The Battle of the Books
Jonathan Swift worked for William Temple during the time of the controversy, and Swift's "A Tale of a Tub" (1703/1705) takes part in the debate. From its first publication, Swift added a short satire entitled "The Battle of the Books" to the "Tale of a Tub." In this piece, there is an epic battle fought in a library when various books come alive and attempt to settle the arguments between moderns and ancients. In Swift's satire, he skilfully manages to avoid saying which way victory fell. He portrays the manuscript as having been damaged in places, thus leaving the end of the battle up to the reader.
Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale
"Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale" is a paper by J. R. R. Tolkien on "The Reeve's Tale", one of the constituent poems of Geoffrey Chaucer's fourteenth century Middle English cycle of poems and stories "The Canterbury Tales". It was originally read at a meeting of the Philological Society in Oxford on Saturday, 16 May 1931, and subsequently published in "Transactions of the Philological Society", Volume 33, Issue 1, November 1934. The delay in publication was explained as "principally due to hesitation in putting forward a study, for which closer investigation of words, and more still a much fuller array of readings from MSS. of the Reeve’s Tale, were so plainly needed." Not having had the opportunity for either, Tolkien "therefore presented [the paper] with apologies, practically as it was read, with the addition of a 'critical text', and accompanying textual notes, as well as of various footnotes, appendices, and comments naturally omitted in reading."