The Tale of Gamelyn

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Gamelyn, The Tale of

The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature | 2003 | | © The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature 2003, originally published by Oxford University Press 2003. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

Gamelyn, The Tale of, a verse romance of the mid-14th cent. from the East Midlands, in 902 lines of long couplets. It is found in a number of manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales, usually assigned to the Cook, and Chaucer possibly intended to write a version of it for use as the Cook's tale.

The story, which recounts Gamelyn's flight to the forest and attempts to recover his stolen birthright, has affinities with Shakespeare's As You Like It and with the legends of Robin Hood.

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MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Gamelyn, The Tale of." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. 17 Dec. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Gamelyn, The Tale of." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Encyclopedia.com. (December 17, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-GamelynTheTaleof.html

MARGARET DRABBLE and JENNY STRINGER. "Gamelyn, The Tale of." The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. 2003. Retrieved December 17, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O54-GamelynTheTaleof.html

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The Tale of Gamelyn

The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition | 2008 | The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. Copyright 2008 Columbia University Press. (Hide copyright information) Copyright

The Tale of Gamelyn , a romance in verse, written c.1350, containing about 900 lines. It tells of the tribulations of a young man abused by his older brothers. The tale survives in 25 manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, sometimes entitled "The Cook's Tale," though it is not by Geoffrey Chaucer . It served as a prototype for several later works, including Shakespeare's As You Like It.

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"The Tale of Gamelyn." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. 17 Dec. 2009 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

"The Tale of Gamelyn." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Encyclopedia.com. (December 17, 2009). http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Gamelyn.html

"The Tale of Gamelyn." The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition. 2008. Retrieved December 17, 2009 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1E1-Gamelyn.html

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Related articles from newspapers, magazines, and more

Sources and Analogues of the 'Canterbury Tales'.(Book Review)
Magazine article from: The Modern Language Review; 4/1/2004; ; 700+ words ; ...of Chaucer's 'Canterbury Tales' was published (Chicago...chapters on the frame and on the tales of the Reeve, Cook, Friar...Riverside Chaucer, though as the tales are taken from the whole poem...Cook (pp. 75-86),whose tale is incomplete. John Scattergood...some comments on the Tale of ...
Chaucer's poetry, versioning, and hypertext.
Magazine article from: Philological Quarterly; 6/22/1994; ; 700+ words ; ...transmission of the Canterbury Tales in a number of ways. Some provided missing Tales, such as substituting the spurious Tale of Gamelyn for the fragmentary Cook's Tale, and others altered the order of specific Tales and fragments, such as the...
IF IT AIN'T BROKE, DON'T FIX IT
Newspaper article from: The Boston Globe; 3/5/2006; ; 700+ words ; ...English Dictionary. But does that mean brokeback is wrong? Not exactly. In the OED's earliest citation, from "The Tale of Gamelyn" (a narrative poem from about 1400), the word is not brokenbacked but brokeback (spelled "broke-bak). Elsewhere...
Chaucer and his English Contemporaries: Prologue and Tales in 'The Canterbury Tales'.(Review)
Magazine article from: The Modern Language Review; 7/1/2000; ; 700+ words ; ...what Chaucer thought a prologue and a tale to be, and how far the Canterbury Tales was experimental compared with the practice...a lively account of the Manciple's Tale and Chaucer's withdrawal from the process of narration towards the end of the Tales (pp. 193-95). I should have ...
The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance.(Review)
Magazine article from: Medium Aevum; 3/22/2001; 541 words ; ...on Lai le Freine, Myra Stokes on Sir Launfal, T. A. Shippey on Gamelyn, Elizabeth Fowler on Sir Isumbras, James Simpson on naming patterns in Sir Degare, Malory's `Tale of Sir Gareth', and the Folie Tristan d'Oxford, Arlyn Diamond...

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