Geoffrey Chaucer: 
The Electronic Canterbury Tales

Daniel T. Kline | U of Alaska Anchorage | Dept of English | CV | Pedagogy  

"But now to yow, ye loveres that ben here,  Was Troilus nought in a kankedort?"

Troilus and Criseyde 
2: 1751-52

Web Kankedort.net

Electronic Canterbury Tales - Kankedort.Net Index Page

1. The Canterbury Tales in Middle English

2. The Canterbury Tales in Translation

3. General Historical & Cultural Backgrounds

4. Sources, Analogues, & Related Texts

5. Online Notes & Commentary

6. Online Articles & Books

7. Student Projects & Essays

8. Online Bibliography

9. Syllabi & Course Descriptions

10. Images & Multimedia

11. Audio Files & Language Helps

12. Potpourri

13. Additional Resources

14. Scholar's Dozen

15. What's New? Recent Additions to the ECT

An Online Compendium and Companion
to Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

WHAT'S NEW?

• See the ECT's Revision History for an overview

• Manuscripts, Printed Editions, and e-Texts - A new page in the Electronic Canterbury Tales!

• Last revision on 05 January 2007

The "Frame Tale," Continuations, and Chaucerian Apocrypha

The "Frame Tale" is the term used to describe the story of the tale-telling contest between pilgrims and their interactions with the Host, Harry Bailly, and it details their interactions during the incomplete pilgrimage to Canterbury. Comprised of the "links" between tales (both prologues and endlinks), the Frame Tale contains some of the most famous moments in the Canterbury Tales, like the Miller's drunken intervention after the Knight's Tale and the Pardoner's interruption of the Wife of Bath.

After Chaucer's death and the compilation of the Canterbury Tales into manuscripts, later authors attempted to complete unfinished tales or add to the Canterbury collection. At the same time, other anonymous medieval tales were sometimes added to different segments of the Canterbury Tales and were then attributed to Chaucer. Those "continuations" or "additions" have been found by modern scholarship to be "apocryphal"--that is, attributed to Chaucer but likely not actually written by him.

Nonetheless, these tales, links, and fragments have exerted profound influence on the development of Chaucer studies and our understanding of Chaucer's work and its "reception"--that is, how subsequent readers have received and understood Chaucer and his work.

Manuscripts, Printed Editions, and e-Texts - A new page in the Electronic Canterbury Tales provides access to different manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, a topic closely related to the Frame Tale, Continuations, and Chaucerian Apocrypha.

New on this Web Page

Arnie Saunders (Goucher College) has written a brief explanation for how the manuscripts of CT were placed in "families," and how manuscripts get accidentally altered in production.  The errors actually turned out to help us discover the relationships among the MSS.

David Scott Wilson-Okamura (East Carolina U) has developed a fine classroom exercise, with bibliography, illustrating Examples of Chaucerian Revision and "describing examples of authorial revision in the Canterbury Tales. Probably best used in conjunction with a facsimile of the Hengwrt manuscript." In Wilson-Okamura's own words, "Note: author buys Ralph Hanna's booklet theory of Hengwrt MS without reservation, ignores N. F. Blake at his peril." Also available as a .pdf file. 

1.  The Logic of the "Fragment" (Joe Wittig, UNC)

2.  The Canterbury "Links" in Middle English

Fragment I / Group A	The General Prologue The Miller's Prologue The Reeve's Prologue The Cook's Prologue
The Introduction to the Man of Law's Tale The Man of Law's Prologue The Man of Law's Epilogue	Fragment II / Group B1
Fragment III / Group D	The Wife of Bath's Prologue (The Pardoner's Interruption of the Wife, lines 163-69) The Friar's Prologue The Summoner's Prologue
The Clerk's Prologue The Merchant's Prologue The Merchant's Epilogue	Fragment 4 / Group E
Fragment 5 / Group F	The Squire's Prologue The Franklin's Words to the Squire The Franklin's Prologue
The Introduction to the Pardoner's Tale The Pardoner's Prologue	Fragment 6 / Group C
Fragment 7 / Group B2	The Words of the Host to the Prioress The Prioress' Prologue The Prologue to the Tale of Sir Thopas The Host's Interruption of the Tale of Sir Thopas The Monk's Prologue The Knight's Interruption of the Monk's Tale The Epilogue of the Nun's Priest's Tale
The Second Nun's Prologue The Canon's Yeoman's Prologue	Fragment 8 / Group G
Fragment 9 / Group H	The Manciple's Prologue
The Parson's Prologue Chaucer's Retraction	Fragment 10 / Group I
Spurious Links:  Many other links are preserved in early manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales.  However, in the opinion of many scholars, they probably were not written by Chaucer, though a few might indicate Chaucer's revisions.  Rather, often inserted by scribes, the "spurious links" usually represent: (1) an attempt to create a rough anthology out of tales acquired separately or, perhaps,  (2) early readers and editors' alternative ideas about how the Canterbury Tales could be ordered.

3.  Spurious Tales, Continuations, & Chaucerian Apocrypha

From the TEAMS Middle English Text volume, The Canterbury Tales: Fifteenth- Century Continuations and Additions, edited with an Introduction to the Links by John M. Bowers. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, 1992.

  John Lydgate's Prologue to the Siege of Thebes

• Lydgate, a younger contemporary and follower of Chaucer's, composed his Siege of Thebes to be the first tale on the pilgrims' return trip from Canterbury.  Through the Prologue to the Siege, written in imitation of the General Prologue, Lydgate inserts himself into the Canterbury troupe and becomes a tale-teller in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. 
• From the TEAMS Middle English Text volume, The Canterbury Tales: Fifteenth- Century Continuations and Additions, edited with an Introduction to the Prologue by John M. Bowers. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, 1992.

  The Tale of Beryn

• "The Canterbury Interlude" and the Merchant's Tale of Beryn, Part One & The Tale of Beryn, Part Two, from the TEAMS Middle English Text volume, The Canterbury Tales: Fifteenth- Century Continuations and Additions, edited with an Introduction to the Tale of Beryn by John M. Bowers. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, 1992. 

  The Floure and the Leafe

• The Floure and the Leafe, from the TEAMS Middle English Text volume, The Floure and the Leafe; The Assembly of Ladies; The Isle of Ladies, edited with an Introduction to the Floure and the Leafe by Derek Pearsall. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, 1990.

  The Ploughman's Tale

• An idealized figure, the Ploughman, brother to Chaucer's Parson, was associated with The Ploughman's Tale by some early editors. 
• From the TEAMS Middle English Text volume, The Canterbury Tales: Fifteenth- Century Continuations and Additions, edited with an Introduction to the Ploughman's Tale by John M. Bowers. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, 1992.
• These tales are in the tradition of Piers Plowman, Langland's great dream vision, one of the most popular in later medieval England.  Entire B-Text (Schmidt, 1978; 500kb) or Table of Contents (by passus number).

  The Tale of Gamelyn

• The Tale of Gamelyn was added to one group of early Canterbury Tales manuscripts, but was later recognized not to have been authored by Chaucer.
• From the TEAMS Middle English Text volume, Robin Hood and Other Outlaw Tales, edited with an Introduction to the Tale of Gamelyn by Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren. Kalamazoo, MI: Western Michigan University for TEAMS, 1997.
• An online essay by Leslie Campbelll Rampey (Middle Georgia College) on The English Royal Forest and the Tale of Gamelyn.

Long considered a "Scottish Chaucerian," Robert Henryson (c. 1430-c.1506) wrote two poems important to Chaucer's legacy:

• The Testament of Cresseid, and
• The Morall Fabillis of Esope the Phyrgian (UVa E-text Center)

The Fictitious "Rebel's Tale" comes to us courtesy of those cultural jokesters at the ALR Advocate.

The Printer's Tale: An Unknown Chaucerian Pilgrim (David Byram-Wigfield, Capella Archive) purports to be "a surviving galley proof of a page of the Kelmscott Chaucer, published by William Morris in 1896. This facsimile shows the text of an hitherto unpublished incomplete work by Chaucer entitled The Printeres Tale." 

Bartleby.com continues to do a great service to the educational community by making available out-of-copyright editions of valuable older scholarly texts, like The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900, by Arthur Quiller-Couch (1919), which includes these by Chaucer's early followers and later successors:

• Thomas Hoccleve (1368–1450?): Lament for Chaucer
• John Lydgate (1370?–1450?): Vox ultima Crucis
• King James I of Scotland (1394–1437): Spring Song of the Birds
•  Robert Henryson (1425–1500): Robin and Makyne, The Bludy Serk
• William Dunbar (1465–1520?): To a Lady, In Honour of the City of London, On the Nativity of Christ, Lament for the Makers
• John Skelton (1460?–1529): To Mistress Margery Wentworth, To Mistress Margaret Hussey
• Stephen Hawes (d. 1523): The True Knight, An Epitaph

4.  Historical & Cultural Backgrounds

5.  Online Notes & Commentary

David Wilson-Okamura (Macalester U) provides deft Examples of Chaucerian Revision. 

6.  Online Articles

Essays in Medieval Studies, full-text articles from the proceedings of the Illinois Medieval Association, edited by Allen J. Frantzen (Loyola - Chicago).  Some of the articles related to Chaucer and the Canterbury Tales include: 

• Norman D. Hinton, "The Canterbury Tales" as Compilatio," Essays in Medieval Studies 1 (1984), n.p.
• John M. Hill, Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales": The Idea!," Essays in Medieval Studies 2 (1985), n.p.
• Timothy A. Shonk, B.L. Harley MS 7333: The "Publication" of Chaucer in the Rural Areas," Essays in Medieval Studies 15 (1998), n.p.
• After the 2002 volume, new issues of EMS will be available only through subscription to Johns Hopkins Project Muse online journal service.

From the Teaching Chaucer in the 90s  post-print from Exemplaria (ed. Christine Rose, Portland State): Daniel J. Pinti's Teaching Chaucer through the Fifteenth Century

Compositional Finalization in the Canterbury Tales (Frederick Martin, Tulane U), from an ongoing e-project melding critical and cultural theory & medieval studies. See Martin's e-dissertation in progress, Pilgrimage in the Age of Schism: Chaucer, Sociological Poetics, and the Canterbury Tales.

Chaotic Order in the Supertext of The Canterbury Tales (Zach Thundy, Northern Michigan U) applies chaos theory to the order of the Canterbury Tales.

Introduction to the Spurious Links by John M. Bowers

Introduction to the Prologue to the Siege of Thebes by John M. Bowers

Introduction to the Tale of Beryn by John M. Bowers

Introduction to the Floure and the Leafe by Derek Pearsall

Introduction to the Ploughman's Tale by John M. Bowers

Introduction to the Tale of Gamelyn by Stephen Knight and Thomas H. Ohlgren

7.  Student Projects & Essays

Dave Clark's MA thesis (Iowa State U) on Chaucer in the Renaissance is entitled, Reaping What Was Sown: Spenser, Chaucer, and the Plowman's Tale.

Anniina Jokkinen's Essays and Articles on Chaucer includes a number of sample student essays, of varying quality.  Like any other source, student essays must be evaluated rigorously, cited correctly, and  used responsibly.

8.  Online Bibliography

9.  Syllabi & Course Descriptions

10.  Images & Multimedia

11.  Language Helps & Audio Files

12. Potpourri

13.  The Next Step

Google Academic Resources

Google Scholar

The Poor Medieval Scholar's Electronic Bookshelf

(no cost, older academic books, in .pdf form from the 
Google Library Project)

The Electronic Canterbury Tales Bookshop

(recommended books for the study of Chaucer and Late-Medieval England, hosted by Amazon.com)

The Kankedort
Gift Shoppe

(with many serious and some silly offerings for the medievalist in your life)

About This Website

ECT Revision History:
What's New?

Headings, Organization, &
Criteria for Inclusion

Additional Chaucer Pages in The Electronic Canterbury Tales

Chaucer the Pilgrim-Narrator & Author

Chaucer's "Orphan" Pilgrims - Those without a Tale

The Frame Tale, Later Continuations,
& Chaucerian Apocrypha

Manuscripts, Printed Editions, & Electronic Texts

Electronic Chaucer Texts:
What's Available Online?

Chaucer in / and Popular Culture

Troilus and Criseyde

Documentation Primer

Chaucer Pedagogy Page

The Electronic Canterbury Tales 

  © 1998-2007 Daniel T. Kline & www.kankedort.net All rights reserved

This page was last revised on 01.05.07.