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The Manuscript Source of Caxton's Second Edition of the Canterbury Tales

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Margaret Kilgour
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Extract

In his discussion of “The Early Printed Editions of the Canterbury Tales” Dr. Greg endeavored to discover the affinities of the manuscript which was used by Caxton in correcting his second edition, printed in 1484. “We have already seen,” he notes, “that C8 was printed from C7, but we have Caxton's own word for it that the text was carefully revised by comparison with a new manuscript, and this claim is amply borne out by the table of collations.” In other words, whatever manuscript copy Caxton may have had in hand for his second edition, he seems to have used it only for corrections where he felt his earlier source to be at fault. From a thorough examination of the variant readings in the first 116 lines, Dr. Greg concluded that it “does not appear possible to determine the affinities of Caxton's second manuscript for the opening of the Knight's Tale.” According to Koch, Caxton's second manuscript is to be assigned to the “Eλ-Dd group,” but Dr. Greg finds that none of the MSS of this group is consistently more successful than others in the Petworth or Corpus groups: “It cannot, then, honestly be said that there is anything to choose between these three groups, and we seem bound to suppose either that Koch's conclusion was invalid or that the relations of the manuscripts are not constant.” Nevertheless, Dr. Greg's investigation is not without results. The manuscript used by Caxton, he concludes, must belong either to the Eλ-Dd, the Petworth, or the Corpus group. Among these he narrows the selection by his table to a comparatively small number of MSS, and he points out that of those which he has examined “A [BM Addit. 35286] does best.” However, the variants shown in lines 70 and 74 of the Knight's Tale “seemingly bar this manuscript.”

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 44 , Issue 1: American Bibliography for 1928 , March 1929 , pp. 186 - 201
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1929

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References

Note 1 in page 186 PMLA, XXXIX, 737 ff.

Note 2 in page 186 Chaucer Society Publications. Series 1, 81, 85-86, 90-94, 97.

Note 3 in page 187 For the convenience of the reader I have used the same symbols and lettering as Dr. Greg has used in his article.

Note 4 in page 192 Brusendorff, The Chaucer Tradition 1925, p. 64 (4); and pp. 95 (2); 96; 97; 98-99; 101; 103; 105.

Note 5 in page 193 Ll. 342 and 448.

Note 6 in page 193 According to Brusendorff: “The worst error Harl. 7335 commits is the insertion of a spurious Franklin's Epilogue, joining his tale to that of the Doctor, and made up of the last six lines of the spurious Yeoman-Doctor link, which occurs in the Bodley subgroup. However, Addit. 35286 is not free from mistakes either, reading ‘fuyre’ in F 950, where Harl. 7335 correctly has ‘furye’. In some cases it offers isolated readings which are tempting but hardly authoritative.” Brusendorff (p. 97) says in this connection: “Both these MSS, sometimes joined by Harl. 7334, have several readings in common with other All England representatives, especially with the Ellesmere group which they support in its important addition of A 3155 F. . . . . A careful collation of both with the eight printed MSS would be a real boon to the Chaucer student. . . . . Such a case as E 2230 . . . . definitely proves that the ancestor of the London Group had access to Chaucer's original MS.”

Note 7 in page 193 Brusendorff, op. cit., p. 83. note.

Note 8 in page 199 Miss Hammond (“The Order of the Canterbury Tales,” Mod. Phil. III, 159) gives a thorough comparison of the order in C7 and C8. She points out that “the MS back of Caxton II had its Merchant's Tale displaced, and its F fused. . . . .” A8, fulfills these requirements. “The principal difference between the two Caxtons as regards order is in the F group. . . . . The manuscript loaned to Caxton for his second edition had received additions not in the earlier recension; the Franklin's Tale had been connected with that of the Squire, the link after the Monk's tale had been revised, and the Epilogue to the Nun's Priest's tale added. We may perhaps infer from these additions that the manuscript of Caxton II, while deriving as regards arrangement from the same archetype as the debased and careless Caxton I, was copied at a somewhat later date. That it belonged to the ”A type“ or Ellesmere group, as a whole, we have as yet no proof.

Note 9 in page 200 See Miss Hammond Chaucer Bibliographical Manual p. 170.

“The order ABDEFCBGHI is found in: Ellesmere, . . . . Add. 35286. . . . . The text is usually superior to that of other groups, and although Bradshaw viewed this type as due to some editorial supervision exercised after Chaucer's death, I would venture to differ from that opinion, and to regard the group as Chaucerian, because of the absence of spurious links and the ML endlink, features which it seems to me no copyist or imitator, only the author himself could have arranged.”

Note 10 in page 201 The omission of certain lines E. 11. 1510-11; C 11 41-3, 81-2, is also noted in the description. In C 11. 41-3 the scribe's eye has skipped from “Was she” is 1. 40 to “was she” in 1. 43. C. 81-2 is a parenthetic couplet which has been omitted.