Chaucer's Source MSS. For the Clerkes Tale

Abstract

There are few of Chaucer's works for which the principal source has been so definitely pointed out as for the Clerkes Tale. Chaucer borrowed it from a Latin prose tale by Petrarch, who in turn had it from the tenth story of the tenth day out of Boccaccio's Decameron. Petrarch's Latin, which is Chaucer's source then, has been made easily accessible to everyone by the Chaucer Society, who published it in Originals and Analogues. Unfortunately, however, the Chaucer Society took their text from the Basle edition, which is notorious for its inaccuracy and inexcusable corruptness in reading after reading. For a long time, therefore, Chaucer scholars have felt the need for a reliable text of Petrarch's Latin tale. Professor G. L. Hendrickson, to whom credit is due for correctly inferring a number of necessary emendations in the text, has this to say after one such emendation:Of course, nothing can be done in problems of this sort until we have a thorough collation of the Petrarch MSS. containing the story, and I have touched upon this one point, somewhat rashly I know, merely for the sake of indicating by a concrete illustration a most imperative prerequisite to any intelligent study of Chaucer's relation to Petrarch—a critical text of Petrarch's tale.