What Elizabeth Scala Should Learn: Who Would Have Thought The Old Man Had So Much Blood In Him?

This is Scala on Lee Patterson's TEMPORAL
 CIRCUMSTANCES (2006) and ACTS OF
RECOGNITION (2010) in STUDIES IN THE AGE
OF CHAUCER 33.1 (2011) 356-360.

So "Patterson belongs to a generation of critics
who did not have to write a monograph for tenure."
Perhaps, just perhaps, his failure to publish a book
a year or two after his first employment gave him
time to think earnestly and even with relentless
skepticism about received truths and to weigh such "truths"
in the light of his patient, dry-as-dust discoveries.
Perhaps his not having to write a monograph for
tenure meant that his first book had a chance of
revolutionizing Chaucer scholarship. Was it worth
waiting for?