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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Those who have suggested theories of the number of days Chaucer intended the pilgrimage in the Canterbury Tales to last have either confined themselves to a consideration of the journey to Canterbury or have assumed that it would take the pilgrims the same length of time for their return. Thus Miss Rickert, finding that groups such as the one described by Chaucer ordinarily traveled thirty miles in a day, “insisted on two days each way.” And Manly, after discussing the time it took the pilgrims to reach Canterbury and arriving at no definite conclusion, decided that the question was of no importance, “since the whole conception of a series of tales told while riding by so large a group of pilgrims is, however entertaining, entirely unrealistic.” The conception, though perhaps unrealistic, has been accepted by generations of readers as thoroughly as any artistic postulate. The stage of the Canterbury Tales is the road from London to Canterbury, and the acts of the finished work would have been the days of the pilgrimage. The evidence for Chaucer's intentions is slight, yet, with the confirmation provided by contemporaries familiar with conditions of pilgrimage, it is sufficient to indicate a five-day journey.
Note 1 in page 820 John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales (Chicago, 1940), ii, 493–494.
Note 2 in page 820 For distances and a description of the route the pilgrims took, see Henry Littlehales, Some Notes on the Road from London to Canterbury in the Middle Ages, Chaucer Soc, 2nd Ser., No. 30 (1898).
Note 3 in page 820 Quotations are from the Cambridge edition of Chaucer, edited by Fred N. Robinson.
Note 4 in page 821 “The Duration of the Canterbury Pilgrimage,” PMLA, xxi (1906), 478 fi. 5 Quoted from the edition of Axel Erdmann, EETS, Extra Ser., cviii (London, 1911), II. 154 f.
Note 6 in page 822 Tatlock argues for the connection: “The Canterbury Tales in 1400,” PMLA, L (1935), 115–118. Root is against it: “Chaucer's Summoner,” TLS, 23 Jan. 1943, p. 43.
Note 7 in page 822 Since there is likely to be an instinctive opposition to a new rearrangement of the tales, I offer the following justification. Two orders are at present recognized, the Chaucer Society order and the Robinson-Ellesmere order. The first is based on the conception of a one-way journey, despite the clear statement in the General Prologue, the presence of the Host on the pilgrimage, the language and time-and-space considerations of the Parson's Prologue, and the reversal of at least one dramatically intended sequence (Pardoner's interruption of Wife of Bath, Pardoner's Prologue and Tale). The other is based on a MS order, which has been critically analysed by Tatlock (PMLA, L, 128–130) and admitted by those most thoroughly acquainted with the MSS. to have no special authority—Manly and Rickert, ii, 475, ff.; Tatlock, PMLA, L, 131; Dempster, PMLA, LXIII (1948), 456 ff., and PMLA, LXIV (1949), 1123 ff. Their statements discredit the authority of all MS orders.). The advantages of the order I am proposing are three: First, it is consistent; there is no need to ignore passages in the frame of the tales or wrench their meaning. Secondly, the order reveals drama where previously there had seemed to be inept repetition (the Host's references to his wife and to the virility of two of the clergy). Finally, the order reveals the same aesthetic intention on a big scale that has been gradually uncovered and is still being uncovered in the parts of the Canterbury Tales. Chaucer actually had a plan for the pilgrimage, and though he occasionally shifted tales and either increased or decreased the total number to be told, he worked far more systematically than has previously been supposed.
Note 8 in page 822 The Squire's “pryme,” V (F) 73, is a contradiction, but since it occurs in the body of an unfinished tale I have considered it a lesser evil than separating Clerk, Merchant, and Franklin from the Wife of Bath, whom they echo and mention. No order will permit the pilgrims to pass Sittingbourne in iii (D) and have it still “pryme” for the Squire's Tale without the intervention of a night between iii (D) and iv (E). The following alternative sequence for the homeward journey provides mechanical consistency at some cost to dramatic continuity: Fourth day: ix (H) early morning “Bobbe-up-and-doun” Interval ii (D) afternoon past Sittingbourne Interval vi (c) Fifth day: iv (?), V (f) prime Interval x (i) 4 o'clock near Southwark This order would present the Pardoner more quickly after his interruption of the Wife of Bath and bring the marriage discussion to a consummation on the final day.
Note 9 in page 823 Root, “The Manciple's Prologue,” MLN, XLIV (1929), 493 ff., and Manly, “Tales of the Homeward Journey,” SP, xxviii (1931), 613 ff., favor this position for the Manciple's Tale. Work, “The Position of the Tales of the Manciple and the Parson,” JEGP, xxxi (1932), 62 ff., and Tatlock, “The Canterbury Tales in 1400,” PMLA, L (1935), 123, are opposed. Tatlock presents three points: that Chaucer would hardly begin the second half before completing the first (but Chaucer was working on several parts of the pilgrimage without completing any); that there is no mention that they are starting the return journey (or approaching their destination of Canterbury); that the Manciple is one of the pilgrims who has not told a tale on the outward journey, and Chaucer would hardly write a second tale for him before he had written the first (assuming that the change in plan was from four tales to two and not four to one or one to four). The evidence is slight on both sides. The advantage of Root and Manly is that they offer some positive evidence.
Note 10 in page 824 The “town” refers to his earlier threat rather than an over-night stopping-place. They could hardly have reached Sittingbourne, some distance away when the Summoner speaks, and ridden on to Rochester (or in the other direction to Ospring) during the three tales of iii (D), 11. 847 to 2294. The Summoner's three tales are the one about friars in hell, the one about the Friar's disappointment and anger, and the mechanically connected one of the way to divide a “gift” among friars.
Note 11 in page 824 For discussion of this problem, see articles referred to in n. 9. Tatlock's point that the Host addresses the Parson as if he did not know him only seems to be an objection. It is actually part of the drama of the pilgrimage. Tatlock's claim in note 60 (PMLA, i, 122) that “ ‘ten of the clokke’ (1. 5) was certainly written by Chaucer” is not allowed by Manly and Rickert, ii, 455, who attribute the confusion to the fact that Arabic 4 looked like Roman x in 15th-century script and give other instances of the same mistake in the Canterbury Tales. The word “Manciple” in line 1 of the Parson's Prologue is written over an erasure in the Hengwrt MS. and seems likely to be scribal in origin. For a discussion of the possibilities, see Dempster, PMLA, LXIV (1949), 1129 f., n. 22. Her final judgment is that the evidence is “hopelessly inconclusive.”
Note 12 in page 825 If they are arriving in Canterbury, it is still inconsistent with the Host's plan for the Parson to be telling his first tale. Possibly the Host's plan was intended by Chaucer to be over-ambitious: it would be modified by the realities of the journey. Or the original plan may have been for one tale per pilgrim, changed when Chaucer neared the end of the first cycle of tales without beginning to exhaust the dramatic possibilities of the pilgrimage. See Manly, Canterbury Tales (New York, 1928), p. 68.