SOURCE: Fletcher, Alan J. “The Genesis of The Owl and the Nightingale.” The Chaucer Review, 34, no. 1 (1999): 1-17.

In the following essay, Fletcher proposes a new theory regarding the date, place, and authorship of The Owl and the Nightingale.

To the cannibalizing of books there is no end. This is so self-evidently true that it needs no extensive demonstration here, but one particular instance, which concerns either the early Middle English poem of The Owl and the Nightingale, or its congener, has generally eluded critical notice, and thus deserves some attention.

No one knows exactly when The Owl and the Nightingale was written, where, or by whom, though there has been no shortage of debate on all these questions—appropriately enough, given the contentiousness that is this poem's driving force.¹ Strictly speaking, the best that can be said for its date of composition is some time up to the...