Summer Perry
ENG 421 - Kiernan
28 February 2002

A Tale of Two Manuscripts: Egerton 2864 (En³) and McClean 181 (Fi)

The ordering and textual differences of various manuscripts of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales have been problematic for scholars over many centuries. The main problem is that Chaucer did not, with any probability, leave a definitive "original" version of his poem that has survived to this day (Manly and Rickert 2:489). Another problem, especially for the early editors of the Tales, was the order in which to present them by elaborating or improvising on what was thought to be the best order (Dempster 1123). Of the eighty-something manuscripts that have survived - more manuscripts than all other works except the Pricke of Conscience - only fifty-five are reasonably complete versions (Silvia 153-4). Only fifteen of the fifty-five whole versions contain all of the tales, but "no manuscript is perfect in the sense that it contains every line that Chaucer wrote" (Donaldson 94). Two of the more complete extant manuscripts, the Egerton 2864 (En³), and the McClean 181 (Fi), represent different orders for the tales as well as different textual arrangements throughout.

The Egerton 2864 manuscript not only contains the Canterbury Tales, but also includes John Lydgate's Siege of Thebes and a list of religious events up to 1349 (Manly and Rickert 1:143). The manuscript, scribed on paper with brown ink, has no illumination and has space for a six line capital at the beginning and one to three lines for capitals elsewhere, but has no attempted rubrication (Manly and Rickert 1:144). It dates from around 1460 to 1480, and is eaten with wormholes towards the end (Manly and Rickert 1:144-5). It was owned by many, including Sir Henry Ingilby and Lawrence W. Hodson, but was sold in the Hodson sale to the British Museum in 1906 (Manly and Rickert 1:147).

The McClean 181 manuscript contains only Canterbury Tales, and includes the un-Chaucerian tale of Gamelyn as a continuation of the Cook's Tale, which En³ excludes. This manuscript on fine vellum dates around 1450 to 1469, and is currently in excellent condition (Manly and Rickert 1:161-2). It has no illumination, but does have some incomplete and irregular rubrication, with space left for three to four lines for capitals (Manly and Rickert 1:162). It was owned very early in its existence by Thomas Kent and passed through owners until Frank McClean bought it in 1899 and subsequently gave it to the Fitzwilliam Museum in 1904 (Manly and Rickert 1:166-8).

The surviving manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales are all grouped into four arrangements based on the general order of the tales; these categories are a, b, c, and d. In "The Manuscripts of Chaucer's Works and Their Use," Donaldson describes these categories as a type of "family tree" that is structured as follows:

O

/ \

A b D

/ \

B C

In this diagram, O represents the author's original, A, B, C, and D represent the four categories of manuscripts, where B and C stem from the same hypothetical ancestor b (Donaldson 101).

The arrangement of En³ follows the pattern of the a group. Using the letter system of the Chaucer Society, the order is as follows: A (Prologue through Cook's Tale), B1 (Man of Law), D (Wife of Bath through Summoner), E (Clerk through Merchant), F (Squire through Franklin), C (Physician through Pardoner), B2 (Shipman through Nun's Priest), G (Second Nun through Canon Yeoman), H (Manciple), I (Parson), and R (Retraction) (Manly and Rickert 1:145). This manuscript very closely agrees with Additional 5140 (Ad1) in dialect, spelling, glosses, and order so much, including the omission of certain lines and an extra six lines at the end of the Nun's Priest's Epilogue which exist in these and only two other manuscripts, that Ad1 was probably copied from En³ (Manly and Rickert 1:554).

The order of Fi is an irregular example of the d group. The pattern follows: A, X (Gamelyn), B1, Fa (Man of Law Endlink reading "squyer," Squire's Prologue and Tale, and Squire/Franklin Link reading "marchaunt"), Eb (Merchant's Prologue and Tale and short form of Merchant's Epilogue), Fb (Seven-line Franklin Headlink and Franklin's Tale), D, Ea (Headlink to Clerk and Clerk's Tale), G, C, B2, H, I, and R (Manly and Rickert 1:162). This particular manuscript is unique among the Canterbury Tales manuscripts in the way the tales are ordered, in the absence of almost 2000 lines throughout the text, and in the imperfection of the text (Manly and Rickert 1:162). It does, however, agree with the Northumberland (Nl) in omitting lines 1423 through 1456 in the Franklin's Tale (Manly and Rickert 1:163).

The vast differences in order would most definitely affect the overall reading of these two manuscripts against each other. The reader of the En³ would, of course, get more content in what is considered a more reliable order; the reader of Fi would miss out on quite a bit of text in a less normalized order but would read the Tale of Gamelyn and perhaps think it to be Chaucer's work. The main problem would arise in the reading of the E and F sections. While these are each arranged in En³ and most other manuscripts as uninterrupted fragments, Fi breaks them up into segments and orders them in quite an unusual way, which would perhaps be problematic for readers expecting an ordering more like that of the manuscripts in other groups.

Apart from the order, the characteristics of dialect and spelling are stylistically different in each manuscript. En³ closely agrees with Ad1, as previously mentioned, but there are some spelling features in the former that are not found in the latter (Manly and Rickert 1:146). The scribe of En³ used the occasional v for w and vise versa (e.g. "wertuous vommen" instead of "vertuous wommen") and also used k for c before a back vowel (Manly and Rickert 1:146). The spelling in Fi has its own features, using the occasional 3 (yogh) for gh, frequent h for gh, occasional þ (thorn) for th, frequent k for c and vise versa, frequent s for c, nght for hgth, and frequent v for u (Manly and Rickert 1:163).

Each manuscript also has its textual differences from others. Some are major, such as the addition of extra lines or the omission of others; some are minor, such as adding an e to the end of a word. It seems that the major differences affect the meaning of the reading more than that of the minor differences, and thus would affect the reader's understanding of the Tales. A few major differences from each manuscript and the possible outcomes in a reader's consideration of the text are outlined here.

In the Wife of Bath's Prologue, En³, as well as the other manuscripts of the a and b groups, includes lines 44a through 44f, while no manuscript outside these groups has these lines in their totality, and only some have partial indications of these lines (Manly and Rickert 3: 454). These lines, as well as lines 575 to 584, 605 to 612, 619 to 626, and 717 to 720, are thought to be a late insertion by Chaucer himself (Manly and Rickert 3: 236). In lines 44a to 44f, the Wife of Bath talks about the "scoleiyng" she has received from her "fyve husbondes," and remarks that "[d]iverse scoles maken parfyt clerkes" (Riverside Chaucer 105). From the Wife's analogy in these lines, the reader can figure out just how "learned" she is, and they can have a better understanding of how having five husbands has influenced her character, whereas a reader without these lines would not get this comparison and its meaning.

In the Merchant’s Tale, En³ completely omits lines 1305 and 1306 (Manly and Rickert 3: 379). In many manuscripts these lines are omitted or edited, and Ralph Hanna III asserts that this to an incomplete couplet in an original manuscript or to censorship by the scribes (1128). Different versions of these lines exist, according to each individual manuscript, but all relate to the Merchant’s knight Januarie quoting Theophrastus, author of the anti-marriage tract Golden Book on Marriage (Riverside Chaucer 154: 1294). But, for Theophrastus’ negative attitude on marriage, Januarie, who is naively eager to marry, says “ther God his bones corse!” and calls a wife “Goddes yifte verrailly” (Riverside Chaucer 155: 1308-1311). The omission of these lines, which read in the Riverside Chaucer as “And if thou take a wyf unto thyn hold/ Ful lightly maystow been a cokewold,” (155: 1305-6) seems ironic, since Januarie’s young wife May cheats on him; however, these lines were probably cut because they were awkward in their fragmentary state. Regardless, their absence seems only to effect the meaning of this small part of the Merchant’s Tale rather than the overall meaning of it.

At the end of the Epilogue to the Nun's Priest's Tale, En³ and only three other manuscripts - Ad1 , Cardigan (Cn), and English 113 (Ma) - include an additional six lines which are considered spurious because of their rare appearance (Manly and Rickert 4: 516). These appear in En³ as the following:

These lines provide more of a transition into the Second Nun's Prologue and Tale to readers of the four manuscripts, which may make it seem to flow better than without. However, these lines probably do not matter much to the overall meaning of the Tales.

Fi has its own particular textual features. It uses the shortened seven-line form of the Merchant's Epilogue (Lines 2427 to 2432) and then, in an unusual arrangement, links the Franklin to the Merchant using a seven-line prologue followed by lines 7 and 8 of the Introduction to the Squire's Tale (Manly and Rickert 3: 481-2). Other members of the d group use these same methods of linking, but most order it after the Clerk's Tale; additionally, Ii.iii.26 (Ii) and Hatton (Ht) order the Franklin after the Merchant, but they do not use the same methods of linking as Fi (Manly and Rickert 2: 497). This seven-line link to the Franklin, is as follows:

The reader of the above lines in the Fi manuscript would not get the explanation that the tale comes from a Bretons' song the Franklin had memorized as would readers of the Prologue to the Franklin's Tale as it appears in the Riverside Chaucer (178: 709-28). In both versions, however, the Franklin is self-effacing, in the Fi version asking to be "excused thogh [he] vnworthy [is]" and in the Riverside version saying he is a "burel man" and asking to be "excused [his] rude speche" (178: 716-8). While the general meaning is similar in both, the Fi reader would not get the entire background information for the reading of the tale.

In the Franklin's Tale, Fi and Nl both omit lines 1423 through 1456, along with Bodley 414 (BO1) and Phillipps 8136 (Ph2), which omit through 1458 (Manly and Rickert 1: 163). Manly and Rickert say they would "gladly absolve Chaucer" of having written this passage called the Complaint of Dorigen (4: 487). In it Dorigen states that she would rather kill herself than be untrue to her husband Arveragus, and then expounds upon this by listing example after example of women who have killed themselves for the sake of chastity or for their husband's honor. While this passage seems superfluous, since she has already cited many other such examples in the previous lines, the reader of Fi would lose both the historical aspects of her lengthy "argument" and the strengthening of the Tale's theme of faithfulness in marriage.

All in all, these differences in the manuscripts, both in order and in text, offer a rich array of variety from which to read different versions of the same work. The fact that there are so many existing manuscripts today, not to mention those that did not survive, shows that Canterbury Tales was both a popular and much scrutinized text. Indeed, it "does not travel from the poet's day to ours in a single, simple form" (Silvia 161). But while Chaucer's line-by-line original intention, if such ever existed, may never be ascertained by modern editors, there is no doubt that the Tales, in whatever order and in whatever textual tradition, will remain an intriguing part of Middle English study.

Works Cited

Dempster, Germaine. "The Fifteenth-Century Editors of the Canterbury Tales and the Problem of Tale Order." PMLA 64.2 (Jun.-Dec. 1949): 1123-42.

Donaldson, E. T. "The Manuscripts of Chaucer's Works and Their Use." Writers and Their Background: Geoffrey Chaucer. Ed. Derek Brewer. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975. 85-108.

Hanna III, Ralph. "Textual Notes to the Canterbury Tales." The Riverside Chaucer. 3rd ed. Ed. Larry D. Benson. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987.

Manly, John M. and Edith Rickert, et al. The Text of the Canterbury Tales Studied on the Basis of All Known Manuscripts. 8 vols. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940.

Silvia, Daniel S. "Some Fifteenth-Century Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales." Chaucer and Middle English Studies. Ed. Beryl Rowland. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1974. 153-3.

Very well done.
Would readers of Fi MS expect an ordering more like that of the manuscripts in other groups?
It would be interesting to study Fi in isolation, as its late medieval readers probably did.