All the power which Derby exerted, and even the plea of Queen Anne on her knees at Gloucester's feet, failed to deter Gloucester's vengeance, and Burley went to the scaffold in the Tower.” See Scott, “Chaucer and the Parliament of 1386,” Speculum, xviii (1943), 85.

^{Note 23 in page 312} See Galway, op. cit., pp. 27, 30, who emphasizes the significant fact that Gloucester “had a personal as well as an official interest in this source of revenue.”

^{Note 24 in page 313} Cf. Manly, Canterbury Tales, pp. 26–28; Galway, pp. 32–33.

^{Note 25 in page 313} Cf. Manly, Canterbury Tales, p. 28; Galway, p. 30.

^{Note 26 in page 313} Cf. Manly, Canterbury Tales, pp. 27–28, 21, 39-44; for Chaucer's relations with Skirlaw, the Nevilles, the de la Poles, etc., see Manly's Some New Light on Chaucer, pp. 110 ff.

^{Note 27 in page 313} See Ramona Bressie, “The Date of Thomas Usk's Testament of Love,” MP, xxvi (1928), 28–29; cf. also Skeat, vii (Supplement), xviii ff. Since Liddell (op. cit., p. 172) suggests that in line 2457—“Myn is the prison in the derke cote”—Chaucer is perhaps referring to some “well-known instance of imprisonment in such a place,” it is interesting to note that in Chapter i of The Testament of Love Usk refers to his own imprisonment thus: “I endure my penuance in this derke prison,….” (For Usk's text, see Skeat, vii.)

^{Note 28 in page 314} Cf. Holinshed, op. cit., pp. 798–799.

^{Note 29 in page 314} Galway, op. cit., p. 30.

^{Note 30 in page 314} Oman, op. cit., pp. 116, 119.

^{Note 31 in page 314} Ibid., p. 119. I cite Holinshed's account of the truce anon (infra, footnote 38).

^{Note 32 in page 314} J. L. Lowes, MLN, xix (1904), 240–243; cf. Robinson, p. 771.

^{Note 33 in page 314} O. F. Emerson, Chaucer Essays and Studies (Cleveland, 1929), pp. 123–173. Skeat's suggestion (v, 70, 75–76) that the poem be dated according to the dates mentioned in lines 1462 ff. and 1850 has been generally discarded; see Robinson, p. 776, and Manly, Canterbury Tales, p. 549.

^{Note 34 in page 315} “The So-called Prologue to the Knight's Tale,” MLN, l (1935), 296–307.

^{Note 35 in page 315} Curry, MLN, xxxvi (1921), 272–274.

^{Note 36 in page 315} Froissart, op. cit., Bk. IV, ch. ii, p. 494. Cf. also KnT 2566–68:

^{Note 37 in page 316} “ Ibid., Bk. iv, ch. xxiii, p. 527.

^{Note 38 in page 316} Op. cit., ii, 797–798. Notice Chaucer's friends among the commissioners.

^{Note 39 in page 317} Op. cit., p. 111. Can Chaucer be pointing a reprimanding finger at Gloucester when he makes Theseus, listening to Ypolita's plea, muse to himself:

The passage has no counterpart in the Teseide.

^{Note 40 in page 317} Stuart Robertson, “Elements of Realism in the Knight's Tale,” JEGP, xiv (1915), 226–255, juxtaposed Chaucer's description of the tournament with the account of Richard's tournament found in Froissart's Chronicles, and discovered many of the details in Chaucer's poem paralleled in the Frenchman's account. But Professor Robertson did not suggest that Chaucer drew his materials from direct observation of the tournament of 1390.

^{Note 41 in page 317} Ibid., pp. 251–253.

^{Note 42 in page 318} According to Tatlock's line-by-line analysis of Chaucer's indebtedness to the Teseide (op. cit., pp. 227–230), in these 102 lines only one (2506) is translated from and only five have any resemblance to lines in Boccaccio's poem.

^{Note 43 in page 318} Cited from G. G. Coulton, Chaucer and His England (London, 1908), p. 61.

^{Note 44 in page 318} Galway, op. cit., p. 16. Cf. also Coulton, loc. cit.

^{Note 45 in page 318} Cf. Skeat, I, xl.

^{Note 46 in page 318} Cf. Skeat's citation (v, 76) from Strutt concerning “the rules established by Thomas, duke of Gloucester, uncle to Richard II”: “The king shall find the field to fight in, and the lists shall be made and devised by the constable; … the lists must be made with one door to the east, and another to the west; …”

^{Note 47 in page 319} I can find no tournaments in London in the 1380's mentioned by Froissart, Holinshed, or in “The Accounts for Jousts in Smithfield” listed in Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrimage, ed. Kirk and Furnivall (Chaucer Society, London, 1903), p. 31. According to Holinshed's eye-witness, Christopher Okland, the tournament in 1390 was held “to set the youth & lustie blouds of the court on worke (because … feats of arms and warlike prowesse both abroad and at home languished and laie as it were a fainting) …” Holinshed, op. cit., ii, 811–812.

^{Note 48 in page 319} Froissart, op. cit., Bk. iv, Ch. xxiii, p. 527. See ante, n. 37.

^{Note 49 in page 319} Froissart, loc. cit.

^{Note 50 in page 319} The passage has no counterpart in the Teseide.

^{Note 51 in page 320} Froissart, loc. cit.

^{Note 52 in page 320} Froissart reports almost all the details: “minstrels,… supper well served, … dancings, … ladies and damsels,… amusements,… presents.” Lines 2198, 2202–03 resemble lines in the Teseide.

^{Note 53 in page 321} Cf. ante. note 36.

^{Note 54 in page 321} Lines 2581–82 and 2584–85 slightly resemble lines in the Teseide.

^{Note 55 in page 322} Holinshed, op. cit., ii, 812.

^{Note 56 in page 322} Between lines 2600 and 2662 Chaucer has borrowed not even a phrase from the Teseide, except in line 2603; and Boccaccio's long succession of single combats he has converted into a more contemporaneous onslaught between the two companies of knights.

^{Note 57 in page 323} Loc. cit., Cf. also Okland-Holinshed (op. cit., ii, 812); “… the king of England, commending the prowess of the outlandish lords, bestowed upon them massie Cheines of gold, & loding them with other gifts of great valure, dismissed them into their countries.”

^{Note 58 in page 323} Lines 2717, 2235–36, and 2739 are slightly paralleled in the Teseide.

^{Note 59 in page 323} The lack of these elements of realism in the original version may explain why Chaucer wrote in the LGW that “the storye is knowen lite.” All will agree that it is difficult to suppose that the KnT as we now have it was little known. I am aware that Manly (p. 542) and Robinson (p. 959) hold Chaucer's expression a reference to Boccaccio's story rather than to his own Tale, because Chaucer says “storye” and because the line summarizes a quatrain in the Teseide. But what difference should that make? Would Chaucer have written such a line if his poem had been well known?

^{Note 60 in page 324} H. M. Cummings, The Indebtedness of Chaucer's Works to the Italian Works of Boccaccio (Cincinnati, 1916), ch. vi.

^{Note 61 in page 324} Ibid.,p. 146.

^{Note 62 in page 324} The author wishes to express his gratitude to the University of Alabama Research Committee for the purchase of microfilms of several of the rare books used in the preparation of this paper.