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Notes
As are other Chaucerians of the twentieth century, I am deeply indebted to F. N. Robinson's editions, especially their introductions and notes. If the present study seems poor recompense for that debt, I can only plead a greater debt to Chaucer's text, and I would hope that Professor Robinson would have agreed that the greater obligation of each scholar is to insure that modern editions, insofar as present knowledge permits, present the closest possible versions of what Chaucer originally wrote. I am also indebted to Fredson Bowers and his readers for helping me to clarify my purpose and to spell out matters which I too often took for granted. My other debts relate to the Variorum Chaucer Project. Although I have not been a member of the Project for some years, from its beginning to the present I have gained steadily in knowledge of Chaucer's text since I was chosen for membership by the General Editor, Paul G. Ruggiers, and the Associate Editor, Donald C. Baker. In earlier years my knowledge steadily grew as I corresponded with other editors, including Thomas Ross, editor of the Miller's Tale fascicle. And from the beginning to the present I have gained from my correspondence with Charles Moorman and especially from my collaboration with him on a now-finished book, Keystone Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales.
In chronological order the editions of the Canterbury Tales discussed in this study or touched upon in the charts are: Thomas Tyrwhitt, ed. The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer. 4 vols. London: T. Payne, 1775; repr. N.Y.: AMS, 1972 [TR]; Walter W. Skeat, ed. The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. 6 vols. and supplement. Oxford, 1894 (the introduction to the second edition contains responses to critical comments about the first [SK in the charts]); Alfred W. Pollard, H. Frank Heath, Mark H. Liddell and W. S. McCormick, eds. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. London: Macmillan, 1898; repr. N.Y.: St. Martin's, 1965 [GL]; John M. Manly, Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer. N.Y.: Holt, 1928, vi-vii [ML]; F. N. Robinson, ed. The Poetical Works of Chaucer. Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1933; the second edition published as The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. 1957 [R1, R2]; John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, eds. The Text of the Canterbury Tales, Studied on the Basis of All Known Manuscripts. 8 vols.; University of Chicago, 1940 [MR]; Robert A. Pratt, ed. The Tales of Canterbury. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966 [PR]; John H. Fisher, ed. The Complete Poetry and Prose of Geoffrey Chaucer. N.Y.: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977
George F. Reinecke. "F. N. Robinson," Editing Chaucer: the Great Tradition. Ed. Paul G. Ruggiers. Norman, Okla.: Pilgrim Books: 240.
Speculum 3 (1934): 460. The Six-Text Edition was initially published as a series of parts from 1866-77; those and the later-published transcriptions of Harley 7334 (Ha4) and of Cambridge Dd.4.24 (Dd) are most conveniently available in the Eight-Text Edition of the Canterbury Tales with especial Reference to Harleian MS 7334. Edited for the Chaucer Society by Walter W. Skeat. London: Trübner, 1908.
The Harleian Manuscript 7334 and Revision of the Canterbury Tales. London: Trübner, 1909. The source of this corruption is fully explained by a statistical study by Charles Moorman which is included in a book which he and I have completed called Keystone Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales.
Five of the twenty-five projected parts of The Canterbury Tales have been published to date under the General Editorship of Paul G. Ruggiers and the Associate Editorship of Donald C. Baker. All are published by the University of Oklahoma Press (Norman and London) and include: Part Three. The Miller's Tale. Ed. Thomas W. Ross, 1983; Part Nine. The Nun's Priest's Tale. Ed. Derek Pearsall, 1984; Part Ten. The Manciple's Tale. Ed. Donald C. Baker, 1984; Part Seventeen. The Physician's Tale. Ed. Helen Storm Corsa, 1987; and Part Twenty. The Prioress's Tale. Ed. Beverly Boyd, 1987. The Text-Fascicle Portion of Part One. The General Prologue. Ed. Charles Moorman is in the hands of the editors and presumably will be published shortly.
See the discussions in Volume 2 of Manly-Rickert and the sections labelled "Textual Commentary" in the Variorum fascicles.
Manly-Rickert has an especially useful discussion of Bédier and other textual critics in "Critics of the Genealogical Method." 2: 12-20.
In the Globe Chaucer, A. W. Pollard's way of listing variants made systematic and visible an editorial process earlier followed without such an avowal by Skeat and repeated by editors since of looking to the alternative readings of El and Hg first: "In recording variants E and H are regarded as mutually exclusive, so that if the reading in the note assigned to H, that in the text is from E, and vice versa. To show further the amount of support accorded to any rejected reading of E or H, an index number is added to the letter" (xxix).
The trend of the emendations by modern editors toward Hg will be the subject of a separate study entitled "Skeat's Editions of the Canterbury Tales and the Trend Toward Hengwrt."
An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Based on the Manuscript Collections of the Late Joseph Bosworth, Edited and Enlarged by T. Northcote Toller. Oxford, 1898: 1030; "Thack . . . v2," Oxford English Dictionary. 11: 242.
Although I have not collated other texts, spot-checks suggest that Robinson closely followed Robert Kiburn Root's text of Troilus and Criseyde. Princeton, 1926.
In the portion of his introduction to The Nun's Priest's Tale entitled "Descriptions of Printed Editions" (104-120), Derek Pearsall presents a lucid, valuable description of the enchainment linking the printed editions from Caxton's first (1478) to that of Tyrwhitt (1775). Although Skeat saw himself as beginning afresh from the readings of the Six-Text edition, his own edition shows the influence which his earlier work of revising Robert Bell's text had exercised upon his editing of the Oxford one. Bell's text had been based upon Ha4, and this manuscript is third only to El and Hg as a source of Skeat's readings.
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