Chaucer's Gnof

Lecture by Fred Biggs (UConn) at King's College, London, 30 October 2017 for the CLAMS series. Philology, by way of Lewis Carroll, solves a problem of literary history — Chaucer’s knowledge of the Decameron — that leads through not only close readings of texts but also both history and theology, with a brief turn to manuscript studies at its conclusion. The premise is indeed preposterous: Chaucer borrowed gnof, which he used in the opening lines of the Miller’s Tale to describe an Oxford carpenter named John, from Boccaccio’s use of gnaffé in the climactic scene of Decameron 3.4. Gnof is a brillig word.