Abstract
Chaucer envisaged the Canterbury Tales as presented on the actual London-Canterbury road at various times during successive days, for he offers about seven allusions to place and at least five to time, scattered throughout eight of the nine Fragments which make up the work. That Chaucer had a definite plan for the order of the Fragments is revealed by various kinds of internal evidence, including the mention of towns on the Pilgrims' way, the reality and precise location of which were clear and obvious to the poet and his audience. The ellesmere (or group a) order of the Tales has long seemed unsatisfactory because it distorts the geographical order of allusions to towns, and Chaucer would not have deliberately alluded to Sittingbourne (Fragment in) before Rochester (Fragment vii) on the way from Southwark and Greenwich to Boughton-under-Blean and Canterbury. Accordingly, Henry Bradshaw suggested to Furnivall, as an improvement on the Ellesmere order, that Fragment vn be lifted up to follow and combine with Fragment ii, the Man of Law's Endlink being used as Prologue to the Shipman's Tale.
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