Inappropriate Pointing in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale, G 1236–1239

Abstract

The standard editions of the Canterbury Tales differ in their pointing of G 1236–39. Curiously enough it is the most influential of these editions (those of Skeat and Robinson) that, to my mind, point the passage inappropriately by mistakenly giving a speech that belongs to one character to another. As a result, one of the characters involved seems to be guilty of an inexplicable and unmotivated impropriety, and the dramatic quality of the passage is blurred.