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Dismantling the Canterbury Book

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

James Dean
James Dean*
Affiliation:
Tufts UniversityMedford, Massachusetts
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Abstract

Although several Chaucer scholars have argued for the last four tales of the Canterbury Tales as a concluding sequence, it has not been generally recognized that Chaucer ends his book deliberately and skillfully beginning with the Second Nun's Tale. Through the concluding stories Chaucer disengages himself and his audience from the fiction making of the Tales, moving toward his own voice in the Retraction, and he introduces themes of transformation in tales concerning the conversion of souls (Second Nun), the transmutation of metals through alchemy (Canon's Yeoman), the metamorphosis of Apollo's crow (Manciple), and the transforming powers of contrition and penitence (Parson, Retraction). The consistency of these closure themes provides evidence for the authority of the Ellesmere manuscript as against the highly regarded and recently published Hengwrt manuscript of the Tales, which has a different concluding tale order and which does not contain the Canon's Yeoman's Tale.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 100 , Issue 5 , October 1985 , pp. 746 - 762
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1985

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