JANKYN2 is a student from Oxford who has left the university and gone to Bath. There he boards with Alisoun, close woman friend of Dame Alys, WBP 525-559. Alys tells how she courts and marries Jankyn, WBP 543-631. He forbids her to visit her friends; he reads to her from his "Book of Wikked Wyves," a collection of antifeminist tracts bound together in one volume, which he calls "Valerie and Theophraste," WBP 641-671. This anthology includes Jerome's Epistola adversus Jovinianum (Letter Against Jovinian, late fourth century), Walter Map's Dissuasio Valerii ad Rufinum philosophum ne uxorem ducat (Valerius's Dissuasion of Rufus Not to Marry, c. 1180-1183), Aureolus liber Theophrasti de nuptiis (Theophrastus's Golden Book on Marriage), now lost, treatises by Tertullian, perhaps his De exhortatione castitatis (On the Exhortation to Chastity), De monogamia (On Monogamy), De pudicitia (On Modesty), Ovid's Ars amatoria (The Art of Love), The Parables of Solomon, the letters of Heloise and Abelard, and treatises on gynecology by the Salernian physician Trotula.
It is not quite clear from Alys's account that Jankyn the apprentice and Jankyn the student are two people. The name denoted the typical priest-lover and was coupled with Alison, a pun on Aleison from the Mass, as in the refrain from the popular lyric:
'Kyrie,' so 'kyrie,'
Chaucer's mating of Jankyn with Alison follows popular tradition [Alisoun3: Crisippus: Janekyn: Jerome: Jovinian: Tertulan: Theofraste: Trotula: Valerie]
Jankyn appears in medial positions only, WBP 548, 595, 628, 713.
Iankyn syngyt merie,
with 'aleyson.'