2 - Manuscripts, Scribes, Circulation

Summary

The eighty-four surviving manuscripts containing all or part of the Canterbury Tales present something of a headache for modern editors of the work, who must select from among these competing authorities in order to present the work in a single form. But this large number of diverse copies, and the nine extant fragments that probably attest to once-complete MSS, can tell us much about the way Chaucer’s work was read and repackaged in the century following his death. When we look beyond the famous Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts, early and authoritative witnesses to Chaucer’s text, we discover that just as valuable are the so-called “bad texts,” with their abundance of scribal readings, linking passages, and rearrangements of the tales; copies like these have much to tell us about scribal attitudes to Chaucer’s work and its reception and about the development and professionalization of the London book trade.