Deborah Barker Stacy
ENG 421 - Kiernan
28 February 2002
Examining the order of the tales in the Harley 7334 and Harley 7335 manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales provides a few extras for the Chaucer scholar. The unclaimed stepchild of the Tale of Gamelyn and a manufactured link between the Franklin and the Physician still stir fresh controversy even six hundred years later. The ordering of the tales in the manuscripts as found in McCormick's Manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales using the Robinson compiled text, The Riverside Chaucer, as a comparative point follows.
Fragment I - The Harley 7335 is missing all of the General Prologue and part of the
Knight's Tale. The Harley 7334 coincides with the Riverside edition but includes the Tale of
Gamelyn after the Cook's Tale.
Fragment II - Both manuscripts are consistent with the Riverside.
Fragment III - The 2nd Nun's Tale is included after the Summoner's Tale in Harley 7335.
Fragment IV - Both manuscripts are consistent with the Riverside.
Fragment V - The 2nd Nun's Tale and Canon's Yeoman Tale are included after the
Franklin's Tale in Harley 7334. A Franklin-Physician link appears in Harley 7335.
Fragment VI - Both manuscripts are consistent with the Riverside.
Fragment VII - Harley 7335 missing from this point forward.
Fragment VIII - Harley 7335 missing section. Harley 7334 included these tales after
Fragment V.
Fragment IX and X - Harley 7335 missing section. Harley 7334 is consistent with the
Riverside.
Although the Tale of Gamelyn appears in 25 of the 84 surviving manuscripts, the true scholars have determined that Chaucer may have had plans to revise the story for The Canterbury Tales, but had not begun to craft the story for one of his characters. The manuscript stands out for the obvious reason of being included in over 1/4 of the existing manuscripts and being excluded from the Canterbury Tales. If the assumption that the Gamelyn story was tossed on the table pending examination and revision with other leaves of parchment only to be gathered and compiled by a scribe, then we have indeed been blessed with the rare glimpse of the 14th century poet frozen in the midst of performing his craft(Cambridge 3).
The Tale of Gamelyn also presents a piece of writing history. Gamelyn is a Robin Hood tale. The inclusion/exclusion of the story makes it unique. The possibility that Chaucer found and purchased a manuscript of the story intending to revise it provides some insight to the age old question of all writers: Where do you get your ideas? The Riverside Chaucer notes many of the Tales that have obvious roots. Chaucer used Boccacio's Teseida for the Knight's Tale and Petrarch's adaptation of Boccacio's Decameron for the Clerk's Tale (Chaucer 6,12).
The tale, unrevised by Chaucer, touches on different levels of societal audience. The aristocratic audience would have found the middle class hero both funny and disturbing. The parody of the middle class as "strong, crude and inherently stupid" would have amused the aristocracy while the concept of a unification of lesser knights, lower officials and of the middle class may have been disturbing(Knight 2).
The Harley 7334 manuscript consists of 286 leaves of parchment. It was bound, rebacked in the 19th century with a gilded Harley crest. The variation in the order of the tales in this manuscript open the discussion for Alex Jones to discuss the construction of the Canterbury Tales(9). Calculating the estimated length of missing leaves, Jones puts the original length of the text at 294 leaves. The "misplacement" of the Man of Law's tale creates problems in that the Man of Law's endlink refers to the next tale as being that of the summoner when in fact it is the Wife of Bath who follows the Man of Law. Reordering the tale in any other position destroys or displaces other headlinks. Placing the Man of Law's Tale before the Shipman's Tale is the most satisfactory order, according to Jones. Based on study of the other manuscripts and order of tales, Jones finds Chaucer's organization to be very probably on numerical system. He sites the number of quires and evaluates the breaks in the work(Jones 15). The Harley 7334 scribe made very little change or deviation from the original. The manuscript has 38 lines to the page, and is copied in one hand throughout. Missing or omitted lines are filled in later with a different hand (Seymour 125-9).
The Harley 7335 manuscript consists of 163 leaves, transcribed around 1450-1475. The order of the tales appears to be related to the Ellesmere, though the closest manuscript is MS. Additional 35286 (Seymour 129-31).
The Franklin's Tale of 'gentillesse' is followed by the 2nd Nun's Tale of saintliness in ms. Harley 7334. One possible reason for this change in order is the thematic similarity between the tales. Both of these tales are considered successful in their stories. And the 'goodness' theme between the two supports the possibility that they could have been set together purposefully.
The Franklin's Tale is joined with the Physician's Tale in ms. Harley 7335 by way of a Franklin-Physician Link:
Yee late that passe quod oure host as now
Sire doctour of phisik y pray you
Telle vs a tale at my prayere
Hit shal be doon if that ye wil hit here
Said this doctour and his tale bygan anoon
Now good men quod he herkenyth euerichon (McCormick 220).
Perhaps the theme of domesticity connects these two tales in this manuscript. The fact that changes at the end of the Franklin's tale exist in both manuscripts indicate a difficult point in the flow of the text. Aside from 600 years of Chaucer scholars, the changes in the text only affect Chaucer's audience. Several of the tales are obviously paired together comically. To change the order of the tales and split these pairs would be detrimental to the Canterbury Tales. Because the Tales were not circulated the way a novel or book would be today, the differences in manuscripts could very well reflect the differences in performances. Given that the audience would necessarily make their feelings about particular tales known, certain tales would have more appeal than others. Because some of the tales are incomplete, perhaps these were not the best received. Unfortunately, this hypothesis is impossible to prove as Chaucer nor his audience recorded any such preferences.
Harley 7334 and Harley 7335 manuscripts reflect several changes in the general order, including the addition of the Tale of Gamelyn and the Franklin-Physician link. Other areas of concern to be explored in the final submission of this research assignment include a copy of the Gamelyn tale as it appears in the Harley 7334, and the occurrence of Modern Instances in the Monk's Tale.
Works Cited
The Cambridge History of English and American Literature in 18 Volumes (1907-21). Volume II. The End of the Middle Ages. VII. Chaucer. Section 18: The Tale of Gamelyn. http://www.bartleby.com/212/0718.html
Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Canterbury Tales." The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Ed. F. N. Robinson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. 3-22.
Jones, Alex. "MS Harley 7334 and the Construction of the Canterbury Tales." English Language Notes. December 1985: Volume 23, Issue 2. 9-16.
Knight, Stephen, ed. "The Tale of Gamelyn: Introduction." Kalamazoo, Michigan: Western Michigan University for TEAMS,1997. http://docserver.ub.rug.nl/camelot/teams/gamint.htm
McCormick, Sir William. The Manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933.
Seymour, M. C. A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts. Vol. II. England: Scolar Press, 1997.
Harley 7334 and 7335 are not as much alike as some of your comments suggest
Recheck facts in Manly-Rickert and/or Seymour (McCormick is not a reliable substitute)
Make explicit the differences of each MS with Riverside
Work on style for presentation