The Meanings of Middle English Wight.

E. Talbot Donaldson's emendation of CT, III 117 to "And of so parfit wis a wrighte ywroughte," not adopted in the recent Variorum volume, rests on insufficiently established evidence. I demonstrate that Donaldson himself retracts crucial aspects of his argument; that Middle English usage shows both ambiguity and significant overlap between the word wight and divine beings (especially the second person of the Trinity); that Chaucer, who adheres to Donaldson's categorical distinction in Troilus, abandons it in the Canterbury Tales; and that various writers in the Christian tradition designate as the Creator (the point at issue in this line) Jesus the Christ: the second person of the Trinity whom it is unambiguously possible to call a wight. Donaldson's emendation remains possible, but the case for making it is much weaker than we have long supposed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]