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Studies In The Chaucerian Apocrypha

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Studies In The Chaucerian Apocrypha

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STUDIES IN THE CHAUCERIAN APOCRYPHA
by
Kathleen Rose Forni
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
May 1995
Copyright 1995 Kathleen Rose Forni
UMI Number: 9614021
UMI Microform 9614021
Copyright 1996, by UMI Company. All rights reserved.
This microform edition is protected against unauthorized
copying under Title 17, United States Code.
UMI
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
This dissertation, w ritten by
Kathleen Rose Forni
under the direction of h..&K...... Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillm ent of re
quirements for the degree of
D O CTO R OF PH ILOSOPH Y
Dean of G raduate Studies
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. The Early Developm ent of the Apocrypha
3. Tyrw hitt and the Chaucer Canon
4. Usk's Testam ent of Love, the Plow m an's Tale and Chaucer's Early
Reception
5. Henryson's Testam ent of Cresseid, Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde and
Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida
6. Apocryphal Elements in the Canterbury Tales
7. Apocryphal Elements in the Canterbury Tales: The Bradshaw Shift, the
Ellesmere O rder, and Chaucer's Intended Tale O rder
8. Authorial Intention, Artistic Integrity, and the Romantic Ideology of
Textual A uthority
Kathleen Form Joseph Dane
Studies in the Chaucerian Apocrypha
The Chaucerian apocrypha has been largely ignored since the
turn of the century. This study examines the textual and aesthetic
criteria used to adjudicate the Chaucer canon, and the effects these
works had on Chaucer's reception. I argue that the distinction
between the apocryphal and authorial remains problematic, to such
an extent that the idea of an authorial text of the Canterbury Tales is
a fiction.
A large body of apocryphal material later was claimed as
Chaucerian because of a conceptual misunderstanding of early
editions. The first collections of Chaucer's works were modelled on
the m anuscript miscellanies throughout which his works were
scattered. These early editions were anthologies, rather than
m odern editions, which collect the works of a single author.
Everything that was included in the first collections of Chaucer's
works was included in later editions, so that by 1721, two-thirds of
Urry's edition contained works that we consider spurious.
Given the popularity of several apocryphal pieces, scholars
have argued Chaucer's early reputation was distorted and "ruined"
by these works. I argue there is very little evidence that the
apocrypha ruined Chaucer's reputation or the reception of his
genuine works. His uneven reputation until the late eighteenth
century can more clearly be attributed to the obsolescence of his
language and his perceived obscenity.
I go on to argue that because scribes did not share our
Romantic conception of proprietary authorship, an apocryphal
element is built into any attem pt to reconstruct an authorial
Chaucerian text. The Canterbury Tales is a product of socialized and
collaborative authorship, yet critical and editorial approaches to this
text are grounded in a Romantic conception of literary production. A
more socialized concept of textual authority would have more
conceptual validity' and would acknowledge the promiscuous texual
practices of those who transm itted Chaucer's works.
C hapter O ne
1
Introduction
G row ing out of current re-evaluations of the literary canon and
canon formation, there has been a renew ed interest in the Chaucerian
apocrypha. In 1977 Kane declared that one of the outstanding problems of
M iddle English scholarship is that "no one has w orked out a rationale of
ascription":
Certainly none is detectable in the discussion of
authorship of M iddle English literature by the first
three or four generations of our predecessors in the
field. A nd it may be that none was developed in
more recent times simply because the unw ieldiness
and mass of the earlier publications induced
acquiescence in the views about authorship there
expressed. ("Outstanding Problems" 232)
More recently Heffernan (1990) has stated "The single most im portant
aspect of the formation of Chaucer's canon is the record of critical
judgem ents which adjudicated between the apocryphal and the authorial
works" and he calls for a re-examination of the "heuristic process out of
w hich the canon evolved" (155). Similarly, in the Preface to the only
annotated bibliography on the apocrypha, Peck (1988) claims "The
Chaucer apocrypha is at present the most neglected area of Chaucer and
fifteenth-century studies”:
Consisting of those works not by Chaucer but which
were once associated with his name, the poems and
tales of the apocrypha have suffered a curiously
paradoxical fate: having once enjoyed an
unw arranted esteem by having been included in the
blackletter editions of Chaucer in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, they were then beset with
scurrilous opprobrium , as editors, beginning with
Tyrwhitt, plucked them of their false glories and cast
them out. Once so chastened and flung aside, their
curse has been a chilly oblivion. Since they are
neither one thing or the other, few literary judges
have given them so much as a literary hearing. (243)
This renew ed interest in the Chaucer apocrypha signifies a call to
reexamine the accepted Chaucerian canon and perhaps to reclaim the
apocrypha as genuine works. It is true, as Peck observes, that those works
once attached to Chaucer's name have been largely ignored in the
twentieth century, although some would seem to possess a literary merit
deserving study. This study does not attem pt to reinstate any of these
pieces into the Chaucer canon. However, the reception and adjudication
of the apocrypha merits study because historically these works have
played an integral role in the conception of Chaucer as an author and in
the formation of Chaucer's canon. The purpose of this project is to
reexamine how the accepted Chaucerian canon was determ ined, and to
explore the effects the apocrypha had on the reception of Chaucer’s
genuine works and on the creation and conception of Chaucer as an
author.
The w ord "apocrypha" itself is a relatively new term in Chaucerian
studies. Thom as Tyrw hitt (1775), the first editor w ho attem pted to trim
the collection of works attributed to Chaucer, makes the distinction
between those works that are "genuine" and those that have been
"im properly intermixed" with the genuine productions (Canterbury Tales
vol V). Skeat, the final arbiter of the canon, calls the works once
attributed to Chaucer included in the early editions of Chaucer's works
"spurious" and his collection of these w orks is entitled Chaucerian and
O ther Pieces. Similarly, Brusendorff, H am m ond, Lounsbury, and
Spurgeon use the sp u rio u s/g en u in e distinction. To my know ledge, the
first use of the term in relation to Chaucer show s up in Bonner's "The
Genesis of the Chaucer Apocrypha" (1955). He uses "apocrypha" as a
loose synonym for "spurious," not authentic, or w orks "falsely ascribed"
to Chaucer. Modern use of the term has tended to connote either works
that were falsely or not overtly attributed to Chaucer, but that were
nevertheless included in early editions w ithout reference to any other
author. Any piece included in an early edition that has subsequently
been declared spurious is "apocryphal."
The term "apocrypha" is loaded. It carries both religious and
romantic connotations. M odern preference for the term may be the
result of the trend am ong literary theorists to discuss the literary canon
using terminology borrow ed from theological discourse.1 According to
Kermode the term itself is problematical:
A pocrypha m eant 'hidden ones', but came to mean
'spurious ones', and now just m eans 'uncanonical
ones'. The canon possesses an authenticity which
the Apocrypha lack. But to say in w hat that
authenticity resided or resides is a very complicated
matter. ("Institutional Control" 172)
Originally, the w ord apocrypha simply m eant "hidden" and was used to
describe works of unknow n authorship. However, as the w ord was used
in relation to biblical texts, it gained the connotation of not authoritative,
or having no w ell-grounded claim to inspired authorship. In an
ecclesiastical sense, to declare certain texts "apocryphal" is to distinguish
4
them from those that are authorititative, from those that contain the
"truth." A pocryphal texts were not simply uninspired, but "false,”
"counterfeit," "imitations" (OED).
Use of the term ap o cry p h a to describe secular w ritings betrays a
Romantic assum ption about the nature of authors and texts. What could
be called a romantic ideology of the author mimics and appropriates
theological discourse. If w orks that were once believed to be by a certain
author are described as "apocryphal," rather than simply spurious, the
genuine productions are set aside as som ehow inspired. The author is
deified. In A Critique of M odern Textual Criticism McGann attributes
this desire for origins to the Romantic ideology of the solitary originator,
to the value set on solitary and unm ediated creativity. But as Kermode
points out, despite such clear-cut semantic distinctions, the difference
between the apocryphal and the authoritative is not as simple as the
terminology implies. For ecclesiastical texts, political and religious
ideology often determ ined the authority or authenticity of sacred texts. It
w ould seem that for secular w ritings more objective standards should be
available, such as overt attribution or a signature. However, historically,
in adjudicating the Chaucer canon, the authoritative was often equated
with literary merit or with prevailing notions of w hat w as "Chaucerian."
Ultimately I will argue that the term "apocryphal" is used erroneously
when applied to Chaucer's texts. No absolute, objective standards or tests
have been derived that effectively differentiate the so-called apocryphal
from the authoritative.
It is strange that the apocrypha has received so little attention since
Chaucer is unique in having such a large am ount of spurious material
(approxim ately seventy pieces) attached to his name. A part from
occasional protests,2 Chaucer scholars have accepted Skeat's canonical
decisions in The Chaucer Canon (1900) and following the general trend in
scholarship, have largely turned from philology and source studies to
literary interpretation. This change in critical inquiry may partly be
attributed to one of the tenets of New Criticism which m andates that the
proper object of literary study is the text itself. Pearsall argues that there
is "a profound desire on the part of readers and scholars...to establish the
existence of the Book of the Canterbury Tales, perhaps because it will be
more susceptible of systematic analysis, that is, easier to write books
about" ("Authorial Revision" 42). A "single master text" is desired
because it is "more analysable, more criticizable, more interpretable, more
of a proper object for the attention of the New Criticism" (47). Like New
Criticism, postm odern critical theories also require a stable text:
...scholars w ant an author to be represented as
know ing w hat he is doing, or at least w hat he has
done, and they w ant editors to present the text as
unequivocal: w hat is the point of equivocating with
an equivocal text, or of finding ironies when they are
not squeezed out of the crevices of an originally rigid
and recalcitrant sructure? W hat is the pleasure of
deconstructing a text that constantly reclaims its ow n
absence of construction? (Pearsall "Authorial
Revision" 41)
The acquiescence to Skeat's canonical decisions may also have
som ething to do with the process of canonization that Kermode explains
in "Institutional Control of Interpretation." Like sacred texts, once a
secular text becomes canonized or stabilized (or in Chaucer's case judged
authentic), in order to protect its text the institution confers upon it "the
virtues of apostolicity, infallibility, inexhaustibility and inspiration" (173).
As C haucer studies became institutionalized and entered university
curriculum s at the turn of the century, the authenticity of his texts were
no longer questioned and the institution w orked to protect the texts
against charges of "low value":
The decision as to canonicity depends upon a
consensus that a book has the requisite qualities, the
determ ination of which is, in part, a w ork of
interpretation. A nd once a w ork becomes canonical
the w ork of the interpreter begins once again.
(Kermode 174)
Skeat's decisions have gone unchallenged in the twentieth century and
the process of canonization envisioned by Kermode has prevailed.
A ccording to Kermode, once certain texts are canonized "the attention
they got w as controlled by the desire of the institution to justify them as
they w ere and find them harm onious...but also to elicit senses not
available to persons of ordinary perceptions" (174-5). Since the turn of
the century the w ork of critics has been to establish and maintain
Chaucer's position as a canonical author.
But how sacred are the primary texts? In w hat does their
authenticity reside? The desire to distinguish the apocryphal from the
authorititative is relatively new. Until Tyrw hitt began to question the
authenticity of w orks attributed to Chaucer in earlier editions in his effort
to create a useful glossary for his 1775 edition of the Canterbury Tales,
these editions underw ent a series of accretions or additions so that two-
thirds of the works in Urry's 1721 edition are today considered spurious
(Brusendorff 44). Tyrw hitt's method of distinguishing the genuine from
the spurious was often based on literary taste and guesswork.3 A century
later Skeat validated Tyrw hitt's decisions with his rhym e tests; however,
although Skeat claims that his tests are objective, he dismisses several
works on critical grounds or on external evidence w hen internal
evidence is tenuous.^ Many scholars have questioned the accuracy and
utility of these language and rhyme tests. And Blake asserts flatly: "No
test has so far been devised which can with confidence distinguish a
Chaucerian line from a spurious one--and it is useless to pretend that any
solution to the problem of genuineness exists" (Text of the Canterbury
Tales 46).8
The most sacred Chaucerian text, the text upon which his m odern
greatness is predicated, is undoubtedly the Canterbury Tales. Since the
genuineness of this w ork has never been questioned, it w ould seem
strange to include this w ork in a discussion of the Chaucerian apocrypha.
However, the standard twentieth century text of the Canterbury Tales as
set forth in Skeat and Robinson is based upon Ellesmere, a m anuscript
that Manly-Rickert, and more recently, the editors of the V ariorum ,
describe as "edited." Am ong the various links and tale orders available
in the seventy complete manuscripts (there are twenty seven different
tale orders) of the Canterbury Tales, only one has been adopted and
essentially canonized, perhaps because it is the most complete and
sophisticated. But although some critics argue that the Ellesmere text is
the closest to w hat Chaucer "intended," the form of this text is essentially
apocryphal. That is, there is little evidence that its order is Chaucer's or
that Chaucer is responsible for all of its links.
Despite advances in knowledge of the textual transmission of the
Canterbury Tales, the text of the Canterbury Tales has appeared stable
since Robinson's edition.5 The Riverside Chaucer is essentially a
revision of Robinson's texts (it is called a "Third Edition"). Pearsall
rightly states Robinson's edition has come to be "thought of as definitive
and canonical" ("Crux" 40). But recently there has been some dissent.
Kane and Donaldson's w ork on Piers Plow m an has challenged traditional
m ethods of textual criticism.6 Also, the superiority of Hengw rt's
readings, and the acknow ledgem ent that Ellesmere is an "edited" text has
led a group of textual editors to create the V ariorum Edition of Chaucer's
works, using H engw rt as a base text, and to Blake's The Canterbury Tales
Edited From the H engw rt M anuscript (1980). Interpretive studies heavily
dependent upon Ellesmere's order are now treated with some
skepticism .7
This study does not attem pt to solve the problem of authenticity,
but rather examines how the canon and the canonized text of the
Canterbury Tales were created. It examines how the apocrypha
originated, how these w orks affected Chaucer's reception, and how the
current canon was finally decided. Given the popularity of the
apocryphal material, it is intriguing to consider the extent to which
Chaucer's reputation until the nineteenth century w as based on works he
did not write. It could perhaps be argued that until the late eighteenth
century Chaucer's reputation was based, with the exception of the
C anterbury Tales, on apocryphal works. His biography was taken from
Usk's T estam en t of Love, his political views were thought to be stated
most clearly in T h e Plow m an's Tale, and the "The Cuckoo and the
Nightengale" and "The Flower and the Leaf" were thought to be am ong
his highest poetic achievem ents.
9
Furtherm ore, I will argue Chaucer's reputation is still based on a
work, which in part, he did not write. The canonized text of the
C anterbury Tales found in Robinson and the R iverside edition is an
edited text containing apocryphal elements. It is only through scribal and
editorial tam pering that that w ork has achieved its present state of
completeness. A lthough today we believe that we possess a clearer
understanding of Chaucer both as a m an and as a poet, our conception of
Chaucer as a great author is still dependent upon a text with apocryphal
elements, that is, a text whose coherence is the result of scribal and
editorial em endations and structuring.
O utline of Project
The studies in this project focus on both w hat is traditionally
known as the apocrypha and on apocryphal elements in the Canterbury
Tal es. The studies on the traditional apocrypha will explore the effects
these w orks had on the reception of Chaucer's genuine w orks and the
extent to which they were significant in forming Chaucer's reputation as
a canonical author. The studies on the Canterbury Tales will show how
apocryphal elements in this w ork have been m inim ized by m odern
textual critics and will ultimately challenge m odern herm eneutic
approaches to the work. As it exists in the manuscripts, the Canterbury
Tales is not only incomplete, but discontinuous and fragmented. It has
attained its present shape only by virtue of consistent editorial
intervention and em endation. It is the suprem e example of the
socialized text. But although every Chaucerian is aw are of the fact that
10
the text of the Tales is collaborative (or at least edited and em ended by
someone other than Chaucer), criticism of that w ork continues to appeal
to Chaucer's intention, assum ing the integrity of authorship. McCann's
theory of authorship as a social act is surely a more accurate description of
the text called the Canterbury Tales. Ultimately 1 would ask why the
Romantic conception of the author as solitary originator continues to
influence criticism of Chaucer's texts.
"The Early D evelopm ent of the Apocrypha" examines T hynne’ s
1532 and 1542 editions, the first attempts to collect Chaucer's works in one
volume. The question that traditionally concerns scholars is the extent
to which Thynne was concerned with the authenticity of w hat he printed
as Chaucer's. Skeat argues Thynne intended to produce a collection of
"diverse material," some by Chaucer, some by other authors. Subsequent
editors, m isunderstanding his intent, accepted the contents of his editions
as canonical. Yeager disagrees, contending that Thynne believed all the
works he printed were genuine. 1 argue the question itself is
anachronistic— inform ed by a post-Romantic concern with the originary.
The desire to distinguish between the authorial and the apocryphal did
not arise until the late eighteenth century. Thynne modeled his editions
on the m anuscript miscellanies or anthologies from which he took his
materials. The commercial consideration— books were expensive and a
fat volum e sold w ell— m otivated T hynne to include anything that
conformed to his notions of w hat was "Chaucerian" or that catered to
popular literary tastes. In "The Apocrypha and Political Agendas" I
exam ine recent antifoundationalist theories of canon formation which
m andate that literary merit cannot be defined independently of
sociological interest. Several scholars suggest that spurious w orks were
attributed to Chaucer because they supported the cultural and political
biases of his early editors. Tw o works appear to have been claimed as
Chaucer's because of their proto-Protestant ideology. A few spurious
pieces may have also been appropriated for their overt monarchism and
nationalism. However, these critics subsequently reintroduce
independent aesthetic value surreptitiously in claiming Chaucer's poetry
was collected in order to gather support for the Lancastrian
adm inistration. The institutional explanation for canonicity fails to
account for why Chaucer's works, which were scattered and difficult to
locate, were collected rather than Gower's, or Lydgate's, whose works
were readily available and more overtly propagandistic.
"Thomas Tyrw hitt and the Chaucer Canon" explores the criteria
Tyrw hitt used to adjudicate the canon. Tyrw hitt (1775) is a pivotal figure
because all of the works he declared to be spurious are no longer accepted
as canonical. However, although Tyrw hitt is praised for his "scholarly
discipline" and his "discernment of w hat is Chaucerian," most of his
decisions were guided by his literary taste and assum ption of w hat was
"Chaucerian." He rejected works on "internal evidence" which
Brusendorff claims is equivalent to "his own personal judgem ent of their
literary value" (45). A lthough many critics recognize that Tyrwhitt's
judgem ents were subjective, his decisions have not been challenged until
quite recently. The same standard— literary excellence-that Tyrw hitt used
to reject several works, is now used to challenge the authenticity of the
Canon Yeoman's Tale. Moreover, several articles have been published
which suggest apocryphal pieces such as the Plow m an's Tale, Beryn and
12
the Tale of G am elyn are m ore "Chaucerian" than previously perceived.
The purpose of this section is to question the standards used to
differentiate the authorial from the apocryphal, and to suggest that our
notion of w hat is "Chaucerian" exists within a fram ework of assum ptions
which are historically produced.
"Usk's Testam ent of Love, the Plow m an's Tale and Chaucer's Early
Reception" examines the effects of two apocryphal pieces on Chaucer's
early reception. 1 test the critical myth that Usk's Testam ent of Love and
the Plow m an's Tale "ruined" Chaucer's reputation until the late
eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Since the Testam ent of Love
was the basis of Chaucer's biography until the early nineteenth century, it
should have had some effect on the reception of his poetry, but there is
no evidence that it did. Moreover, despite claims that the P lo w m an 's
Tale popularized Chaucer as an early Protestant reformer, there is little
evidence that Chaucer was seen specifically as a Lollard, except by John
Foxe. He was viewed as a moral reformer in the sixteenth century, but
this was on the basis of the genuine Canterbury tales. I argue critics claim
these apocryphal works ruined Chaucer's early reputation w hen in fact it
was the increasing obsolescence of his language and his perceived
obscenity that hindered a broad critical appreciation of his works.
"H enryson's Testam ent of Cresseid, Chaucer’s Troilus and Crisedye
and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida" explores another critical myth of
the deleterious effects of the apocrypha on Chaucer's reception. In the
early tw entieth century it w as believed since Henryson's T estam ent of
Cresseid was included in Chaucer's editions for almost 200 years, it was
accepted as Chaucer's ending to Troilus and Criseyde and subsequently
ruined his poem. This assum ption was based not on historical evidence
but on a canonized interpretation of Chaucer's poem. It was believed
that C haucer’s treatm ent of Criseyde was largely sym pathetic and
Henryson's portrayal of Criseyde as a "leprous strum pet" underm ined
Chaucer's characterization. This myth arose in the effort to explain why
Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida was so much inferior to Chaucer's
treatm ent of the love story. However, with the "discovery" of Chaucer's
ironic narrator and a critical reevaluation of Shakespeare's play, the
controversy disappears, and H enryson's influence becomes
inconsequential. This analysis illustrates well how interpretive
assum ptions become canonized, and how these assum ptions tend to
direct historical and critical inquiry. Moreover, the question scholars
posed— Did readers mistake Henryson's T estam ent for Chaucer's
conclusion?— reflects the m odern assum ption that textual authority
resides in an author, particularly a canonical author. That early readers
did conflate the two stories as equally authoritative versions should
indicate the rigid distinction we make between the authoritative and the
apocryphal is perhaps an anachronistic projection of post-Romantic ideas
of textual authority.
I will then move on to the Canterbury Tales and show how
potentially apocryphal elements in the Canterbury Tales have been
finessed by m odern scholars. When faced with the problem of tale order,
critics redefine or m uddy the spurious/genuine distinction in order to
produce the most coherent and sophisticated text possible. Although
standardized texts claim to be a reconstruction of w hat Chaucer wrote,
14
these texts are really a m odern construction of w hat we think Chaucer
should have written.
"The Bradshaw Shift, the Ellesmere O rder and Chaucer's Intended
Order" examines how the apocryphal element is dealt with at the level of
tale order. Like choosing between scribal and authorial variants, it has
proven impossible to determ ine with any certainty which of the twenty-
seven different tale orders the manuscripts provide represents C haucer’ s
final order. Many scholars have declared that it is impossible to decide,
or that Chaucer himself may not have decided on a final order.
Although this conclusion is partly based on the chaos of the manuscripts,
the operative assum ption is that none of the m anuscript orders can be
Chaucerian because none is wholly "satisfactory" by m odern aesthetic
standards. Two orders have been declared authorial in this century— the
Bradshaw shift and the Ellesmere order. In order to get around the
charge that an apocryphal or spurious element is built into these
reconstructions of Chaucer's tale order, an interesting distinction has
arisen between Chaucer's order and Chaucer's "intended" order. The
reasoning is as follows: although Chaucer's order (as he left the
Canterbury Tales at his death) may be irrecoverable (either through
accidental shiftings of the tales or because he never finally ordered the
tales since the w ork was unfinished), Chaucer's intended order, which
has come to be defined as the most "satisfactory" order, can be
constructed. Advocates of the Bradshaw shift must resort to this
argum ent since that order is not found in any MSS. But those critics who
support the El order also resort to ihe argum ent that that order is
Chaucerian, although it is probably an scribal arrangem ent.
15
W hat is most striking in discussions of tale order is the continuous
appeal to Chaucer's intention. Every critic w ho entered this debate
w ould argue that since a particular order was the most "satisfactory," it
therefore represented Chaucer's "intention." It is odd that this concept is
used so freely given the critical mistrust in appealing to the author as a
repository of meaning. In Principles of Textual Criticism Thorpe argues
that the integrity of a piece of art depends upon recovering, at least in
physical form, the intentions of the artist. It is only authorial intention
that distinguishes the aesthetics of a w ork of art from a w ork of chance or
a w ork of nature. Thorpe's theories on artistic integrity may help to
explain the pervasive appeal to Chaucer's intention in discussions of the
order of the Canterbury Tales. He says that in order to have "integrity,"
to be considered a w ork of art, the work must reflect the author's
intentions. Because it does not reflect Chaucer's intention, the
apocryphal elem ent that is built into any reconstruction of the Canterbury
Tales may be threatening because it underm ines the status of the poem as
a w ork of art. There is no proof that the standard editions of the
Canterbury Tales reflect the intentions of the poet, despite the claims of
scholars.
The problem is that the poem was not transm itted with the
intention of preserving the poet's intention. From im m ediately after
Chaucer's death, transmission of the poem was a collaborative effort. It
has only reached a state of completeness and coherence through the
efforts of others. Thus, the romantic quest to recover the authorial text is
perhaps m isguided in this textual situation. In the conclusion 1 argue
that the critical task needs to be reevaluated and a more socialized theory
16
of authorship, such as that proposed by McCann, should inform critical
discussion of the poem. A socialized theory of authorship w ould at least
free critics from the specious appeal to Chaucer’s intention for a specific
reading. Chaucer's intention has for too long been used simply to
validate critics' ow n interpretations of the text. And if Donald Pease is
correct, to declare that the author is dead is finally to em pow er the critic:
The critic is the real beneficiary of the separation of
an author from a text. It is the critic rather than the
author or the reader w ho can render an authoritative
account of the structure of the work, the internal
relationships am ong the various textual strands and
levels...W ithout the author to dem and the resolution
of contradictory textual lines into an intended unity,
the critic is free to reconstitute the text according to
his ow n term s ("Author" 112-113).
17
N otes
1. In "Literature and Science" M atthew Arnold predicted that
"hum ane letters" w ould replace the needs previously fulfilled by religion,
as the consolation of religion faltered in the face of the scientific
revolution. See also Kermode's "Institutional Control of Interpretation,"
Said, and Walker.
2. For instance Blake, "On Editing the Canterbury Tales" continues
to assert that The Canon Yeoman's Tale is a later addition to T h e
C anterbury Tales since it is not in the H engw rt MS; and John Bowers has
claimed that The Tale of G am elyn should be included in editions of T he
Canterbury Tales. It is interesting that Skeat includes The Tale of
G am elyn with his volum e of The Canterbury Tales rather than in
volum e seven with the "Other Pieces." It is also odd that he omits T h e
Prologue and Tale of Beryn from Chaucerian and O ther Pieces. Skeat
states that he has collected "the most important" spurious pieces,
omitting those that are long, "poor and uninteresting." It seems as if
Skeat is establishing a canonical apocrypha.
3. For instance Brusendorff says that Tyrw hitt does not "lay dow n
any general principles," and mostly relies on Chaucer's lists and scribal
ascription. Tyrw hitt declares many minor poems genuine based solely
on "internal evidence," w hat Brusendorff says is "probably equivalent to
his ow n personal judgem ent of their literary value" (45).
4. For instance one of the most popular apocryphal poems, "The
Flower and the Leaf" is very similar to Chaucer's own practice of
gram m ar and versification. Thus where the gram m ar and rhym e tests
fail Skeat turns to subjective evaluation: "...many critics have formed
exaggerated ideas of the poem's value...it is difficult to understand for
w hat reasons it was considered worthy of so great a master as Geoffrey
Chaucer" (W orks of Geoffrey Chaucer vol 7, lxviii).
5. For a recent discussion of manuscript affiliations see Owen, T he
M anuscripts of the Canterbury Tales.
6. See Patterson "The Logic of Textual Criticism and the Way of
Genius: The Kane-D onaldson Piers Plow m an in Historical Perspective."
Patterson argues that w hat the edition represents is "a reformulation of
the w hole question of evidence, with results that show how terms like
'subjective' and 'objective' are profoundly misleading" (56). Patterson
18
says that Kane w as revolutionary in his dem onstration that the process in
which an edited text is achieved is "inevitably and appropriately circular"
(60). Kane also discovered that convergent variation was m uch more
prevalent than previously thought, which underm ines reliance on
attestation. However, Kane's confidence that the authorial and the
scribal can be distinguished "presumes certain characteristically Romantic
attitudes" (73).
7. For instance in "Authorial Revision" Pearsall cites studies done
by H ow ard, David, Dinshaw and Patterson which are based on the
assum ption that "the Tales were intended by Chaucer to be read in the
order in which they appear in Robinson's edition" (41).
8. As early as 1925 Brusendorff recognized the difficulty of
distinguishing the genuine from the spurious. A lthough Skeat was
satisfied that Bradshaw's rhym e tests provided sufficient internal
evidence w here external evidence is lacking, Brusendorff argues that
there are "a few cases in which Chaucer himself does not seem to observe
the rule" (of the -y:-ye test) and "the nearer the spurious poems were to
his own time, the more difficult the task naturally |becomes]... no trust
can be put in those tests which lately have been in so m uch favor"
(Chaucer Tradition 47-51).
9. In "Geoffrey Chaucer: the Critics and the Canon," Blake argues
that the assum ption that Chaucer left many of his works unfinished has
been an "im portant factor in discussions of Chaucer's poetic creativity"
and has become part of the "Chaucer mythology.” He claims that given
the vagaries of transmission, it is more likely that many of Chaucer's
endings w ere simply lost, and asks for a reevaluation of some of the
critical m aneuvers used (such as the theory that Chaucer habitually uses
an abrupt ending creatively and artistically) to explain or save his
unfinished poems.
Chapter Two
19
The Early D evelopm ent of the A pocrypha
The sheer num ber of apocryphal w orks that were attached to
Chaucer's name is rarely recognized.1 For Skeat, the num ber of spurious
pieces is so "very numerous," he limits his selection in C haucer and
O ther Pieces to the thirty "most im portant" ones. Seventy spurious
w orks were included in Chaucer editions, and approxim ately two-thirds
of Urry's 1721 edition contained works today considered spurious
(Brusendorff 43-4).2 Lydgate alone is responsible for seventeen of the
works falsely attributed to Chaucer (Bonner 477), and Skeat calculates that
"not less than twenty authors are represented in the mass of
heterogeneous material which appears under Chaucer's name" (Ixxxiii).
From Caxton's editions until Urry, as Chaucer becomes a major poet,
works by other authors are continuously added to w hat we recognize
today as his genuine works.3 The purpose of this chapter is to explore the
developm ent of these early collections. Traditionally scholars have been
concerned with the extent to which early editors, particularly Thynne,
were concerned with the authenticity of w hat they printed as Chaucer's.
However, since desire to distinguish between the authorial and the
apocryphal did not arise until the eighteenth century, l argue that the
question itself is anachronistic— informed by a Romantic conception of
textual authority. Thynne modeled his editions on the m anuscript
anthologies from which he took his materials. The commercial
20
consideration-large books were expensive and readers expected fat
volum es— m otivated T hynne to choose w orks that conform ed to his
notion of w hat w as loosely "Chaucerian" or that catered to popular
literary tastes. I also examine the extent to which conspiracy theories of
canon formation can be used to explain why specific w orks were included
in these early collections. Several spurious pieces appear to have been
appropriated for their overt Protestantism, m onarchism, and
nationalism. However, critics who claim Chaucer's poetry w as collected
in order to gain support for the Lancastrian, and later, Henrician
adm inistrations, surreptitiously introduce independent aesthetic value.
It is unclear w hy Chaucer's works which were scattered and difficult to
locate should be gathered, rather than Lydgate's which were readily
available and more overtly propagandistic.4
M anuscript Miscellanies and Thynne's Editions
The mass of apocryphal material naturally leads one to question to
w hat extent early editors were concerned with the authenticity of what
they printed as Chaucer's. In trying to assess early conceptions of
authorship, scholars have focused on Thynne's editions (1532, 1542)
because it is with them, the first attempted collections of Chaucer's works,
that the apocryphal tradition appears to begin. It is believed that if one
could assess Thynne's intentions for his editions, one could determ ine
w hether most of the spurious pieces became attributed to Chaucer
through accident or design. The answ er depends on w hether Thynne
intended to produce an edition of Chaucer's works only, or a collection of
materials, sim ilar to the m anuscript miscellanies from which he took his
contents.
There are tw o schools of thought on Thynne's collections. Skeat
argues that Thynne's edition w as not an edition in the m odern sense of
the term. The title of Thynne's 1532 edition is The Workes of Geffray
Chaucer newly printed, w ith dvvers workes which were never in print
before, &c. Skeat argues that Thynne's title literally means "'dyvers
w orkes (of various authors] never in print before'" and that it is only
through "ignorance or negligence" that subsequent editors assum ed all
the works in this edition were by Chaucer:
Much that has been w ritten on the canon of
Chaucer's W orks is practically worthless and
misleading, ow ing to the extraordinary way in which
Thynne's collection of M iddle-English poems has
been m isunderstood. Just because a considerable
num ber of the poem s included in it happened to be
by Chaucer, the bookbinders naturally put 'Chaucer's
Works' on the back of the volume, and the
booksellers call it 'Chaucer's W orks’ for short. The
appearance in it of any given piece affords n o
presum ption that such a piece is Chaucer's, unless
there is some external evidence in its favor. Yet
some critics are pleased to say that the inclusion of a
piece in that particular volum e is equivalent to
'attributing' it to Chaucer! (Chaucer C anon 95)
However, even if T hynne himself did not intend to mislead subsequent
editors, the tw enty-one spurious pieces he collected are also included in
later editions.5 Subsequent editors appeared to have accepted his choices
as canonical. Each editor not only includes Thynne's contents, but also
the additions of each previous editor. The title of Stowe's 1561 edition is
The Woorkes of Geffrey Chaucer, newly printed with diuers Addicions
which w ere neuer in printe before. Skeat claims that it is here that "the
22
authorship of Chaucer was, for the first time, practically claimed for the
whole of Thynne's volume" (7, x). However, his title seems just as
equivocal as Thynne's and Stow does continue to attribute overtly two
spurious poem s to G ow er and Lydgate. Stow adds seventeen new
spurious works, culled prim arily from MS Trinity College Cam bridge R 3.
19, including Lydgate's Siege of Thebes. He also adds the genuine
"Gentillesse," and "W ords to Adam." Speght's 1598 edition entitled T he
Workes of our A ntient and lerned English Poet Geffrey Chaucer, newly
printed, the first to contain a biography of Chaucer, includes Stow's
additions and contains even more spurious material ("Flower and Leaf,"
"Isle of Ladies"). Speght's 1602 edition adds the anti-papal "Jack Upland,"
and Chaucer's "ABC."6 In Speght's 1687 edition spurious endings are
added to the C ook's and Squire's Tales. Finally, Urry's 1721 edition
includes all of the material from previous editions (except Lydgate's Siege
of Thebes) and adds the Tale of Gamelyn and the Prologue and Tale of
B eryn. The Retraction is also printed for the first time since Wynken de
W orde's 1498 edition of the Canterbury Tales. Although Tyrw hitt (1775)
does not produce an edition of Chaucer's works, he is the first editor to
suggest that Chaucer did not write many of the works attributed to him.
H owever, despite Try whitt's pronouncem ents m any of the most popular
spurious pieces are included in Chaucer editions until the m id
nineteenth century.
Skeat believed early editors were concerned with the authenticity
of w hat they printed as Chaucer's and that it was only a
m isunderstanding of Thynne's editions that led to the subsequent
bloating of the canon. In "Literary Theory at the Close of the Middle
Ages: William Caxton and William Thynne," Yeager challenges Skeat's
position and argues that Thynne did intend to "gather all the true works
of Chaucer into one volum e for the first time" (136). He bases his
argum ent on the fact that both Caxton and Thynne "had to have read
more than they printed; the mass of material available to them was
simply too extensive and too conglomerate for their books to have turned
out as they are without the continued exercise of judgem ent" (139-140).
He concludes that Caxton's choices were informed by his conception of
Chaucer as a didactic poet and Thynne's by his desire to represent Chaucer
as a "poet of fin amour." O ne point that Yeager seems unable to
reconcile is w hether Caxton and Thynne m ade their choices based on the
desire to collect only Chaucer's authentic works or on the desire to create
a saleable image for the poet. For instance, Yeager claims that Caxton was
concerned with the authenticity of what he printed as Chaucer's, but at
the sam e time "he trafficked unabashedly in w hat his custom ers liked"
(146). These two motives seem self-contradictory. Similarly, Yeager
states that Thynne wished to represent Chaucer as a love poet and he
"shaped Chaucer's image to fit that of the narrator of The Legend of Good
W o m e n " (163). It is difficult to reconcile Yeager's argum ent that Caxton
and Thynne were concerned with the authenticity of w hat they printed
with his parallel argum ent that they were each consciously creating a
popular authorial image for Chaucer.
Yeager's argum ent is compelling, but it is based on several tenuous
assumptions. First, he uses Francis Thynne's statements in his
A n im a d v ersio n s as definitive proof for William T hynne’s intentions.
Francis Thynne does state that his father's goal was "to seeke the
augm ente and correctione of Chawcer's Woorkes." H owever, his
subsequent statements are unclear. He says that his father's object was to
produce the "fyrst printed booke that euer was of his woorkes" and that
he had added "many thinges whiche were not before printed" (6-7). Like
W illiam T h y n n e’s title (The Workes of Geffray Chaucer newly printed
with dyuers w orkes w hiche w ere neuer in print before) Francis Thynne's
statem ent is am biguous. It is unclear w hether those "things not before
printed" refers to w orks of Chaucer's or w orks by other authors.
Moreover, one strong argum ent against the proposal that Thynne
intended to create a definitive edition of Chaucer's w orks is the fact that
he includes poems overtly attributed to other authors. The poem we
know today as "In Praise of Peace" is entitled "John Gower, unto the
W orthy and Noble King H enry the Fourth” and the "Moral Balade" is
entitled "Scogan unto the Lords and G entlemen of the King's House." In
order to finesse the fact that Thynne deos include w orks attributed to
other authors, Yeager makes the following unlikely suggestion: "If
Thynne...envisioned C haucer as the poet of m ultiple narrative voices, the
consum m ately skillful creator of personae, m ight he not have suspected
that Chaucer wrote 'In Praise of Peace' disguised, so to speak, as Gower?"
(157). T hynne may have w anted to produce a collection of Chaucer's
genuine works, but he also obviously included works by other authors as
well. Subsequent editors appear to have followed his model and with
time, the distinction betw een the authorial and the spurious, which was
never very rigorous, becomes blurred.
Yeager finally argues that "It is sim pler to assum e that Thynne did
believe that Chaucer w rote w hat he published than to suspect him of
25
padding or of conscious deception" (148). These are the only two
alternatives if Thynne shared our rom antic assum ptions about the
dom ain of authorship or our m odern conception of an edition. Bonner
believes early editors did and that it was finally an ignorance of Chaucer's
language and versification that led to the mistaken attributions:
W hen we consider that the men w ho com piled the
sixteenth-century editions of Chaucer's w orks had not
formulated all the canonical tests readily available to
m odern scholars, and that they probably selected their
materials on the basis of such circumstantial evidence
as was presented by the manuscripts, it is hardly to be
w ondered at they they chose many pieces that were
not Chaucer's." (476)
It appears that ascription of a poem to Chaucer in a m anuscript or the
appearance of a w ork am ong Chaucer's genuine w orks in a m anuscript
provided sufficient evidence to include the poem in an edition of
Chaucer. But some works such as the Plow m an's Tale and the
Testam ent of Cresseid were included in editions of Chaucer's works with
no discernable basis for ascription apart from similarity of subject matter.
A good example is Urry's decision to include the Tale of Beryn before he
has even read it. At the sam e time however, num erous pieces were
included in these early editions that were attributed to other authors, like
Lydgate's Siege of Thebes, which was never mistaken for one of Chaucer's
ow n Canterbury tales.
A lthough early editors w ere perhaps more cavalier in their
attributions because a larger edition sold well, and because the supposed
recovery of lost Chaucerian w orks increased the value and marketability
of a new edition, there is also some evidence that early editors were
concerned with establishing correct texts. For instance, Caxton claims
26
that he is issuing a new edition because his first one is not correct: "For I
fynde many of the sayd bookes/w hich wryters have abrydged it and many
thynges left o u t/ A nd in some place have sette certayn versys/ that he
neuer m ade ne sette in hys booke" (Spurgeon 1; 62). Although Caxton
appears to be concerned with establishing an authoritative Chaucerian
text, this could simply be a sales pitch since he also gives himself the
licence to add endings to incomplete poems, such as the House of Fame.
Similarly, T hynne says having perused previous Chaucer editions he has
found
many errours/ falsyties/ and deprauacions... whereby
I was moued and sty red to make dilygent sertch/
w here I might fynde or recouer any trewe copies or
exemplaries of the sayd bookes/ w herevnto in
processe of tym e/ nat w ithout coste and payne I
attayned/ and nat onely vnto such as seme to be very
trewe copies of those workes of Geffray C haucer/
whiche before had ben put in printe/ but also to
dyuers other neuer tyll now e im printed/ but
rem aynyng alm ost vnknow en and in oblyuion.
In 1599 Francis T hynne censures Speght in his "Animadversions" for
including the Testam ent of Cresseid and the "Letter of Cupid" which he
says, are not by Chaucer: "...yt w olde be good that Chaucer's proper
woorkes were distinguyshed from the adulterat, and suche as were not
his..." (Spurgeon 1:155)7 A lthough Speght ignores Thynne's suggestions,
he does (wrongly) attribute "To his em ptie purse" to Hoccleve. Similarly,
Urry, w ho does finally attribute the Testam ent of Cresseid to Henryson,
and omits Lydgate's Siege of Thebes, is puzzled that G am elvn is not found
in earlier editions w hen it is found in several, and w hat w e would today
recognize as authoritative, manuscripts:
27
So m any of the MSS have this Tale, that I can hardly
think it could be unknow n to the former editors of
this Poet's works. Nor can I think of a Reason why
they neglected to publish it. Possibly they met with
only those MSS that had not this Tale in
them...unless they doubted of its being genuine.8
Urry also includes the Prologue and Tale of Beryn based on m anuscript
evidence; he is puzzled that a supposedly genuine work, the P lo w m an 's
Tale, has no m anuscript authority and concludes that "Scriveners were
prohibited transcribing it." Similarly, the Retraction, how ever
unpalatable, is included based on the testimony of the MSS. It is not
until Tyrw hitt that m anuscript testimony is used in reverse— to excise
works.
Given the conflicting evidence, 1 can only conclude that Thynne
and his successors had a dual purpose for their editions: their first task
w as perhaps to collect Chaucer's works, but at the same time the idea of
an edition w as influenced by the format of the m anuscripts they used,
which freely combined the works of several writers. It may be that
Thynne m odelled his edition on these early m anuscript anthologies.
Muscatine notes that the earliest printed texts were rivals to the
m anuscript tradition: "They were set in type modelled after the hand of a
scribe, and their contents were necessarily determ ined by the nature of the
text found in the manuscripts" (The Book 1). Anthologies of
miscellaneously assorted texts were very popular. In fact, it could be said
that almost every m anuscript was a miscellany of some sort. Boffey and
Thom pson describe some of these m anuscripts and conclude "In the
absence of a strict sense of copyright, or of any form of direct supervision,
28
it seems natural that the history of book production before printing
should be full of examples of compilers" (302).
Before any definitive collection of Chaucer's ow n poetry w as attem pted,
his works were scattered am ong different anthologies: "The Chaucerian
pieces in particular descended originally from independent groups of
gatherings (booklets), each containing a single longish work, or a group of
lyrics, from which anthologies of poetry could be m ade up and copied"
(Boffey and Thom pson 280). All the manuscripts that contained works
by Chaucer were miscellanies:
...it appears to have been a common publisher’s
custom during the later half of the fifteenth century
to make one or more scribes copy a num ber of short
poems in separate quires and to unite these very
much at random , merely with a view to get up
such collections as w ould com mand a good price
and a quick sale. (Brusendorff 179n.)
All of the spurious w orks added to w hat became accepted as
"Chaucer's Works" were either very similar in subject m atter or style to
Chaucer's genuine works, or were found in m anuscripts w ith Chaucer's
genuine poetry. According to Bonner "There is every reason to believe
that many spurious docum ents were attributed by |early editors] to
Chaucer solely or chiefly because those docum ents happened to be
contained in manuscripts which also contained w orks generally
recognized as authentic" (471).9 For example, Thom as Hearne, who
helped Urry collect material for his 1721 edition, reports that he has seen a
m anuscript (subsequently identified as Fairfax 16) "which is a Collection
of Poems, some w herof bear Chaucer's name, and others have no name
at all, which, nevertheless, I take to have been written by him, as being in
29
the same Style, and all in the same Hand, which I guess to have been of
the very Age of Chaucer" (Spurgeon 1; 306). Many poems that are today
regarded as apocryphal were explicitly ascribed to Chaucer in these
fifteenth century manuscripts. For instance, Trinity College Cam bridge
R. 3. 19. erroneously attributes six poems to Chaucer. How these poems
came to be ascribed to Chaucer remains uncertain. John Shirley is
certainly a key figure in the attribution of many of the shorter poems to
Chaucer.1* ' The basis for many of his attributions is unknown.
Brusendorff notes that Shirley never "attributes poems to Chaucer, which
are ascribed to other poets in early MSS." (236). However, his testimony
in nine instances is "practically unsupported— except by internal
evidence" (236). Thus, the contents of early editions were not wholly
indiscriminate; all of the spurious pieces that were included in early
editions were either attributed to Chaucer in manuscripts, or were found
in collections that contained his genuine works. O ther pieces that were
added that w ere not in m anuscript miscellanies were very similar in
subject matter, or were written as continuations, such as the Testam ent of
Cressid, which acted as a conclusion to Troilus and Criseyde, and the
Plow m an's Tale, the Tale of Gamleyn, and the Prologue and Tale of
Beryn which were written as supplem entary Canterbury tales. Whether
early editors believed these works were by Chaucer cannot be ascertained.
Given their radically different conceptualization of an edition, the
question may not have occured to them.
In each edition the Canterbury Tales is also tam pered with. The
order of tales is rearranged, links are created or em ended and new tales
are added. Despite m odern claims that the w ork is "incomplete but
30
finished" early editors saw the w ork as manifestly unfinished. Several of
the pilgrims in the General Prologue do not tell tales, and the Host's plan
is obviously not realized. Muscatine argues that the motivation to
complete the text was prim arily commercial:
The realization by most of the early editors that
Chaucer planned to link his tales with brief interludes
indicating the sequence of speakers m ade for a great
deal of editorial "correction,” no doubt aggravated in
the commercial w orkshops, where books were
produced for general sale, by the desire to make them
appear complete and consistent. And so genuine
links written by Chaucer were sometimes misplaced
or em ended or suppressed to fit different editors'
arrangem ents of the tales. Where links were lacking,
spurious ones w ere supplied, no less than eighteen in
the extant manuscripts. (The Book 3)
However, Bowers argues that the "unfinished state of The Canterbury
Tales was more than an aesthetic em barassm ent and commercial
drawback" (3). Because the Lancastrians w anted to use the Tales in its
battle against the Lollards, it was imperative that that w ork appear
finished:
Efforts by medieval scribe-editors to close gaps and
conceal signs of incompleteness by including
apocryphal tales, spurious links, and large-scale
continuations can be read as a commentary on larger
dynastic im peratives in which Thom as Chaucer and
his Lancastrian kinsmen were thoroughly implicated.
(3)
W hatever the motives for completing the Canterbury Tales, like
Chaucer's entire oeuvre, it was seen as an incomplete collection. What is
perhaps most surprising and frustrating to m odern scholars is the
cavalier attitude of early scribes and editors took tow ards the preservation
of Chaucer's texts. We tend to approach his texts with a romantic
31
conception of authorship. His texts are considered superior to those of
his copyists and editors; his w ords are inspired and any additions to his
texts are considered blemishes, adulterations. Yet early scribes and
editors do not appear to have operated under the Romantic ideology of
the solitary originator. An authorial text was not necessarily equated
with an authorial one.
The A pocrypha and Political Agendas
Bowers' suggestion that the Canterbury Tales played some role in
Lancastrian politics is in keeping with recent theories of canon formation,
which teach us to view canonical texts with suspicion. Many critics are
convinced that the process of selection used in the literary canon is
similar to the formation of the biblical canon:
These critics detect beneath the supposed objectivity
of value judgem ents a political agenda...the history of
canon-formation appears as a kind of conspiracy, a
tacit or deliberate attem pt to repress the writing of
those w ho do not belong to a socially or a politically
powerful group or whose writing does not in some
overt or covert w ay express the "ideology" of the
dom inant groups. (Guillory 233-4)
Critics w ho ascribe to this political approach of canon formation tend to
view argum ents of literary worth as a mystification. The assum ption is
that literary merit is not a quality that can be defined independently of
sociological interest: "Literary quality is simply a function of the current
interests of the reading public" (Richter 112). Arising from this critical
atm osphere is Fisher's The Importance of Chaucer (1992). Fisher argues
that Chaucer acted as a "cultural cynosure," first to promote English (and
32
indirectly the Lancastrian adm inistration) as a national language, and in
the sixteenth century, to support the Protestant Reformation. Chaucer
w as used by H enry IV and V in order to promote the national language
and to acquire popular acceptance for its "usurpation and taxes and
provisions for its warfare":
If the Lancastrian adm inistration was in any way
consciously seeking popular support by strengthening
the use of the vernacular, it needed socially accepted
m odels of English...the royal establishment appears to
have undertaken a program to elevate the prestige of
English...The public relations agent for the program
appears to have been the poet John Lydgate and the
w riter chosen to exemplify the new culture, Geoffrey
Chaucer. (144)
For Fisher, even Chaucer's image as a poet of courtly love served a
hegem onic function:
Chaucer as a poet of love was father to the courtly
ideal as it shaded from the aristocratic into the genteel
tradition: the patronizing Victorian and BBC1
tradition in which art is intended to indoctrinate the
low er classes in the values and behavior of the
gentility. (157)
Similarly, Bowers suggests that Thom as Chaucer "undertook
dissem inating his father's poetry, not with the motivation of artistic or
even filial devotion, but as part of the elaborate w arp and woof of... the
quid-pro-quo transactions of the age's politics" ("House of Chaucer"138).
Chaucer's literary materials "figured as cultural factors in the formation
of Lancastrian social consciousness" and formed "the cobbled support for
the Lancastrian regime, affording his patronage to later writers, first and
foremost John Lydgate, for developing a well-defined Chaucerian poetic
com mitted to social stability and religious orthodoxy" (140).
33
Both Fisher and Bowers are vague on exactly how Chaucer s works
w ould have aided the Lancastrians. They suggest that it was simply
Chaucer's English that lent political support, but this does not explain
w hy Chaucer's works, which were widely scattered and difficult to locate,
were later collected into editions, rather than Lydgate's or Gower's. As
for content, Lydgate's poetry is surely more overtly nationalistic and
propagandistic. In other words, they reintroduce independent aesthetic
value surreptitiously in arguing that Chaucer's literary repuatation was
the result of a political gambit. H ow ever persuasive m odern conspiracy
theories of canon formation may be, it does appear that at least in the
fifteenth century Chaucer's status was based on his poetic use of English.
So difficult w as his achievem ent to imitate that Lerer argues his fifteenth
century im itators were "infantalized."
The conspiracy theory of canon formation is inadequate to explain
why Chaucer's works were copied, collected into m anuscript miscellanies
and eventually into editions, but may provide some explanation for the
types of works that were attached to Chaucer's name. Of particular
interest is the Plow m an's Tale, first included by Thynne and claimed to be
Chaucer's as late as 1857.11 The myth that this tale had been censored
from early manuscripts because of its Lollard ideology began early. In
1540, Chaucer's first biographer John Leland, claims that the "Tale of Piers
Plowman" is not found with the other Canterbury tales in manuscripts
and editions because it "has been suppressed... because it vigorously
inveighed against the bad morals of the priests" (Brewer, Critical Heritage
1: 94).12 In the same spirit, John Foxe (1570) makes much of the fact that
Chaucer's works, which he reads as scathing and subversive attacks on
34
the Church, w ere exem pt from the "Acte for the A duauncem ent of true
Religion and for the abolisshm ent of the contrarie" (1542):
...but muche more 1 meruell to consider this, how
that the Bishoppes condem nyng and abolishyng al
m aner of Englishe bookes and treatises, which might
bryng the people to any light of knowledge, did yet
authorise the woorkes of Chaucer to rem ayne still &
to be occupied...the Byshops, belike, takyng hys
workes but for iestes and toys, in condem nyng other
bookes, yet permitted his bookes to be read.
(Spurgeon 1: 105-6)
Foxe goes on to claim that the Plow m an's Tale did not appear in editions
before 1542 because of its subversive doctrine:
...what finger can pointe out more directly the Pope
with his Prelates to be Antichrist, then do the poore
Pellycan reasonyng agaynst the gredy Griffon?...and
therefore no great maruell, if that narration was
exem pted out of the copies of Chaucer's workes.
(Spurgeon 1: 106-7)
Francis Thynne repeats the myth that some of Chaucer's w orks had been
censored because of their subversive content. In his 1598
"Animadversions uppon the annotaciouns and corrections of some
imperfections of im pressiones of Chaucer's Workes" aim ed at Speght's
1598 edition, he relates the story of how the Pilgrim's Tale was suppressed
by Cardinal Wolsey and how his father printed the Plow m an's Tale only
under the personal protection of Henry VIII:
...yet the Cardinall caused the kinge so muche
myslyke of that tale, that chaucer must be newe
printed, and that discourse of the pilgrymes tale lefte
oute; and so printed again some thynges were forsed
to be omitted, and the plowm ans tale...with much
ado permitted to passe. (Spurgeon 1: 152)13
35
Pearsall calls Thynne's account of the Pilgrim's Tale and Plow m an's Tale
a "cock-and-bull story" (Editing Chaucer 89). But this legend remained
popular. In his 1602 edition Speght repeats Thynne's story about the
censored Pilgrim's Tale: "M William Thynn in his first printed booke of
Chaucer's w orks with one Colum be on a side, had a Tale called the
Pilgrim's tale, which w as more odious to the Clergie, than the speech of
the Plowman" (H am m ond 35). Speght conducted a desperate search to
recover the Pilgrim's Tale and promises to publish it "if possibly it can be
found." Urry suggested that the Plow m an's Tale w as missing from
Caxton's and Pynson's editions because both were printed before the
"Abolition of Popery" and thus they "durst not publish it." Similarly,
Thom as Hearne, w ho helped Urry with his 1721 edition, suggested that
the absence of the Plow m an's Tale from the m anuscripts resulted from
the "tartness against the Popish clergy" (Spurgeon 1: 299). He speculates
that the Retraction was probably written in retaliation for this tale, which
show s by the "Doctrine and lives of the Romish Clergie and that the Pope
is anti-christ and they his ministers" (Spurgeon 1: 301). This myth, that
the Retraction w as a monkish forgery intended to m inimize the heresies
of the Plow m an's Tale rem ained popular until the early nineteenth
century.
The creation of this grand conspiracy theory in order to authorize
the Plow m an's Tale and silence the Retraction probably betrays the
political agenda of Chaucer's editors. Similarly, the prose lack Upland,
w hat Skeat describes as "an outspoken and rather fierce attack upon the
friars" (C haucer Canon 141-2), was first included with Chaucer's works in
Speght's 1602 edition, probably because that editor discerned an audience
36
for its invective. Yeager claims that Thynne included the spurious
poems, "To the Kinges Most Noble Grace," "To the Lordes and Knightes
of the Garter" and "Eight Goodly Questions" because of their "anticlerical,
sweepingly nationalistic and aristocratic tone" in an effort to promote
Henry VlII's political agenda:
In 1532, Henry VIII was as yet the unqualified
"Defender of the Faith," his break with the Roman
Church not taking place until a year later, but the
atm osphere of the court in which Thynne w orked as
"chief clerk of the Kechynne" m ust already have been
charged with nationalism...One effect of this feeling
was the developm ent of the image of Chaucer as first
bard of the realm, as English poet for Englishmen; 1
think we may safely attribute such a view to Thynne
on the basis of these poems. ("Literary Theory" ISO-
151)
Lerer has also suggested the abundance of spurious courtly love poems
reflects a nostalgia for "the literary politics of Ricardian England...a
fantasy for a past w orld in which kings govern, courts patronize, and
poets live as 'laureates' under their munificent rule" (Chaucer and His
Readers 15). For Lerer, the fascination with the poetry of fin amours
"illustrates an attem pt to imitate the structures of courtly patronage by
provincial readers" and to "rehabilitate the |im agined] literary system that
controlled Chaucerian production" (17-19).
Altieri describes the cultural functions canons serve: "Critical
historicism em phasizes tw o basic aspects of self-interest: the desire for
pow er over others, and the pursuit of self-representations that satisfy
narcissistic dem ands" (134). In hindsight, the way in which Thynne's
political and religious interests influenced his choices for his collections is
fairly transparent. According to Minnis, "Works of unknow n or
uncertain authorship were regarded as 'apocryphal' and believed to
possess an auctoritas far inferior to that of works which circulated under
the nam es of auctores" (11). Attaching the nam e of Chaucer to Lollard
propaganda such as the Plow m an's Tale lent a nationalistic validity to the
Reformation. However, given the expense of these early printed books,
Thynne m ust have discerned a ready audience for overtly anti-papal and
monarchial pieces.
38
N otes
1. There are three com prehensive reference works on the
Chaucerian apocrypha: Skeat's Chaucerian and Other Pieces (1897),
H am m ond's Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual, and Robbins' "The
Chaucerian A pocrypha," in A M anual of the W ritings in M iddle English:
1050-1500. See also Peck, Chaucer's Rom aunt of the Rose and Boece,
Treatise of the Astrolabe, Equatorie of Planetis, Lost Works, and
Chaucerian Apocrypha: An A nnotated Bibliography, 1900-1985.
2. See H am m ond 406-463 for a complete list of these spurious
works. See also 114-130 for the apocryphal works in early editions from
1532-1721.
3. According to Lerer, the editorial impulse in the sixteenth
century w as to "expand the range of works that could be printed under
Chaucer's name." He contrasts the "omnivorous character" of
Renaissance com pilers w ith the post-Romantic editorial "concern with
the originary and the unique" (Chaucer and His Readers 118). Early
editors w orked under the initial assum ption that a large body of
Chaucer's works had been lost. In the prologue to the Man of Law's Tale,
the Retraction, and the Legend of Good Women, Chaucer lists several
presum ably long works, the "book of the Leon," the "Origines upon the
M audelyne," and the "Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde" and refers to
many shorter works, particularly love poems. In the Legend of Good
W o m e n Alceste credits the poet with "many an ym pne for your |Love's|
halydayes,/ That highten balades, roundels, virelayes" as well as "many a
lay and many a thing." And in the Retraction Chaucer asks pardon for
"many a song and many a leccherous lay" and "many another book" the
nam es of which he has forgotten. According to Bonner "Such statements
as these clearly left the door w ide open for the very sort of wholesale
attributions which swelled the volum e of spurious w orks in the
sixteenth-century editions" (464):
N ow there are in the accepted body of Chaucer's
writings relatively few balades, no roundels, and
certainly no virelays. But w hen we look at the long
list of spurious w orks which were attributed to him,
we find more than a dozen balades dealing with love,
a triple-roundel, a viriley, and a great many other
poem s which may be classified as "ynipnes" or
"many a lay and many a thing" written to celebrate
love. (463)
39
4. Chaucer lists several w orks in the prologue to the Man of Law's
Tale, the Legend of Good W omen and the Retraction that have not been
found: the "book of the Leon," the "Origines upon the M audeleyne," and
the "Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde." Brusendorff suggests the
Book of the Lion could have been a redaction of Deschamps' P it du Lyon
(429-30) w ritten to celebrate Prince Lionel's marriage. See also Dear and
Langhans. The "Origenes upon the Maudeleyne" is believed to be a lost
translation of the pseudo-O rigen homily "De Maria Magdalena." See
McCall. Pynson (1526) included a "complaynt of Mary Magdaleyne", a
rhym e royal monologue which Bonner notes was accepted as genuine for
several centuries (463). Lewis argues the "Wreched Engendrynge of
M ankynde" is a translation of Pope Innocent Ill's "De miseria condicionis
humane" or may perhaps refer to an early version of the Man of Law's
T ale. Since Chaucer refers to these works by name, one assumes that
they were fairly substantial. Were these works known they would alter
our conception of Chaucer somewhat, since they are all devout.
5. T hynne himself w as more discriminate and omits the "Moral
Proverbs," and the "Letter of Dido to Aeneas" printed by Pynson. Of the
ten m inor poem printed by Caxton only three are spurious. See
H am m ond, 350. Thynne includes all the minor poems Caxton printed.
6. Speght does how ever attribute some works to other authors.
For instance, following Francis Thynne's suggestion that Chaucer's
genuine w orks should be distinguished from those that are "adulterat,"
Speght attributes (wrongly) "The Complaint of Chaucer to His Purse" to
Hoccleve, changing the title to read "Th. Occleve to his em ptie Purse."
7. A lthough Thynne is correct in calling these works spurious, he
also wrongly argues that the P lo w m an 's and Pilgrim 's Tales are
Chaucerian.
8. Many scholars now concede that G am elyn may have been found
am ong Chaucer's papers and that he may have been planning to rework
the tale into a Canterbury tale. It would be interesting to know if
G am elyn was in any of the manuscripts Thynne used. Blodgett states
that "Thynne did em end his base text with a m anuscript related to Manly
and Rickert's m anuscript family cd*" ("William Thynne (d. 1546)" 46). If
this is true, almost all of the MSS. in Manly-Rickert's C and D groupings
contain G am elyn.
40
9. Bonner also notes "a definitive study" show ing the relationship
between early manuscripts and the early printed editions "has yet to be
made" (469). I think this is still the case. The new V a rio ru m edition of
Chaucer's M inor Poems w ould have been an appropriate place for such a
study, but that volum e only lists the titles of the m anuscripts that contain
w hat we accept today as the genuine poems.
10. Shirley is responsible for "An ABC," "Fortune," "Truth," "The
Com plaint of Chaucer to His Purse," and "Gentilesse." The authenticity
of these poems was validated by Tyrw hitt and the last by Scogan. Shirley
is the only authority for "Anelida," "The Com plaint of Mars," "The
Com plaint of Venus," "The Com plaint Unto Pity," "Lak of Stedfastnesse,"
and "Chaucer's W ords Unto Adam." For a discussion of Shirley's
attributions see Lerer, Chaucer and His Readers, "The Com plaints of
A dam Scriveyn: John Shirley and the Canonicity of Chaucer's Shorter
Poems." See also Brusendorff, 178-295.
11. In 1857 Jean Baptiste de Chatelain dedicates his French
translation of the Plow m an's Tale ("l'un des plus beaux poemes du grand
Chaucer") to of all people, the Pope, insisting that the tale is genuine: "le
Plowman n'a ete laisse de cote dans les premieres editions des Contes de
Canterbury que parce que Chaucer y denoncait trop vertem ent les abus
scandaleux de la Cour de Rome" (Spurgeon III, A ppendix B, 68-9).
12. It appears that Leland is confusing Langland's Piers Plow m an
and the Plow m an's Tale, a mistake that is repeated by several subsequent
readers. The Plow m an's Tale is first included with the Canterbury Tales
in Thynne's 1542 edition.
13. W hether or not there was actually an edition by T hynne that
contained the Pilgrim's Tale was a matter of controversy. Bradshaw
argues that Francis was confused and that the "supposed cancelled edition
of William Thynne is a fiction." See Chaucer Society 13 2nd ser., 75-6.
For a clear explanation of the subversive ideology of the Plow m an's Tale
see W awn, "The Genesis of The Plow m an's T ale."
41
Chapter Three
Thom as T yrw hitt and the Chaucer Canon
"There is a sense in w hich it is true w e d o not know w hat Chaucer wrote" (H am m ond,
B ibliograp hical M anual 51).
Thom as Tyrw hitt's 1775 edition of The Canterbury Tales of
C haucer is often praised as the first m odern edition of Chaucer. In
Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition, Barry W indeatt repeatedly claims
Tyrw hitt is the "founder of m odern Chaucer editing" (118) and "the
founder of m odern traditions of Chaucer editing" (119). He describes
Tyrw hitt's "An Account of the Works of Chaucer" (fifth volum e 1778) as
a "watershed in the developm ent of Chaucer editing" (141). In this essay
Tyrw hitt distinguishes w hat he "conceives" to be the "genuine w orks of
Chaucer" from those "which have either been falsely ascribed to him, or
im properly mixed w ith his, in his Editions" (V, i). In his adjudication of
the Chaucer canon, W indeatt praises Tyrw hitt for his "scholarly
discipline" as well as his "discernment of w hat is Chaucerian" (142).
The purpose of this chapter is twofold: to examine the basis for the
claim that Tyrw hitt is the first m odern editor and to examine the
rationale for his canonical decisions. A lthough discussions of the
Chaucer canon tend to focus on the w ork of the Chaucer Society and
Skeat, Tyrw hitt should be a pivotal figure in any discussion of the
42
formation of Chaucer's canon because the authenticity of every w ork he
rejected had not been questioned until recently. However, Tyrw hitt's
criteria for authenticity w as not as scientific and objective as W indeatt
claims. His canonical decisions were often based on w hat has been called
a Romantic conception of authorship. He believed that Chaucer's
language was not only different from that of his imitators, but better. He
felt it was necessary to to determ ine a canon of Chaucer's genuine works,
am ong the "heap of rubbish" that has become associated w ith Chaucer's
name, in order to create a useful glossary of his language. Although
m anuscript evidence is his prim ary criterion, Tyrw hitt repeatedly falls
back on w hat he calls "internal evidence," equivalent to aesthetic value.
He rejects w orks on the basis that the "manner, style and versification"
belong to an author "much inferior to Chaucer" (IV, 145). And despite
W indeatt's praise for Tyrw hitt's "discernment of w hat is Chaucerian,"
Tyrw hitt mistakenly attributed six of the most popular spurious w orks to
Chaucer (which W indeatt oddly does not note).1 Tyrw hitt was primarily
an aesthete— w hat later became accepted as objective canonical m andates
was based on textual criteria that is unarticulated. The only clear
distinction between the apocryphal and the authorial appears to be
estimated literary worth. Tyrwhitt's influence may be seen in the
inheritance of this criteria as a standard for authenticity since Skeat also
rejects pieces on the basis that they are not "worthy" of Chaucer.
A lthough T yrw hitt's A ccount had little impact on the contents of
subsequent editions for almost a century, his canonical decisions were
accepted until quite recently. Blake has argued against the authenticity
of the Canon Yeoman's Tale because it is not in the earliest manuscript,
43
Hengwrt. However, using Tyrwhitt's criteria of aesthetic value, Blake
goes on to argue "The verdict on CYT by literary criticism is uncertain,
and it w ould be a brave editor w ho inserted the tale only with that
support" ("On Editing" 109). Following Blake’s lead, Peter Brown
analyzes CYT as an independent w ork and concludes that the second half
of the tale is so inferior that it m ust be the w ork of someone else. Given
editors’ continued allegience to the tale order (but not the text) in El, CYT
is not likely to be ejected from the Chaucer canon.2 But the fact that
articles are being published which entertain the possibility that a w ork of
"inferior" literary quality could be spurious, is clearly reminiscent of
Tyrwhitt, and should lead us to question w hat kind of criteria we use to
differentiate the authoritative from the apocryphal.
T yrw hitt's Editorial Method
Why is Tyrw hitt considered the first m odern editor? Pearsall
claims "Although his m ethods of m aking text and his views of Chaucer's
metrics are not entirely sound, still with him it m ust be said the story of
m odern textual editing of Chaucer begins" (Editing Chaucer 6).
Tyrw hitt's approach to establishing his text of the Canterbury Tales was
different from that of previous editors, who, Tyrw hitt says, simply
adopted the texts of previous editions and failed to consult the
manuscripts. Tyrw hitt is especially critical of Urry's practice in his 1721
edition of "lengthening and shortening Chaucer's w ords according to his
own fancy, and of even adding w ords of his own, w ithout giving his
readers the least notice" (1, xx). Tyrw hitt insists the "only rational plan of
44
publishing Chaucer" is "by collating the best Mss. and selecting from
them the genuine readings (I, xx-xxi). Tyrw hitt knew of 26 manuscripts,
and am ong these considered first Harley 7335, then Additional 5140, Dd
4.24, Egerton 2726 and 2864 to be the best. Using Speght's 1687 text of the
Canterbury Tales as his basis of collation, he corrected it in the margins
according to the various MSS which he adopted as authoritative,
"sometimes changing at an interval of less than a page, sometimes
keeping on with one and the same for ten pages" (H am m ond 209).
Brusendorff censured Tyrw hitt for failing to carefully evaluate the
authority of the m anuscripts from which he chose readings to em end his
text:
In order, however, really to judge of the value of a
certain reading in a particular authority, it is
necessary to thoroughly examine the MS. in question,
and decide w hether it is on the whole a reliable
witness. On this point Tyrw hitt failed. He collated a
good many MSS., but each for comparatively brief
passages only, so that he was apt to prefer a reading
w hich on the face of it looked tempting, but which
was, after all, offered by a MS. of rather suspicious
character. (60)
Similarly, according to Ross, "When Tyrw hitt did not find w hat he
w anted in Speght, he em ended from w hatever m anuscript provided him
with an acceptable reading, or he went back to Urry's edition, or he simply
m ade up the best reading to fit his ideas of Chaucer's regular iambic
pentam eter" (148).
It is unclear why Tyrw hitt's eclectic editorial method, which was
superceded by the recensionist approach, and that by a "best-text" method,
is said to be "modern." According to Windeatt, it is simply the fact that
Tyrw hitt consulted MSS. to select his readings and that all editorial
45
conjectures in the text are signalled to the reader that makes Tyrw hitt
"the founder of m odern traditions of Chaucer editing" (118-119).
W indeatt's assessm ent of Tyrw hitt's achievem ent may be influenced by
the ideological format in w hich W indeatt's essay appears, because
nowhere else does one find this kind of unqualified praise. In the
chapter on Thom as W right which follows W indeatt's in Editing Chaucer:
The G reat Tradition, Ross claims it is only Tyrwhitt's "respect for the
m anuscripts with which he w orked which entitles him to be called the
first critical editor of Chaucer" (148). Thom as Wright, w ho used the best-
text method (Harley 7334) for his 1847-51 edition, which is closer to the
approach used for the new V ariorum , criticized Tyrw hitt for "forming his
text from a num ber of different manuscripts, w ritten at different times
and different places," an approach W right censures as "the most absurd
plan which is possible to conceive" (1, xxxiii). And for H am m ond,
Tyrwhitt's text "labors under the disadvantage of editorial subjectivity, of
interpretation to us by a partial advocate"; it is not "of m odern critical
method" (209).
A lthough W indeatt's praise for the modernity of Tyrw hitt's
editorial method is exaggerated, Tyrw hitt may be considered a pivotal
figure because most of his editorial and critical assum ptions concerning
the proper order for the tales have been adopted by m odern editors.
Tyrw hitt derived his tale order from the "best" m anuscripts, which
follow Manly-Rickert's a order, and on the basis of internal allusions.
His order and use of links in identical to standard editions except in two
instances: he omits the "Host stanza" and uses the Man of Law's endlink
to introduce the S hipm an's Tale. He is the first editor to create w hat later
46
became know n as the marriage group, and it may be in this innovation
that Tyrw hitt m ade his contribution to the "great tradition" of Chaucer
editing. He appears m odern because most of his interpretive
assum ptions about the aesthetics of the CT, especially his notion of
dram atic realism, have become canonized.
Tyrw hitt and the Apocrypha
Thus, to call Tyrw hitt the first m odern editor is som ew hat
misleading. But Tyrw hitt is also know n for his w ork on the Chaucer
canon. He is the first editor not to add works to the canon and the first to
excise pieces that had been attributed to Chaucer since Thynne's 1532
edition. For H am m ond "It is perhaps upon the canon of Chaucer that
the results of Tyrwhitt's labors are most conspicuous and most
perm anent...the first thoroughgoing examination of the canon w as made
by Tyrwhitt" (211). W indeatt claims that Tyrwhitt's w ork in the canon
represents a "watershed" in Chaucer scholarship.
It appears that Tyrw hitt adjudicated the canon based on two
criteria: external and internal evidence. External evidence he seems to
equate with m anuscript attribution. Thus, any w ork that Chaucer
himself lists in the Legend of Good Women, the Man of Law's Prologue
and the Retraction he rightly accepts as genuine. He also rejects any
pieces expressly attributed to other authors, such as Lydgate, Hoccleve and
Gower, in manuscripts. But Tyrw hitt mistakenly attributes the
Testam ent of Love to Chaucer, on the basis of Gower's com m ent in the
Confessio A m antis (IV, xvii). He also tentatively accepts as genuine the
47
spurious "Flower and the Leaf" since Chaucer alludes to the subject in the
Legend of Good W om en (V, xi).
W hat he means by internal evidence is less easy to define. It
seems to indicate "the language and versification at the time w hen
Chaucer wrote" and the "peculiarities of his style and m anner of
composition" (1, i). However, now here do we find an explicit description
of Chaucer's gram m ar and versification. Contrary to w hat one would
expect, his Essay on the Language and Versification of Chaucer (volum e
IV) is written to counter two charges against Chaucer: 1) that he
"corrupted and deform ed the English idiom by an im m oderate mixture of
French words," and 2) that Chaucer was "either totally ignorant or
negligent of metrical rules, and that his verses (if they may be so called)
are frequently deficient, by a syllable or two, of their just measure" (IV, 3).
To counter the first charge, Tyrw hitt provides a brief linguistic history,
show ing the effects of the Norm an conquest, and concluding Chaucer
"ought not to be charged as the im porter of w ords and phrases" since "the
English language m ust have imbibed a strong tincture of the French, long
before the age of Chaucer" (IV, 26). Tyrw hitt then provides an outline of
M iddle English gram m ar, show ing how Anglo-Saxon endings have been
norm alized and how French vocabulary was incorporated and subjected
to English rules of gram m ar. He then goes on to discuss Chaucer's
versification. He claims that most of Chaucer's verse is "Heroic," and
postulates that Chaucer w as "the first introducer of it into our language"
(84). The problem remains how ever that "A great num ber of Chaucer's
verses labour under the apparent Deficiency of a syllable or two."
Tyrw hitt is the first to suggest that this deficiency can be rectified through
48
different pronunciation, especially of those w ords borrow ed from French.
H ow ever well Tyrw hitt may have defended Chaucer’s reputation against
the charges of corrupting the English language and being unable to
com pose m easured verse, one is not any clearer about the "peculiarities of
his style and m anner of composition."
How Tyrw hitt used the vague principles suggested by his Essay to
distinguish Chaucer's genuine works is unclear. He states that G am elyn
is spurious because it is in "Iambic Metre" in which he says Chaucer
never com posed (IV, 79). A lthough the popular "Court of Love" lacks
external "testimony" he declares this spurious piece genuine: "I am
induced by the internal evidence to consider it as one of Chaucer's
genuine productions" (V, viii). Similarly, also presum ably on internal
evidence he declares the spurious "The Isle of Ladies," "The Com plaint of
the Black Knight," "The Cuckoo and the Nightengale," "The Flower and
the Leaf" to be genuine. He rejects the Plow m an's Tale, the Prologue and
Tale of Beryn and lack U pland which he says have been "received, for the
most part, w ithout any external evidence whatever, and in direct
contradiction to the strongest internal evidence" (V, xxii). "Internal
evidence," in the case of the Plow m an's Tale, is based partly on Tyrwhitt's
perception of Chaucer's faith:
...it has not the least resemblance to Chaucer's
m anner, either of w riting or thinking...Though he
and Boccace have laughed at some of the abuses of
religion and the disorders of Ecclesiastical persons, it is
quite incredible that either of them, or even Wycliff
himself, w ould have railed at the whole governm ent
of the Church, in the style of this Plowman's Tale....it
is probable, that Chaucer (though he has been pressed
into the service of Protestantism by some zealous
writers) was as good a Catholick as men of his
49
understanding and rank in life generally have been.
(IV, 184-185)
None of the w orks Tyrw hitt declared spurious has since been accepted as
canonical.
Given the faith in T yrw hitt’s decisions, it is odd how little he has
to say about each w ork he dismisses. Although W indeatt praises
T yrw hitt for his "scholarly discipline" and his acute "discernment of what
is Chaucerian" (142), m any earlier critics were more skeptical of his
criteria. For instance, H am m ond states, "In acceptance and in rejection
Tyrw hitt was apparently guided by his ow n taste and judgem ent as to the
literary quality of the various works" (67): "He formed his judgem ents it
w ould appear, mainly on the notions of Chaucer's style" (211).
Brusendorff claims Tyrw hitt declared many pieces genuine "on 'internal
evidence,' probably equivalent to his ow n personal judgem ent of their
literary value, not an entirely safe guide" (45). Similarly Brewer notes
Tyrw hitt sorted the genuine from the spurious "by the criterion of style"
(Critical Heritage 1: 37). It is telling that the spurious works that Tyrw hitt
mistakenly accepted as genuine— "The Isle of Ladies," "The Cuckoo and
the Nightengale," "The Com plaint of the Black Knight" and "The Flower
and the Leaf"— w ere Chaucer's most popular shorter works, and therefore
conformed to Tyrw hitt's notion of w hat was Chaucerian.
Canonical Dissent
Many of the pieces attributed to Chaucer were unattributed in the
manuscripts. Given the lack of external testimony Bradshaw and Skeat
relied on the internal evidence of stylistic and rhym e tests, particularly
the "-y/-ye" test, which was based on the belief that Chaucer did not
rhyme together w ords which etymologically end in -y with w ords that
end in -ye. Brusendorff (1925) was especially critical of w hat he calls
"relative internal evidence" because the nearer the spurious poems are
to Chaucer's time, the m ore difficult the task becomes, and "so-called
'stylistic' features...are generally so common in most authors of a given
period as to prevent their verdict from being of any real importance" (50-
51). However, most scholars in the early twentieth century were
confident that gram m ar and rhym e tests w ere "the only infallible means
of distinguishing between the genuine and the spurious works" (47).
For instance Tatlock claimed that there was "seldom more difficulty in
discrim inating between |spurious lines] and the genuine than in
discrim inating in a handful of real nutm egs and w ooden nutmegs" ("CT
in 1400," 119). However, more recently scholars have become more
skeptical of these language tests, and Blake contends "No test has so far
been devised which can w ith confidence distinguish a Chaucerian line
from a spurious one— and it is useless to pretend that any solution to the
problem of genuineness exists" (Textual Tradition 47). Lacking external
testimony, m odern critics tend to fall back on aesthetic criteria, the same
shaky standard for authenticity utilized by Tyrwhitt. Although the
appeal to literary excellence allowed the canon to be stabilized, because
the standard is subject to prevailing cultural notions of aesthetic value,
such criteria is not absolute and ultimately threatens to underm ine the
canon.
51
Perhaps because Tyrw hitt provided little concrete rationale for his
canonical decisions, and perhaps because of the grow ing allegience to the
text of H e n g w rt ,5 several scholars have begun to challenge Tyrwhitt's
decrees. For instance, Tyrw hitt rejected G am elyn first because it is "not
found in any of the Mss. of the first authority" and second on literary
grounds. However, although the tale is not in the m anuscripts Try whitt
considered the most authoritative, it is in three of the m anuscripts
Furnivall published as his Six-Text (Corpus, Petworth, Harley 7334),
which he, and subsequent scholars, have accepted as the "best"
manuscripts. Most scholars today accept Skeat's hypothesis that the tale
was found with Chaucer's papers, perhaps because he was considering
reworking the story for a Canterbury tale.4 One critic has even
speculated how Chaucer w ould have rewritten the tale.5 Perhaps
because the tale cannot be dismissed simply on m anuscript evidence,
since it is in 25 of the 57 manuscripts analyzed by Manly-Rickert, and
because Tyrw hitt's decree that the tale is "inferior" to Chaucer's abilities
is not an absolute standard for authenticity, Bowers suggested at the New
Chaucer Congress that the tale might be added to the canon.6
Furtherm ore, Blake has rightly shown the degree to which prejudice
plays a role in scholars' attitudes tow ards its authenticity:
CYT [is found| in El and most other manuscripts
including Ha4, Gamelyn in Ha4 and about half the
extant manuscripts but not in El. The attitude of
scholars to these two could hardly be more different:
CYT is accepted as universally genuine, but Gamelyn
is as universally rejected. ("On Editing" 107)
The C anon Yeoman's Tale itself is no longer accepted as
universally genuine. Blake denies its authenticity on external testimony,
52
since it is not in H engw rt, which is accepted as the earliest m anuscript of
the Canterbury Tales. Blake's insistence that CYT is apocryphal is based
on his assum ptions about how Hg was produced. In brief, he believes
that the copytext for Hg consisted of Chaucer's ow n set of fragments.
Thus, anything that is not in Hg (from which all subsequent MSS are
derived) is probably a later editorial insertion and thus spurious.7 In "On
Editing the Canterbury Tales" he argues that the authenticity of CYT is
decided solely on literary grounds. He claims that the fact that it is
woven so adroitly into the fabric of the CT should arouse suspicion, for "a
conscientious im itator w ould try to make his creation as convincing as
possible” (107). Moreover, Blake finds the m anner in which the tale is
linked to the Second N un's Tale odd:
No reference is m ade to the nun, for it seems
probable that SNT was not allocated to a teller in the
original copy-text and that allocation to the nun was
the w ork of the editor of Hg. It may well be that the
imitator started on CYT before he knew which
pilgrim was to be allocated SNT in Hg. (108)
Blake goes on to argue that the style and structure of the poem are
different from Chaucer's usual practice: the distinction between prologue
and tale is blurred, and "the vindictive and brutal tone is also unlike
anything else in the poem, partly because there is such a lurid exposure of
an individual w ho had joined the pilgrims rather than of a class in
society" (109). Blake's argum ents for rejecting CYT on literary grounds
are not entirely convincing; but they are just as ineffectual, he would
argue, as argum ents for its authenticity on literary grounds.
Readers have often found it strange that Chaucer abruptly
introduces the Canon's Yeoman to the pilgrimage even though several
53
pilgrims described in the General Prologue have not yet told their tales.
One explanation that is usually derided but continuously repeated is that
offered by Tyrwhitt: "some su dden resentm ent had determ ined Chaucer
to interrupt the regular course of his work, in order to insert a Satire
against the Alchemists" (IV, 181). Muscatine observed that "scholarship
still tends to class the poem as a 'current event'...If not autobiographical,
it is journalistic, and som ething like autobiographical interest still lurks
in the m uch-debated question of Chaucer's attitude tow ards alchemy"
(Chaucer and the French Tradition 214). M uscatine himself describes the
tale as "un-Chaucerian," "simple," "a good piece of realism and not much
more," and as the one "unassimilable lump" in the philosophical pattern
of the C anterbury Tales: "Chaucer's realism is ultimately symbolic" (214).
Since most studies of CYT link the tale to the Second N un's Tale
(which it may or may not have been m eant to follow), Peter Brown offers
a reading of the tale as a "free-standing work." He finds pars secunda "so
devoid of invention and creative energy that it may well be the w ork of
an imitator" (488). He suggests that pars secunda "though not by
Chaucer, was possessed by him and provided him with the inspiration for
the prologue and prima pars. Pars secunda may then have been
retouched by a scribe or editor for inclusion in the Canterbury Tales"
(489). Albert H artung has also suggested that although pars secunda may
be authentic it was not m eant to be included in the CT.8 Brown is not
unaw are of the significance of his exercise. He concludes that critics need
to "consider the perceptions they take to a w ork because it is thought to be
by Chaucer."
54
Similar prejudice, or the assum ption of w hat is "Chaucerian," can
be used to argue for the authenticity of works traditionally accepted as
spurious. In "The Yoke of Canon: Chaucerian Aspects of T he
Plow m an's Tale," Robert Costomiris comes close to pleading, on internal
evidence, for the authenticity of the tale. Costomiris states that he is not
claiming that the Plow m an's Tale "should be reinstated to the Chaucer
canon" (187). However, he does continuously suggest that "our opinion
of the tale" has been "influenced by Tyrwhitt's editorial decision to
remove it from the canon," and that the way in which the tale is read
today, in Skeat's edition, "where it is set apart from The Canterbury
Tales... and w ithout the complete rubrics," gives an inaccurate sense of
the poem's physical context (187). Costomiris goes on to suggest the
placement of the tale before the Parson's Tale provides an "avian
connection" w ith the N un Priest's Tale and the M anciple's Tale:
Reading these tales in succession, one cannot help
but note the avian connection between them: they
all ha ve rational, talking birds as central characters,
and they all draw some moral conclusion after gross
miscalculation by one of the birds. This connection
is com pounded by the tendency for each tale to
increase the moral ante over the tale that preceded
it... Even The Parson's Tale, although it departs from
the avian theme, can be seen as a part of this group of
tales in its effort to expose man's sins. (188)
Similarly, he rightly states that the anti-clerical sentim ent in the
Plow m an's Tale is in keeping with Chaucer's "strong distaste for clerical
misbehavior" (189). Finally, Costomiris draw s some stylistic similarities
between the Plow m an's Tale and Sir Thopas and suggests that "It seems
reasonable to suggest that editors and readers w ho accepted Sir Thopas as
authentic might also accept The Plow m an's Tale as yet another caricature
55
of a popular poetic sytle" (191). Costomiris avoids the logical conclusion
of his argum ent which w ould be to challenge Tyrw hitt's "editorial
decision" to remove the tale from the canon, but he does suggest that it is
a "preconceived notion of Chaucer" that has led m odern readers to
sum m arily dism iss the tale as "un-Chaucerian."
Tyrw hitt had dismissed both the Plow m an's Tale and the Prologue
and Tale of Beryn because of a lack of external evidence. However,
although the Plow m an's Tale does not appear in any extant manuscript
of the Canterbury Tales, the Prologue and Tale of Beryn does. It is in the
N orthum berland m anuscript (1450-1470), which Manly-Rickert classify as
an "anam olous manuscript." The Prologue and Tale of Beryn follows
the Canon Yeoman's Tale, and the tales are arranged to form a round-trip
from Canterbury. All of the geographical m arkers are in order.9 Unlike
the other Chaucerian apocrypha, which, Peter Brown describes as
"paintings once thought to be genuine and subsequently shown to be
fakes" which have "been consigned to the limbo-land of criticism" (490),
Beryn has continuously been praised for its "Chaucerian" qualities. The
Prologue to Beryn, which details the pilgrims' arrival at Canterbury, their
visit to the shrine of St. Thom as, their overnight stay at a local inn, and
the Pardoner's attem pt to seduce a tapster, has received a great deal of
critical attention largely because it validates the dram atic approach to
reading the Canterbury Tales. As such, the relationship between the
genuine and the apocryphal is not entirely clear cut.
Perhaps because of its length, the tale itself has received little
critical attention, although Karen W instead has show n how the tale "is
on the whole Chaucerian in both spirit and accomplishm ent, evincing a
56
keen appreciation not only of Chaucer's hum or but of the...narrative
techniques w hich most m odern readers com monly associate with his
name" (223).1 (1 The Prologue, however, has attracted considerable
com ment, perhaps because it has the hum or and realism (to a much
greater extent) of Chaucer's ow n links, which seems to validate the way
we read the poem today. Furnivall says that "Still, worse than Chaucer's
though the hand of the Beryn-writer is, a bit, and a good bit, of the
Master's h um our and lifelikeness, the later verser has in his Prologue"
(Chaucer Soc. 24, ser. 2, vii). He describes the Prologue as a "piece of
contem porary social history to be read and studied." Not surprisingly,
Kittredge has an article claiming the Beryn poet furnishes us "with
know ledge of w hat a nearly contemporary poet believed Chaucer was
trying to delineate in each of his characters (2).11 Bowers also praises the
poet for surpassing Chaucer's "very sketchy links" and recognizing the
qualities of the frame narrative we adm ire today:
While the Beryn poet fully grasped the narrative
strategy of Chaucer's tales as accesses to the
personalties of the tellers and as digressive
com m entaries of the frame action, he was also alive
to the realism of the "roadside dram a" which critics
earlier in our ow n century perceived as the unifying
principle in Chaucer's work. (32)
The Prologue has also been cited by O wen as proof that Chaucer himself
intended the tales to form a two-way journey ("Plan of the Canterbury
Pilgrimage" 821). As yet, no critic has argued for the authenticity of the
Prologue and Tale of Beryn, but the relationship between the apocryphal
and the authorial begins to be blurred in discussions of Beryn, especially
w hen it is said the poet's grasp of Chaucer's narrative strategies surpasses
57
Chaucer's: "Unlike Chaucer's ow n brief, sometimes very sketchy links,
his continuing frame narrative...has a sophisticated structure... it is even
more eventful than even The General Prologue (Bowers, "Alternative
Ideas" 27-28). Tyrw hitt had rejected Beryn because he found it to be
inferior to Chaucer's craft, but w hen articles are published arguing the
w ork is equal to or even better than Chaucer’s stylistic and narrative
techniques, the grounds w e use for authenticity and the degree to which
tradition influences our perception of w hat is authentic should perhaps
be questioned.
A d d en d u m
The early equation of literary excellence with authenticity has had a
strange effect on subsequent criticism— it has led to the assum ption that
Chaucer cannot write a bad piece of poetry. An odd genre, "deliberately
bad art," has been created to deal with "problem" tales like the Squire's
Tale. Literary excellence as a criteria for authenticity finally threatens to
underm ine the canon it seeks to stabilize. The standards used by Tyrwhitt
and Skeat to adjudicate the Chaucer canon have had three effects on the
subsequent treatm ent of his works. First, literary excellence as a standard
for authenticity has led to the assum ption that Chaucer cannot write a bad
piece of poetry. Chaucer's poetic achievement was not always
sacrosanct.12 W hen one looks through Spurgeon's Five H undred Years
of C haucer Criticism and Allusion, one is struck by many of the
pejorative com m ents on Chaucer's poetics. But it is not an exaggeration
to say that since the turn of the century, Chaucer's poetry is not criticized.
58
The reception of the Squire's Tale presents a good example of how critics
handle this herm eneutic restriction.
In the fifteenth century Jean d'Orleans dismissed the Squire's Tale
as "valde absurda" (Strohm 72). Although many critics today hold the
same opinion, except perhaps Getty who bizarrely describes the piece as
"the most fascinating tale never told" (212), they do not criticize Chaucer's
poetic achievement. Taking into account the alterity of m edieval tastes,
Donaldson cautiously describes the tale as "the fragment of a very
respectable aristocratic romance which few readers today will wish
longer" (Chaucer's Poetry 923). Critics have dealt with this "problem"
tale in two ways. First, utilizing Kittredge's dictum that "the stories are
merely long speeches expressing, directly or indirectly, the characters of
the several persons" (155), the tale can be salvaged as a puerile
performance by the Squire. Thus, for Kahrl, "It is the Squire, not
Chaucer, who has formed the ambitious project of com bining several
Eastern tales into a single story, w ithout possessing the ability to maintain
a coherent thread (196). Similarly, H adow claims that "the tale is exactly
suited to the teller":
...his sublim e unconsciousness of the fact that any
one else can possibly find it long or quail before
the prospect of a tale which bids fair to last all the
way to Canterbury and back, is just w hat we
should expect of this "lusty bachelor. " (81)
And Pearsall believes "surely neither Chaucer nor anyone else in his
senses could ever take this story seriously in itself"; "A 'dramatic' reading
is imperative" to w ard off the heretical view that "Chaucer grew tired of
the story and simply abandoned it" (298).
The second way the tale has been saved is to proclaim that the tale
is, in G ardner's phrase, "intentionally bad art" (288). The possibility that
the tale is simply a bad imitation of a romance is not entertained.
Because this is Chaucer, and "Chaucer always knew w hat he was about"
the tale is elevated to the genre of parody. Thus, H adow argues "Chaucer
gently satirizes the long-w indedness and aburdity of romance-writers"
(82). For McCall, the tale is "a chaotic and fragmentary failure; but in a
more im portant way it proves to be another one of Chaucer's complete
and engaging masterpieces" (109). A nd Seym our pontificates "only a
very dull dog or a foreigner untuned to English ironies or a critic intent
on new fangelnesse could im agine that the absurdity is unintentional, the
pretension real, and the hum or absent" (311). There are obviously other
factors at w ork in the deification of secular authors, but the fact that some
early tales were rejected because of their literary inferiority must have
some effect on the assum ptions we bring to the literary quality of
Chaucer's genuine works. Critical reaction to the Squire's Tale provides
a good exam ple of how a literary text exists only within a fram ew ork of
assum ptions which are historically produced.
60
N otes
1. A lthough "The Cuckoo and the Nightengale" is listed am ong
the works Tyrw hitt believes to be genuine he does note "I cannot believe
that it was written by Chaucer" (V, xiii).
2. See Pearsall's A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey
Chaucer, Part Nine, The N un's Priest's Tale, for a discussion of how
recent editors rationalize H engw rt as the more "authentic" text while
retaining the order and links found in Ellesmere.
3. Fisher, "A nim adversions on the Text of Chaucer, 1988,"
attributes the new allegience to H engw rt to the "deconstructive tem per of
m odern criticism": "When unity and pattern are regarded as important,
Ellesmere is the better text, but w hen deconstruction of unity and pattern
is elevated to a critical principle, H engw rt becomes the more interesting
text" (791-2).
4. See Skeat, "The Evolution of The Canterbury Tales."
5. See George Saintsbury, CHEL 2 (1908): 221-4.
6. "The Evolution of The Canterbury Tales after 1400," (Conference
Paper, Philadelphia, March, 1986).
7. Brown, "Is the 'Canon Yeoman's Tale' Apocryphal?" remarks
that "the claim that w hatever is not in H engw rt may be considered
spurious is not a corollary since it depends in part on a proposition that is
not dem onstrated (that the scribe's copytext was Chaucer's ow n set of
fragments)" (483). H anna III, "The H engw rt M anuscript and the Canon
of the Canterbury Tales" argues that Hg was produced as booklets because
the tales and links came piecemeal to the scribe (as is indicated by odd
blanks and spacing). He argues that Hg was not copied from Chaucer's
"holograph" but from a series of separate exemplars, probably in vita
drafts. Note that his theory of the early MS history is dependent upon
circulation of at least parts of the CT before Chaucer's death.
8. See also Baum, "The Canon Yeoman's Tale."
9. The arrangem ent is as follows: KT, MT, RT, MLT, SqT, MerT,
WBT, FRT, SumT, C1T, FkT, SNT, PrT, PhT, ShT, Th, ParT, CYT, Mel,
MkT, NPT, McT, ParT.
61
10. The best analysis of Chaucer's influence on the author of Beryn
is W instead's "The Beryn-W riter as a Reader of Chaucer." See also
Green's "Legal Satire in The Tale of Beryn." and Bowers, "The Tale of
Beryn and T h e Siege of Thebes: Alternative Ideas of The Canterbury
Tales."
11. See also Kohl, "Chaucer's Pilgrims in Fifteenth-Century
Literature,"who argues that the satire in the Prologue "turns against
Chaucer the moralist, not against the pilgrim s’ w ordly concerns (229).
Bowers, "The Tale of Beryn and The Siege of Thebes" Alternative Ideas
of The Canterbury Tales," argues that the Beryn poet gives the pilgrims
more "dramatic vitality” than they display in Chaucer's ow n links and
that the Beryn poet "was concerned not so much with the spiritualized
pilgrimage as with the secular, nonreligious, and even grossly irreverent
quality" of the pilgrimage that Chaucer only hints at (30).
12. Some of the adverse criticism is fairly hum orous. For
instance, Jean of A ngoulem e finds both the SqT and CYT "valde absurda."
See Strohm, "Jean of Angoueme: A Fifteenth Century Reader of
Chaucer." Joseph A ddison (1694) rem arks "In vain he Jests in his
unpolish'd S train,/A nd tries to m ake his Readers laugh in vain" (Brewer
1: 160), although Brewer prefaces the exerpt with the caveat that the
com m ent w as m ade w hen A ddison w as a very young man" and he
w ould perhaps not have allowed this piece of crass juvenilia to have been
published" (1: 159). Thoreau (1843) considered w hat w ould later turn out
to be Chatterton's forgeries superior to Chaucer's more limited range of
vision. He rem arks that despite the "broad hum anity” of Chaucer, "we
have to narrow our vision som ew hat to consider him, as if he occupied
less space in the landscape, and did not stretch over hill and valley as
Ossian does" (Brewer 2: 51).
Chapter Four
62
The Chaucerian Apocrypha: Did Usk's Testam ent of Love and the
Plow m an's Tale Ruin Chaucer's Early Reputation?
A lthough the Canterbury Tales and Troilus and Criseyde have
always been considered Chaucer's prim ary poetic achievements, several
apocryphal pieces w ere very popular, especially "The Flower and the
Leaf" which was considered to be his "best poem" (Pearsall, Floure and
Leafe 1). W hat was know n of Chaucer's biography until the late
eighteenth century was based on allusions draw n from apocryphal works.
As such, it is intriguing to consider the possibility that until the late
eighteenth century Chaucer's reputation was, in part, based on w orks he
did not write. Two apocryphal works that are especially interesting are
Usk's T estam ent of Love and the Plow m an's Tale.l Lounsbury has
show n that the T estam ent of Love was used as the basis for Chaucer's
biography until the nineteenth century (180-205). Lounsbury, A ndrew
W awn and Francis Bonner also argue that the Plow m an's Tale supported
the belief that Chaucer w as a Lollard and an ardent proto-Protestant
reformer. There is evidence for these claims. However, they go on to
argue that these apocryphal pieces not only distorted, but actually harmed
Chaucer's early reputation. There is no evidence for this and the claim
that these apocryphal pieces "ruined" or "stained" Chaucer's reputation is
exaggerated. I argue that critics are using these apocryphal pieces to
extenuate Chaucer's uneven reputation until the late eighteenth century,
63
which can more clearly be attributed to the obsolescence of his language
and the perception that he w as obscene, and therefore not wholly
appropriate for serious study. The one intriguing exception to my thesis
that these w orks did not affect the reception of his genuine w orks is the
omission of the Retraction from editions for almost 200 years. It is
possible that the Retraction was excised in order not to underm ine the
anti-papal ideology of the Plow m an's Tale.
Thynne's Editions and the Problem of Authenticity
The Testam ent of Love was first included with Chaucer's works in
Thynne's 1532 edition. Thynne's edition is the sole authority for the
work. The Plow m an's Tale, which was printed separately by Godfrey
(1532), first appears with the Canterbury Tales in the 1542 edition, after the
Parson's Tale.2 In the next edition (1550) the tale is placed before the
Parson's Tale and the first line of the Parson's prologue is em ended,
designating the previous speaker as the Plowman. Tyrw hitt (1775)
probably correctly postulates that the tale was moved to the "more
honourable station" before the Parson's Tale because it "had probably
been well received by the publick, upon account of its violent invectives
against the Church of Rome" (IV, 184).
Both works cast Chaucer as a political activist. The narrator of the
T estam en t is or has been in prison. He says that he "administered the
office of com mon doing, as in ruling the establishments am ong the
people." However, because he took part in the "conjurations and other
great matters of ruling citizens," he has been forced into exile. Those
64
men w hom he has suffered for betray him so he is forced to return to his
native country. He returns and is throw n into prison. He confesses his
collusion to Richard and attains his freedom, but loses his reputation.
The narrator is a Boethian figure— a m an w ho has unjustly suffered for
his beliefs and his efforts to im prove the common lot.
The Plow m an's Tale is a debate between a Griffin, w ho is an
apologist for official doctrine, and a Pelican w ho represents Lollard beliefs.
The poem is less a debate and more of an "unstoppable polemic" as
W awn describes it. The Pelican provides a long list of clerical abuses and
calls for clerical reform. Tw o beliefs make the poem a product of Lollard
ideology and therefore subversive: the Pelican's insistence that authority
resides not in the visible church but in scripture, and his questioning the
true nature ("subgette or accydent") of the Eucharist.3
The appearance of these w orks in Thynne's editions raises the
question of early conceptions of authorship. Put simply, did Thynne
believe that these w orks w ere Chaucer's? There are two w ays of looking
at Thynne's editions. Either he intended to create editions of Chaucer's
w orks only, or his editions were intended to contain works by Chaucer
and other authors. His title, The Workes of Geffrav Chaucer newly
printed with dyuers w orkes whiche were neuer in print before is
am biguous. It is unclear w hether "dyuers workes" refers to the diverse
w orks of Chaucer or other authors. Thynne does include works overtly
attributed to other authors.4 Skeat argues that Thynne's edition was an
avow ed collection:
Those who, through ignorance or negligence, regard
Thynne's edition of Chaucer as containing "Works
attributed to Chaucer" make a great mistake...It is
65
clear that Thynne's intention was to print a collection
of poems, including all he could find of Chaucer and
anything else of similar character that he could lay
his hands on. In other words, the collection was,
from the beginning, a collection of the Works of
Chaucer and other w riters. (Chaucerian and O ther
Pieces ix-x)5
On the other hand, Yeager argues that Thynne intended "to gather all the
true works of Chaucer into one volume for the first time" (136). He bases
his argum ent on the fact that Thynne had to choose w hat to include.
Speaking of both Caxton and Thynne he says, "They had to have read
more than they printed; the mass material available to them w as simply
too extensive and too conglomerate for their books to have turned out as
they are w ithout the continued exercise of judgm ent (140).6 Yeager
claims that Thynne believed the Plow m an's Tale was Chaucer's because it
had previously been attributed to him, but his evidence for this is faulty.7
Yeager also bases his argum ent on Francis Thynne's statem ents of his
father's intentions. In his A n im ad v ersio n s he claims that his father's
goal was to produce "the fyrst printed booke that euer was of his woorkes"
and that he added "many thinges whiche were not before printed" ( 6-7).
But it is again unclear if "many thinges" refers to many things by Chaucer
or by other authors. Yeager concludes "it is sim pler to assum e that
Thynne did believe that Chaucer wrote w hat he published than to suspect
him of padding or of conscious deception" (148).
These are the only two alternatives if Thynne shared our romantic
conception of authorship or our m odern idea of an edition. But he may
have not have. It seems that one obvious indication that an edition is
meant to represent a single author's works is the presence of a biography.
66
Speght's 1598 edition is the first to include a life of Chaucer. Given the
evidence, it is im possible to determ ine w hether Thynne thought Chaucer
was the author of the T estam en t and the Plow m an's Tale. He may not
have cared. A fat edition sold well, and financial considerations probably
superseded the concern w ith authenticity. It is my belief that Thynne
m odeled his edition on early m anuscripts many of which were
miscellanies based on subject m atter.8 Thus he may have w anted to
create the first collection of Chaucer's own works, but at the same time he
included w orks of other w riters.9
Supposed Effects on Reception
Tyrw hitt finally declared the Plow m an's Tale spurious in 1775 and
the T estam ent was not discovered to be spurious until 1866.1() To what
extent did these w orks affect Chaucer's reputation? According to
Lounsbury (1892) the T estam en t "conveyed an im putation upon the
character of the m an w hich every adm irer of the poet felt called upon to
apologize for and explain away":
...it is little creditable to literary history that the
carelessness of the first editor in adm itting into the
collection of his w orks a treatise that did not belong
to it, and the ingenuity of later biographers in
deducing from this unauthentic production
unfounded references, have com bined to cast for
nearly two centuries upon the foremost w riter of our
early speech a stain which has not yet been wholly
effaced. (1:198-210)
Similarly, speaking of his story of exile and his reputation as a "bitter
enem y of the Catholic Church" Bonner claims the "misconceptions
67
inspired by the Chaucer apocrypha unrelentingly dogged the poet's name
through the centuries" (461): "This spurious material caused the picture
of Chaucer, both as a m an and writer, to be so w arped that his true
features were hardly recognizable" (481). In the same vein, W awn argues
that the Plow m an's Tale "distorted the poet's subsequent reputation
more than any other |apocryphal work|":
In the years from its initial absorption into the canon
as a Canterbury Tale in 1542 until long after its
excision by Thom as Tyrw hitt in 1775, the poem
created and then sustained the impression that
Chaucer was England's most significant pre-
Reformation protestant poet. ("Genesis" 21)
These claims seem exaggerated. There is little proof that Chaucer's
biography or his supposed political views had an adverse effect on his
literary reputation. In essence, these critics are using these apocryphal
works to extenuate Chaucer's low reputation until the early nineteenth
century.
For Brewer Chaucer is unique insofar as "no other author has been
com m ented on in English so regularly and extensively over so long a
period" and because he affords "the only tradition of critical commentary
in English that exists continuously from before the end of the sixteenth
century" (Critical Heritage 1: 1-3). However, there are large gaps in that
tradition (no edition appears for a generation— from 1602-87), and the
com m entary is often far from laudatory. In a survey of Spurgeon's
volum es it is surprising to w hat degree the pejorative com ments
outnum ber those that praise him.H For instance, Harington (1591)
accuses him of "flat scurrilitie," Drant (1567) describes Chaucer's tales as
"ripe toungued tryfles; venem ouse Allectyues, and sweet vanities," and
W harton (1575) calls his tales "stale."12 Chaucer was adm ired by his
literary contemporaries and poets of the fifteenth and early sixteenth
centuries for polishing the English language. A lthough he is sometimes
singled out, he is often ranked along with Gower and Lydgate. But in
large part, until the eighteenth century modernizations, and until serious
scholarly study was inaugurated with Tyrw hitt’s 1775 edition, he is not
studied seriously because his language and versification are considered
"rude" and obsolete or because he is considered "coarse," "uncivil," and
obscene.
The language barrier should not be underestim ated. Within 100
years after his death Skelton is insisting that although readers "barke" at
Chaucer's verses, his sense is not "darke" or "vayne."13 There are
continuous references to Chaucer's antiquated and obsolete language
through the late eighteenth century. Part of the problem w as that the
English language was changing, but editions presented corrupt and
uneven texts as well. A lthough it is usually Dryden's critical com ments
about Chaucer's realism that are considered the turning point in his
reception, it seems to me it is really his modernizations that w orked to
popularize Chaucer. Spurgeon shows that until 1700 Troilus and
Criseyde was considered Chaucer's main achievement. Up until 1750 the
num ber of references to T roilus is double that of the Canterbury Tales (1:
Ixxvii-lxxix). But references to the Canterbury Tales become more
num erous in the eighteenth century, particularly com m ents on the tales
D ryden m odernized (Knight's Tale, Wife of Bath's Tale, N un's Priest's
Tale). At the same time, there are markedly fewer references to Troilus,
probably because it was not available in a modernization.
69
But perhaps a larger im pedim ent was the general assum ption that
Chaucer not only lacked seriousness (as Arnold believed) but that he was
obscene. D ryden was careful in the tales he chose to m odernize— he says
that he has "confin'd my Choice to such Tales of Chaucer as savour
nothing of Im m odesty."14 There are continuous references to Chaucer's
"barbarity" and "incivility," from some unexpected readers. Byron (1811)
describes Chaucer's "jokes and numbers" as "quaint and careless,
anything but chaste"15 and for Defoe (1718) Chaucer "is not fit for modest
Persons to read" (Brewer 1: 174). It is interesting that those writers who
were themselves accused of obscenity condem n Chaucer for the same
tendency. Spurgeon argues that apart from some notable exceptions,
until the end of the eighteenth century Chaucer "is looked upon for the
most part as a comic poet chiefly remarkable for the scurrility of his
verses... and if his coarseness is not insisted on, he is at best a good, jolly
story teller" (1: liii).
Thus, these apocryphal pieces did not significantly harm his
reputation, for apart from being the first English poet (and his
achievem ent even in this area is both praised and reviled), it can be
argued Chaucer did not have a consistent reputation to harm. Even in
the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries w hen some readers
cham pion him as a religious reformer, many readers held the opposite
opinion, or as Spurgeon says, "they considered the poet's w orks to be
anything but edifying literature" (1: xxi). He is openly condem ned for his
"flat scurrilitie" and a Canterbury tale became idiomatic as a term of
contem pt for a "vain or scurrilous tale."
Chaucer the Protestant Reformer
70
To say that the Plow m an's Tale and the Testam ent of Love had no
effect on Chaucer's reception w ould be false. However, the effects are
limited and these pieces cannot be claimed to have m arkedly influenced,
or much less ruined his reputation. The m yth that they were highly
influential can be traced to John Foxe, who is the first to appropriate these
works for his own uses. His Ecclesiasticall history contayning the Actes
and M onum entes of thynges passed in euery Kynges tym e in this Realme
(1563; 1570 with nine editions in the sixteenth to seventeenth centuries)
was widely popular.16 A Proclamation in 1571 required that the book be
kept in every English church, so the Ecclesiasticall history w as chained to
the altars. The purpose of the history was to trace the beginnings of the
Protestant movem ent in England. Chaucer is am ong his early "faithful
witnesses" w hom he praises for bringing his contem poraries to "the true
know ledge of Religion." Foxe begins by com paring Chaucer's industry
with the "idle life" of the clergy. But he "marvels" much more at the fact
that "the Bishoppes condem ning and abolishyng al m aner of Englishe
bookes and treatises, which might bryng the people to any light of
knowledge, did yet authorise the woorkes of Chaucer to rem ayne still &
to be occupied." In an extraordinary passage he goes on to say that
Chaucer w as an ardent Wycliffite whose w orks barely slipped by the
censors:
[Chaucer] (no doubt) saw in Religion as much almost,
as euen we do now, and vttereth in hys workes no
lesse, and semeth to bee a right Wicleuian, or els was
neuer any, and that all his workes almost, if they be
throughly aduised, will testifie (albeit it bee done in
7 1
myrth, & couertly) & especially the later end of his
third booke of the Testam ent of loue: for there
purely he toucheth the highest matter, that is the
Com m union. Wherin, except a m an be altogether
blynde, he may espye him at the full. Althoughe in
the sam e booke (as in all the other he vseth to do)
vnder shadow es couertly, as vnder a visoure, he
suborneth truth, in such sorte, as both priuely she
may profite the godly m inded, and yet not be espyed
of the craftye aduersarie: A nd therefore the Byshops,
belike, takyng hys workes but for iestes and toyes, in
condem nyng other bookes, yet permitted his bookes
to be read. (Brewer, Critical Heritage 1:108-9)
Foxe also goes on to cite the Plow m an's Tale ("what finger can pointe out
more directly the Pope with his Prelates to be Antichrist, then doth the
poore Pellycan reasonyng agaynst the gredy Griffon?") as evidence that
Chaucer brought many of his contem poraries to the "true know ledge of
Religion." Foxe's views of Chaucer's politics are obviously informed and
distorted by the apocrypha. The textual obscurity in Book Three of the
T estam en t allows almost any reading and the Plow m an's Tale does
profess Lollard beliefs.17
To support her contention that the sixteenth century saw Chaucer
as a "Reformer" Spurgeon asserts "When we rem em ber the popularity of
Foxe's book, and the num ber of editions it went through, we realize he
must have done a good deal to strengthen this conception of the poet" (1:
xx). But if he did strengthen this conception, we have no record of it.
Lounsbury also insists that the Plow m an's Tale popularized Chaucer as
an ardent reformer:
The fact is that the Protestants of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries had no more notion of giving
up this poem than for a long time the extreme
Trinitarians had of giving up the text about the
witnesses in the epistle of John. It put the nam e
72
then recognized as the greatest in English literature
unm istakably upon their side. Its vigorous
outspoken invective was far more suited to their
feelings and tastes then the covert irony and delicate
satire of the genuine tales. It consequently received
from them altogether greater attention than any of
the latter. It was, in fact, looked upon as one of the
sheet-anchors of Protestantism. References to it in
controversial literature are by no m eans infrequent.
(1:471)
But the only reference Lounsbury provides is Milton w ho he says "turned
its batteries later against the very church that had supplanted the Roman
Catholic, and m ade a special application of its attack upon the earlier
bishops to those of his ow n tim e."!8
Again, there is no evidence for the claim that Chaucer was viewed
as a proto-Protestant reformer. On the basis of his satire of the clergy in
his genuine tales, Chaucer is generally referred to as a moralist and a
satirist, but there are very few readers who saw him specifically as a
Lollard. Dryden (1700) does say that in his religion he had "some little
Byas tow ards the opinion of Wycliff...somewhat of which appears in the
Tale of Piers Plowman" (Fables 561). However, he goes on to say that
Chaucer "liv'd in much esteem, with good and holy Men in Orders" and
that the "Scandal which is given by particular priests reflects not on the
Sacred Function." In 1721 in the biography included in Urry's edition,
Dart also states that Chaucer was a "Favourer of the Lollards," but this is
on the basis of the Canterbury Tales alone, since he denies the
authenticity of the Plow m an's Tale. Like Dryden Dart observes that
although in his w ritings Chaucer "bitterly inveighs against the Priests and
Fryars," nonetheless he "expresses his regard for the secular clergy who
lived up to their Profession."19 Dart goes on to note that Chaucer was a
73
friend of Lydgate who was a Monk, and also with G ow er who was "a
violent Bigot to the Church of Rome, and a perpetual exclaimer against
Wickliffe and his Followers." Although C ow den Clarke (1835) and de
Chatelain (1861 )2() continue to claim the Plow m an's Tale is by Chaucer,
there is basically no effect on the reception of Chaucer's genuine writings.
The belief that Chaucer satirized the clergy (and by way of this was calling
for reform) is supported by the genuine Canterbury Tales.2! so there is no
reason to attribute this aspect of Chaucer's reputation to the P low m an's
T ale.
There is also no evidence that the biographical inferences taken
from the T estam ent adversely affected Chaucer's reputation. The story of
his involvem ent in a popular revolt, his exile, im prisonm ent, and
betrayal of his fellow conspirators to gain pardon, is included in Chaucer
biographies until 1866 w hen Hertzberg found that the facts in the poem
could not be autobiographical. In the biography in the 1721 edition, Dart
surmises, w ithout providing any historical evidence, that Chaucer's
supposed confession, which "impeached the Persons concerned with
him," brought upon Chaucer "the ill will of most people, who...called
him false, Iyer, base, ingratefull, &c." (sig. dl). To my know ledge there are
only two instances in which there is a connection between the fictitious
biography and literary criticism. Dart (1721) does use one of its references
to C om m union to argue that Chaucer was a pious Christian since he
"confesses the Real Presence...and shew s his regard for Divine Worship"
(sig. c3). And Hazlitt in his Lectures on the English Poets (1818) after
repeating the story of Chaucer's "discovery of his associates" wryly
com ments that "Fortitude does not appear, at any time, to have been the
74
distinguishing virtue of poets." More im portantly though, he goes on to
suggest that there is "an obvious similarity between the practical turn of
Chaucer's m ind and the restless impatience of his character, and the tone
of his writings":
Chaucer's intercourse with the busy world, and
collision with the actual passions and conflicting
interests of others, seemed to brace the sinews of his
understanding, and gave his writings the air of a man
w ho describes persons and things that he had know n
and been intimately concerned with. (Brewer,
Critical Heritage 1: 277)
A part from these references there is no evidence that the T estam ent
affected, much less "stained" Chaucer's early reputation. It seems to me
that, under the guise that these works ruined Chaucer's reputation,
Lounsbury and the others are using these apocryphal pieces to account for
Chaucer's uneven reputation until the late eighteenth century.
Moreover, despite claims by Tyrw hitt22 and W awn that the
Plow m an's Tale is highly subversive, not many readers were moved by
its supposed scandalous invective. For instance, in a list of sum m aries of
the Canterbury Tales Harvey (1590) describes the S um m oner's Tale as
"An od iest in scorne of friars," the Friar's Tale as "inuective against the
briberie of the spiritual courts" and under Plow m an's Tale simply notes
"Ecclesiastical abuses" and comments that Chaucer's tale is nothing like
stories of other reformers (Brewer, Critical Heritage 1: 123). Perhaps more
sixteenth century readers saw Chaucer as a moral and religious reformer
than in previous or subsequent ages, but this was not necessarily on the
basis of the Plow m an's Tale. Spurgeon says that the value placed on
Chaucer as a religious and moral reformer "lessens the value of the
75
criticism" at this time, but the belief that literature should instruct was
heavily influential throughout the period. That readers should therefore
find moral instruction in Chaucer is not surprising.
The Plow m an's Tale and the Retraction
The one intriguing exception to my thesis that these apocryphal
w orks had no effect on the reception of Chaucer's genuine w orks is the
controversy over the authenticity of the Retraction. In 1709 Thom as
Hearne suggested that the Retraction had been added by the clergy to
minim ize the invective of the Plow m an's Tale:
I believe the Revocation annex'd to the Parson's Tale
in some Copies of Chaucer not to be genuine, but
m ade by the Monks, who were strangely exasperated
for the Freedom he took, especially in the Plow
man's Tale of exposing their Pride, Loosness and
Debauchery. (Spurgeon 1: 303)
He goes on to add that if the Retraction is genuine, then it may represent
Chaucer's response to his "Misfortunes" from "following the M ultitude,"
which caused him to "reflect seriously upon the Changes and Infirmities
to which hum ane N ature is subject" (Spurgeon 1: 308) Thus both
apocryphal pieces are used to excuse a conclusion to the Canterbury Tales
that Hearne finds unfit. Hearne's suggestion is repeated until the end of
the nineteenth century. Hippisley (1837) suggests that the "scholastic and
monkish" Retraction is "out of place" and was probably interpolated by
the "hand of some pious catholic or schoolman" (Brewer, Critical
Heritage 1: 319). Tyrw hitt felt the m iddle was interpolated; Dibdin (1810-
19) says it was "foisted in by the zeal of some pious monk"; and Hertzberg
76
(1866) calls it the "work of a w ellm eaning but clumsy zealot" (H am m ond
321-22). Lounsbury suspects it is a "forgery" because it does not list the
Romance of the Rose ("a w ork that in the original equalled anything
written anyw here by the poet in the freedom of its sentiments and in its
attacks upon the clerical orders") and because it lists 25 w om en in the
Legend of Good W om en w hen Chaucer had said that he w ould write of
no more than twenty "and he m ust have know n that he had not actually
given an account of half that number" (1: 414-15).
The Retraction has never been popular. Caxton printed it, but it is
omitted by Pynson (1526). T hynne also omitted it, and the Retraction
does not appear again until Urry's 1721 edition, although a headnote to
the Plow m an's Tale states that the "Scriveners were prohibited
transcribing it; and enjoyn'd to subscribe an Instrument at the end of the
C anterbury Tales, call'd the Retraction." It is unclear why Thynne
omitted it. He should have had access to Caxton's and de W orde's
editions which included it, and Pynson's 1526 edition which omitted it.
Yeager suggests that T hynne left the piece out because it blurred the figure
of Chaucer as a love poet which w as the figure Thynne "sought to draw"
(163). However, it is interesting to speculate w hether he silenced the
Retraction for political reasons, so that it w ould not blur the figure of
Chaucer as an early critic of the Papacy.23
W hatever the reason was, no critic has questioned w hy it was
omitted for over two hundred years; and from the time it was
reintroduced, readers have felt compelled to minim ize Chaucer's bald
statem ent that all he wrote w as for our edification. Even after Skeat
pronounced the piece w as genuine, some critics continue to doubt its
77
authenticity. Manly and Rickert question w hether Chaucer is the author
of the Retraction and the Parson's Tale, or if they were meant to be
included in the Canterbury Tales: "They are indeed a strange substitute
for the jolly ending of the CT which the Host's w ords...encouraged us to
expect" (2: 471-2). They say that "there is not a hint of any sort that [the
Retraction] is appended to CT" and conclude that the question of
authenticity "is incapable perhaps of any other solution than the personal
one of conformity to the tastes and preconceptions of each individual
scholar" (471-2). Blake also continues to challenge the authenticity of the
Retraction since it is not in Hengw rt, although its absence may easily be
attributed to the loss of leaves at the end of the m anuscript (Textual
T radition 173-4). Even those critics who accept the Retraction as genuine
tend to lessen its significance. W urtele gives a thorough sum m ary of the
various interpretations the Retraction has inspired:
The floodtide of subjective criticism w as initiated as
much by Tatlock as anyone; he wrote that the
"retracciouns," though genuine, "need imply
nothing more than a few weeks of other-w orldliness
at the very end, and surely have nothing to say as to a
w hole decade.” The period from that point to the
present has w itnessed a range of opinion focusing not
on authenticity but rather on extenuation. A certain
pattern has em erged. Blame is placed on the poet's
conscience and narrow creed by Root, on clerical
influence during physical weakness by Manly, on fear
of im m inent death by Lawrence. (338)
It may be that this suspicion of the Retraction is a legacy of the myths that
the Plow m an's Tale initiated.
78
Chaucer the Political Activist
A nother legacy of these apocryphal pieces may be the desire to see
Chaucer as a social activist. Despite some historical evidence to the
contrary and despite the resistance of his poetry to yield any overt political
statements, the image of Chaucer as a political activist remains popular.
It is highly unlikely that Chaucer did not have political convictions, but
given his position in a politically turbulent court, to voice those
convictions may have been im prudent at the very least. It seems that
Chaucer's survival, w hen so many of his contem poraries perished in the
later years of Richard's reign, is a good sign of his diplomacy and
circumspection. Nonetheless, two recent studies insist that Chaucer was
"deeply" and "dangerously" involved in the politics of his time.
In Chaucer and the Subject of History Patterson asks if we can
"understand Chaucer's fascination with the subject of history in
biographical terms" (32). Although Patterson adm its that Chaucer's
poetry "declined to engage the real w orld of late medieval England
explicitly" and that he "ruled out much of his contem porary historical
w orld as an object of poetic attention" he goes on to make some very
specific connections between contemporary historical events and
Chaucer's poetics. For instance, he reads Troilus and Criseyde as a
"witness" to Chaucer's deep involvem ent in the "factionalized political
world of the mid-1380s" (161). He reads the account of the Trojan
Parliam ent in Book IV as a "mordant" com m entary on the W onderful
Parliam ent of 1386, "albeit one delivered from a narrow ly royalist
79
perspective" (158). This com m entary carried with it "important, and
even dangerous political consequences." Patterson goes on to claim that
Chaucer was a victim of the 1386 Parliament: "He lost his two positions
in the Custom, gave up the rent-free lease on his house over Aldgate, and
over the next two years continued to be harassed by both the aristocratic
opposition and by financial insecurity" (159). Patterson's speculations are
intriguing. The problem is that there is no evidence and at the end of the
chapter Patterson essentially retracts his reading:
Yet of course Troilus and Criseyde is not really
that kind of poem. Despite the royalist attitudes
that govern its account of the Trojan Parliament,
despite the generally affirmative effect that any
Trojan narrative has upon royal authority,
Troilus and Criseyde cannot really be aligned with
specific monarchial interests. On the contrary, its
meditations on history are both too general and
too profound to be contained by any narrowly
partisian purpose. (162)
In Social Chaucer Strohm also discusses the "broad extent of
|Chaucer's| participation in the politics of faction" (25). However, like
Patterson, Strohm is unable to provide substantial evidence for Chaucer's
participation in the bloody party factionalism of the late 1380's. Strohm
rightly notes that Chaucer's survival (which he attributes to his low
profile in terms of patronage and his reduced activites on behalf of the
crown fro m l386-8) is a witness to "the prudence with which he managed
that participation in difficult and dangerous times": "Part of Chaucer's
success may have been based on an ability to mobilize in his political
choices those qualities that readers have found in his literary choices,
including even-handedness and receptivity to opposed points of view
(41). However, he goes on to say that the inspiration for the aesthetics of
the Canterbury Tales, w hich "has a deep implication in the urgent social
contests of the time," can be attributed to Chaucer's participation in the
politics of his day. He believes that from 1386-9 Chaucer m ade a "private
decision to scale dow n his visibility as a m em ber of the royal faction"
(37).24 W hen Chaucer became estranged from the court and city for his
ow n safety, he lost his audience. So he "developed an internal
com m unication system w ith fictional pilgrim tellers and hearers— a
fictional audience to replace his real one" (65). Strohm attributes the
generic and stylistic variation in the Canterbury Tales to Chaucer's
"mediated response to the factionalism and contradiction within his own
social experience" (163). The Canterbury Tales is finally a Utopian
enterprise, a vision of the future in which different voices (different
parties, different social classes) are allowed free interaction. But despite
this com pelling reading, like Patterson, Strohm finally adm its that
Chaucer "effaces any dem onstrable connections between contem porary
politics and the meaning of his text" (164).
Spurgeon claims that Chaucer's reception "forms a m easurem ent
of judgem ent— not of Chaucer— but of his critics" (1: cxxv). Similarly,
reflecting on his ow n collection of critical com mentary, Brewer remarks
"We give ourselves away constantly" (23). W hat use to us, then, is the
political Chaucer? It seems to me that as Medieval studies become more
m arginalized and in the face of calls for academic responsiblity and
reform, the study of an author w ho had or has political significance may
in turn render the w ork of the critic on that author socially relevant. In
the W inter 1994 issue of H u m an ties Muscatine calls "for the academic
81
hum anties to be reformed...the academic [must] examine his or her
profession from the perspective of the public good":
In the "research universities"...hum anities teaching
on the graduate level, and increasingly on the
undergraduate level [is] driven by a frantic and
m isguided specialism itself driven by a frantic
careerism...it does not even aim at preparing
hum anists w hose w ork will ultimately recirculate
into the body politic...For much of w hat passes for
research these days...is so subjective, so cynical, so
devoid of belief in com munication or meaning, so
careless (when not positively hostile to) the evidence
and logic that em pow er responsible agreem ent and
m ake informed understanding shareable, and is
offered up in so dense and ugly a jargon— that one
cannot imagine its usefulness to a sane society. (1 ;10)
Muscatine's rem arks are in response to a grow ing m ovem ent that calling
for w hat Lerer terms "a politically informed and socially responsible
pedagogy" ("Review" 426). This movement, at least within the academy
itself, is a response to budget cuts and a dw indling job market. So
perhaps the em phasis on the political Chaucer— in the same article
Muscatine calls him an "eminent public hum anist"— is a move to make
our ow n w ork politically significant— useful to a sane society. And
according to Lerer this is exactly w hat Patterson's Chaucer and the Subject
of History aspires to: "the book aspires to a kind of social activism that
enables literary study to change the reader's life" (426).
N otes
82
1. Both w orks are found in Skeat's Chaucerian and O ther Pieces.
2. Yeager claims that The Plow m an's Tale appeared before
Thynne's 1542 edition in a black-letter edition. As evidence he cites H. J.
T odd's Illustrations of the Lives and Writings of G ower and Chaucer
(London: F. C. and J. Rivington, 1810), xxxix, who describes an edition of
the C anterbury Tales "of duodecim o size, in black letter, w ithout date, and
im printed at London in Paules churche-yard at the sygne of the Hy 1 1 , by
W yllyam Hyll." There w as included in this edition "The Plouman's tale
compylled by syr Geffray Chaucer knyght." This edition does not predate
Thynne's 1542 edition, but refers to T hynne’s ow n 1550 edition.
3. For a thorough explanation of the attitudes in the poem that
make it "unquestionably Lollard in origin" see W awn, "The Genesis of
The Plow m an's Tale."
4. For instance, "Unto the worthy and noble kynge Henry the
fourth” is attributed to Gower, and Scogan is said to be the author of
"Unto the Lordes and Gentylmen of the Kynges House." See D. S.
Brewer, ed., Geoffrey Chaucer, The Works, 1532. With Supplem entary
Material From the Editions of 1542, 1561, 1598, and 1602.
5. Probably under Skeat's influence Spurgeon also insists that
Thynne's editions should be viewed as a "book of poetical selections or
extracts" (Five H undred Years, 1: xci).
6. Yeager goes on to argue that because Thynne had to choose
poems from several miscellanies (i.e. he read more than he printed), he
"did believe that Chaucer w rote w hat he published" (148). Yeager’ s
support for this argum ent is not entirely convincing. One problem is
Thynne's inclusion of two poems that are overtly attributed to Gower and
Scogan. Yeager suggests that if Thynne "envisioned Chaucer as a poet of
multiple narrative voices, the consum m ately skillful creator of personae,
might he not have suspected that Chaucer wrote 'In Praise of Peace'
disguised, so to speak, as Gower?" (157). This is improbable. Bonner,
"Genesis of the Chaucer Apocrypha," also argues that Thynne w anted to
produce an edition that "filled out the incomplete canon of Chaucer's
works," but w as led astray by false ascriptions in his MSS. and an
ignorance of Chaucer's versification.
7. See note 2, above.
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8. See Boffey and Thom pson: "In the absence of a strict sense of
copyright, or of any form of direct supervision, it seems natural that the
history of book production before printing should be full of exam ple of
compilers...!in w hose collections] distinctions between the works of
different authors, between religious and secular material, between
different literary forms, are generally unobserved."
9. John Leland, Chaucer's first biographer (1540, but his
C om m entarie, although used by Pits and Bale is not printed until 1709)
does seem to think that Caxton and Thynne were trying to create a
definitive edition of Chaucer's works. He says Caxton "collected in one
volume" the works of Chaucer. He goes on to say that Thynne
"employed much labor, zeal, and care in searching diligently for ancient
copies, and added many things to the first edition." See John Leland,
Com m entarie de Scriptoribus Britannicis, in Brewer's Chaucer: The
Critical Heritage, 1: 90-96.
10. See H am m ond, Chaucer: A Bibliographical M anual, 458.
11. A lthough Spurgeon's collection of allusions has its problem s
(such as incomplete extracts), which Brewer sought to ameliorate, a very
different impression of Chaucer's reception is given by his Critical
Heritage. His aim is to collect "all the 'critical' w ritings on Chaucer from
his ow n day up to 1933" (1). A much more positive impression of
Chaucer's reception is gained from Brewer's collection. Most of the
pejorative com m ents found in Spurgeon (which Brewer may have
considered am ateurish) are omitted.
12. Spurgeon, 1: 134; 100; 111.
13. John Skelton, "Phyllyp Sparowe" (II. 800-803).
14. Dryden, Fables Ancient and Modern, 563. I should note that
Dryden goes on to say that "If I had desired to please more than to
instruct, the Reeve, the Miller, the Shipman, the Merchant, the Sum ner,
and above all, the Wife of Bath, in the Prologue to her Tale, w ould have
procured me as many friends and readers, as there are beaux and ladies of
pleasure in the town." The baw dy elements of Chaucer's verse obviously
had its admirers. Under the entry for Samuel Pepys Brewer discusses a
"Mennes" w ho published a "small collection of facetious, mainly
scatological verse, not w ithout wit, containing two Chaucerian
burlesque...which incorporate a num ber of reminiscences of 'The General
Prologue'" (Critical Heritage, 1: 153).
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15. "Hints From Horace" (11. 425-428) in McCann, Lord Byron: The
Com plete Poetical Works, 305.
16. Relevant passages are in Brewer, Critical Heritage, 1: 107-109.
17. In his biography of Chaucer in Urry, The Works of Geoffrey
Chaucer (1721), Dart uses the same passage that discusses Com m union to
assert that Chaucer was n o t an ardent Wycliffite: "But Chaucer differed
much from them even in O pinion; for in his Testam ent of Love, he
confesses the real presence...and shew s his regard for Divine Worship"
(sig. c3). Skeat explains how he discovered the "extraordinary dislocation
of the text" in Book Three. Skeat had initially assum ed that the initial
letters in the different sections were meant to form an acrostic. Based on
Thynne's print, the acrostic read "Margaret of virtu, have merci on T. S.
K. N. V. I." Skeat speculated that the concluding letters were an anagram
of the author's nam e w hich he supposed to be "Kitsun." Henry Bradley
suggested that the m anuscript leaves w ere disordered, and suggested to
Skeat that the correct order should read "thin Usk" (Chaucerian and
O ther Pieces, xx). See The Collected Papers of Henry Bradley, (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1928), 229-232. W awn, "The Genesis of The Plow m an's Tale,"
observes that it is not simply the fact that it is anti-clerical that m arks the
PT as a product of Lollard ideology: "From long before Wyclif w as born
until long after his death many articulate citizens had written scathingly
on all aspects of ecclesiastical im propriety whilst rem aining of
unim peachable (or at least unim peached) orthodoxy in the eyes of the
church" (29). However, he says that this poem is "bounded by attitudes
to ecclesiastical authority which were unquestionably Lollard in origin,"
in particular the Pelican's insistence that true authority does not rest with
the "visible church" but is manifest in Scripture (30-31).
18. In Of Reformation touching Church-Discipline in England
(London, 1641) Milton does quote from the Plow m an's Tale and says that
Chaucer was w arning his contem poraries to "beware of her Bishops." See
Spurgeon, Five H undred Years. 1: 220-221.
19. Urry. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer, sig. cl; c3. Also quoted
in Brewer, 1: 178-179.
20. The case of Jean Baptiste de Chatelain is rather am using. In his
Contes de Canterbury, traduit en vers francais (1857-61) found in
Spurgeon, Five H undred Years, 3: 66-8, Appendix B, he dedicates the
P low m an’s Tale, which he describes as "I'un des plus beaux poemes du
grand Chaucer" to, of all people, Pope Pius IX.
85
21. J. H. Hippisley in Chapters on Early English History (1837) in
Brewer, Critical Heritage, 1: 327, appears to take the Host's reference to
the Parson (that he smells a Lollard in the w ind) seriously. He says: "In
rem arking on the Persoune's character, it may be as well to observe upon
the inconsistency of uniting a Lollard, an avow ed despiser of pilgrimages,
with a gay train of Catholic devotees. In his prologue, the Priest speaks in
the spirit of the Puritans of a later day:
'I wol you tell a litel tale in prose
To knitte up all this feste, and make an ende,
And Jesu for his grace wit me sende.'"
22. Tyrwhitt, "Introductory Discourse to the C anterbury Tales,"
believes that not "even Wycliff himself w ould have railed at the whole
governm ent of the Church in the style of the Plow m an's Tale. If
[Chaucer] had been disposed to such an attem pt [his] times w ould not
have born it" (IV, 184-5). Hearne (1709) records the title of a 1606 copy of
the Plow m an's Tale that says that the piece shows "by ye Doctrine and
lives of the Romish Clergie that the Pope is anti-Christ and they his
ministers" (Spurgeon, 1: 301). N ow here does the poem m ake this claim.
The Pope is only criticized to the extent that he does not control and
reprim and corrupt clergy.
23. Lounsbury, Studies, 1: 413-4, suggests essentially the same
thing: As his [Thynne's] came out as early as 1532, it cannot be said with
positiveness that it was a religious motive that dictated the suppression
by that editor of w hat certainly have been contained in most, if not all, of
the manuscripts in his possession. Still, even then the attacks by the poet
upon various of the clerical orders are likely to have been met with a
sym pathy the strength of which it was not desirable to im pair by
im puting to him any regrets for their appearance. The hostility felt
tow ards the Roman Catholic church w ould naturally cause the omission
of the passage in all editions that followed Thynne's and were based on it.
24. Crow and Olson show that on December 4 and 14 Chaucer
relinquished the controllerships of the wool and petty customs (268-70).
This event seems to intrigue critics. Patterson argues that Chaucer lost
these appointm ents but Strohm agrees with Crow (269) that "No
particular pressure seems to have been brought against him to resign his
posts (37).
Chapter Five
86
Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida and
Much A do A bout H enryson's Testam ent of Cresseid
This chapter provides another example of the supposed effects the
apocrypha had on the reception of Chaucer's genuine poetry. From 1532
until 1721 Henryson's Testam ent of Cresseid was included in editions of
Chaucer's w orks following Troilus and Criseyde. Scholars were
concerned that H enryson's continuation was accepted as Chaucer's, and
subsequently ruined the aesthetic value of Troilus and Criseyde. I argue
that this line of critical inquiry is anachronistic, reflecting the m odern
assum ption that textual authority resides in an author, particularly a
canonical author. That readers did conflate the tw o stories as equally
authoritative versions should indicate that the rigid distinction we make
between the authoritative and the apocryphal is informed by the
Romantic ideology of originary inspiration.
Until late in this century, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida was
considered a canonical blemish. The play was said to be poorly written,
lacking structure, a plot and complex characterization. The play was
considered especially w eak w hen com pared to Chaucer's Troilus and
Criseyde. It w as believed that Shakespeare had som ehow missed
Chaucer's subtle and sym pathetic characterization of Criseyde, and it was
primarily for this that his play was condem ned. At the turn of the
century, and dism issing the suggestion that Shakespeare did not himself
write Troilus and Cressida, Tatlock, Rollins, and Root thought that they
had discovered the explanation for this "puzzling and graceless" play.
Robert H enryson's Testam ent of Cresseid. which had appeared after
Chaucer's T roilus in editions for almost 200 years, was to blame.
H enryson had depicted his Cresseid as a blasphem ing whore,
underm ining Chaucer's more sensitive and am biguous characterization.
It was presum ed that Shakespeare accepted Henryson's treatm ent of
Cresseid as Chaucer's, which led to the creation of his flat, debased
heroine. Henryson's story, which was presum ably mistaken as Chaucer's
"sixth book" until attributed to Henryson in 1721, was thus responsible
for ruining two canonical works. It not only corrupted the reception of
Chaucer's Troilus. but also influenced Shakespeare's conception of
Troilus and Cressida. However, the discovery of Chaucer's ironic
narrator called into question Chaucer's ostensibly sym pathetic
characterization, and at approxim ately the same time, the aesthetic
reevaluation of Shakespeare's play finally m ade the question of
H enryson’s influence inconsequential. The assum ption that H enryson is
responsible for ruining two canonical masterpieces was based on certain a
priori interpretive expectations of the meaning of, and the author's
intentions in, each of these works. The following analysis illustrates well
how herm eneutic assum ptions about texts become canonized and tend to
dictate the nature and direction of critical inquiry.
The T estam ent was first printed in Thynne's 1532 edition of
Chaucer's works. It was a late addition, since there is a gap in the
foliation— it is sandw iched in on four extra leaves between T roilus and
T h e Legend of Good W om en. Both Stow (1561) and Speght (1598, 1602)
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followed Thynne's arrangem ent, and Speght adds the following passage
at the beginning of Chaucer's poem:
In this excellent Booke is shew ed the feruent loue of
Troylus to Creseid, w hom e hee enioyed for a time:
and her great vntruth to him againe in giuing her
selfe to Diomedes, w ho in the end did so cast her off,
that she came to great miserie. In which discourse
Chaucer liberally treateth of the diuine purueiaunce.
(Rollins 395)
Speght ignores Francis Thynne's suggestion in his A n im ad v ersio n s
(1599) that "yt w olde be good that Chaucer's proper woorkes were
distinguyshed from the adulterat, and such as were not his, as the
Testam ente of Cresseyde...which Chaucer never composed" (Spurgeon 1,
155). Kinaston is the first to attribute the poem to Henryson in a his Latin
translation of T roilus and the T estam ent (1639). But the first recognition
of H enryson's authorship in print is in Urry's 1721 edition, in which Urry
borrows, or steals, Kinaston's note (since it is w ithout acknowledgement):
"The A uthor...w as one Mr. Robert H enderson, chief schoolmaster of
D um ferlin..."
Many critics have assum ed since the T estam ent was placed after
T roilus in every major edition of Chaucer's w orks until 1721, that the
poem was accepted as Chaucer's. H yder Rollins claims "It should be
obvious that most readers took the T estam ent for Chaucer's own
work...every mention of Cressid as a leper at least to 1600, is an allusion to
C haucer" (Rollins 399-401). According to Valerie Smith, "...until the
eighteenth century the T estam en t was generally thought to be by Chaucer
him self" (69). Robert Kindrick asserts that "Throughout the sixteenth
century, in England the poem was believed to be Chaucer's...Thynne
89
included it as a sixth book' of Troilus and Criseyde" (119).1 Denton Fox
says T hynne's inclusion of an anglicised text of the T estam en t in his
edition ensured that it w ould be accepted as Chaucer's in the sixteenth
century...any mention of Troilus and Criseyde made between 1532 and
1721— and often later— is a reference to both Chaucer's and Henryson's
poems" (19-20). And Alice Miskimin states "The paradox that the best of
all the fifteenth-century imitations of Chaucer was for tw o centuries
accepted as Chaucer's last judgem ent on Criseyde is one of the most
famous in literary history" (208).
It seems am azing that sixteenth and seventeenth century readers
could have mistaken H enryson's "epilogue" for Chaucer's conclusion.
G ranted, the language w as anglicized and the spelling normalized in
order to smooth over the M iddle Scot dialect which w ould normally
have betrayed the poem's northern origin:
H enryson
Ane dooly sesoun to ane cairfull dyte
Suld correspond, and be equivalent.
Right sa it wes quhen I began to wryte
This tragedy; the w edder richt fervent,
Q uhen Aries, in m iddis of the Lent,
Shouris of haill can fra the north discend;
That scantily fra the cauld I micht defend.
T h y n n e
A doly season tyl a careful dyte
Shulde coresponde/ and be equivolent
Ryght so it was w han I began to write
This tragedy/ the w eder right fervent
W han Aries in m yddes of the lent
Showres of hayle can fro the northe discend
That scantily fro the colde I m yght me defende.
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But there are obvious indications that the w ork is not written by Chaucer.
Henryson refers to Chaucer three times in the first ten stanzas as the
"worthie" author of the T ro ilu s. Chaucer does often refer to himself in
the third person, as in the Man of Law's Prologue ("I kan right now no
thrifty tale seyn,/ That Chaucer, thogh he kan but lew edly/ On metere
and on rym yng craftily" (46-8)), so the reference in the T estam en t could
have been taken as another ironic self-allusion. Perhaps irritated by
Chaucer's extenuation of Criseyde, Henryson also challenges his handling
of his "matere": "Quha wait gif all that Chauceir wrait was trew?" But
more im portantly, his poem blatantly ignores Chaucer's conclusion in at
least one glaring w ay— Troilus is resurrected in the T estam en t. Thynne
entitled his edition The Workes of Geffray Chaucer newly printed, with
dyuers w orkes whiche were neuer in print before. Skeat argues that
"those who, through ignorance or negligence, regard T hynne’ s edition as
containing 'Works attributed to Chaucer' make a great mistake," and
insists that "dyuers workes" must be construed as "of various authors"
(Chaucerian and Other Pieces 8).2 It is unclear w hether early readers
thought Chaucer was the author of the T estam en t. They may not have
cared. A lthough medieval and renaissance attitudes tow ards authorship
are difficult to define, it does seem that they did not share our romantic
conception, with its em phasis on inspiration, originality and
authenticity .3 The medieval conception of a text was often based more
on subject m atter than on authorship (c. f. Jankyns's book of "wikked
wyves"), and Chaucer himself habitually builds his own w orks on several
textual sources, such as the story of Dido in the House of Fam e. Even if
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early readers realized the T estam en t could not have been com posed by
Chaucer, this does not mean that they w ould ignore Henryson's
contribution to the Troilus and Criseyde legend.
However, the evidence that the T estam en t was read as a
continuation of T roilus did worry Rollins, Tatlock, and Root because they
felt that Henryson had ruined or corrupted Chaucer's more am biguous
and complex poem in his characterization of Criseyde as a "leperous
strumpet." There are critics w ho read the T estam ent as a vindication of
Criseyde's character, w ho argue she achieves spiritual enlightenm ent and
a Christian salvation, which ennobles her character.4 But it w ould seem
to me that her actions speak for themselves. Henryson says she is
abandoned by Diomede w hen he "had all his appetyte,/ And mair" (and
more?) and that she "walkit vp and doun...into the court, commoun"
which all editors gloss as the indication that she became a prostitute,
although Fox concedes that "Henryson is probably being intentionally
vague, though the Chaucerian 'And sum men sayis' makes it clear that
he is dam ning Cresseid" (Fox 92). She then is stricken with leprosy
(which was often believed to be a venereal disease) for blasphem ing
Cupid and Venus, and at the climax she is groveling in the dirt as the
miraculously resurrected Troilus rides by. After he gives her a sack of
gold, she dies repenting for having been "fals" to him. The im m ediate
effect, unless one insists on a Christian interpretation, is to rub her nose
in her crime (not for blasphem ing the pagan deities but for forsaking
Troilus). The point is not that Criseyde is ennobled by her suffering but
that she has been duly punished, which Kinaston (Henryson's first critic)
did not miss: "...he learnedly takes uppon him in a fine poeticall way to
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expres the punishm ent and end due to a false inconstant whore, which
com m only term inates in extreme misery" (Smith 1, 103).
A lthough it is difficult to determ ine to w hat extent the T estam ent
affected the reading of Troilus, Rollins has show n that several sixteenth
century readers did conflate the two poems into a single tradition. The
tell-tale sign is always Criseyde's leprosy. For example, Turberville in his
Epitaphes (1567) writes "I pray she may have better h a p / Than beg hir
bread with dish and clap...God shield hir from the lazars lore,/ And
lothsome leapers stincking sore" (Spurgeon 3, 35); George Gascoigne
(1575) describes "how she dyed leaper-like, against hir louers will" in his
Poesies (Spurgeon 3, 39); and in Thom as Heyw ood's Iron Age (1596),
Helen w onders how "hath Cresids beauty sinn'd 'gainst H eauen,/ That is
branded thus with leprosie?" (Spurgeon 3, 61 ).5 Rollin's research shows
that H enryson's version w as incorporated into the T roilus legend. But
almost as often as not, Criseyde is depicted in this period as "the highest
type of sweetheart," because she is not a coy mistress, but a beautiful
w om an w ho "yielded grace" to her lover's advances, and w ho was to be
em ulated. This evidence som ew hat deflates Rollin's thesis that Criseyde
w as viewed as a whore, but he suggests most readers may simply have
w earied of the story before reaching the end: "One could almost suspect
that, tired with Chaucer's long-draw n-out narrative, certain readers
stopped at the great climax of the third book of the T roilus and w ent on
their way, blissfully unaw are of Criseyde's later perfidy" (390). H owever,
it is equally plausible that readers may have ignored Henryson's spurious
account of Cresseid's degradation, or they may have felt his conclusion
vindicated her character.
Chaucer's Sw eetheart and Shakespeare's W hore
There is evidence that some readers did accept Chaucer's and
H enryson’s versions of the Criseyde legend as a single tradition (however
incoherent), but we cannot really determ ine if H enryson's T estam en t was
thought to be by Chaucer. The distinction itself may not have m ade
sense to Renaissance readers. However, at the turn of the century the
perceived authenticity of H enryson's poem was considered crucial,
surprisingly enough, to Shakespeare scholars. Shakespeare's Troilus and
Cressida had long been held in low esteem. In his Preface to Troilus and
Cressida or. Love Found Too Late (1679), John D ryden postulates that
Shakespeare must have grow n "weary of his task" (226) a belief that
endured until the early twentieth century. Johnson, Hazlitt, Coleridge
and Sw inburne all found the play flawed and the "least likeable" in the
canon (Adamson 6). Tatlock (1916) felt that the "want of deep interest on
Shakespeare's part accounts for the play's cynical "tone and temper"
("Chief Problem" 141). Similarly, Rollins (1917) w onders if Shakespeare
wrote the play at all and suggests that "for some reason it was not finished
and was put aside for a year or two, and the last few scenes were the work
of another hand" (428). Robert Kilburn Root (1906) suggests that
Shakespeare approached the love story "in a spirit of bitter cynicism and
blackest pessimism...it is merely disgusting" (104-5). As late as 1958 M. C.
Bradbrook describes the play as a bitter refashioning of Chaucer's poem,
in which "the high and heroic romance is in every way deflated...and a
poetical ideal is ironically distorted and defaced" (312).
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The low critical estimation of Troilus and Cressida was partly based
on the assum ption that Shakespeare read and used Chaucer's poem.
Tatlock, Rollins, and Root believed Chaucer's T ro ilu s was his primary
source. Bradbrook calls the later play a "correction" of Chaucer's, and
shows how each of Chaucer's five books is represented one or two scenes
in each of Shakespeare's acts. For Dorothy Loomis, "that Shakespeare
read him and used him is indubitable" (167). Miskimin describes T roilus
and Cressida as a "deliberately grotesque distortion" of the earlier poem
(156). Jane Adam son argues that Shakespeare "freely draw s on it and
adapts it to his own purposes, in a m anner that both assumes and exploits
his audience's know ledge of Chaucer's narrative" (71). And Jill Mann
bases her reading of Troilus and Cressida on the assum ption that
"Chaucer's poem contains the seeds from w hich Shakespeare's new
interpretation germinated" (117). But despite these strong claims, it is
unclear to w hat extent Shakespeare relied on Chaucer's version of the
popular legend.
Shakespeare's treatm ent of the legend was seen as inferior to
Chaucer's primarily because early twentieth century critics felt that he had
cheapened the love story by maligning Criseyde's character, by depicting
her as blatantly sexual and fickle. In his Preface to Love Found Too Late
Dryden described Chaucer's T roilus as "a Satyr on the Inconstancy of
Women." There may be some internal evidence in T h e Legend of Cood
W o m e n (if the god of Love is reliable gauge for Chaucer's audience's
reaction), that Chaucer's contem poraries took the point of the poem as
"how that w em en han don mis" (G 266). However, until the m id
twentieth century, it was generally believed that Chaucer's handling of
Criseyde was sympathetic. This interpretation was predicated on the
assum ption that Chaucer's narrator voiced the poet's ow n sentiments.
Thus, in 1880 A dolphus W. W ard states, "The English poet... endears her
to us from the first; so much so that 'O the pity of it' seems the harshest
verdict we can ultimately pass upon her conduct" (92-3). Root also
equates Chaucer with the narrator and oddly suggests that although
Criseyde is a fickle, easy w om an, she essentially "deceives" Chaucer into
thinking that she is tricked into sleeping with Troilus (113). For Rollins
Chaucer had a "sym pathetic com prehension" of Criseyde that m ade him
pity her (396). Tatlock insists that "The Englishman was almost in love
with his heroine himself; he never w rote more heartfelt w ords than his
refusal to chide her" ("People in Chaucer's Troilus" 100). And according
to Joseph G raydon, the "author's sum m ation of the purport of his w ork is
a w arning to women, lest they suffer the undeserved unhappiness that
came to Criseyde through her love for Troilus" (177).
If Chaucer wrote such a sympathetic and tender poem in which
Criseyde is "sweet and charming" to the end, how did Shakespeare go
amiss? Why did he portray Cressida as a "coarsened coquette and a
wanton"? First Tatlock, and then to a greater extent Rollins, concluded
that since H enryson's T estam en t was attached to T roilus and explicitly
attributed to Chaucer in Speght's 1598 edition which Shakespeare
supposedly w ould have used, the T estam ent had corrupted Chaucer's
more sensitive handling of his heroine.
There is evidence that Shakespeare knew H enryson's version. In
Henry V Falstaff calls Doll Tearsheet "the lazarkite of Cressid's kind" (II, i,
80) and in Tw elfth N ight a clown asserts that "Cressida was a beggar" (111,
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ii, 58). Tatlock claims that since H enryson had "degraded and chastised
her, by Shakespeare's day her good nam e was gone forever, and she was
merely a by-w ord for a light woman" ("Siege" 764). Similarly, Rollins
could only conclude that because H enryson portrays Cresseid as a
"strumpet," he "rang Criseyde's 'bell' so loudly that it reverberated to the
time of Shakespeare, and forever dam ned her as a loose w om an" (397).
Ironically however, Rollins says that it is not entirely H enryson's fault
since he approaches the story in a sympathetic spirit which later readers
(including Shakespeare) m isinterpreted (400). Graydon also targets the
T estam en t as the "impetus to the flood of vilification" of Criseyde's
character which persisted until the late nineteenth century. In effect,
early critics felt they had solved the problem of the "puzzling and
graceless” position of Shakespeare's T ro ilu s— besides a general lack of
interest in his material, the dram atist's handling of his story "was the
only one possible in his day" thanks to the deleterious effect of
H enryson's poem.
Chaucer's Unreliable N arrator and Criseyde
The assum ption at the turn of the century that Henryson ruined
Chaucer's poem w as based on the belief that Chaucer's characterization of
Criseyde was largely sympathetic. However, several years later,
discussing The Book of the Duchess and draw ing on ten Brink's allusions
to Chaucer's naivete, Kittredge w arned we must not confuse Chaucer the
narrator and Chaucer the man, based on the odd premise that "a naif
Collector of Customs w ould be a paradoxical monster" (45). He described
97
Chaucer as an "ironist" and suggested the source of Chaucer's hum or is
the incongruity between "his childlike seriousness and the absurdity of
w hat he says" (45). Kittredge did not extend this interpretation to Troilus
however, in w hich he continues to equate the narrator's sentim ents with
Chaucer's: "So mightily is he stirred by Cressida's grief that he would
extenuate her guilt, or even excuse it altogether, for sheer pity" (114).
Moreover, as for the conflicting interpretations of Criseyde (i.e. is she a
victim or a scheming adventuress), Kittredge insists that she is sincere
because Chaucer says she is. In 1954, E. Talbot Donaldson takes
Kittredge’s interpretation of the narrator to the extreme and insists the
narrator is almost always "acutely unaw are of w hat he sees" and is the
"victim of the poet's pervasive— not merely sporadic— irony" ("Chaucer
the Pilgrim" 929). The guise of the narrator "becomes essential to any
interpretation" of Chaucer's works, and we must always differentiate the
narrator, the man, and the poet.
According to Donaldson, the narrator of T roilus is at the very least
unreliable. He is in love with Criseyde, "wildly emotional," and in need
of an analyst ("Criseyde and H er Narrator" 68). Chaucer m anipulates the
narrator through verbal imprecision, anticlimax, and deficient rhetoric so
that "Criseyde's forsaking is em phasized rather than palliated by the
narrator's attem pt to minimize it" (70). The narrator's sym pathy creates
a feeling of distrust in the reader, and "we are apt to transm ute the
narrator's fear of failing to do justice to her feeling into a failure on her
part to genuinely feel" (72). The net result is that the reader "hates"
Criseyde by the end of the poem.
98
This view of the narrator rem ained popular until quite recently,
and Robert Jordan even goes so far as to claim "the real subject of the
poem is not Troilus but the narrator" ("Narrator in Chaucer's T ro ilu s"
249). However, if the narrator represents a consistent persona (i. e. the
poet's booby), then one is hard pressed to account for the so-called
"epilogue," in which the speaker exhorts the reader to
Repeyreth horn fro w orldy vanyte,
A nd of your herte up casteth the visage
To thilke God that after his ym age
Yow made; and thynketh al nys but a fayre
This w orld that passeth soone as floures fayre.
(V, 1837-41)
Are these the reflections of the fallible narrator who represents
"humanity's ow n myopia"? The answ er appears to depend upon
w hether a critic finds the concluding moralitas sim ple-m inded or
profound. Those w ho feel the advice is sound resolve the problem of the
narrator by either insisting the narrator matures or that it is finally
Chaucer, not the narrator, w ho is speaking, throw ing a w rench in the
consistent persona theory. Thus Thom as Bestul argues the narrator
realizes that his emotions have been misdirected and by the end he
"achieves the necessary distance from his subject m atter and is able to
transcend w orldly involvement" (374). Jordan, on the other hand, says
the "anonym ous narrator becomes the poet Chaucer," w ho "understands
the moral and spiritual significance of his material" which the obtuse
narrator lacks ("Narrator" 253). Donaldson vacillates. In Speaking of
C haucer he ascribes the lines to the disillusioned persona w ho throws
"himself into w orld hating with enthusiasm" (99), but earlier he
attributes the "solemn principle" to Chaucer (Chaucer's Poetry 16).
99
Critics w ho find the moralitas illogical and absurd attribute it, not
surprisingly, to the narrator. For M urray M arkland the inept ending
characterizes a narrator who "superimposes on the logic of the events his
own vision of the consequences of such action"; his logic is m eant to be
comical since it "denies the m eaningfulness of hum an love" (154). And
Alice Kaminsky settles the problem by simply stating: "The narrator may
or may not be expressing the views of the 'real' Chaucer" (93). I suppose
the only reason the epilogue poses a problem is because many critics
assum e that Chaucer is too complex and sophisticated to have ended his
poem on such a trite, "medieval" note. More recently, critics like
Marshall Leicester and Jordan have recognized that view ing the narrator
as a consistent persona creates more problems than it solves, and have
basically returned to a more complicated single-voice (or "presentational
voice") theory. This does not deny Chaucer's frequent ironic posturing
but allows the different "voices" in the text "to become assimilated in the
basic voice of the text, that uniquely expressive voice that we identify as
Chaucerian" (Chaucer's Poetics 122).
Shakespeare is Vindicated
Despite the problems the epilogue raises, many critics accepted
Donaldson's conjecture that we distrust the narrator in Troilus, and that
Criseyde's character was meant to be less sympathetic and am biguous
than earlier critics had assum ed. If the inadequacy of the narrator's
defense does work to condem n Criseyde, then H enryson's T estam en t
w ould not have had a negative effect on her character (and w ould have
100
been in keeping w ith Chaucer's characterization of her), and therefore
was not responsible for Shakespeare's pejorative treatm ent of her.
Moreover, if Shakespeare used Chaucer's poem, then he interpreted
Criseyde's character correctly.
At approxim ately the same time as Chaucer's "pervasive irony"
was discovered, a paradigm shift to "bardolatry" seems to have occured in
Shakespeare criticism. Consequently, we find that "no other
Shakespearean play has been so positively revalued nor undergone a
more striking reversal from general rejection to w idespread acclaim"
(Adamson 8). The play is no longer considered a "heap of Rubbish," but
"paradoxical, multifold and full of evident w arring contradictions"
(Medcalf 303). Shakespeare's deflation of the love story is said to be
intentional, calling into question our romantic conceptions of love, or
challenging us to "critique man's habit of m yth-making" (Cole 81).
Shakespeare's characterization of Criseyde has also been reevaluated.
Curiously enough, as Chaucerians began to stigmatize Criseyde's
character, we find that Shakespeare's Cressida is vindicated. Adamson
claims the "inw ard-turning, self-disfiguring violence of her grief is
poignantly reminiscent of Chaucer's Criseyde" (109). For Valerie Smith
"Cressida is not a simple, clear-cut figure," since she is the victim of
"heartless male machinations" (76). Those w ho concede her character is
flat insist that the characterization is deliberate and is meant to invoke
our sym pathy. For instance, Mann suggests Shakespeare intentionally
denies us access to her inner life in order to show how "her value is
brought to her from the outside and is ultimately decided by men" (122).
101
The "Prologue" to the 1609 Q uarto enjoins the reader to "Like or
find fault; do as your pleasures are," and w hereas earlier critics (and even
Shakespeare's ow n audience w ho apparently "spurned Troilus" since
there is scanty record of any contemporary stage performances) worked
under the assum ption that Shakespeare was fallible and could write a bad
play, m odern critics seem to operate under the premise that his apparent
defects can only be intentional aesthetic devices.6 So w hat seemed like a
poorly written, plodding play "about a w ar with a skimpy love story
attached" is for T. McAlindon an "exploration of stylistic clashes, a
deliberate use of linguistic discord" (34) and for Barbara Everett, a "witty"
exercise in "storylessness" (135).
C onclusion
W hat began as simple historical inquiry (i. e. w as the T estam ent
mistaken for Chaucer's conclusion) inevitably becomes an interpretive
problem, behind which is alw ays lurking the assum ption that an
authoritative reading of a text (which is ultimately linked to the author's
intention) can be recovered. Although E. D. Hirsch may deplore the fact
that "the sensible belief that a text means w hat its author meant" was
declared a fallacy by W imsatt and Beardsley, it would seem that the
"intentional fallacy" often prevails and directs historical inquiry.
Modern critical theory seems to be based simply on the primacy of reader
response, but for that response to be valid, it is invariably predicated one
way or another on the author's intention or on the assum ption that the
response of the author's contem porary audience can be recovered.
According to C. S. Lewis, "The stupidest contem porary...knew certain
things about Chaucer's scholarship which m odern scholarship will never
know; and doubtless the best of us m isunderstand Chaucer in many
places w here the veriest fool am ong his audience could not have
misunderstood" (163). But this does not invalidate interpretation.
Deconstruction essentially m ade a "vertu of necessite" by m andating that
the intended meaning (or any meaning for that matter) of a text can
never be recaptured or stabilized: "There is nobody there; there is only
the text" (Leicester 121). But a study of interpretive strategies does enable
us to acknow ledge and perhaps challenge the often unconscious
hermeneutic assum ptions we bring to texts.
N otes
103
1. Thynne did not call the T estam en t C haucer’s "sixth book." The
colophon at the end of Troilus and Criseyde in the 1532 edition reads:
"Thus endeth the fyfth and laste booke of Troylus: and here foloweth the
pyteful and dolorous testam ent of fayre Creseyde" (CC xix). The common
assum ption that the T estam en t was considered the sixth book of T roilus
arises from Kinaston's note in his 1639 Latin translation of T roilus and
the T estam en t: "For the A uthor of the supplem ent called the Testament
of Cresseid, which may passe for the sixt & laste booke of this story 1 haue
very sufficiently bin informed...that it was m ade & written by one Mr.
Robert Henryson" (see G. Smith).
2. It remains unclear w hether Thynne intended his editions as
definitive collections of Chaucer's genuine w orks or as miscellanies.
Yeager argues that Thynne w anted to "gather all the true works of
Chaucer into one volum e for the first time," which he bases on the
premise that he "had to have read" more than he printed. However,
Thynne does include poem s overtly attributed to other authors.
3. Minnis argues that Chaucer represents himself as a "compiler"
rather than an "auctor" since as a mere collector of materials, a compiler
was able to disavow responsibility (see 190-210). See Rouse and Rouse for
a critique of Minnis' definition of compilatio. For a critique of the
Romantic conception of authorship and texual authority see McGann,
Thorpe, and Stillinger.
4. For a convenient sum m ary of the critics w ho read the poem as a
vindication of Cresseid's character see Noll. For fuller, individual
argum ents see Duncan, Elliot, Kinghorn, Muir, and Tillyard.
5. For the full collection of sixteenth and early seventeenth
allusions to H enryson's T estam en t see Spurgeon 3, appendix A.
Spurgeon had initially om itted references for Henryson's poem from her
Five H undred Years of Chaucer Criticism and Allusion for which she is
criticized by Rollins.
6. See Charney whose collected essays "try to dispose of the idea
that Shakespeare could do no w rong and that everything he w rote is
equally inspired" (18). The same tendency to excuse artistic defects as
intentional aesthetic devices is com mon to Chaucer criticism. For
instance, the Squire's Tale is described by G ardner as "intentionally bad
art." For condem nation of this approach see Blake.
Chapter Six
104
Apocryphal Elements in the Canterbury Tales
It is hard to think of any w ork ever written, im portant or unim portant, w hich w as
intended as a unit and in w hich there is anything like so chaotic a condition of the early
authorities. This chaotic condition is the con sp icu ous feature of the MSS. to one familiar
w ith them; it could hardly be w orse. (Tatlock, "CT in 1400," 101)
It may seem odd to include the Canterbury Tales in a discussion of
the Chaucerian apocrypha. However, these chapters proceed from my
argum ent that since the distinction between the authorial and the
apocryphal was not observed in the historical transmission of Chaucer's
ouevre, an apocryphal element is built into any attem pt to reconstruct an
authorial text. The Chaucer canon has largely been adjudicated based on
aesthetic criteria:
We put Chaucer on a pedestal and assum e no one
else could write like him...The history of scholarship
suggests that we are unable today to tell with
confidence w hat was written by Chaucer and what
was not, for the canon has been gradually whittled
away over the last century. For the most part
attribution of a text to Chaucer is m ade on purely
literary grounds. (Blake, Textual Tradition 202)
Similarly, within genuine texts, attribution of individual lines and
readings is based on assum ptions about Chaucer's aesthetics. I will argue
the Canterbury Tales as it is represented in m odern editions is dependent
upon apocryphal elements for its coherence. The Canterbury Tales
originally circulated in fragments, and it is only through diligent editorial
and scribal tam pering that the w ork achieved any state of completeness
and coherence as a collection. Since scholars cannot clearly differentiate
authorial readings from the contributions of scribes, there is no evidence
that the texts of the Canterbury Tales that have been standardized in this
century, and that are said to represent Chaucer's intention, can be
attributed to Chaucer. M odern editions claim to preserve the authorial
voice, but I argue they achieve this "voice" only by virtue of textual
critical theories that finesse the distinction between the apocryphal and
the authorial, m inim izing non-authorial interventions perceived to
corrupt the purity of the authorial text.
Variants and Authorial Revision
Editors have come to rely heavily on the concept of authorial
revision to minim ize apocryphal elements in the Canterbury Tales.
Textual scholars begin with the premise that the m anuscripts are
historically m ediated texts; none contains all that Chaucer wrote. The
goal is to distinguish between w hat Chaucer did write and the
contributions of scribes. However, although many scholars are fairly
confident in adjudicating the authenticity of larger structural units, the
genuineness of smaller units is more difficult to determ ine and several
scholars including Blake and Manly-Rickert m aintain that the distinction
between the scribal and the authorial is insolvable.
M odern textual m ethod is inform ed by Romanticism's facination
with solitary and unm ediated creativity. Within the Romantic paradigm
of literary production and textual authority, scribal contributions are
perceived as corruptions of an inspired authorial text. Claims by scholars
such as Blake and Manly-Rickert that scribal contributions cannot be
easily distinguished from the authorial text threatens the authority and
integrity of standard editions. In order to justify the practice of
combining readings from several manuscripts, Chaucerian scholars have
come to rely upon the concept of authorial revision. U nder classical
textual theory when one is faced with two or more variants, one is
thought to be authorial and the other(s) scribal. However, if one is
unable to clearly distinguish the authorial from the scribal one is at an
impasse. In order to circum vent the m uddy distinction between the
authorial and the scribal, Chaucerian textual scholars depend upon the
theory of authorial revision. The notion of authorial revision
eliminates the potential scribal element— both, or all, variants can be
called authorial, and the editor is free to choose the best readings from the
best manuscripts. Chaucer undoubtedly revised his work, but the
question is w hether these revisions found their way into the m anuscript
tradition, or w hether his first thoughts can even be distinguished from
his second. For if the authorial and scribal is difficult to distinguish, the
distinction between the authorial original and the revision m ust be more
ephemeral. Although these theories have developed in the effort to deal
with the chaos of the early manuscripts, in the end they are used to justify
the failure of textual editors to adjudicate between authorial and scribal
variants. Textual scholars tend to be adam ant on the issue of revision
because the possibility that Chaucer may not have revised calls into
question our ability to distinguish between the scribal and the authorial.
I
107
Textual editors of the Canterbury Tales have been forced into this
position because the chaos of the m anuscript affiliations does not lend
itself to the traditional editorial goal of isolating and editing an authorial
text. D em pster fairly states that the complexity of m anuscript affiliations
for the Canterbury Tales is "without precedent in the history of textual
criticism" ("Early History" 409). Kane accurately describes the textual
problems that face editors of this text:
...the num ber of MSS of the CT is very large, and they
were written over a period of about a century; they do
not go back to a single archetype derived from a
completed MS of Chaucer's, with tales arranged,
linked, and subjected to his corrections and changes,
but rather to a body of incomplete material, in
different stages of composition and only in part put in
order and corrected; many MSS have supplied from
other sources parts missing in their exem plars— tales,
links, or passages missing by loss of leaves; some have
m ade corrections from sources other than their
exemplars; and some have edited their texts. (Text of
the CT 11 . 41)
Early editors used an eclectic approach to editing the Canterbury Tales.
Each edition was derivative, with changes m ade from an unsystematic
collation of the available manuscripts. Wright (1847-51) was the first to
use the best-text method, unfortunately using w hat Skeat calls the "faulty
and treacherous" Harley 7334. In "The Evolution of the Canterbury
Tales" (1907) Skeat argued that the earliest MSS represent different stages
of authorial revision.^ However, he was unable to account for how the
spurious G am elyn could find its way into an authoritative m anuscript or
how later MSS could contain authorial variants. Skeat (1894) ended up
using an eclectic method, with Ellesmere as his base text, em ended from
the Chaucer Society's Six-Text.2 Robinson (1933) also used an eclectic
approach, prefering Ellesmere and em ending from Hengwrt, Dd. 4.24 and
Gg. 4.27, and occasionally using readings from inferior manuscripts.
Manly-Rickert (1940) discredited Ellesmere as an "edited" text. In order to
dim inish subjective judgem ent in distinguishing between authorial
readings and scribal contributions, they used the genealogical method,
classifying the m anuscripts into genetically related groups. However, the
process of recension rests on the assumption that a single archetype exists,
but given the num ber of variants, Manly-Rickert concluded that tales and
fragments circulated in m ultiple copy texts, and had different textual
traditions. As such, a stem m a is irrecoverable. The textual rationale for
many of their readings is unclear.3 The editors of the V ariorum C haucer
claim to go beyond Manly-Rickert, who aimed only to establish the
readings of the archetype of extant copies, and "to recover with some
degree of assurance the author's original” (Pearsall, N un's Priest's Tale,
97), using the "uniquely authoritative and uneditorialized" H engw rt as
their best text. The editors however, face the the logical difficulty of
providing readings, lines and a whole tale from Ellesmere, which is said
to have "no value for the establishment of the original text" (5).
The V ario ru m editors get around this problem by appealing to
authorial revision. For instance, H engw rt contains the short form of the
Nun's Priest's Prologue, with the Knight as interrupter, Ellesmere the
longer form, with the Knight's interruption picked up by the Host. The
extra twenty lines are accepted as authorial on the strained Romantic
assum ption that no scribe could imitate Chaucer's aesthetics:
109
To explain the lines as the product of editorial
revision, we should have to presum e that an editor
w as doing exactly w hat Chaucer might have done.
Every editorial judgem ent, on this hypothesis,
becomes indistinguishable from an authorial
judgm ent, and there is no basis on which a m odern
editor can discriminate between them. (Pearsall 6)
Because the editor wishes to include the extra lines, whose "poetic quality
and dram atic propriety" lend sophistication to the work, the editor must
shift ground and accept the superior authority of a text that has already
been declared inferior to Hengwrt. Enter authorial revision:
...the presence of the expanded M onk's-Nun's Priest's
Link in Ellesmere makes it almost certain that the
Ellesmere editor had access to revised drafts of the
Canterbury Tales...The presence of the added lines in
Ellesmere is not difficult to explain, given the fact that
Chaucer is know n to have revised his poem s and that
the papers on which these revisions were copied
could have become separated from the papers that
w ent to the making of Hengwrt. N or is it difficult to
justify the apparent sleight of hand whereby we lift
certain lines from Ellesmere and recognize them as
authentic, at the same time that we relegate the rest of
Ellesmere to an inferior status. (Pearsall 5-6)
The appeal to authorial revision allows the editor to choose the "best"
readings from the "best" manuscripts; all variants are declared authorial.
The result is a text that is both sophisticated and complete, but at the same
time, claimed to represent Chaucer's original text. But the reliance on
authorial revision is the result of editorial indecision, indicating the
failure of editors to distinguish between the authorial and the scribal.
The short form of the Prologue may indeed be Chaucer's only version.
But because the long form "enriches the comic character of the Host"
editors prefer it to the short form. That the long form could be the work
no
of a scribe is dism issed as "both unlikely and unnecessary" since it calls
into question the ability of the editor to distinguish between an authorial
and an editorial judgem ent. Since the editors of the V a rio ru m reject
Ellesmere as a first authority on the basis that it is highly "edited," it
w ould seem to be more probable that the long form is scribal.4
Most discussion of the evolution of the Canterbury Tales is based
on the assum ption that textual variations represent different stages of
authorial revision. Several theories have been proposed to explain the
origin of authorial variants. D em pster suggested that early versions of
individual tales may have been found am ong Chaucer’s drafts, and these
versions became absorbed into the m anuscript tradition. Tatlock guessed
that a final copy with many additions on loose leaves and corrections in
the m argins circulated after Chaucer's death and the m anuscript variants
reflect the scribes' attem pts to deal with this confusing fair copy.
H am m ond postulated that an early "pirated" version of the Tales was
produced from stolen facsicles (262). Manly-Rickert suggested that tales
circulated individually before Chaucer's death— tales that he later
rew orked or revised— and the absorption of these earlier drafts in the
m anuscript tradition explains the authorial variants. More recently
Benson has suggested that "the Canterbury Tales m ust have been in
circulation very early indeed, perhaps even in Chaucer's ow n lifetime"
(109). But proof for in vita circulation of the Tales is scanty. Keiser
imagines the Tales being read aloud in court, but recent research on
Chaucer's original audience and his place in court makes it highly
unlikely that the Canterbury Tales was presented in this way. The only
111
evidence that individual tales may have circulated is Chaucer's reference
to the Wife of Bath in the "Envoy to Bukton."5
All of these theories are based on the assum ption that Chaucer
revised his w ork and that these revisions are reflected in the mansucripts.
The theory of revision is absolutely necessary to explain apparant
authorial variants and the validate an edition that makes eclectic use of
the m anuscripts.6 But despite the num ber of hypotheses, w hether or not
Chaucer extensively revised the Canterbury Tales rem ains uncertain.
Proof that he did is usually draw n from his practice in other works,
although this really provides no evidence that he revised the Canterbury
Tales. Most scholars cite Troilus and Criseyde and the Legend of Cood
W o m e n as evidence that Chaucer did revise his work, sometimes
extensively. But it is not at all clear that he did revise these works.
Root's theory that the different manuscripts of T roilus represent different
stages of revision has been seriously challenged by Windeatt, and Dane
argues that the G prologue of the LGW is the result of catastrophic
dam age to its exem plar.7
Evidence that the Canterbury Tales was revised is equivocal. The
w ork is unfinished and there are signs that it was not even carefully
proofread: the Man of Law says he will tell a tale in prose then proceeds
in rhym e royal, the Shipm an refers to himself as a woman, the Second
N un calls herself an "unw orthy sone of Eve." However, these
"mistakes" are also cited as evidence that Chaucer was in the process of
revision w hen he died.^ The evidence is malleable and as Benson
admits, "anything is possible." But the theory of revision is necessary to
112
preserve the appearance of editorial competance and so that w hat are
considered authorial variants can be included in a authoritative edition.
The danger is that if Chaucer did not revise his work, or if his
revisions are not represented in the manuscripts, then w hat are
considered authorial variants may actually be scribal. Long ago Tatlock
recognized it is only "our idea of literary fitness" on which we judge
am ong alternative readings. Manly-Rickert adm it that it is almost
impossible to distinguish between "improvements by the author and
em endations by a highly intelligent reader":
In all such cases there can, of course, be no scientific
proof of the genuineness of the passages. The most
that MS evidence can do is show that they originated
early enough to be author's corrections; but this is no
guarantee that the changes may not have been m ade
by someone else, and it is of course true that in any
series of such changes some may be due to the author
and others to someone else. The only test is the
knowledge and taste of the reader. (II, 495-6)
But if authorial variants cannot be distinguished from scribal
contributions, there is no basis for the theory of pervasive revision.
Fisher rightly observes "The conclusion that these variations are scribal
rather than authorial w ould throw into question over a half century of
C haucer criticism" ("Anim adversions" 786).
N otes
113
1. Skeat argued that H engw rt represents an archetype or Chaucer's
"first try." Petworth represents his second attempt, Corpus and
Lansdow ne his third, and Harley 7334, his last effort at organizing the
tales. Following Furnivall's suggestion, he claims El is the w ork of a
"careful editor." However, even Harley does not represent Chaucer's
final arrangem ent, since he was not finished with the work:
If there had been anything at all approaching a final
arrangem ent, we m ight see our way. As it is, many of
the Tales are unw ritten, and we do not know w here
they w ould have been inserted. To put them in order
in accordance w ith such insufficient and shifting data
is like m aking a rope of sand...Any im provem ent
must be purely editorial. ("Evolution" 29-31)
The presence of G am elyn is so many MSS is puzzling. If is found in 26 of
the 57 manuscripts analyzed by Manly-Rickert. Skeat suggested that the
tale may have been found am ong Chaucer's papers and he may
considered rew orking the tale for one of his pilgrims (Oxford Chaucer V,
477-89).
2. An element of random ness is built in since the most popular or
"authoritative" MSS (since they are the most accessible) are those that
Furnivall published in his Six-Text. He chose his MSS according to the
following criteria, which m ust seem bizarre by m odern academic
standards: three should come from private hands and three from public
libraries, and those from the public quarter should democratically
represent London, Oxford, and Cam bridge (Tem porary Preface 5-7).
3. In "John M. Manly (1965-1940) and Edith Rickert (1871-1938)" in
Chaucer and Langland, Kane observes that "from the theoretical
information supplied it is almost impossible to establish w hat the
editorial procedures were." Manly-Rickert began with the intention of
testing recension as a system of classification, then ended up having to
defend the method: "In short, the edition shows them carrying out
editorial processes not in the determ ination of originality but in defense
of a dubious stem m a from which initially they had expected support and
direction" (184). Kane also questions their editorial judgem ents for
num erous readings, and show s where mistakes are m ade out of
ignorance of scribal practices and Middle English gram m ar. It appears
that their theory of the "intelligent editor" of Ellesmere may be based on
114
the misinterpretation of variants (i. e. interpreting scribal mistakes as
editorial judgem ents).
The genealogical m ethod was m eant to reduce subjectivity in
choosing between scribal and editoral variants. Donaldson, "The
Psychology of Editors of M iddle English Texts" in Speaking of Chaucer,
102-118, rightly claims that recension is used to m ask editorial
subjectivity. Although the initial classification of MSS is based on shared
error "it is seldom pointed out that if an editor has been able to
distinguish right readings from w rong in order to evolve a stem m a
which will in turn distinguish right readings from w rong fo r him, then
he m ight as well go on using this God-given pow er to distinguish right
from w rong throughout the whole editorial process and eliminate the
stemma" (107). Donaldson says that "In making fun of the genetic
system of editing, 1 have been kicking a dead horse, or a dying one— or, at
least, a very ill one" (112). Pearsall marks 1960, w hen Kane's edition of
Piers Plow m an came out, as the death of recension. But Aage
Brusendorff, The Chaucer Tradition (1925) had long ago called into
question the fitness of the genealogical m ethod to the textual condition of
the CT:
A good many scholars, especially Germans, have
m aintained that this method rightly used will lead
automatically to a perfect text, or at any rate to a perfect
reconstruction of the original MS. This is, however,
only true if we assum e first that scribes never make
the same mistake so that identical errors may be taken
in all cases to prove identity of origin, and next that
one MS. was always copied straight from another,
w ithout interm ixture of authorities...H ow ever, such
perfect conditions of textual transmission are very
rare, and especially contamination seems during the
m iddle ages to have been the rule rather than the
exception. (62-3)
4. In "Geoffrey Chaucer: Textual Transmission and Editing" Blake
asserts that distinguishing between Chaucer's original and revised
versions is even more difficult (if not impossible) than distinguishing
between authorial and scribal variants:
If it is difficult to decide w hether a reading is authorial
or scribal, it is almost impossible to decide w hether a
reading represents Chaucer's first version or his
revision. We do not know enough about Chaucer's
language, metrical ideas, or the way in which he
115
revised texts to m ake that kind of judgement.
Decisions are likely to be m ade on the basis of an
editor’s critical assum ptions, which can readily be
m ade to represent Chaucer's intentions. (32-3)
5. Several editors have pointed out that this reference does not
provide absolute evidence of prior circulation of tales. For instance Blake
argues that although there are many references to Chaucer's w orks in
several of his poems there is no evidence any of them were published in
his lifetime:
The Bukton Envoy cannot be dated accurately and may
be later than assum ed, though naturally if it is genuine
it w ould date from Chaucer's lifetime and so the
argum ent as such w ould not be unduly affected by its
date. There are several ways of publishing in the
medieval period, of which one was verbal delivery.
Bukton may have know n of the Wife of Bath in this
way, but not necessarily read her tale. We do not need
to take this kind of reference too literally in that we
have to accept that the recipient could indeed read the
w ork to which he referred. ("Geoffrey Chaucer" 52)
Blake is so adverse to the possibility of in vita circulation of any of
Chaucer's works that he suggests "Adam Scriveyn" is apocryphal. See
"Geoffrey Chaucer: Textual Transmission and Editing" in Crux and
C ontroversy.
6. 1 am using the term "eclectic" in a loose sense here. The classic
eclectic editions are Tyrw hitt (1775), Skeat (1894, 1899), and Robinson
(1933). A diplomatic edition, or a reproduction of a single m anuscript
was used by Wright (1848-51), and Blake (1980). Manly-Rickert (1940) is a
critical edition. Robinson states he does not consider his text a critical
edition because he has chosen the most satisfactory readings: "The editor
has not always adopted the readings which the strict critical process would
yield. Some eclecticism inevitable; editor has not hesitated to abandon
critical reading rather than put unreasonable or unmetrical lines into
text" (quoted from his H arvard papers by Reinke, Editing Chaucer, 239-
40). The difference between an eclectic edition and a critical edition is
that the former gives equal authority to all the MSS, whereas a critical
edition is based on recension. However, it is unclear how the method of
determ ining individual readings is substantially different. See Dane,
"Copy-Text and Its Variants in Some Recent Chaucer Editions."
116
7. See Root, The Textual Tradition of Chaucer's Troilus. and Owen
"Troilus and Criseyde: The Question of Chaucer's Revisions." For
argum ents against Root’s theory of revision see W indeatt, "The Text of
T ro ilu s" in Essays on Troilus and Criseyde. For Dane's argum ent see
"The Notions of Text and Variant in the Prologue to Chaucer's Legend of
Good W om en" which is a response to Kane's "The Text of the Legend of
Good W om en in CUL MS Gg. 4.27."
8. It has been suggested by many that the Man of Law originally
told Melibee, the Wife of Bath originally told the Shipm an's Tale and that
the Second N un's Tale was com posed before Chaucer conceived of the
C anterbury Tales. H am m ond notes that in reconstructing Chaucer's
poetic process and dating the tales "we have no guide but our own desires
in term ing them early or late, personal or im personal...No partial early
sketch, no record of tentative assignments, exist to aid us in discussing the
dates of the Tales and their artistic purpose" (241). Both Blake and
Brusendorff w ho do not think Chaucer revised the w ork argue that the
Shipm an is speaking in the third person w hen he refers to himself as a
woman: "This is a rhetorical dram atization of a set situation which
happens to be put into the Shipman's m outh, but has no bearing on the
gender of the narrator" (Textual Tradition 49). Similarly Brusendorff
claims Chaucer "simply m ade the male narrator introduce a w om an as
the representative of her sex" (Chaucer Tradition 118). These odd
readings represent another instance in which assum ptions about
Chaucer's creative processes affect interpretive judgem ents.
Chapter Seven
117
A pocryphal Elements in the Canterbury Tales:
The Bradshaw Shift, The Ellesmere Order, and Chaucer's "Intended"
O rder
"The harder one looks at a text from an incorrect stance, the m ore convincing the incorrect
construction becomes" (Hirsch V alidity in Interpretation. 241).
The debate over the correct tale order is old, perhaps archaic. In
the last decade few critics have raised the issue, either because it is
considered settled or insoluble. The Ellesmere order, subsequently
adopted by Manly, Robinson, and the editors of the R iverside Chaucer,
and the Bradshaw shift, followed by the Chaucer Society, Skeat, and Pratt
are the tw o canonized tale orders in the twentieth century.1 Both of
these structures are coherent and highly artistic. The dram atic interplay
of the "marriage group," and the theme of the spiritual pilgrimage that
culm inates w ith the Parson's Tale and the Retraction, are theories that
find unity and depth in w hat is otherwise a simple collection of stories.
O ther orders have been proposed but have not been em bodied in an
edition, except Blake's diplom atic edition of the Canterbury Tales which
follows the H engw rt order.2
The most recent editions gloss over the issue of tale order. The
Riverside edition is called a "third edition" of Robinson's text, which
neatly skirts the problem of which order to use. And the V a rio ru m is
118
being published in fascicles, which avoids the problem all together. I
have no desire to reopen the debate; the purpose of this chapter is not to
challenge theories about the history of m anuscript transm ission or
Chaucer's aesthetic process that have been constructed to support a given
tale order. However, the tale order debate illustrates how the apocryphal
element is finessed in order to construct a sophisticated authorial text.
Like choosing between scribal and authorial variants, it has proven
impossible to determ ine with any certainty which of the twenty-seven
different tale orders the MSS. afford represents Chaucer's final order.
Many scholars have declared that it is impossible to decide, or that
Chaucer himself may not have decided on a final order. Although this
conclusion is partly based on the chaos of the MSS, scholars claim that
none of the MSS orders can be Chaucerian because none is wholly
"satisfactory" by m odern aesthetic standards.
In order to get around the charge that an apocryphal or spurious
elem ent is built into any reconstruction of Chaucer's tale order, an
interesting distinction has arisen between Chaucer's order and Chaucer's
intended order. The reasoning is that Chaucer's order (as he left the
Canterbury Tales at his death) may be irrecoverable, either as a result of
accidental reshiftings of the tales or because he never finally ordered the
tales since the w ork is unfinished, but Chaucer's "intended" order, which
has come to be defined as the most "satisfactory" order, can be
constructed. For those w ho support the Bradshaw shift satisfactory
denotes geographical consistency; for proponents of the Ellesmere order
satisfactory implies thematic unity. In each case the appeal to authorial
119
intention authorizes w hat is surely an editorial or scribal arrangm ent of
the tales.
The argum ents that authorized these two orders illustrate two
points: the consequences of projecting modern aesthetics on the past and
the pow er of subjective critical language. W hen definitive m anuscript
evidence fails, the authorial is decided on aesthetic criteria, on prevailing
notions of w hat is "Chaucerian." This generation of critics has learned to
read the Canterbury Tales as a dramatic work. In Pratt's words, this
interpretive approach seems "simple and natural." But when critics try
to impose this conceptual frame on the textual evidence, the fact that the
dram atic approach to the Tales is a twentieth century creation becomes
clear. Kittredge's dram atic approach to reading the w ork was so popular
that it almost seems as though many of the argum ents for a specific tale
order were more concerned with validating his interpretive frame, rather
than recovering an authorial text. The circularity of the argum ents is
clear: critics begin with an assum ption about the correct order of the tales;
they then interpret m anuscript evidence so that it fits that assumption.
Donaldson describes well the nature of the rhetoric used in this debate:
Discussions of the order of the Canterbury Tales,
although some of them are brilliant displays of the
scholarly process, seem to share one original sin: a
m arriage of genuine evidence and rationalization so
dearly joined that the reader finds it difficult to
distinguish between the two. It is probably impossible
for us ever to attain the paradise in which we can be
certain of the correct order. ("Ordering of the CT" 193)
Yet these rhetorical strategies, which seem so specious in retrospect, were
persuasive, persuasive enough to settle an issue that earlier critics
believed insoluble. W hat may be an apocryphal tale order has been
120
canonized as authorial, providing the foundation for many sophisticated
unity studies of the Canterbury Tales. 1 am not claiming that these
studies are illicit, but I w ould challenge any claim that a particular
structure and the readings it affords reveal Chaucer's intention.
Chaucer's Order, His Intended Order, and the Most "Satisfactory" O rder
The fifty-seven m anuscripts analyzed by Manly-Rickert offer a
choice of twenty-seven different tale orders. It is generally accepted that
editors and scribes were responsible for "the ordering, the explicits and
incipits, the headings, and almost all of the m arginalia and interlinear
glosses" (Owen, M anuscripts, 6). Half a century ago Manly-Rickert
described the chaos of the m anuscript authorities:
the num ber of MSS of the CT is very large, and they
were written over a period of about a century; they do
not go back to a single archetype derived from a
completed MS of Chaucer's, with tales arranged,
linked, and subjected to his corrections and changes,
but rather to a body of incomplete material, in
different stages of composition and only in part put
in order and corrected. (11,41)
Textual scholars after Tyrw hitt who seriously studied the MSS concluded
that none of the specific orderings of the tales found in the MSS could be
attributed to Chaucer. For instance, Tatlock declared in 1935 that "The
order of the 'groups' in the MSS has no authority whatever" ("CT O rder
in 1400" 133). Similarly Manly-Rickert (1940) concluded that "none of the
extant MSS exhibits an arrangem ent which with any probability can be
assigned to Chaucer" (II, 489). More recently O w en (1991) has confirmed
their conclusion: "In this century of m anuscript history no evidence
121
connects any ordering of the fragments to Chaucer" (M anuscripts of the
CT 125).
However, a second generation of scholars, w orking with the same
evidence, claimed to have recovered Chaucer's intended order. For
instance, G ardner (1967) argued that "the Ellesmere order is probably
Chaucer's (106) and Benson (1981) declared that "the order of the tales in
the Ellesmere MS represents Chaucer's ow n final arrangem ent" (79). For
Pratt (1951) the Bradshaw shift "reveals the actual intention of the poet"
(1167) and for Keiser (1978) the Bradshaw shift suggests "what Chaucer's
final intention for tale order was" (191).
Some critics believed that although Chaucer may not have decided
on an order, nonetheless, they had discovered his intended order, or,
more oddly, the order he should have intended. For instance, although
Tatlock surm ised that Chaucer probably left the Canterbury Tales w ithout
"external indication of the order of the ’groups'" he goes on to argue that
the Bradshaw shift is w hat "Chaucer seems likeliest to have intended"
("CT in 1400" 133). Fisher (1972) claimed "we may safely conclude that
the collection was not complete at the time of his death, and that in
discussing the order of the tales or the intentions of the links we are
trying to read the author's as yet but tentatively m ade up mind" but then
states that the Ellesmere order is Chaucerian ("Chaucer's Last Revision").
Similarly, Keiser claimed that the Bradshaw shift "seems to represent the
most artistically satisfying arrangem ent of the tales, and may, therefore,
suggest w hat Chaucer's final intention for tale-order was, if indeed there
was one1 ' (191, italics mine).
122
There is a curious distinction being m ade here. C haucer's order
may be irrecoverable, either because he did not finish the w ork or because
the order he left at his death w as som ehow lost. However, Chaucer's
intended order, that is, the order he w ould have devised had he lived to
finish the work, or the order in which he intended the tales to be copied,
can be recovered. The claim to have recovered Chaucer's intended order,
however, is not based on m anuscript evidence, but on aesthetic criteria:
the most "satisfying" order is said to reflect Chaucer's intention. The real
concern should be w hether a particular order is authorial, not w hether
we like it or not. Exploring the terminology that w as utilized in this
debate, particularly the notion of w hat is "satisfactory" and the claims to
have recovered Chaucer's "intention," is exasperating. From a critical
distance, the argum ents set forth by scholars appear ludicrous: they are
m arred by circular reasoning, descriptive and evaluative terms are
confused. In order to authorize a tale order that w ould meet twentieth
century aesthetic criteria, critics invented historical "facts" that simply
projected m odern aesthetics.
Almost every critic w ho entered the web of this debate used the
same terminology. Those w ho said no m anuscript order was Chaucerian
had no proof for this claim: one of the orders may indeed represent his
final order. W hat these critics dem onstrate is not that Chaucer had no
order but that none of the extant orders is "satisfactory" under m odern
aesthetics. In other words, they discount the real possibility that Chaucer
had an "unsatisfactory" final intention. For instance, Manly-Rickert
claimed that "Chaucer cannot be held responsible for any one of the
arrangem ents in the MSS" because the geographical references and
123
internal allusions in the MS orders are not "satisfactory." On the other
hand, those w ho claimed that one or another order represents Chaucer's
intention alw ays do so on the basis that the order is "satisfactory."
D onaldson himself, w ho w as aware of the danger of substituting
rationalization for genuine evidence, argues for the Ellesmere order first
on m anuscript evidence, but finally because the order is "entirely
satisfactory" (203). Pratt argued for the Bradshaw shift because it is most
"satisfactory and Chaucerian." The term "satisfactory" became so
prevalent in discussions of tale order that it had no definable meaning.
For those w ho supported the El order, "satisfactory" seems to mean
"based on m anuscript evidence," or "traditional." For those w ho support
the Bradshaw shift "satisfactory" denotes geographical consistency.
The Bradshaw Shift
The whole issue of tale order came to the forefront of criticism and
became a practical problem with Furnivall's and the Chaucer Society's
Six-Text (1868). The six "best" manuscripts that were to be represented in
parallel colum ns had different tale orders and links and some consensus
had to be reached.^ Previous editors had tinkered with the orders of the
tales; each of Caxton's editions has a different order, and the order
changes in each successive edition.4 Furnivall rejects the typ e« order
used by Tyrw hitt because the geographical references in the links are
wrong. In the El order at D847 at the end of the Wife of Bath's Prologue,
the Sum m oner threatens to tell "tales two or th re /O f freres, er 1 come to
Sidyngborne." But 8300 lines later in the Prologue to the M onk's Tale at
124
B21926 the Host rem arks "Loo, Rouchestre stant heere faste by." On a
map, Rochester comes before Siddingbourne. Henry Bradshaw was the
first to propose to Furnivall that Fragm ent VII be moved forward to
follow the Man of Law's Tale, so that the towns would follow a realistic
geographical sequence. Frustrated with the attem pt to coordinate his Six-
Text and fixated on the realism of the pilgrimage, Furnivall w as thrilled
by Bradshaw's conjecture: "A happy hit! And it sets us free to alter the
arrangem ent of any or all of the MSS, to move up or dow n any G roups of
Tales, w henever internal evidence, probability, or presum ption, requires
it" (Tem porary Preface 22). The bulk of the Tem porary Preface is devoted
to delineating how many miles the pilgrims travelled each day, where
they slept, w hat times they got up, and when they ate. For instance, the
"evidence" Furnivall provides for placing G roup C is typical:
[The Pardoner's] bite on the cake and draught of ale
leave no doubt on my m ind that the Pardoner
w anted a snack, by way of breakfast, before telling his
tale; and that before-dinner suits the circumstances
much better than after; for if he had had a hearty
meal at 9 or 10, after a morning's ride, he would not
have w anted a luncheon between that and supper at
4 or 5. A draught of ale he might have felt need of,
but the bite on a cake means before breakfast. (25-26)
Most scholars later agreed with Lawrence's feeling that Furnivall "did not
make sufficient allowance for the fact that the pilgrimage is not real, but
imaginary" (100). Manly-Rickert also felt that the num ber of days
occupied by the pilgrim age is a "matter of small consequence" since "the
whole conception of a series of tales told while riding by so large a group
of pilgrims is, how ever entertaining, entirely unrealistic" (494).
125
It is unclear w hether Furnivall was reconstructing the m inutae of
the pilgrimage simply for the m odern reader's benefit (in order to create
verisimilitude) or if he felt that he w as reconstructing w hat w ent through
Chaucer's m ind as he com posed the links. Furnivall agreed with
Tyrw hitt's conclusion that the w ork is unfinished and "confessedly
fragmentary," but he felt compelled to exonerate Chaucer from the charge
that he left the w ork in a chaotic mess: "our present results...quite clear
Chaucer from having m ade the trem endous mess of his w ork that
Editors' and writers' w ant of care has attributed to him" (41). He begins
by stating that the w ork is fragmentary and unfinished. Therefore, the
editor is free to arrange the tales based on "internal evidence, probability,
or presumption." But he ends by saying that his editorial construction
reflects Chaucer's intention. This logical, or illogical leap (Chaucer had
no order, the editor creates a satisfactory order, the order represents
Chaucer's intention) patented by Furnivall, is repeated by critics who
entered this debate for the next 100 years.
The Bradshaw shift is based on m anuscript evidence, but it is
evidence that m ust be interpreted. Furnivall initially felt that El (the
order used by Tyrwhitt) was a coherent order, except that it lacked the
Man of Law's endlink. Furnivall guessed that Chaucer may have deleted
the "chat" but follows Bradshaw's suggestion that it was excised "by a
subsequent reviser" (23). H ow the editors were able to determ ine this is
not explained. However, their judgem ent was no doubt inform ed by the
assum ption that for geographical consistency, Fragment VII needed to
follow the Man of Law's Tale so that Rochester w ould come before
Siddingbourne, and there is absolutely no basis for this shift w ithout the
126
endlink. If El can be classified as an edited text, the editor is free to
dismiss it as an authority and include the M an of Law's endlink. The
assum ption that the endlink was cancelled by the editor of El is the origin
of the myth of El as an "edited" text that continues to inform critical
discussion.5
The next problem is that the MSS that contain the Man of Law's
endlink designate different speakers to tell the next tale. Twenty-eight
MSS read "Squire," six read "Summoner" and only the "bad" Seldon
reads "Shipman." In a majority of manuscripts the Squire's Tale follows
the Man of Law's Tale, with or w ithout the link. Since the nam es of each
of the speakers begins with the same letter, H am m ond suggested that
Chaucer had em ended the line, leaving only a sm udged S-, which later
scribes filled in.6 Pratt recognized that if the original reading was S- then
"no MS. reading...is of any authority w hatever except as a witness for the
archtypal "s..." (1150). Given the failure of textual evidence, and no
doubt informed by Kittredge's dram atic approach, he suggested "we turn
to the Man of Law's Endlink in its entirety for further aid in the
identification of the tale-teller" (1150). Advocates of the Bradshaw shift
finally based their argum ent for the reading "Shipman" on the basis that
the link is "unsuited" to the Squire. For instance, Pratt vociferously
argued that the "rude interrupter" cannot be that model of "gentillesse"
and courtesy described in the General Prologue. Similarly, it was argued
that the speaker cannot be the Sum m oner because the speaker says "Ther
is but litel Latyn in my mawe!" w hereas the Sum m oner is said in the
General Prologue to "speke no w ork but Latyn" w hen he is drunk. But
127
the link is said to fit the Shipm an since his personality suits the rudeness
and discourtesy of the interruptor (Pratt 1154).7
Tatlock observes that "while subjective im pressions of relative
merit may w eigh little against strong MS. evidence, the latter m ust be
fully criticized, and strong cases of dram atic fitness in so dram atic a poet
as Chaucer are as clear as proofs as holy writ" (116). Kittredge's influence
should be clear in this statement, and it is not surprising if his approach
to reading the Canterbury Tales is accepted as "holy writ," that dramatic
fitness should replace m anuscript evidence as the criteria for choosing
individual readings. Pratt finally argues that the reading "Shipman" is
both "simple and natural" and therefore m ust represent Chaucer's
intention. But if dram atic fitness is our only standard, w e have moved
far beyond m anuscript evidence to reconstruct Chaucer's text, and almost
any reading can be forw arded.8
The three following argum ents supporting the Bradshaw shift
dem onstrate well how critics m aneuvered between m anuscript evidence
that was inconclusive and chaotic, and assum ptions about the type of
author Chaucer should be. Tatlock's "The Canterbury Tales in 1400"
(1935) was one of the most rational and cautious treatments of the
problem of tale order. Like Tyrw hitt and Furnivall, he begins with the
assum ption that because of the "imperfections and incompletenesses" it
"seems certain" that the Canterbury Tales as a whole w as not published in
Chaucer's lifetime. At his death Chaucer left an informal draft with no
indication of tale order, thus no m anuscript reflects his intended order,
since he did not have one:
128
It is sure hard to see w hy a sequence due to |Chaucer]
should be any m ore likely to survive through nearly
a century than one due to an "editor"...None of the
MSS., how ever good, has any authority w hatever in
determ ining the order of the "groups." This is
m eant literally...The best of the authority in any of
them is that only of enlightened opinion. (130-1)
Like Furnivall, Tatlock discusses the "excellencies" of El but then
dismisses El as authorial because it is an edited text: "the very wary
EIIesmere-man...put the headless groups as near the end as he possibly
could," omitting the two links (Man of Law's endlink and N un's Priest's
epilogue) that "most em phasize incompleteness." Tatlock rejects the El
order as Chaucerian because it is the "smoothest and most reasonable"
order and because of the "extreme handsom eness" of the m anuscript and
the obvious "carefulness" with which it was prepared (129). Ironically, it
is almost as if because El is too sophisticated, it can’t be Chaucerian.
Thus, although C haucer may have som ehow "pointed" to this order, it
was "just as possibly adopted by the earliest ’editor’ and retained by his
successors" (130). In the end he advocates the Bradshaw shift out of
simple expediency,9 but then claims that this order is w hat "Chaucer
seems likeliest to have intended." (133). That is, the most satisfactory
order by twentieth century standards, the one with correct geographical
references, can be said to reflect the intentions of the poet. The absurdity
of this logic should be clear— it is essentially the same fallacious leap
pioneered by Furnivall.
Pratt's "The O rder of the Canterbury Tales" (1951) is another
exam ple of the "tangle of rationalization" that creeps into most
discussions of tale order. His argum ent exemplifies the curious
predicam ent that advocates of the Bradshaw shift found themselves in.
They first had to establish the authority of the El order, since the
Bradshaw shift is dependent upon it. But then they had to underm ine or
deconstruct their ow n argum ent in order to argue for the authority of the
Bradshaw shift. Unlike Furnivall and Tatlock, Pratt begins with the
assum ption that "Chaucer had a definite plan for the order of the
Fragments" because of the geographical references (1141). The El order is
"unsatisfactory" because it m uddles these allusions. Nevertheless, he
praises the "exceedingly enlightened opinion" of the El scribe who
"without the aids and benefits of m odern scholarship, and w ithout the
study and appreciation (1 assume) of the many nuances so soon after 1400
achieved this order" (1161). The El scribe was able to duplicate Chaucer's
intended order, except that he misplaced Fragment VII. However, this
was not really his fault, since the fragment was probably separated from
the other ordered groups, perhaps hidden in a trunk.11’ Thus the El scribe
was smart, but not sm art enough— he duplicates Chaucer's intended
order but was not alert enough to notice that Fragment VII should come
after Fragm ent II. The text Pratt reconstructs "rings true" because it
show s that "Chaucer's sense of dram atic continuity and climax was far
richer than editors have so far encouraged us to see": "Hence I believe
that the proposed "Chaucerian" order offers positive artistic values and
interlocking themes and ideas, inherent in the order of no MS. or printed
text, which reveals the actual intention of the poet" (1167). The El order
is denied authority on the basis that it is "edited," yet the Bradshaw shift,
which is clearly editorial, is declared authorial.
More recently Keiser (1978) declared the Bradshaw shift authorial
simply because it represents the "most artistically satisfying arrangem ent
130
of the tales": "Obviously...it is more satisfying to have the Host's
mention of Rochester precede the Sum m oner's m ention of Sittingborne"
(195). Since it is the most satisfying, it m ust represent Chaucer's "final
intention" for tale order— "if indeed there was one." Like previous critics
Keiser begins by validating the El order, since the Bradshaw order is partly
dependent on it. He says that this order is so "credible" that the MS must
have been com missioned by som eone w ho "had a personal relationship
with Geoffrey Chaucer and w ho might well have heard the Canterbury
Tal es read by Chaucer at court": "we can readily conjecture that those
responsible for the production of the Ellesmere might have had access to
information about Chaucer's intentions concerning tale-order" (192). Yet
w hen Keiser gets around to arguing for the Bradshaw shift, he backtracks
and says that "we have no evidence that this order |E1| is Chaucerian"
(194). Since the Bradshaw shift is "more satisfying" because it enhances
the artistry of the Canterbury Tales, and since "Chaucer was greatly
concerned with geographical realism" (196), the shift suggests Chaucer's
final intention for tale order: "The enhancem ent of the artistry of the
Canterbury Tales that derives from the em endation of the Ellesmere tale-
order surely offsets the effects of a very minor com prom ise in the
authority of a manuscript" (199).
By the time Keiser addresses this issue some assum ptions had
become so ingrained that he does not feel compelled to analyze them .11
He states as fact the long-standing opinion that "Chaucer was greatly
concerned with realism," although this w as initially only Furnivall's
concern. He also accepts the premise that the "most satisfying" order for
a specific critic may be said to reflect Chaucer's intention, an odd
131
assum ption also adopted from Furnivall. Again, he begins by stating the
possibility that Chaucer may not have arrived at a final tale order, then
ends postulating that the Bradshaw shift is his intended order. But if
Chaucer was not finished with the w ork and left it in a fragmentary state,
then he could not have "intended" this structure. These critics m ust be
aw are that the order is purely conjectural, but in order to validate their
efforts they appeal to authorial intention. The assum ption is that if
m odern critics are intelligent enough to figure out a coherent order then
surely Chaucer must have been able to as well.
A lthough these editors grant themselves the freedom to arrange
the tales at will, earlier efforts are not granted the same authority. It is
absurd to dismiss El on the grounds that it is "edited," since every
m anuscript of the Canterbury Tales is obviously edited. The operative
assum ption is that m odern editors possess a know ledge of Chaucer's
aesthetics that far exceeds that of earlier readers:
The editor of a major poet m ust begin with a
presum ption of the excellence of his author; he is
also governed by an axiom that texts, including
archetypal texts, are corrupt. The excellence of his
author is a m atter of consensus of critical judgm ent;
the axiom is a m atter of fact. Further, that excellence
has survived notw ithstanding the axiomatic
deterioration of his texts, and m ust thus once have
been even greater than the received texts now
represent it to be. Is it then such bad thinking for his
editor, w here the text seems inferior in particulars
although unanim ously attested, to im pute the falling
off to archetypal scribal corruption? Such an
inference, as the logic of literary studies goes, might
seem good rather than suspect. (Kane, "Conjectural
Em endation" 160)
132
But Kane goes on to w arn that the inference that textual infelicities are
necessarily scribal corruptions is also "subjective, speculative and
hazardous” since critics run the risk of em ending the text so that it reflects
w hat they think the poet should have written. Critics w ho support the
Bradshaw shift think Chaucer should have arranged the tales according to
geographical markers. Perhaps he should have, but this does not mean
that he did. Thorpe suggests that textual critics need to establish w hat it
is that they are trying to recover: "the better w ord or the w ords of the
author" (6). In this case, those w ho advocate the Bradshaw shift (which
is simply conjectural em endation on a grand scale) try to have it both
ways: they insist that the better w ords are the w ords of the author.
The Ellesmere O rder
Tyrw hitt was the first editor to em body the El order in an edition.
He began with the assum ption that "the work was never finished by the
author" (IV, 121). Beginning with the premise that no extant manuscript
order is authoritative, Tyrw hitt relied on internal allusions as well as the
evidence of the "best" MSS (in this case Harley 7335 and Dd 4.24) to
arrange the tales. Although he did not have access to Ellesmere, the
order he derives is the same as that represented by Manly-Rickert's group
a. He is the first m odern editor to create w hat later became known as the
"m arriage group."12 Manly (1928) is the first m odern editor to adopt the
Ellesmere order; he used Roman num erals to designate the individual
"fragments." For his 1933 edition Robinson follows Manly's precedent:
133
|ChaucerJ not only failed to complete the tales, but he
never m ade a final arrangem ent of w hat he had
written, or w orked out a consistent scheme for the
pilgrimage. U nder the circumstances and editor
m ust now choose between keeping the arrangem ent
of the best MSS., with all its imperfections, or making
the unauthorized adjustm ent adopted in the Six-Text
and several succeeding editions. The former is
undoubtedly the sounder procedure. (889)
Robinson uses both letters and Roman numerals, perhaps to
acknow ledge the classifications used by the Skeat and the Chaucer Society,
and to lessen the confusion "in departing from the system of groups used
in references in the prolific Chaucer 'literature' of the past fifty years"
(889). Robinson's edition essentially canonized the Ellesmere order: it is
the text that has been taught to undergraduates for half a century and the
text which forms the basis for the most influential studies of the poem ’ s
stru ctu re.13 A lthough Pratt's edition is sometimes used, Robinson's
Chaucer and its successor the Riverside Chaucer are the texts most often
used for college courses and the texts that are cited by critics:
Robinson's text of the Canterbury Tales came to be so
widely accepted, and so universally employed for
citation in scholarly and critical writing, that it got to
be thought of as definitive and canonical— not as one
am ong a num ber of possible editorial choices as to
w hat Chaucer had written; Robinson's ordering of
the Tales, that is, Ellesmere's ordering, likewise
became thought of as w hat Chaucer had decided. In
this way the Canterbury Tales became a Book, in the
most portentous medieval sense of the word, which
is very portentous indeed." (Pearsall, "Authorial
Revision" 40-1)
Critics who advocated the El order did not like the Bradshaw shift
for two reasons. First, it breaks up the marriage group. Although
Kittredge had not included the Man of Law's Tale in his discussion of
marriage, subsequent critics found that the tale extended the "drama":
"The contrasting positions of the Man of Law and the Wife of Bath set off
a debate and compromise" (G ardner 90).14 Second, the Bradshaw shift
has no MS authority and is entirely dependent upon argum ents over
who the speaker in the Man of Law's endlink "sounds like." Only
Seldon reads "Shipman" and connects the Shipm an's Tale to the Man of
Law's Tale, but its placement of these tales in the overall scheme and the
order of the rest of the tales is considered bizarre. Pratt, Tatlock and
Keiser must finally argue that the w ords in the endlink are more
"suitable" to the Shipm an than the Squier or Sum m oner. Also, the
whole basis for the shift— the belief that Chaucer ordered the tales
according to geographical m arkers— is purely conjectural. There is no
proof that Chaucer had reached a stage to order the tales or that he
com posed the tales to fit into a geographically realistic scheme. He may
have eventually intended the links to have geographical consistency, but
there is no proof that he had reached that point. Robinson argues "there
are so many small discrepancies in the w ork that the misplacing of
Rochester and Siddingbourne may be regarded as an oversight of
Chaucer’s ow n which he left uncorrected" (889). Moreover, Eisner
show ed that if the Canterbury Tales is said to follow a strict chronology,
the pilgrimage w ould have ended the day before it began.15 What was
even more problematic w as that of the twenty-seven different tale orders
the MSS present, none follows the Bradshaw order: "N o scribe was ever
influenced by internal evidence within the tales— allusions by one speaker
to another tale, or to geographical allusions to the Canterbury Road,
135
which apparently no one ever noticed until the nineteenth century
(Benson 111).16
A lthough argum ents for the superiority of the El order also are
predicated on literary interpretation and are just as relative and subjective
as argum ents for the Bradshaw shift, the El order does at least have
manuscript authority (twelve manuscripts share a similar order). Thus
the order itself is not conjectural. However, advocates of the El order
were not content to accept the order as the best scribal guess. They
declared the order authorial. Those who believed the El order to be
Chaucerian or closest to Chaucer's intention ascribed to two large
assumptions: 1) that Chaucer was in the process of revision w hen he died
but that he had arranged the tales, and 2) that the sophistication of the El
order is beyond the capabilities of any scribe.
It is interesting that just as the Bradshaw shift is partly dependent
on the authority of El, the El order is dependent upon the Bradshaw shift.
Both orders are dependent on the same m anuscript evidence. Advocates
of the El order argued that Chaucer had extensively revised his work (just
as he had extensively revised T roilus and the Legend of Good W omen).
Following Furnivall's suggestion, Fisher and G ardner argued that the
Man of Law originally told Melibee (a tale in prose) and the Wife of Bath
initially told the S hipm an's Tale. When Chaucer recreated the Wife of
Bath and conceived of the marriage group, he gave the tale of Constance
to the Man of Law, and the Wife of Bath's initial tale to the Shipman.
The evidence for all this is that the Shipman refers to himself as a "wife"
and the Man of Law says he will tell a tale in prose— the only other option
is the Parson's Tale.
136
W hat happened to the Man of Law's endlink after Chaucer m ade
this revision? jones argued that the link originally designated the
speaker as the Wife, but w hen Chaucer gave her tale to the Shipman, her
name was erased. Some w ho support the El order argue that the speaker
here is the Wife of Bath. There is no textual evidence for this, but they
argue on the grounds that the "language and tone of the Man of Law's
endlink suits the Wife" (Gardener 83). Because the link is missing from
the El manuscript, some critics suggested that the link (which originally
was attached to Melibee) was cancelled when Chaucer gave the tale of
Constance to the Man of Law. For instance, Benson claimed the
speaker's promise to "waken al this compaignye" is "inappropriate in
tone":
It is one thing for a churlish character to object to a
long and heavily learned discourse that has
apparently put some of the com pany to sleep and
quite another matter for such a character to object so
boisterously to a pious tale of Christian suffering.
The Man of Law's endlink is tactless as an epilogue to
the tale of Custance and so, though it w as allowed to
stand temporarily in the early version, Chaucer
finally cancelled it. He was sometimes careless about
small details, but his sense of tact w as infallible, (note
14,100-101)
Because the Man of Law's endlink is considered genuine, the
theory of revision is crucial to any argum ent that the El order is authorial.
Both G ardner and Fisher argued that although Chaucer may have begun
by ordering the tales according to geographical markers, the marks of
revision (cancelled Man of Law's link) show that he had devised a higher
dram atic or thematic purpose. Chaucer's original plan may have been
137
based on geographical consistency. However, his final plan is much
more complex and sophisticated:
...that Chaucer's plan may possibly have changed and
developed as he w orked on the Canterbury Tales
makes it plausible that the illogical sequence of
references to time and place may have resulted not
from a scribe's confusion but from Chaucer's having
himself shifted tales around for some purpose of his
own, intending to correct the sequence of
geographical allusions later. (Gardner 82)
Similarly, Fisher argues that Fragments VI-X "represent an earler stage of
composition before dram atic interplay had em erged in Chaucer's mind as
a fundam ental characteristic of the collection" ("Chaucer's Last Revision"
243).
In other words, these critics argued that Chaucer's creative process
followed twentieth century critical changes. The El order is thought to be
more sophisticated the the Bradshaw shift because the Man of Law's Tale
extends the dram atic principle. Because we have devised some dram atic
and thematic purpose in the structure, Chaucer must have as well. Thus,
advocates of the El order argue that the earlier (and more simplistic) plan
of ordering the tales according to geographical consistency occured to
Chaucer first.17 However, as his plan m atured, he was moving tow ards a
more sophisticated order, based on thematic contrast. The implication is
that we are discovering Chaucer's creative process. But the fact that it
imitates our ow n critical changes is suspect.
The Ellesmere order may indeed be the most coherent and
sophisticated structure, the order most am enable to criticism. But is this
order Chaucer's? Tatlock had raised the possibility that the El order
could be just as easily the w ork of an editor. The major difference
138
between those who supported the Bradshaw shift and those the El order is
that the former assum e that scribes were com petent— at least they were
intelligent enough to come up with the El order (but not the Bradshaw
shift).18 However, those w ho support the El order must assum e that the
sophistication of the order w ould be beyond any scribe. Benson argues
that the El order "represents Chaucer's ow n final arrangem ent" and that
to attribute the order to an editor or scribe "requires a long series of
strained assum ptions": "...and in this matter, as in most, Occam's razor
must be applied: The fewer assum ptions necessary to account for the
facts, the more probable the validity of the account" (79-80). But the only
assum ption seems to be that no scribe could have been sm art enough to
derive a satisfactory tale order.
Benson's "The O rder of the Canterbury Tales" rem ains one of the
most influential and persuasive pleas for the authority of the El order.
To support his argum ent that no scribe could invent this order he has to
argue for the unlikely in vita circulation of the Tales as a whole:
It is difficult to believe that anyone but Chaucer could
have m ade so satisfactory an arrangment...If we
assum e that some one other than C haucer invented
the type a order, we m ust assume the existence of an
unknow n literary prodigy w ho has left no other
traces of his genius. So im probable an assertion is
not necessary; it is m uch more reasonable to assume
that the Type a order was the work of the author of
the Canterbury Tales. (111-112)
Again the problem is that simply asserting no scribe could be capable of
the arrangm ent doesn't make it so.
Benson's other assum ptions are equally as tenuous. He uses the
explicit at the end of El that says that the w ork was "compiled" by Chaucer
139
as proof that he m ust have arranged the El order himself: "Here we have
the direct testimony of one of the earliest scribes of the tales, if not the
earliest, that Chaucer was not only the 'maker' of the book but the one
w ho 'compiled' it, w ho gave it its ordinatio" (112). However, the
m eaning of compilatio and compiler is slippery. A compiler is actually
distinguished from an auctor; he is someone w ho writes and gathers
together the materials of others, adding "no opinions of his own"
(Minnis 94). That Chaucer compiled the tales does not necessarily mean
that he arranged them in a certain order but that he organized the
material in relation to tales and tellers; that is, he organized the "diverse
mnteriae by distributing them am ongst fictional characters" (Minnis 202).
On the other hand, Minnis does say that there is a distinction between a
compilatio and a collection, in which the former has an orderly
arrangm ent of material, w hereas the latter does not (97). Nonetheless
the denotation of the w ord is too unclear to take the colophon as
testimony that Chaucer is responsible for the El arrangem ent.
Finally, Benson's argum ent that the El order is Chaucerian is based
on his assum ption that Chaucer was finished with the w ork w hen he
died: "...unfinished, unrevised, and imperfect as The C anterbury Tales
may be, Chaucer was finished with it" (81). H ow does Benson know this?
Because the Retraction is "Chaucer's w ord he was finished with the
work":
We have Chaucer's ow n word, in the Retraction,
that, unfinished as The Canterbury Tales obviously
is, he was finished with it. We have, in short, not a
w ork in progress to which Chaucer intended to
return and w ould have, had not death or illness
prevented this, but rather Chaucer's final version, as
140
it was w hen he decided his w ork on it was ended.
(80)
The authenticity and significance of the Retraction has always been a
problem, and it was excluded from Pynson's 1498 edition until Urry
included it again in 1721. Even m odern critics are uncomfortable with
the implications of the declaration that Chaucer wrote everything "for
our doctrine." Most theories that account for the significance of the
Retraction try in some way to excuse it or to ignore its literal im pact— it
has been explained as the utterance of a dying man, as a conventional
topos, or as ironic. Some critics have even questioned w hether the
Retraction was intended to conclude the Canterbury Tales. Manly-
Rickert question w hether the Parson's Tale and the Rt "properly belong to
CT":
Chaucer may have been responsible for both PsT and
Rt and yet they may have no legitimate claim to a
place in CT...The curious fact remains that in Rt there
is not a hint of any sort that it is appended to
CT...And the "tales of Caunterbury" occupy an
undistinguished position in the sham bling
enum erations of the "endytynges of worldly
vanitees," neither leading off as the most im portant
nor closing the list as a climax. The reference to
them suggests that they had already been published
and w ere unfortunately beyond the control of the
penitent, not— as we are asked to believe— that they
were being offered to the public in the very collection
carrying the author's repentence for having w ritten
them. (II, 472)
Similarly, O wen has argued that the Parson's Tale and Rt were found
am ong Chaucer's papers and were attached to the end of the w ork by
som eone other than Chaucer: "The 'Retraction' is clearly the conclusion
of the treatise on penitence and the seven deadly sins, not of the
Canterbury Tales" ("Developm ent of the CT" 458). A lthough Owen's
earlier views were influenced by his conception of a two-way journey, in
his more recent M anuscripts of the CT (1991), he again argues that the
person w ho prepared the copytext for Hg brought the CT to a "suitable"
end by including the ParT and Rt, and he suggests that "as earlier editors
rejected the G am elyn, we should also have the courage to reject ParT and
the Rt which have no place in the CT collection" (124-5). Blake also
questions the authenticity of the Rt since it is not in Hg, and he warns
that it is "dangerous to base textual argum ents on a part of the text of such
dubious genuineness" ("On Editing" 188).
W hether or not Chaucer m eant to include the ParT and Rt in the
Canterbury Tales can probably not be determined. It is also questionable
w hether the Rt was actually the last thing Chaucer wrote, or that it does
indeed imply that Chaucer was actually finished with the poem. Blake
remarks: "Although the author retracts his secular works, it need not
imply that he was going to write nothing else...the poem w as not written
in the order in which it is now usually read, and if genuine Rt might well
have been written before some of the tales which are included in the
Canterbury Tales" ("On Editing" 188). Finally, although Benson argues
that the Rt is proof that Chaucer was finished with the CT, and thus had
arrived at a final order, he also argues that there are two different orders
that can be assigned to Chaucer, both which contain the Rt: "The mss
show that from the very beginning the w ork circulated in but two orders,
both of which can be attributed to Chaucer; one may be an early version,
in which case the Type a-Ellesmere order is the final arrrangem ent" (117).
Thus, the Rt did not inhibit Chaucer from rearranging the tales. Blake
142
notices this logical mistake in Benson's argum ent as well: "So even
Benson does not accept that the inclusion of Rt prevented Chaucer from
tinkering further w ith his poem" (188).
Scholars w ho entered this debate were forced into making specious
and often absurd argum ents because they began with an assumption
about Chaucer's aesthetics then attem pted to twist and rationalize the
m anuscript evidence so that it w ould fit these assumptions. Historical
facts must be invented: we hear of m anuscripts hidded in trunks, of
Chaucer reading his entire poem to the court, of Chaucer in the m iddle of
a grand revision w hen he died. For those critics who supported the
Bradshaw shift, Chaucer was a poet who spoke of real people and real
events. He was a meticulous poet, concerned with details and
psychological consistency. For those who supported the El order,
Chaucer is a poet w ho is more concerned with thematic structure, who
was above small matters of realistic detail. It does seem "simple and
natural" as Pratt said, to read the CT as a dram atic work, since every
student of Chaucer has been taught to read this way. There is no harm in
reading the poem as a dram a, but it is easy to forget that the dramatic
approach is a m odern conceptualization of the work. When this
approach is put into a historical context, when one tries to reconcile this
approach with the textual evidence, the fact that the dram atic approach is
a twentieth century construct becomes very clear. Only a few of the MSS
em body the El order— this order may be the "best" order, but that does not
mean that it is an authorial order. This paper should show that although
m odern discussions of the structure of the CT are intriguing, nonetheless,
any claim to be recovering or revealing Chaucer's intention is specious.
N otes
143
1. Furnivall used letters to indicated each "group" for the
Chaucer's Society's texts. The Roman num erals used to designate
individual "fragments" of El were first used by Manly, Canterbury Tales
(1928). Robinson uses both letters and Roman numerals, and the same
practice is adopted by the editors of the R iverside Chaucer.
2. O w en has m aintained for many years that Chaucer intended a
two-way journey. It is interesting that he uses Lydgate's Siege of the
Thebes and the Prologue and Tale of Beryn, both of which are apocryphal,
as evidence that Chaucer himself intended a five-day journey. See for
instance, "The Plan of the Canterbury Tale Pilrimage." However, in his
recent The M anuscripts of the Canterbury Tales he makes no mention of
this two-w ay journey, and says instead that the MSS do not reveal any
final plan, but successive revisions:
It is time we went back to the text Chaucer wrote and
let it speak to us. There we will find if we look
carefully three different beginnings of the storytelling
and two projected endings. There we will find the
evidence for the different plans on which Chaucer at
different times w orked. (125)
Derek Pearsall, The Canterbury Tales (1985) arranges and analyzes the
tales according to genre. Olson, The Canterbury Tales and the Good
Society groups the tales according to topic, and Allen and Moritz, A.
Distinction of Stories: The Medieval Unity of Chaucer's Fair Chain of
N arratives for Canterbury propose an ordering of Chaucer's tales based
on medieval classifications of Ovid's tales.
3. There is an elem ent of subjectivity and random ness built into
choice of the "best" MSS which is seldom noted. Furnivall chose his
m anuscripts according to the following criteria: Three should come from
private hands (Ellesmere, Hengwrt, Petworth), three from public libraries.
The three chosen from libraries should represent Oxford (Corpus Christi),
Cam bridge (Gg) and London (Lansdowne).
4. See H am m ond, Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual for the tale
orders used by early editors.
144
5. In a footnote Furnivall cites the following as "Marks of an
Edited Text": "Gamelyn cut out. Link after Man of Law cut out. Second
N onne and Chanon Yeman shunted dow n late. M odern Instances in
M onk’s Tale, at the end" (note 1, 24). Tatlock correctly comments,
'"Edited MS.' is unm eaning; most of the early MSS. are 'edited,' El merely
more intelligently" (129). But Furnivall's description of El as an "edited"
text has been repeated by every subsequent editor. This notion has led to
the odd m odern practice of preferring the text of Hg while following the
order of El, since the language of El is said to be too smooth and
sophisticated for Chaucer. Kane has argued that Manly-Rickert's
conclusion that El is edited is based on their misinterpretation of variants.
See "John M. Manly and Edith Rickert” in Chaucer and Langland, 178-205.
6. M odern Philology 3 (1905): 163-4.
7. Similarly, French argues "There is every appearance of dram atic
purpose in the sudden intrusion of this Shipm an— with his black record
as thief and pirate, and with the grossly immoral tale he has to tell— as the
defender of this respectable company against the terrible calamity of
listening to heresy from the lips of the of those dangerous radicals, the
Lollards" (232). Tatlock: "One need not dilate here on w hat has long
been recognized as the beautiful fitness of this link to the Shipm an and its
grotesque unfitness to the Squire" ("CT in 1400" 116); "the Shipman, who
was in the habit of throw ing objectionable people overboard, w ould not
consider w hether or not he had the right to be disrespectful to the Parson"
(116 nt. 44).
8. For instance, Brusendorff argues that the speaker is the Yeoman:
If, then, Chaucer had originally put the first Yeoman
into the Epilogue in question— and indeed he is the
only one of those left w ithout a tale w hom the speech
obviously fits— nothing w ould have been more
natural than w riting Esquier above the Yeoman in B
1179 to distinguish him from the new m em ber of the
company. The Oxford scribe thought this a
correction and accordingly introduced the wrong
name. (C haucer Tradition 72)
Tatlock calls Brusendorff's theory "peculiar and unacceptable" (115 nt. 43),
but if dram atic propriety is the standard, almost any pilgrim w ithout a
prologue could be given the tale.
9. Tatlock argued that adopting the El order involves "puzzling or
misleading" the m odern reader, not because of the geographical
145
inconsistency "which w ould trouble few but Kentishmen" (132), but
because it omits the Man of Law's endlink which, Tatlock argues, "was
intended for the Shipman." Since the Shipm an's Tale is "in search of a
prologue" and the prologue is "in search of a tale," m odern editors
should adopt it: "this junction is a happy way out, which the poet
himself might well have adopted" (132). The other advantage of
retaining this shift is that "for a half-century and more an im m ense
scholarly literature has used one line-numbering" system.
10. Pratt's argum ent is confusing, I think because he mistakes
internal evidence for m anuscript authority. He says that internal
evidence points to the sequence 1, II, VII, III, IV-V, VI, VIII, IX, X (i.e. the
Bradshaw shift). But the "continuity of the genealogical groups of
MSS...through VI and the first half of VII...points to the existence of VI-
VII in o ! before any copying began" (1161): "How can this evidence be
reconciled with the internal evidence that Chaucer acutally intended the
II-VII sequence?" Pratt argues that VII was misplaced from its
"Chaucerian" position (II-VII) w hen his copy was discovered, so that the
shift from the "Chaucerian" to the "1400" position took place before
copying began. He says that the scribes of El and a knew the authentic
"Chaucerian" tradition of the order of the tales, except for the accidental
m isplacem ent of VII. The main problem here is that there is no
evidence that the El order is "Chaucerian." Pratt tries to have it both
ways: he claims that MS evidence points to the continuity of VI-VII (the
El order) and internal evidence (which he confuses with MS authority)
points to the Bradshaw shift:
But if Chaucer prepared the tales w ithout an ordered
plan, and if he left his papers in a disorganized state,
then we are presented with a most remarkable
coincidence: namely, that the order fitting the
internal evidence (Chaucerian) plus the continuity of
the generic groups of MSS through VI and through
the first half of VII, yields an order (1400) precisely
identical with the only MS. order with any possible
claim to authority (/7-El). This identity and the
variety of internal evidence, together suggest that
Chaucer had a plan. (1167)
Again, the problem is the the shift of VII to after II has no m anuscript
authority.
11. Reiser's article elicited a vituperative response from Blake. In
"Critics, Criticism and the O rder of the Canterbury Tales," Blake also
explores some of Reiser's assumptions. He concludes that "if Chaucer
146
had no final order, there is little point in discussing w hat his order might
have been. By the same token there is no point in claiming that the
scribe of El had access to a Chaucerian order if Chaucer never had an
order" (48):
I myself have serious reservations as to w hether
the poem is extant in a compete enough form for
such studies to be undertaken. We must
rem em ber in future how fragm entary the poem
was w hen Chaucer died; criticism ought to start
from this recognition. We may have to accept
that certain critical procedures, such as the
exam ination of the overall structure, may not be
suitable for a poem which has survived in such a
fragmentary state. (58)
A lthough for the most part I agree with Blake, his argum ent against El
reflects the prejudices of his ow n agenda. Because Hg seems to have been
put together piecemeal and has w hat is today considered an inferior tale
order, Blake assumes that Chaucer had not arrived at a final order and
that he had no plan for one. He says that to assum e that El represents
Chaucer s intended order w e have to assum e that he had a master plan
and that he com posed the tales in the order they w ould appear in the
poem (which he obviously did not). But Chaucer obviously could have
had a plan w ithout com posing the tales in the correct order.
12. W ynken de W orde's 1498 edition also has the m arriage group,
although it lacks the m odern Squire's Prologue. Tyrw hitt argued that the
prologue which had previously been used to introduce the Merchant
should be given to the Franklin since the speaker refers to his grown up
son w hereas the Merchant refers to his recent m arriage (IV, 162-3).
13. Although Pratt's The Tales of Canterbury (1974) which uses the
Bradshaw shift is som etim es used in the classroom, Robinson's edition
and the Riverside C haucer are used most often and are the texts that are
used for citation in academic articles. The influential studies of structure
that are based on El include H oward's The Idea of the Canterbury T ales,
Baldwin's The Unity of the Canterbury Tales, Ruggiers' The Art or the
Canterbury Tales, Jordan's Chaucer and the Shape of Creation, and
Lum iansky's Of Sondry Folk: The Dramatic Principle in the Canterbury
Tales.
14. Similarly, in "Authorial Revision in Some Late-Medieval
Texts" in Crux and Controversy Pearsall observes:
147
Lee Patterson and Carolyn Dinshaw, using the
Riverside Chaucer, based their very different
argum ents on the assum ption that the editorial order
of the Tales is Chaucer's order, and that significant
conclusions can be draw n, for instance, from the fact
that the Wife of Bath's Prologue stands after the M an
of Law ’s Tale (that is, begins on the page after that on
which the Man of Law's Tale finishes). (41)
See Dinshaw, Chaucer's Sexual Poetics, and Patterson's, "No Man his
Reson Herde: Peasant Consciousness, Chaucer's Miller and the Structure
of the Canterbury Tales. "
15. Sigm und Eisner, "Chaucer’s Use of Nicholas of Lynn's
Calendar," 21. In the Man of Law's Prologue, the day is said to be April
eighteenth. In the Parson's Prologue, the day calculated "can only apply
to April 17 or earlier."
16. Early scribes and editors apparently did not find the Merchant's
reference to the Wife of Bath significant or indicative of tale order since
in 28 MSS the M erchant's Tale precedes the Wife of Bath's Tale.
17. A lthough if Chaucer composed the tales this way the offensive
reference to "Sidyngbourne" in the Wife of Bath's Prologue would not
have existed.
18. In 'T he Fifteenth-Century Editors of the Canterbury Tales and
the Problem of Tale Order," Dempster concludes that early scribes saw the
CT prim arily as "a collection of stories whose order was a secondary
matter" (1141). For instance in Manly-Rickert's type b and d orders, the
M erchant's Tale, which refers to the Wife of Bath, precedes her tale.
Similarly, several MSS. of the type b order have both the M erchant's Tale
and the Clerk's Tale precede the Wife of Bath's Prologue and Tale.
Chapter Eight
148
Authorial Intention, Artistic Integrity, and the Romantic Ideology of
Textual A uthority
The appeal to authorial intention is endem ic to discussions about
the structure of the Canterbury Tales. The appeal is used to minimize
apocryphal elements that are perceived to threaten the purity of the
authorial text. However, the idea of an authorial, unm ediated text of the
Canterbury Tales is a fiction. We do not know in w hat state Chaucer left
the poem, but it is only through the efforts of subsequent editors that the
poem has achieved any kind of structure or completeness as a collection.
From very soon after Chaucer's death the production and dissemination
of the Canterbury Tales was a collaborative effort. Faced with what
Chaucer wrote, subsequent readers em ended, im proved and changed the
text in order to give it coherence. Because the text was not transmitted
with the intention of preserving the author's intention, the Romantic
conception of textual authority and literary production that informs
editing and criticism of this text is anachronistic, and needs to be replaced
with a theoretical model more consonant with the aesthetic and textual
assum ptions of those who preserved the text.
In A Critique of M odern Textual Criticism, McGann argues that
since the production and transmission of texts inextricably combines the
intentions of many people besides the author's, the Romantic ideology of
149
the solitary originator w hich informs critical m ethod is m isguided.
A lthough McGann derives his idea of authorship and literary production
from m odern m ethods of textual transmission, his theory also applies,
and is perhaps more applicable to, pre-m odern texts. Recension has been
ineffective in its goal to reconstruct the lost original or w hat McGann calls
the "ideal of the finally intended text." It has proven impossible to
penetrate the early scribal and editorial additions. The w ork of art that
we call the Canterbury Tales is a collaborative or social construct to which
the nam e of an author, "Chaucer," has been attached: "The fully
authoritative text is therefore always one which has been socially
produced; as a result, the critical standard for w hat constitutes
authoritativeness canot rest with the author and his intentions alone"
(75). Since the transm ission of the Canterbury Tales represents the
epitomy of collaboration, and since in practice we already accept
apocryphal elements as authoritative, a socialized theory of authorship is
the only approach that does justice to the complexity of the texual
evidence.
A uthorial Intention and Thorpe's Concept of Artistic Integrity
As I show ed in the previous chapter, discussion of the tale order in
the Canterbury Tales was always predicated on Chaucer's intention.
Advocates for the Bradshaw shift and the El order both claimed that since
the order w as the most "satisfactory," it revealed Chaucer's intention.
For instance Keiser states "the Bradshaw shift...seems to represent the
most artistically satisfying arrangem ent of the tales, and may, therefore,
150
suggest w hat Chaucer's final intention for tale-order was" (191). For
G ardner, since "the Ellesemere order has artistic coherence missing in
other arrangem ents of the tales...the Ellesmere order of the tales is
probably Chaucer's" (82). And according to Benson, since the El order "is
an arrangem ent of considerable artistic merit" it necessarily "represents
Chaucer's ow n final arrangm ent" (79). Many critical studies of the
poem's dram atic unity base their argum ents on the assum ption that the
order appearing in standard editions, prim arily Robinson's and the
Riverside, represents Chaucer's intended order. Some even appear to
assum e that Chaucer com posed the tales in that order. Since most of
these critics were trained under the New Critical injunction that the
author's intentions cannot be used to gauge the success of a w ork of art, it
is strange that we find appeals to Chaucer's "final intentions" used to
justify different orders of the CT and the m eanings those different orders
afford. Moreover, this debate took place in a theoretical climate which,
with the publication of Barthes' "The Death of the Author" (1968) and
Foucault's "What is an Author?" (1969), was discarding the traditional
hum anist concept of the autonom ous subject as a single source for
meaning. Given the popular theoretical oppposition to w hat was
considered Romantic subjectivity, why do Chaucerians persist in an
outm oded appeal to the author as a source and guarantor of meaning?
In "The Intentional Fallacy" (1946) W imsatt and Beardsley
banished the author on the grounds that his intentions (w hether they
were accessible or not) should not be used to gauge the success of a work
of art. They were prim arily concerned with allusions (specifically T. S.
Eliot's) and they were trying to dispell the tendency of biographical and
151
genetic inquiry to make sense of difficult poetry: "Critical inquiry is not
settled by consulting an oracle." Barthes w anted to banish the author as
the final repository of m eaning so that m eaning is not shut dow n, so that
"it is langauge which speaks, not the author" (143). But he was primarily
concerned w ith validating the practices of m odern french w riters such as
Mallarme, Valery and Proust whose w riting had to be "disentangled" in a
very real sense, rather than "deciphered." Whereas for W imsatt and
Beardsley meaning ended with the critic w ho practiced the "true and
objective way of criticism" (that is, poetic analysis and exegesis rather than
crude biographical criticism), for Barthes m eaning resides in the
impersonal process of reading.
But the com m on assum ption is that the author's presence in the
text is som ehow tyrranical. Critical theorists w orking with m odern
authors may be more willing to banish the author as an oracle or as a
repository of meaning because these theorists are studying authors whose
texts are basically stable— they possess the author's fair copy, the first
editions, as well as the author's revisions, second thoughts and
reflections on his ow n work. In addition, they also have extensive
biographies— they know the author's aesthetic assum ptions, his political
preferences, his personal life.1 In many respects, the author's intentions
are often easily recoverable. The aim of critics who wish to marginalize
the author is, in part, to ensure that m eaning does not sim ply end with
authorial intention: "the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the
death of the Author" (Barthes 148).
But Chaucerians lack these prim ary sources. Their desire to
recover authorial intention is not aim ed at explaining cryptic allusions2
152
nor is it, as Barthes suggests, a reactionary allegience to a capitalist
ideology w hich deifies the individual. The real problem is that
Chaucerians do not possess a transcendent verbal icon that simply awaits
their criticism. A ssum ing a transhistorical perm anence and organic
textual unity, W imsatt and Beardsley m andated that the critic is only to
judge the "art of the poem itself." But w hat if that poem is disordered,
incomplete, and perhaps unfinished? W hat if the status of the artistic
verbal object itself is open to question?
It is easier for critical theorists to dismiss authorial intention when
the critic has a reasonable assurance that the w ords belong to the author—
that is, w hen they know that the author intended the text as they have it.
In "The Aesthetics of Textual Criticism" Thorpe argues that the "language
of the literary work... is a fulfillment of the author's intentions." The
desire to recover authorial intention therefore should not be confused
with the "intentional fallacy":
...the authority of the author over the w ords which
make up the text he wrote is subtly underm ined by
confusing it with the authority of the author over the
m eaning of his text. While the author cannot dictate
the m eaning of the text, he certainly has final
authority over which w ords constitute the text of his
literary work. (10)
Similarly, Tanselle observes discussions of authorial intentionality
"regularly take the text as given and focus on the activity of the critic as he
faces that text; they do not raise the question of the authority of the text
itself, apparently assum ing that the text in each case is the text as the
author w ished it to be" (31). Thorpe argues that it is im portant to recover
the w ords of the author, or the author's intention, because the "integrity"
153
of a piece of art (its status as an aesthetic object) is predicated upon the
author's intention. To support this assertion, Thorpe spends some time
distinguishing between w orks of art, chance, and nature. He claims that
although w orks of chance and w orks of nature may evoke aesthetic
responses, a w ork of art is created by a hum an agency to arouse an
aesthetic response- it is an intended aesthetic object: "If the element of
intention is minimized, the w ork of art tends to blend into, and be
indistinguishable from, w orks of chance and works of nature" (10).
Although we may derive aesthetic satisfaction from w orks of chance or
nature, it is the literary w ork of art that is the "sole practicable subject for
textual criticism" (14).
Critical theorists dealing with more m odern and stable texts may
not be concerned with author's intended text because they begin with the
assum ption that the w ork of art has lexical integrity, and that it therefore
represents a coherent aesthetic object:
...the integrity of a work of art depends very much on
the w ork being limited to those intentions w hich are
the author's, together with those others of which he
approves...W hen these intentions have been fulfilled,
the w ork art art has its final integrity or completeness.
It may be aesthetically imperfect or unfinished, and it
is possible that an indefinite num ber of people may be
capable of im proving it. But in the authorial sense it
is already finished, it is already complete, it already
has that final integrity which should be the object of
the critic's chief attention. This is the final integrity
which it is the business of the textual critic to identify
as an order of w ords in fulfillment of the authorial
intention, the business of the literary critic to
understand as an order of w ords in the context of all
literature. (31)
154
But critics of the Canterbury Tales cannot begin with the assum ption that
individual readings or the order of the tales reflect Chaucer's intention.
An earlier generation of scholars was confident that an authorial text was
recoverable using rhym e tests. For instance Tatlock declared that "There
is seldom more difficulty in discriminating between [the spurious links]
and the genuine than in discrim inating between real nutm egs and
w ooden nutm egs" ("CT in 1400" 119). But he bases this assertion on the
assum ption that any spurious links will be of poor literary quality.
H owever, Manly-Rickert concluded that it is almost impossible to
distinguish between scribal and authorial variants:
In all such cases there can, of course, be no scientific
proof of the genuineness of the passages. The most
that MS evidence can do is to show that they
originated early enough to be the author's corrections;
but this is no gaurantee that the changes may not
have been m ade by someone else, and it is of course
true that in any series of such changes some may be
due to the author and others to some one else. The
only test is the know ledge and taste of the reader. (II,
495-6)
Blake argues that the metre, style and language tests which were used to
analyze Chaucer's poetry are "unreliable" since they are based on edited
MSS. He concludes: "No test has so far been devised which can with
confidence distinguish a Chaucerian line from a spurious one— and it is
useless to pretend that any solution to the problem of genuineness exists"
(Textual Tradition 47). Similarly Fisher suggests textual variations,
presum ed to represent various stages of authorial composition, may in
fact be scribal: "The conclusion that these variations are scribal rather
than authorial...throw s into question over half a century of Chaucer
criticism" ("Anim adversions" 786).
155
Therefore, critics w ho study the Canterbury Tales cannot be sure
that the text itself fulfills Chaucer's intention. As such, the w ork of art
lacks integrity, which threatens its status as a w ork of art. But the
Canterbury Tales also fails a second test of artistic integrity. Thorpe goes
on to argue that it is publication that guarantees an author's intentions
have been fulfilled: "the w ork can only have such integrity, or
completeness, as the author chooses to give it, and our only reasonable
text of w hen the w ork has achieved integrity is his willingness to release
it to his usual public" (38). It is publication that distinguishes the "actual"
from the "potential" w ork of art:
It remains a "potential" work of art— it is in process, it
is becoming— so long as the author is still giving it
shape, in his mind or in successive drafts or
interlineations or in w hatever m anner he suspends
those works which he is not yet ready to release to his
usual public. On the other hand, the "actual" w ork of
art is a version in which the author feels that his
intentions have been sufficiently fulfilled to
com m unicate it to the public...The distinction which I
am offering is a practical (rather than idealistic) way of
separating the potential from the actual, the w ork of
art which is becoming from the w ork of art which is.
The distinction thus turns on the intentions of the
artist: the w ork can have only such integrity, or
completeness, as the author chooses to give it, and our
only reasonable test of w hen the w ork has achieved
integrity is his willingness to release it to his usual
public. (37-8)
Critical theorists studying m odern texts only face the problem of multiple
versions w hen the text has been successively revised by the author, in
which case Thorpe and McGann contend that each published version
constitutes a different text or w ork of art. The problem that faces
Chaucerians here is obvious. We do not know if Chaucer was finished
156
with the Tales. The evidence we have suggests that he was not. The
w ork is not only incomplete insofar as the plan announced in the
General Prologue is unfulfilled, but the Cook's Tale and the Squire's Tale
are unfinished, and several well-known "mistakes" in the text (such as
the Shipm an referring to himself as a wife) suggest that the w ork was not
even closely proofread. By all appearances, this is a text that was in
"process," "becoming," and as an entity, was not yet ready to be released to
the public. For Thorpe, a work that has not officially been released to the
public remains a "potential" w ork of art. As such, the Canterbury Tales
reflected in the MSS. does not fulfill Chaucer's intentions: if we interpret
Thorpe literally, the Canterbury Tales remains a potential work of art.
This distinction is significant because Chaucer's canonical status
does not depend upon the individual tales, which may in themselves be
"actual" w orks of art. They appear finished and could very well have
circulated individually during Chaucer's lifetime as Manly-Rickert and
O w en suggest. Individual tales were included in "miscellanies" or
anthologies (the Clerk's Tale, Prioress' Tale and M elibeus are the most
popular) indicating that the tales could be appreciated outside of the
pilgrim age context. There is also evidence that Chaucer composed
several tales before he had conceived of the Canterbury Tales (like the
Knight's Tale and the Second N un's Tale), and critics speculate that it was
his habit to write the tales first, and then later provide the speaker and the
links. But Chaucer's m odern reputation does depend upon the
C anterbury Tales as a coherent entity. W ithout the pilgrimage frame and
links the w ork is static— it lacks any kind of dram atic or thematic structure
that elevates it above a simple collection of stories. For Fisher w hat sets
157
the CT apart from other m edieval collections (like the D ecam eron,
Confessio Amantis, and the Legend of Good W omen) is its "rhetoric of
fiction," its "play upon the attitude of the tellers and the reaction of the
audience": "It is the fact that the Canterbury Tales does show this
sophistication that makes it so endlessly fascinating to m odern critics"
("Chaucer's Last Revision" 244). Since D ryden Chaucer's achievem ent
and canonical status have been predicated on the dram atic vitality and
coherence provided by the links. That early scribes recognized the
importance of the links is evident in their practice of providing links that
were missing. Lydgate's Siege of Thebes and the author of the Tale of
Beryn also recognized the dram atic im portance of the links (or prologues)
in contextualizing the tales. And the studies that have m ade critics
famous are those that have found unified m eaning in the w ork as a
whole.
But the chaotic state of the manuscripts and the fact that the work
is incomplete underm ines the illusion that the Canterbury Tales is an
"actual" w ork of art or a verbal icon. According to Hanna, "None of the
tale orders we have received necessarily reflects Chaucer's plan (if indeed
he had one) but rather the difficulties of m anuscript supervisors trying to
make a text left manifestly incomplete at its author's death look like a
continuous whole ("H engw rt Manuscript" 79). In his recent analysis of
the m anuscript transm ission of the Canterbury Tales, O w en concludes
that the Canterbury Tales initially circulated as fragments and individual
tales in "booklets." N one of these booklets survive, having been literally
"read to pieces"
158
The result of this failure to survive has been the
undue influence on m odern readers of the
"complete" texts. One of their arrangm ents of the
collection of fragments Chaucer left behind has
coopted critical attention from some of the real issues
raised by the Canterbury Tales. A deeper reading of
the m anuscript record...may correct this almost
universal misreading. (Manuscripts of the CT 124-25).
O wens suggests that the desire to recover a complete authorial text of the
Canterbury Tales is fundamentally misguided: "In this century of
m anuscript history no evidence connects any ordering of the fragments to
Chaucer. It is time we gave up the impression of completeness or near
completeness editors like the Hengwrt-Ellesmere supervisor tried to give
the Canterbury Tales" (125).
A Socialized Concept of A uthorship
The interesting dilem m a in Thorpe's theory of authorial intention
and artistic integrity is that "in a pure sense it is probably impossible" to
isolate an author's intentions from those w ho help bring the w ork to
publication:
The literary w ork is frequently the result, in a pure
sense, of composite authorship...The intentions of the
person we call the author thus become entangled with
the intentions of all the others w ho have a stake in
the outcome...Our identification of the author is partly
a convention for the sake of simplicity, partly a case of
the Boss being given credit. (30-31)
Although Thorpe concedes that the primacy of authorial intention is a
Romantic fallacy, he nonetheless reiterates "the integrity of the w ork of
art depends very much on the w ork being limited to those intentions
159
which are the author's" (31). Thorpe's definition of artistic integrity is
paradoxical: the integrity of a w ork of art is predicated upon the
intentions of the author, but these intentions can never be wholly
disentangled from those w ho help to bring the w ork to publication.
Since the late eighteenth century editors have w orked to recover
the authorial text of the Canterbury Tales. In A Critique of M odern
Textual Criticism, McGann has suggested this critical approach is
fundam entally flawed. He argues the quest to reconstitute a lost original
docum ent is doom ed to fail because literary production is "fundamentally
social rather than personal" (8). Given the nature of literary production
as a social and institutional event, it is erroneous to view authorship as
autonom ous and self-reflexive. The romantic conception of the author
as solitary originator simply fails to take into account the literary m ode of
production:
In fact...an author's work possesses autonom y only
w hen it remains an unheard melody. As soon as it
begins its passage to publication it undergoes a series
of interventions which some textual critics see as a
process of contamination, but which may equally well
be seen as a process of training the poem for its
appearances in the world. (51)
Given the fact that we have over seventy different m anuscripts of the
Canterbury Tales, it appears that early scribes shared this social concept of
textuality. Moore observes: "It is indeed only in comparitively m odern
times that the true function of an editor or textual critic has been
recognized to be the discovery of w hat the author actually did write, not
the suggestion of w hat he ought to have written" (vi). Scribes and early
160
editors were less interested in a true text, the text Chaucer intended, than
in a text that was com plete and coherent.
Discarding the notion of literary production as autonom ous and
conceptualizing the Canterbury Tales as a social construction, a
collaborative act, may to some extent reproduce medieval attitudes
tow ards textual authority. M achan convincingly dem onstrates that the
division of intellectual property was less clear cut in the M iddle Ages
than in the post-Romantic periods. W hereas today an author is
"presumed to be someone w ho composes a piece of writing, whose
authority over his w ords is culturally recognized," and w hose texts have
"conceptual, existential, and almost always aesthetic superiority" over
those of scribes, in the M iddle Ages an authoritative text was not
necessarily equated with an authorial one ("Middle English Text
Production" 3). There is no "a priori historical justification for
privileging the texts of 'poets' over those of 'scribes' (5). Given the
num ber of variants in most vernacular medieval texts "it is impossible to
believe that many scribes regarded their task as mere duplication of
another's words" (5). In the transmission of vernacular texts there was
no clear distinction betw een the authority of the scribe and the author,
and in actual practice we often find a "not very authoritative author and
some very authorial scribes":
The distinction betw een vernacular author and scribe
is problematic in relation to medieval culture...As the
variants for many vernacular medieval texts suggest,
scribes could be quite willing to rewrite substantively
the text they w ere copying...it is apparent that for
many works the m anuscript and cultural evidence of
the M iddle English texts does not bear out the m odern
161
a priori editorial distinction between scribes and
authors. (5-6)4
Machan concludes that our ideas of textual authority are Romantic,
informed by the New Critical elevation of the transcendent verbal icon
w hich ignores the indeterm inacy of medieval texts:
The implicit model of editing...has perhaps developed
as a way of bridging the cultural chasm of
Romanticism— as a way, that is, of treating, presenting
and interpreting medieval texts as much as possible
like m odern ones...M edieval authors...have to be
created as an editorial and intepretive rationale: the
supposition that an author's final intentions and an
authoritative text lay in the distant but recoverable
textual past has been the principle which has enabled
critics to construct the medieval verbal icon. (10)
Evidence of the promiscuous textual practices of early scribes should
challenge the ideology of individual creativity that informs not only the
editing, but the interpretation of Chaucer's texts. The assum ption of
proprietary authorship and the critical questions that arise from it are
often anachronistic because of this fundam ental m isreading of the
dom ain of texual authority in pre-m odern periods.
C onclusion
The renew ed recognition of the fragm entary and provisional state
of this text should have some consequences on traditional interpretive
approaches to the Canterbury Tales. First, unitary studies need to be put
in a proper context, recognizing, or at least acknow ledging that
standarized texts of the CT are not authorial but editorial constructs:
162
We m ust rem em ber in future how fragm entary the
poem was w hen Chaucer died; criticism ought to start
from that recognition. We may have to accept that
certain critical procedures, such as the examination of
the overall structure, may not be suitable for a poem
w hich has survived in such a fragm entary state.
(Blake, "Critics, Criticism" 58)
Pearsall has also suggested that critical studies basing their argum ents on
the assum ption that a certain editorial order is Chaucer's order ignore the
disordered, partially revised and unfinished state of the manuscripts from
which standardized texts are derived. He cites studies by Howard, David,
Patterson and Dinshaw which treat the Tales "as if they were intended by
Chaucer to be read in the order in which they appear in Robinson's
edition, almost, it seems sometimes, as if they had been composed in that
order... they conflate passages that exist only in different stages in the
evolution of the work, and find interesting ironies in the incongruities,
that, not unexpectedly, arise" ("Authorial Revision" 41). Interpretations
that are dependent upon a certain tale order, such as those, for instance,
w hich draw significant conclusions from the fact that the Wife of Bath's
Prologue comes after the M an of Law's Tale, should at least acknowledge
that that order is provisional and editorial.
Second, standardized texts should indicate to some extent the
different orders and uses of links represented in the manuscripts.
Pearsall argues that since Chaucer left the w ork as a "partly assembled kit
with no directions" standardized editions should reflect, or at least
indicate the fragmented and unfinished condition of the text:
This is how it should, ideally, be presented, partly as a
bound book (the first and last fragments are fixed) and
partly as a set of fragments in a folder, with the
fragm entary information as to their their nature and
163
placement fully displayed. This w ould not make
studies of the structure or design of the Tales
impossible or illicit; it w ould merely ensure that such
studies were conducted in a proper context of
understanding. ("Editing Medieval Texts" 97)
This type of format will probably never be realized, although the
V a rio ru m edition in which each tale is presented in a separate volume
perhaps unintentionally exhibits the Tales in a more historically
authentic manner. The different tale orders represented not only in the
manuscripts, but in early editions also offer an as yet unexam ined
resource for interpretive studies. That these historical constructions of
the text have been largely ignored attests to the ideological influence of
the dram atic approach to conceptualizing this text.
Finally, the individual manuscripts can be studied as indepedent
texts since Chaucer's literary w orks survive as historical artifacts only in
m anuscript versions. This proposal is in keeping with w hat has been
term ed the "New Philology" which calls for the recontextualization of
m edieval literature. Rejecting the Romantic concept of the unique
authoritative text, it recognizes the elusiveness and the indeterminacy of
the medieval text. Nichols suggests that we reject the outdated critical
paradigm centered on text and author with one centered on m anuscript
and reader:
I am suggesting that the manuscript, each manuscript,
like the critical edition, is also the product of a
collaborative effort in its own time, an effort of
production that tells us not simply about the reception
of a public for the works it contains, but more
im portantly contextualizes those w orks in material
culture. Rather than seeking to recover the lost voice
of a single author, we need an approach that focuses
on the poetic text as one of several discourses within
164
the manuscript. Such a theory w ould consider the
m anuscript as a complex system of expression and
study it networks of meaning production. ("Philology
and Its Discontents" 117)
Study of the m anuscripts has been hindered because of accessability.
However, The C anterbury Tales Project directed by N orm an Blake is in
the process of publishing on CD-ROM all eighty-four extant manuscripts
of the Canterbury Tales together with selected printed editions. The
project announcem ent states that publication of this material will "open
up new avenues of research":
T hrough the transcripts, which may be studied beside
the image of the m anuscript page itself, every
different version of the text surviving from before
1500 may be exam ined in its ow n right...Scholars
citing the Canterbury Tales will be able to check,
rapidly and easily, just w hat the m anuscript support
for any one reading is and— where necessary— qualify
their argum ent accordingly.
A re-examination of the m anuscripts will challenge the validity of the
concept of an authoritative text and will position study of this text in a
cultural and historical fram ew ork more consonant with the medieval
textual and aesthetic assum ptions.
N otes
165
1. In Flawed Texts and Verbal Icons (Evanston: N orthw estern UP,
1984) Hershell Parker argues that the New Critical assum ption that the
poem or w ork of art is a "verbal icon" is misguided and leads to "spurious
meanings." "The New Critical assum ption that the unified, perfect
verbal icon, the 'text itself,' is always a sufficiently reliable source of
information" has led to some notorious interpretations such as Brodtkorb
Jr.'s phenomenolgical reading of Moby Dick in which he attributes all of
Melville's factual errors as well as the copyist's and compositional
blunders to Ishmael. Paul Brodtkorb, Jr., Ishm ael's W hite W orld (New
Haven: Yale UP, 1965).
2. Although Chaucerians w ould probably still like to ask Chaucer
w hat he meant by "Wades boot."
3. Blake has suggested "Adam Scriveyn" is apocryphal on similar
grounds: "Since it fits in with our m odern prejudices to assum e that a
great author took care with the m inutae of his text, we are happy to accept
the stanza as Chaucerian rather than a fifteenth-century creation"
("Geoffrey Chaucer: Textual Transmission and Editing" 20).
4. Machan also cites Parkes' well-known discussion of St.
Bonaventura w ho identifies four distinct participants in m edieval textual
production: a scriptor w ho copies texts; a compilator w ho supplem ents
texts from other sources; a com m entator w ho supplem ents with his own
argum ents; and an auctor w ho writes his ow n argum ents ("Influence of
Ordinatio" 127-8).
Conclusion
166
I began this dissertation by looking at the historical relationship
between the authorial and the apocryphal. 1 argue that so many works
became attached to Chaucer's nam e because early editors did not make
the same conceptual distinctions that we do. It is not until the
Renaissance that a concern for authenticity is voiced, but the practical
effects are not seen in the contents of Chaucer editions until the early
nineteenth century. Thus, the question that has traditionally concerned
scholars— Did early editors believe w hat they printed was Chaucer's?— is
anachronistic, informed by a Romantic conception of textual authority.
A more productive line of inquiry is to examine the contents of early
editions in a political and cultural context.
Given the popularity of several apocryphal pieces, I explored the
extent to which these w orks affected Chaucer's reputation and the
reception of his genuine works. Although the Plow m an's Tale did lead
some readers to suspect that Chaucer had Lollard sympathies, none of the
apocryphal works substantively affected Chaucer's reputation. Critics
w ho claim the Plow m an's Tale destroyed Chaucer's reputation are using
this apocryphal tale to extentuate Chaucer's uneven reputation until the
late eighteenth century, which can more clearly be attributed to the
obsolescence of his language and the perception that he w as obscene.
U nder the same topic, the effect the apocrypha had on Chaucer's
reception, I exam ined the critical myth that Henryson's Testam ent of
Cresseid ruined the aesthetic value of Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde. It
167
appears that early readers did conflate the tw o stories as equally
authoritative traditions, irregardless of the different canonical status of
the two authors. My analysis illustrates how an erroneous line of
inquiry develops w hen scholars impose m odern assum ptions about the
cultural and artistic status of the author onto the past.
Proceeding from m y argum ent that readers and scribes did not
share our assum ptions about the dom ain of textual authority, I argue an
apocryphal element is built into Chaucer's genuine works. The
Canterbury Tales was not transm itted with the intention of preserving
Chaucer's intended text, but a text that was complete and coherent. The
complexity and chaos of the m anuscript affiliations is w ithout precedent
and many scholars maintain that it is impossible to distinguish a
Chaucerian reading from a scribal em endation. In order to establish an
authorial text, scholars appeal to authorial intention and authorial
revision to minim ize the apocryphal elements that threaten the purity of
the authorial text. The theory of authorial revision allows scholars to
choose the "best" readings, establishing a text that is both sophisticated
and authorial. A rgum ents over the largest textual problem — tale o rd e r-
reveal that w hen definitive m anuscript evidence fails, the authorial is
decided on aesthetic criteria, on prevailing notions of w hat is
"Chaucerian." The most "satisfactory" order is declared to represent
Chaucer's intended order.
Finally, given that medieval readers and scribes did not share our
post-romantic assum ptions about the artistic status of the author, and
given that the historical transm ission of Chaucer's texts w as a
collaborative effort, I argued that the Romantic ideology of the solitary
originator that informs textual'and critical approaches to his texts is
anachronistic. 1 suggest that a more socialized concept of authorship that
recognizes medieval literary production was social rather than personal
or individual, should inform textual critical and interpretive methods.
In the conclusion I suggest some if the practical effects such an approach
might have. Unitary studies w ould have to acknow ledge that the
dram atic or thematic structure upon which their argum ents are based is
editorial; standard editions should reflect or indicate the different
possibilities for tale order; and the m anuscript authorities can be studied
as independent texts, as conceptual products, as surely as our m odern
editions are, of a specific historical and cultural framework.
169
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Creator Forni, Kathleen Rose (author)

Core Title Studies In The Chaucerian Apocrypha

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

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Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

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Advisor [illegible] (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member), Lazar, Moshe (committee member)

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