Chaucer's Canon and The Unity of The Canon's Yeoman's Tale

Abstract

Students of The Canterbury Tales have devoted relatively slight attention to the incident of the Canon at Boughton under Blee and to his Yeoman's tale, and even of this they have not given much to the Canon himself. H. G. Richardson and J. M. Manly investigated possible historical models for him, and Marie P. Hamilton has shown that he was a Canon Regular. But apart from these, discussion has been confined mainly to the sources and extent of Chaucer's alchemical knowledge, the possible audience for the tale considered apart from the Canterbury group, and the character of the Yeoman, so much more fully developed than that of his master.