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Inappropriate Pointing in the Canon's Yeoman's Tale, G 1236–1239

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Albert E. Hartung
Albert E. Hartung*
Affiliation:
Lehigh University
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Extract

The standard editions of the Canterbury Tales differ in their pointing of G 1236–39. Curiously enough it is the most influential of these editions (those of Skeat and Robinson) that, to my mind, point the passage inappropriately by mistakenly giving a speech that belongs to one character to another. As a result, one of the characters involved seems to be guilty of an inexplicable and unmotivated impropriety, and the dramatic quality of the passage is blurred.

Type
Notes, Documents, and Critical Comment
Information
PMLA , Volume 77 , Issue 4-Part1 , September 1962 , pp. 508 - 509
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1962

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References

1 The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. W. W. Skeat, 6 vols. and supplement (Oxford, 1894–97). The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. F. N. Robinson (Boston, 1933); 2nd ed., Boston, 1957. The citations from Chaucer in my text are from Robinson's 2nd edition.

2 G 1238–39 are omitted in El a-Nl-Py-Ry1 To. John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales (Chicago, 1940), iv, 524. For Manly's earlier statement on the couplet, see Canterbury Tales, ed. John M. Manly (New York, 1928), p. 652.

3 Among the earlier editions which have the passage pointed appropriately are Thomas Wright's edition for the Percy Society (London, 1847); F. S. Ellis' for the Kelmscott Chaucer (London, 1896); and Alfred W. Pollard's edition (London, 1894). Sharing the inappropriate pointing of Skeat and Robinson are those popular editions of Chaucer based on them: Great Books of the Western World, Vol. xxii—Chaucer (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, c. 1952) —based on Skeat's text; The Canterbury Tales (New York: The Modern Library, c. 1929)—based on Skeat's text; and, most recently, The Canterbury Tales, ed. A. C. Cawley (London: Everyman's Library, 1958)—based on Robinson's 2nd edition.