Pope's Chaucer

Gameson, Richard

Abstract

Oxford, Trinity College, MS 49, produced in the second half of the fifteenth century, probably before 1483, is one of the most divergent and least studied copies of The Canterbury Tales (plate 10.1).1 Even for a work that was left unfinished, without a fixed order, and whose elements could circulate independently, the arrangement of the text here is idiosyncratic.2 Moreover, within the individual Tales themselves many lines are omitted or transposed, and the scribe appears to have been ready to correct and to emend as he saw fit (plate 10.2).3 The effects of deficient exemplars, slack copying discipline, and casual remedial action are most evident in The Merchant’s Tale. Initially transcribed in a drastically imperfect form, this was then expanded and completed by the insertion of ten supplementary leaves into one of the original quires.4 Yet the augmentation was done with little concern for an efficient join between the new and the old: the insertion terminates with a blank page (fol. 139v) which is then followed by the original abortive ending (fol. 140r (plate 10.3)), now an anomalous duplication of nineteen lines that appear at the beginning of the insertion as well (fol. 130r (plate 10.4)).5 In brief, Trinity MS 49 is a vivid witness to the continuing fluidity of Chaucer’s text in the second half of the fifteenth century – on the eve of, and then alongside, its appearances in print.

Citation

Gameson, R. (2022). Pope's Chaucer. In C. Saunders, R. Lawrie, & L. Atkinson (Eds.), Middle English Manuscripts and their Legacies (237-254). Brill Academic Publishers. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004472167_012

• Online Publication Date: Dec 6, 2021
• Publication Date: 2022
• Deposit Date: Sep 1, 2021
• Publicly Available Date: Dec 8, 2021
• Publisher: Brill Academic Publishers
• Pages: 237-254
• Series Title: Library of the Written Word
• Series Number: 102
• Book Title: Middle English Manuscripts and their Legacies
• Chapter Number: 10
• ISBN: 9789004472167
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004472167_012
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1653480