The Alternative Reading of The Canterbury Tales: Chaucer's Text and the Early Manuscripts

Abstract

The evidence of the six earliest manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales does not support the consensus among Chaucerians that the Ellesmere a ordering represents Chaucer's intentions. Marginalia indicate that Hengwrt preceded Ellesmere and was most closely associated with it. Hengwrt and Ellesmere influenced Cambridge Dd. A somewhat looser association binds Corpus, Harley4, and Lansdowne. In each of the groups editors tried to improve the arrangement and to make the resulting book appear complete. Three conclusions emerge. (1) Only the text derives from Chaucer. (2) Throughout the manuscript period, single tales and groups of tales continued to circulate in great numbers and to provide exemplars for the collected tales that survive. (3) The Canterbury Tales never existed as a neat pile of manuscript, an almost complete text. What we have instead is a collection of fragments reflecting the different stages of a developing plan.