Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve’s Tale

Chaucer as a Philologist: The Reeve's Tale is an essay by J.R.R. Tolkien, published in Transactions of the Philological Society for 1934.

The essay was delivered at a meeting of the Philological Society in Oxford on 16 May 1931. Tolkien discusses Chaucer's use of the Northern Middle English dialect as a linguistic joke in "The Reeve's Tale", part of the Canterbury Tales.

It was reprinted in 2008 in Tolkien Studies 5. It was also reprinted in 2024 in Tolkien on Chaucer, 1913-1959, but incorporating Tolkien's own corrections.