The Text of Caxton's Second Edition of the Canterbury Tales (original) (raw)
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Studies in the Orthography of Some Manuscripts of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales"
Studies in the Orthography of Some Early Manuscripts of Chaucer’s “Canterbury Tales” ― Jacob Thaisen Volume I: Analysis and discussion A thesis submitted for the partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the degree of Ph.D. ― De Montfort University October 2005 ― Abstract The systems of spelling found in the extant manuscripts of a late Middle English text are rarely considered in discussions of the transmission of that text. If they are, scholars have typically used the occurrence of dialectal spellings to allocate manuscripts to geographical areas or the occurrence of identical spellings, often unusual spellings, in corresponding locations across the manuscripts to recover the usage of the presumed archetype. The basis for much of this scholarship has been profiles which rely upon text samples or which list what spellings are found in a manuscript but do not reveal the internal distribution of these spellings in that manuscript. This study considers the spelling and codicology of nine complete, textually-important manuscripts of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, each of which was copied by a different scribe. The author semi-automatically indexes the electronic transcripts prepared by the Canterbury Tales Project from the spellings registered in the Project spelling databases for one of the tales. He extracts a comprehensive spelling profile for each manuscript from this index. The profiles correspond to the questionnaire used for Angus McIntosh, M.L. Samuels, et al., A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (Aberdeen, 1986). The author next evaluates the distribution of the variant spellings of each lemma relative to one another in the individual manuscripts. This evaluation leads to the findings that these manuscripts typically contain relatively few co-ordinate sets of spelling and that the boundary between two such sets usually coincides with a change in the codicology of the individual manuscript. This congruence can be related to the number of exemplars used by the scribes of these manuscripts in preparing them, implying that, with outside support, late Middle English manuscript spelling can be useful for textual purposes. Much Canterbury Tales scholarship has been dominated by a view developed by some textual scholars in the interwar years. According to this view the first manuscripts were compiled from multiple exemplars due to individually circulating tales or, at best, from material received piecemeal, for Chaucer left the poem unfinished. This study concludes in opposition that large tranches of the text were physically together in a fixed order already when it reached the early scribes.
Transactions of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society, 2004
Three of these pamphlets were so popular that they were promptly reprinted, either in 1476 or early 1477, probably in the following order: 1. The horse, the sheep and the goose II (STC 17018; Duff 261). 2. The churl and the bird II (STC 17008; Duff 256). 3. Cato II (STC 4850; Duff 76). Caxton's business was clearly thriving, but what is also important to note is that the catalogue numbers for the three reprinted texts antecede those of their respective first editions. The reason is obvious: new evidence has led to a reconsideration of the sequence in which these volumes appeared, a sequence originally postulated by William Blades and accepted by many later authorities.5 The case for reassessing The churl and the bird (hereafter, Churl) was first made in 1941 by Curt Bühler, who demonstrated convincingly from textual evidence that STC 17009, the supposed second edition (in the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York), must rather have been the exemplar from which STC 17008, the supposed first edition (in Cambridge University Library), was set.6 His conclusions were later endorsed by Paul Needham, 4 This list of Caxton's early Westminster output is necessarily incomplete since it details only quarto editions printed on half-sheets. Four obvious omissions from the period concerned are the Sarum hours (8vo in half-sheets: STC 15867; Duff 174), the indulgence for Abbot John Sant of Abingdon (vellum broadside: STC 14077 с 106), Chaucer's Canterbury tales (fo.: STC 5082; Duff 87), and the Sarum ordinale (4to from full sheets: STC 16228; Duff 336). For more detailed chronologies, see L. Hellinga, Caxton in focus: the beginning of printing in England (London, 1982), 67-8, 80-3, and P. Needham, The printer & the pardoner: an unrecorded indulgence printed by William Caxton for the Hospital of St. Mary Rounceval, Charing Cross (Washington, 1986), 83-91 (esp. 84-5). Hellinga's chronology ascribes several works to late 1476 that Needham dates to 1477, a minor discrepancy that is not relevant to this article.
Framing Chaucer's Canterbury Tales for the Aristocratic Readers of the Ellesmere Manuscript
Medieval Images, Icons, and Illustrated English Literary Texts (chapter 6), 2004
In its restrained elegance, the visual presentation of the Canterbury Tales in the Ellesmere manuscriptl is quite unlike that of the comparatively humble miniatures of the Pearl manuscript, but there is an absence of images of divinity and saints in both. Instead of portraying potentially idolatrous images in illustration of the tales, the Ellesmere manuscript portrays the pilgrim narrators. Such a strategy indirectly emphasizes authors, if not divine authorship, although that is alluded to in Chaucer' s leue or "confession" on the last folio (fig. 58). That focus on authorship, however, does not account entirely for the reticence about making divine images in a manuscript intended, as I will suggest, for the new Lancastrian regime, which was to become identified with the orthodox position advocating the use of religious images. Timing may have been a factor if this manuscript was made during a 1 San Marino, Huntington Library, MS Ellesmere 26 C9, made in London probably within the frrst decade ofthe fifteenth century (see discussions in The Ellesmere Chaucer, cited below). I would like to thank Mary Robertson, the Chief Curator of Manuscripts, for granting me access to the precious original, which made possible many insights, both technical and conceptual. This manuscript has been published in a facsimile, "a covetable object in its own right" (in the words of Jill Mann in the information brochure), by the Huntington Library and Yushodo Co. ofTokyo as The Ellesmere Chaucerin 1995. A companion volume, Martin Stevensand Daniel Woodward, eds., The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation (San Marino and Tokyo, 1995), contains the most extensive studies of individual aspects of this manuscript to date. It includes bibliographical references, as does Kathleen Scott' s catalogue entry no. 42 for the Ellesmere in Later Gothic Manuscripts 2: 140-43. In my transcriptions from the Ellesmere manuscript, all Middle English expansions of abbreviations have been inserted italicized and follow the line numbers in Larry Benson, ed., The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edn. (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1990). Expansions ofLatin abbreviations have been enclosed in brackets. References are given parenthetically, employing standard abbreviations for the tales. Prologues are designated by "Pro," so that "ProFrT," e.g., indicates the Prologue to the Friar 's Tale. Citations ofChaucer' s other literary works arealso from The Riverside Chaucer.
2015
Most manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have placed the fragment that begins with The Shipman's Tale after Fragment VI. Thus, it is usually found as Fragment VII in most modern translations of Chaucer's tales. Although it is the longest tale-cluster in Chaucer's tales, the order of this fragment is still controversial. For instance, Henry Bradshaw insists that this fragment should be moved ahead and placed after Fragment II. On the other hand, most scholars believe that breaking the order of the tales as it exists in the Ellesmere a Manuscript, and as Bradshaw hopes, might ruin the thematic relationship among the tales in different fragments. This research investigates the position of Fragment VII in multiple manuscripts. It evaluates various critical perspectives on the issue and recommend moving fragment VII to be placed after Fragment II. I argue that some amendments to the order found in the Ellesmere a Manuscript and the ones that follow its order might reinforce the thematic relationship among the tales and does not ruin it.
Distichs; he assembled over his lifetime a library of more than 160 manuscripts, many copied or annotated by himself; he was a candidate for the papacy, according to his early biographers, and for canonization fifty years after his death. 1 John Duxworth, a shadowy and unimpressive figure compared to Jean d'Angouleme, copied two manuscripts for the latter (the Canterbury Tales and a Dialogue of St. Anselm) during Jean's years of captivity in England (1412-45). Duxworth may also have copied works for Jean's brother, Charles d'Orleans, whose captivity in England began and ended a few years shy of Jean's. 2 Noting that Duxworth is an unusual name, Manly and Rickert suggest that Jean's scribe may be the man who was granted some tenements in Cambridge near Corpus Christi College four years after Jean's return to France. 3 Duxworth has left no certain trace but the signatures to his manuscripts for Jean-"Duxwurth" at the end of the Canterbury Tales', "Johannes Duxworth" in the table of contents for the Dialogue of St. Anselm . A copyist, however obscure, leaves also his hand. The leading work on Duxworth's Canterbury Tales manuscript, that of Martin M. Crow, has argued that Jean, not Duxworth, is the intelligence behind most of the manuscript's unique features, and that Duxworth is responsible only for what may be considered unimaginative. 5 Crow's conclusions are universally accepted in recent scholarship, but I believe they are unsubstantiated and that Duxworth's contribution is coextensive with his hand. If we can 17 18 SUSAN CRANE accept that Duxworth is the intelligence behind the Paris manuscript, it can be considered a coherent Chaucerian editorial project with instructive similarities to more well-known editorial projects such as the Hengwrt, Ellesmere, and Corpus manuscripts.