1. All citations from Chaucer are from Larry D. Benson, gen. ed., The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987).
2. According to Carleton Brown, “The Prioress’s Tale,” in W. F. Bryan and Germaine Dempster, eds., Sources and Analogues of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1941), pp. 447–85
3. Luis A. Lazaro Lafuente, José Simon, and Ricardo J. Sola Buil, eds., Medieval Studies: Proceedings of the Illrd International Conference of the Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature (Madrid: Universidad de Alcala de Henares, 1996), pp. 151–75.
4. All biblical citations are from the Douay-Rheims version. The Vulgate reads: Et vidi: et ecce Agnus stabat supra montem Sion, et cum eo centum quadraginta quatuor millia, habentes nomen eius, et nomen Patris eius scriptum in frontibus suis. Et audivi vocem de caelo, tanquam vocem aquarum multarum, et tanquam vocem tonitrui magni: et vocem, quam audivi, sicut citharoedorum citharizantium in citharis suis. Et cantabant quasi canticum novum ante sedem, et ante quatuor animalia, et seniores: et nemo poterat dicere canticum, nisi ilia centum quadraginta quatuor millia, qui empti sunt de terra. Hi sunt, qui cum mulieribus non sunt coinquinati: virgines enim sunt. Hi sequuntur Agnum quocumque ierit. Hi empti sunt ex hominibus primitiae Deo, et Agno: et in ore eorum non est inventum mendacium: sine macula enim sunt thronum Dei. The relevance of the liturgy to the Tale was first explained by Marie Padgett Hamilton, “Echoes of Childermas in the Tale of the Prioress,” Modern Language Review 34 (1939): 1–8.
5. On the exclamatio as a feature of both Chaucerian and medieval Marian poetry generally, see Patrick S. Diehl, The Medieval Religious Lyric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), pp. 151–2.