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Notes
- 1. Alderson, William L., and Arnold C. Henderson. Chaucer and Augustan Scholarship. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1970.
- 2. Bentley, G. E., Jr. Blake Books. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977.
- 3. —. "Comment Upon the Illustrated Eighteenth-Century Chaucer." Modern Philology 78 (1981):398.
- 4. Bentley, G. E., Jr., ed. William Blake's Works in Conventional Typography. Delmar, NY: Scholar's Facsimiles and Reprints, 1984.
- 5. —. William Blake's Writings. 2 vols. Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1978.
- 6. Bentley, G. E., Jr., and Martin K. Nurmi. A Blake Bibliography. Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1964.
- 7. Bowden, Betsy. "The Artistic and Interpretive Context of Blake's 'Canterbury Pilgrims,'" Blake: An Illustrated Quarterly 13 (1980):164-190.
- 8. Erdman, David V., ed. The Complete Poetry and Prose of William Blake. Newly Revised ed. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1982.
- 9. Essick, Robert N. The Separate Plates of William Blake: A Catalogue. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1983.
- 10. Gilchrist, Alexander. The Life of William Blake. London and New York: The Bodley Head and Dodd Mead, 1906.
- 11. Keynes, Geoffrey, ed. The Letters of William Blake. 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980.
- 12. Kiralis, Karl. "William Blake as an Intellectual and Spiritual Guide to Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims." Blake Studies 1 (1969):139-90.
- 13. Miskimin, Alice. "The Illustrated Eighteenth-Century Chaucer." Modern Philology 77 (1980):26-55.
- 14. Ogle, George, et al., trans. The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, Modernis'd by several Hands. 3 vols. London: J. and R. Tonson, 1741.
- 15. The Prologue and Characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims, Selected From His Canterbury Tales; Intended to Illustrate A Particular Design of Mr. William Blake. London: n.p., 1812.
- 16. Ruggiers, Paul G., ed. Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition. Norman, OK: Pilgrim Books, 1984.
- 17. [Speght, Thomas, ed.] The Workes of our Ancient and Learned English Poet, Geffrey Chaucer. London: n.p., 1602.
- 18. —. The Works of Our Ancient, Learned, & Excellent English Poet, Jeffrey Chaucer. London: n.p., 1687.
- 19. Tyrwhitt, Thomas, ed. The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer. 5 vols. London: T. Payne, 1775-78.
- 20. Urry, John, ed. The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. London: B. Lintot, 1721.
- 21. Wells, William. William Blake's "Heads of the Poets." Manchester: Turret House, 1969.
Works Cited
Research for this article was facilitated by a National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar at UCLA directed by Michael Allen. Thanks to the staffs of the Huntington Library and Gallery, William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, and the UCLA Research Library for additional assistance.
Miskimin announced that Blake used 1687 for the Catalogue and promised to prove it later in her essay (39) . . . but never mentioned the matter again; see Bentley, 1981, on other features of this article. Miskimin was evidently confusing the Catalogue with the Prologue and Characters, described below.
Blake may have owned or at least used the 1741 Ogle translation of the Canterbury Tales as well; see the discussion of The Prologue and Characters below.
Alderson suggests that 1687 was printed merely to establish copyright, which suggests a small press run; I have seen no references to 1687 in early nineteenth-century auction records, which mention several copies of 1602. On the other hand, U.S. libraries contain many copies of 1687, and modern sales records include several copies at fairly low prices. See Alderson and Henderson, 40-52.
For detailed accounts of Speght and all other major editions, see Ruggiers, esp. 71-92, and Alderson and Henderson.
Because Blake's quotations are set in modern type, I have silently changed all texts from Chaucer by modernizing long "s," edh, thorn, and "u"/"v" and "i"/"j" to simplify comparison; italics indicate significant incongruencies.
Bentley offers his transcription in Writings 2:822; Essick's is in Separate Plates 68-69. Essick also provides "detail" views of the critical areas of the print (Plates 40, 41), but the reproductions are not clear enough to read with confidence.
Urry's text reads "The Morrow when the day began to spring," and omits "mote" in "Ye gon to Canterbury, God [. . .] you spede." Tyrwhitt reads, "and was our aller cok," and "gaderd us togeder in a flok."
I have seen nothing in Blake's Descriptive Catalogue or pictures of the Pilgrims to suggest that he had in mind anything in the glossaries, notes, or other editorial apparatus of the Urry or Tyrwhitt editions; he may well have looked at or recalled the Urry illustrations as well as pictures of the Pilgrims by other artists, however.
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