''
The Canterbury Tales'' is a collection of stories, mostly in verse, written by
Geoffrey Chaucer chiefly from 1387 to 1400. They are held together in a frame story of a pilgrimage on which each member of the group is to tell two tales on the way to
Canterbury
Canterbury (, ) is a cathedral city and UNESCO World Heritage Site, situated in the heart of the City of Canterbury local government district of Kent, England. It lies on the River Stour.
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the primate of ...
, and two on the way back. Fewer than a quarter of the projected tales were completed before Chaucer's death.
It is uncertain in what order Chaucer intended the tales to appear; moreover it is very possible that, as a work-in-progress, no final authorial order of tales ever existed.
Several different orders are evident in the manuscripts of the work; in addition certain orders and structures of the Tales have been proposed by scholars.
Key
The table below enumerates all the pilgrims mentioned in the General Prologue, plus two that materialise later in the tales, and the stories they tell. It also compares the orders in which stories appear in various sources.
* Pilgrim — The designation of each pilgrim in the General Prologue, commonly accepted alternate designation within the name of their Tale, and membership in group of pilgrims if any. The pilgrims' names link to their Tales' articles.
* GP (
General Prologue
The General Prologue is the first part of ''The Canterbury Tales'' by Geoffrey Chaucer. It introduces the frame story, in which a group of pilgrims travelling to the shrine of Thomas Becket in Canterbury agree to take part in a storytelling comp ...
) — This column lists the order in which each character is mentioned in the General Prologue.
Scholarly arrangements
* Tyr (Tyrwhitt's Fragments) —
Thomas Tyrwhitt
Thomas Tyrwhitt (; 27 March 173015 August 1786) was an English classical scholar and critic.
Life
He was born in London, where he also died. He was educated at Eton College and Queen's College, Oxford. He was elected a fellow of Merton College ...
, editor of the first modern edition of ''The Canterbury Tales'' (1775–78) accepted the order of the Ellesmere manuscript, and furthermore determined – primarily based on linkages in the Tales' Prologues – which tales were "inseparably linked" to each other; this resulted in his postulating 10 Fragments, each of which is seen as an authorially integral narrative unit, but with no certain indication of what is to come before or after. This structure has remained influential, and is the arrangement followed in the ''Riverside Chaucer'' (3rd ed.). (To sort the table by Tyrwhitt's order, use the Ellesmere column.)
* CS (Chaucer Society's Groups) — Using Tyrwhitt's foundation,
Henry Bradshaw rearranged some Fragments, largely with the goal of constructing the most plausible itinerary for the pilgrims based on clues of time and location in the text. The "Bradshaw shift" results in Groups A-I. This arrangement was embraced by
Frederick James Furnivall
Frederick James Furnivall (4 February 1825 – 2 July 1910) was an English philologist, best known as one of the co-creators of the '' New English Dictionary''. He founded a number of learned societies on early English literature and made pio ...
and the Chaucer Society, as well as
Walter William Skeat
Walter William Skeat, (21 November 18356 October 1912) was a British philologist and Anglican deacon. The pre-eminent British philologist of his time, he was instrumental in developing the English language as a higher education subject in th ...
and others.
Manuscripts: Over 80 manuscripts containing all or part of ''The Canterbury Tales'' exist. The six tabulated below represent the four main orders (El, Cx, La, Pw) in which tales appear in the manuscripts, plus two significant anomalous arrangements (Hg, Ha). All manuscript orders (except Hg*) were collated by Furnivall.
* El (Ellesmere 26 C 9, the
Ellesmere manuscript
The Ellesmere Chaucer, or Ellesmere Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, is an early 15th-century illuminated manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer's ''Canterbury Tales'', owned by the Huntington Library, in San Marino, California (EL 26 C 9). It is co ...
) — A deluxe illuminated manuscript, probably made within 20 years of Chaucer's death.
* Hg (Hengwrt 154 (Peniarth 392D), the
Hengwrt manuscript) — Probably the oldest surviving manuscript and, since the mid-20th century, considered the most important.
* Hg*
Manly &
Rickert argue that some time after Hengwrt was copied, leaves from the back of the manuscript were mistakenly moved to the middle, and the manuscript was bound – and remains today – in this mistaken order. This column shows the ''presumed original'' order.
* Cx (
Caxton Caxton may refer to:
Places
* Caxton Street, Brisbane, Australia
* Caxton, Cambridgeshire, a village in Cambridgeshire, UK
** Caxton Gibbet, a knoll near the village
* Caxton Hall, a historic building in London, UK
* Caxton Building, a historic ...
's
editio princeps) — The earliest printed edition of The Canterbury Tales (1478), it is typically accorded manuscript status, as it is based on a now-lost manuscript.
[Benson 1987, p 1118.]
* La (Lansdowne 851)
* Pw (Petworth House MS 7)
* Ha (
Harley MS. 7334)
Table
''(+G = Manuscript includes the non-Chaucerian
Tale of Gamelyn
''The Tale of Gamelyn'' is a romance written in c. 1350 in a dialect of Middle English, considered part of the Matter of England.Cartlidge, Neil and DS Brewer. ''Boundaries in medieval romance'', 2008, , 9781843841555. pp. 29–42. It is presented ...
after the Cook's initial abortive attempt to tell a tale.)''
Notes
References
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{{The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales