University of Virginia Library

What Was Blake's Chaucer?
by
Alexander S. Gourlay

William Blake's Descriptive Catalogue for his 1809 Exhibition features a detailed account of the tempera painting Sir Jeffery Chaucer and the nine and twenty Pilgrims on their Journey to Canterbury.[1] Both the picture, later engraved on a large scale, and the Catalogue, which contains nineteen short quotations from the Canterbury Tales, evince careful study of some version of Chaucer's poem. Because the editions available to Blake differ substantially in both content and quality, establishing which one he used has important implications for those studying his pictures of the Pilgrims and the Descriptive Catalogue. Once Blake's source is known, we can better understand his pictorial responses to Chaucer and consider his performance as an editor offering a difficult text to a general audience.

In the passages he quoted from the Canterbury Tales, Blake freely modified word order, spelling, punctuation, and even the words themselves in an apparent effort to make the verses metrically pleasing and easily understood by readers unfamiliar with Middle English. As a result, the approximately fifty-five lines printed in the Catalogue do not correspond closely to any published text of Chaucer, a circumstance that has led some Blake scholars to despair of finding strong evidence in the quotations themselves (Kiralis 173, Bowden 173). Most arguments have therefore focused upon other considerations, particularly Blake's reference to a note that appears in 1598 Speght and all later editions, and suppositions about his scholarly practices.

But because early editors and compositors of Chaucer also introduced changes in the text, each edition differs from the others in ways that would influence spelling and wording even in a heavily modified text such as Blake's. Close analysis of the word choice, word order, and spelling in the Chaucer quotations shows that Blake used the 1687 version of the great Speght edition of Chaucer's complete works, a text that has never been fully considered as a potential source for the Descriptive Catalogue quotations.[2] Further, he still had access to a copy of this edition three years later, when it supplied the text for a pamphlet promoting the engraved version of his picture, and again about ten years thereafter, when he added five lines of additional quotations in the fourth state of the engraving. The accumulated evidence not only makes it certain that Blake used this edition as the source for his Catalogue quotations from Chaucer, but also more likely than not that he owned it.[3]

There have been four published explorations of the relationship between Blake's quotations and the editions of Chaucer that were available to him. Three different editions of the Canterbury Tales or the complete works have been proposed as Blake's source: G. E. Bentley, in the 1964 Blake Bibliography, suggested that Blake used the 1602 Speght edition, and included it among the "Books Owned" by Blake (201-202); Karl Kiralis, in a 1969 article about the painting and engraving, responded with an extended but muddled review of the evidence, vigorously attacking Bentley's reasoning and concluding that Blake probably used a much better and more recent edition, the 1775-78 Tyrwhitt edition of the Tales or some reprint of it (167-74); Bentley, in the notes to his 1978 edition of Blake, reiterated his belief that Blake used 1602 Speght, this time offering somewhat sounder arguments, but also granting that Kiralis' suggestions were plausible (2:822-823) (Bentley also dropped any mention of a Chaucer edition from the less speculative "Books Owned" section of his 1977 Blake Books); and in 1980 Betsy Bowden re-reviewed all the evidence and decided that Blake probably used yet another edition, the notoriously unreliable (but sumptuously produced and illustrated) Urry edition of 1721 (173-174). In 1984 Bentley again identified 1602 Speght as Blake's source without mentioning Kiralis or Bowden (133).

A systematic comparison of Blake's modernized text and the source texts available to him suggests that he could not possibly have derived his quotations from either the Urry or Tyrwhitt texts, and that the 1687 Speght edition is much more likely than the 1602 or any other to have been the source behind the Descriptive Catalogue. This 1687 edition is essentially a reprint, with modernized spelling, of the 1602 edition of the complete works that has been specified by Bentley, who may have supposed 1687 too rare to be considered as a potential source, or imagined it to be identical to 1602.[4] The 1687 edition is not, by modern standards, a good one; it is the last and probably the worst of a long line of casually edited "vulgate" Chaucers printed in blackletter, each a copy of its predecessor that introduces a few corrections, a few more "works," usually spurious, and many corruptions in the form of progressively modernized spelling and attendant garbling of the meter.[5]

Urry and Tyrwhitt

Because the Speght editions are so similar to each other it is more important (and much easier) to show that Blake could not have derived his quotations from the elaborate 1721 Urry or the scholarly 1775-78 Tyrwhitt. This is not to say that Blake did not know of these eighteenth-century editions; indeed, we can be certain that he was aware of both in one way or another. He engraved one plate after Stothard for the Bell's English Poets edition of Chaucer, which used Tyrwhitt's text for the Canterbury Tales and Urry's text for the other works, and he surely recalled this convenient (and inexpensive) 1783 edition when he set to work on the tempera of the Pilgrims (Bowden 170). Similarly, we know that he must have seen a copy of Urry in William Hayley's library at Felpham, for Blake copied from this edition the figures

of the Merchant and Wife of Bath that appear in a Chaucer portrait executed for Hayley in 1801-1803 (Wells 18-19).

But Blake's Chaucer quotations could not have been copied, however freely, from Urry or Tyrwhitt, because his versions never follow the texts of these editions in the telltale passages unique to them, except in instances of coincidental revision; his quotations do, however, follow 1687 and sometimes other editions in these and most other passages. When comparing Blake's source with his quotations we can expect to find that Blake or the compositor committed a few errors in transcription or typesetting. Given the divergence of Blake's text from all editions, we can also expect to find that he made minor changes in order to fix perceived deficiencies in meter, modernized spelling (or at least made it conform to his own practice), and even substituted words in instances in which the Middle English word might be misunderstood or not understood at all. But none of these more or less predictable editorial patterns can account for all the differences between Blake's text and those of Urry or Tyrwhitt.

The Urry edition is discredited as Blake's source by substantial differences between its text and Blake's. For instance, in the Wife of Bath's Prologue Urry's edition reads, "But Age alas! that all woll undermine," whereas Blake has "But age, alas, that all will envenime," as (in various spellings) do all other editions that could have been available to him.[6] The Urry emendation is so plausible (and so unremarkable in itself) that Blake would not have noticed it unless he were carefully checking Urry against another text, which is unlikely. Similarly, Urry's description of the Squire reads, "And Songis he couth make," whereas Blake's quotation is "He could songs make," a version in modern spelling of the reading found in all other editions. Another typical variation occurs in the General Prologue. There Urry reports that the Reeve "rode hinderest of our rowte," whereas Blake (twice) has him "hinderest of the rout." Again, Urry's reading is unique, and also so unremarkable that it would have been copied without any suspicion that it was not Chaucer's.

There are more than a hundred and fifty additional differences between Blake's quotations and Urry's text; most of these are trivial, but several are as telling individually as those cited above. Further, Urry's practice of spelling "ed," "es," and "en" endings "id," "is," and "in" (if they were to be pronounced) is nowhere reflected in Blake's texts; these editorial spellings usually do not interfere with reading, so Blake, who preserved many archaisms, probably would not have eliminated all trace of them.

The evidence that discredits the great 1775-78 edition of the Canterbury Tales by Tyrwhitt is not as immediately compelling as that against Urry, but it is equally strong, especially when the claim of Tyrwhitt is weighed against that of either the 1602 or 1687 Speght editions. If we compare selected passages from Tyrwhitt with both Blake's and Speght's text (of 1687), it is clear that the latter is a more likely source even when it is possible to imagine circumstances under which Blake could have derived his text from Tyrwhitt's. For instance, Blake says of the Prioress:

Speght's 1687 text is:

Tyrwhitt's text differs in two important ways:

The Tyrwhitt text is plausible, and metrically acceptable whether one reads it with or without pronouncing some final "e's" (one cannot, of course, maintain pentameter without the final "e," but Blake's text suggests that he did not recognize its function). It is thus unlikely that Blake would have modified the Tyrwhitt text here; because Speght is so much closer to Blake there is no reason to construct scenarios in which he would have done so.

Ockham's razor is also useful in considering the relative claims of Speght and Tyrwhitt for several other lines in the General Prologue:

Blake:
He could songs make, and eke well indite
Just, and eke dance, pourtray, and well write.

Speght:
He coud songs make, and eke well indite,
Just, and eke dance, portray and well write.

Tyrwhitt:
He coude songes make, and wel endite,
Just and eke dance, and wel pourtraie and write.

The presence of "eke" in Blake's version of the first of these lines and the differing placement of "wel" in the second both argue against Tyrwhitt as source; Tyrwhitt's "pourtraie" might appear to have influenced Blake's spelling except that "pourtray" is Blake's own spelling in his Modern English description of the Franklin (the only other time the word appears in his surviving work). Additional incongruent texts occur in the descriptions of the Squire and Reeve:

Blake:
And kerft before his fader at the table.

Speght:
And kerfte before his Fader at the table.

Tyrwhitt:
And carf before his fader at the table.

Blake:
And ever he rode hinderest of the rout.

Speght:
And ever he rode hinderest of the route.

Tyrwhitt:
And ever he rode the hinderest of the route.

Of the tradesmen:

Blake:
All were yclothed in o liverie.

Speght:
All were yclothed in o Lyvere,

Tyrwhitt:
Were alle yclothed in o livere,

In the Monk's Prologue:

Blake:
Tragedie is to tell a certain story,

Speght:
Tragedie is to tell a certaine story

Tyrwhitt:
Tragedie is to sayn a certain storie,

But Tyrwhitt's text also contains two readings that are in Blake but cannot be found in 1687 (or 1602) Speght. These, however, probably represent instances in which Blake and Tyrwhitt (who was also using Speght as his basic copy-text) made minor emendations that happened to coincide. The first of these occurs in the account of the Squire:

Blake:
In Flanders, in Artois, and in Picardy,

Speght:
In Flaunders, in Artois, and Picardy,

Tyrwhitt:
In Flaundres, in Artois, and in Picardie,

Because this "in" appears before "Picardy" in 1598 Speght and all other sixteenth-century editions as well as Tyrwhitt, the presence of it in Blake's text is not evidence that he used the 1775-78 edition. More likely, Blake and Tyrwhitt independently concluded that the parallel structure of the line had to be continued to the end. It is possible that Blake or the compositor checked a second text containing this reading, but it is hard to imagine why either would have done so.

Another reading found in both Blake and Tyrwhitt can be attributed to coincidence more confidently, for this editorial addition (once again, of a small preposition) clearly improves the scansion of a clumsy line. The text in question occurs in the Wife of Bath's Prologue:

Blake:
But Lord, when it remembereth me
Upon my youth and on my jollity,

Speght:
But lord Christ, when it remembreth me
Upon my youth, and my jolite,

Tyrwhitt:
But, lord Crist, whan that it remembreth me
Upon my youth, and on my jolitee,

Because Urry also contains this "on," it may be worth contemplating the implications of his version of these two lines as well:

The three most thorough editors (that is, Urry, Tyrwhitt, and Blake) all appear to have felt the need to adjust both lines to reach an even number of syllables. Urry, who often added unauthorized expletives to the text, inserted the poetaster's favorite expedient, an "o," in the first line. Tyrwhitt probably found manuscript authority for the "that," as have modern editors. Blake, however, decided to create a tetrameter line by subtraction rather than a pentameter line by addition; because he did not recognize that final "e" was sometimes pronounced, he must have believed that tetrameter lines were very common in Chaucer's pentameter verse. Blake's decision to emend the line in this way, and to drop the word "Christ" (an elision that is not authorized by any edition) was probably not arbitrary, though he might have cut "Lord," and even "But." One may imagine that he chose to omit "Christ" because he could not accept the suggestion that his anathema, the Wife of Bath, was a Christian, even a blasphemous one. But the Wife wears a crucifix in Blake's pictures of her, as do several other pilgrims of varying degrees of

piety. Crucifixes have variable symbolic value in his work, but this one makes it unlikely that Blake was suppressing the Wife's pretensions to Christianity. More probably, in this appeal to a wide audience, he wanted to avoid stirring up the old charge that Chaucer was offensive; certainly none of his other quotations gives evidence of the recurrent blasphemies in the Tales.

Thus Urry, Tyrwhitt, and Blake each responded to the weaknesses they saw in the first of these two lines with a different solution; yet faced with an even less satisfactory second line, all three arrived at the same answer, a reading that does not appear in any other edition under consideration but is accepted by modern editors. The line obviously needs a word between "and" and "my," a word with only one syllable. Because the word in question must parallel "Upon," the only candidate is "on," and each editor probably chose it independently.

"Thynne in his Glossary"

Thus Blake could not have used the 1775-78 first edition of Tyrwhitt (or its many reprinted versions—these were set by compositors who took few liberties with the material), and he did not use Urry either. Some evidence discussed at length by Bentley, Kiralis, and Bowden points weakly in the same direction. The source, or at least one of Blake's study texts, should contain a note attributable to "Thynne": Blake reports in his Catalogue that "Thynne in his Glossary says [the Tabarde] was the lodging of the Abbot of Hyde, by Winchester" (Erdman 532). As Kiralis has pointed out, William Thynne's sixteenth-century editions had no glossaries, and this note could only have been found in Speght, Urry, or Tyrwhitt, all of whom offered the same information in the same words (168). But neither Urry nor Tyrwhitt is likely to have been the source of Blake's note, for both attribute the information to Speght rather than to Thynne, and neither contains any suggestion that William Thynne, the sixteenth-century editor, or his son Frances Thynne, who helped Speght to improve the 1602 edition, contributed the glossary or the note.

To the extent that this note is useful evidence, it suggests that Blake consulted an edition that contained a glossary including this note and that could have given him the mistaken impression that the glossary was the work of Thynne. Only the last two Speght editions satisfy both requirements, for no earlier or later edition has a glossary with this note that could be attributed to Thynne. Speght's address "To the Readers" in the revised edition of 1602 (reprinted in 1687) thanks the younger Thynne for his help:

Blake's mistake here is entirely understandable. What is a little surprising is his spelling of "Thynne," which is not spelled with an "e" anywhere in either the 1602 or 1687 edition, but is the usual spelling of this common English name.

Blake's reference to the note is also useful because it helps to discredit all pre-Speght editions, including that of William Thynne. These editions have no notes and no glossaries; furthermore, their texts all contain discrediting incongruencies with Blake's quotations.

Which Speght?

If Blake did not use Thynne, Stow, Urry, or Tyrwhitt, the only remaining possibilities are the three Speght editions, of 1598, 1602, and 1687. Of these, the 1598 can be eliminated immediately. In addition to containing a variety of incongruencies of the kind that discredit Urry and Tyrwhitt as Blake's source, 1598 does not credit Thynne for helping with the glossary, and, more tellingly, lists a Goldsmith rather than the usual Carpenter among the tradesmen. Because the Goldsmith is only in the 1598 Speght, as Kiralis shows (167-168), it was surely this edition that led Thomas Stothard, Blake's rival in depicting the Pilgrims, to include a Goldsmith in his version of the subject. Thus we can be just as certain that Blake did not use the 1598 Speght when he wrote the Descriptive Catalogue as we can that Stothard used it when he painted his picture. Blake includes the Carpenter and mocks Stothard's Goldsmith: "But the painter's thoughts being always on gold, he has introduced a character that Chaucer has not; namely a Goldsmith" (Erdman 540).

This leaves only the 1602 Speght, Bentley's candidate, and the 1687, mine. These editions are very similar, and the claim of either is much, much stronger than that of any of the other contenders. But because they are slightly different, it is both possible and worth while to establish which one Blake used for the Descriptive Catalogue, primarily because this is part of the evidence needed to determine whether he owned or at least had consistent, easy access to a copy of a particular edition.

Only spelling evidence can be assembled to distinguish between the influence on Blake of 1602 and 1687 Speght. Because 1687 is much more modern in spelling than 1602, correspondence between 1687 and Blake's even more thoroughly modernized text is not significant unless Blake's quotations show archaic or otherwise unexpected spelling that appears in 1687 but not in 1602. Many words are spelled in the modern fashion in both 1687 and Blake but not in 1602; because this is what we would expect even if Blake were using 1602, this evidence is not very meaningful.

Yet four unexpected spellings suggest that Blake was not using 1602: one is a common word, one an uncommon word, and two of them archaisms that Blake never used elsewhere. The common word occurs in the Knight's remonstrances to the Monk in the Nun's Priest's Prologue:

(As the full context demands, Blake rendered Chaucer's "her" as "their" in his version.)

The somewhat uncommon word in question here is "indite," which was still often spelled "endite," its medieval spelling, at the end of the eighteenth century (OED; see related words as well as "indite" itself). The word occurs in the description of the Squire; 1687 and Blake spell it in the modern way, "indite," whereas 1602 spells it medievally, "endite." Because both spellings were current in Blake's day, and because he did not use the word in surviving work, it is more likely that he would follow the spelling in his source.

The other two significant spellings might be regarded as weaker evidence than the unexpected "heare" or the unlikely "indite," because both "wastel" and "mokell" are archaisms. But both involve Blake's handling of the same letters in similar situations, and are therefore meaningful evidence against 1602: the only pattern in them is that Blake did not follow 1602. One occurs in the General Prologue and the other in the Nun's Priest's Prologue:

Later Quotations

It is evident then that Blake either owned or borrowed a copy of 1687 Speght when he wrote the Descriptive Catalogue. That he owned the 1687 edition is suggested by the fact that two additional instances of quotation from the same edition over the next fifteen years can be associated with Blake. The first evidence that 1687 Speght was available to him after 1809 can be found in a promotional piece for his engraved version of the painting described in the Catalogue; this 1812 pamphlet, The Prologue and Characters of Chaucer's Pilgrims, is one of several Blakean works also containing quotations from Chaucer, but all the others are obviously derived from the Descriptive Catalogue and the quotations in them are not evidence that Blake had fresh access to an edition of Chaucer. The 61-page Prologue and Characters, on the other hand, contains most of the General Prologue in two different versions, one copied more or less accurately from "the edition of Thomas Speight, printed Anno. 1687," and the other from the Modern English verse translation assembled in 1741 by George Ogle. The booklet also includes a short introduction, signed "THE EDITOR," and two small, rather crude engravings by Blake. "THE EDITOR" is obviously not Blake; most have accepted Gilchrist's conjecture that he was Benjamin Malkin, a friend and patron (264-265). Yet the two engravings and the fact that he was the printer and publisher of the work promoted by the pamphlet suggest that Blake was involved extensively in its production, and it is not unreasonable to suppose that he provided the antiquated edition from which the Middle English text was taken.

Strengthening the evidence that Blake's own copy of Speght was used for both the pamphlet and the earlier Catalogue is the appearance of five

more lines from the 1687 edition in the fourth state (formerly called the third state) of Blake's large-scale engraving after the tempera, titled Chaucers Canterbury Pilgrims, originally engraved in 1810. Robert N. Essick dates the fourth state c. 1820-23, about ten years after the pamphlet (68-69). Four lines from Chaucer and two Blakean mottos were lightly scratched in drypoint on either side of Blake's title and imprint; these were burnished or worn off in the fifth state. Beneath the lines from Chaucer are fainter vestiges of two more pairs of lines, making the new lines barely legible. An additional quotation, "Ye gon to Canterbury God mote you spede," at the bottom of the imprint replaces the address (until 1812) of Blake's brother on Golden Square; this line was deeply engraved and survives in the final state.

The four faint lines from Chaucer that appear only in the fourth state are difficult to decipher, and Bentley, Essick and I have arrived at different readings.[7] Bentley's transcription is inaccurate, perhaps because he was studying a copy of this state that is even fainter than the one at the Huntington Library, the one transcribed here and in Essick. My reading of the Huntington copy differs only slightly from Essick's, who sees "gadrid" where I see "gadird" in the very faint third line (Essick 68-69).

Nevertheless, these four faint lines and the fifth, which is deeply engraved in a clear "Gothic" lettering style, provide sufficient evidence to show that Blake copied them from 1687 rather than 1602:

Blake:
A morrow when the day began to spring
Up rose our Host and was our alder cocke
And gadird us together on a flock—
***
Let see now: Who shall tell the first Tale
***
Ye gon to Canterbury God mote you spede,

That Blake and 1687 capitalize "Host" whereas 1602 does not is weak evidence in itself; similarly, we would expect Blake to modernize the somewhat difficult "se" of 1602. But these instances of agreement between 1687 and Blake, taken together with the presence in both of "gon" rather than the "gone" of 1602, make it much more likely that Blake was working with 1687

than 1602 or any of the other editions (all of which differ even more substantially from Blake's text).[8]

The inscriptions on the engraving are particularly good evidence that Blake owned 1687 Speght, for two reasons. First, the quoted lines are from three different places at the end of the General Prologue, and none of them were included in the Descriptive Catalogue or The Prologue and Characters. He must, therefore, have newly consulted a copy of the 1687 edition. Further, the project of engraving additional lines was rather casually undertaken and executed. Blake had no strong need to add lines from any edition of Chaucer, not even where the old address had been burnished out (flourishes would have served to balance the composition of the imprint at least as well), so it does not make sense to imagine that he went to the trouble of borrowing for this purpose a copy of the unusual edition that he had used ten and fifteen years before.

Conclusion

Blake was widely and deeply read in some subjects, and, as a result, critics sometimes expect of him the thoroughness of a modern scholar. In this instance, however, he evidently undertook a major project of literary illustration using a grievously outdated edition, relying upon it almost entirely.[9] If this fact reflects poorly on his scholarship, it does him credit as a reader of Middle English, for those using 1687 Speght were pretty much on their own in construing the text. Although the Speght editions had much better supporting apparatuses than did the immediately preceding Thynne and Stow editions, the lists of "hard words" that appear in them are based on such questionable lexicographical principles as the notion that Elizabethan speakers of Northern dialects could explain Chaucerian vocabulary; further, the 1687 glossary is only fitfully alphabetized (mostly by the first two letters), and, because the several texts and glossary had been set and reset independently by free-spelling Renaissance compositors, the orthography of a given word in a text often varies wildly from that in the glossary. The explanatory notes that appear here and there in the glossary of 1687 are sparse and hobbyhorsical, and its critical apparatus as a whole is much less helpful than that in the Urry or Tyrwhitt editions.

Knowing that Blake copied his Chaucer quotations from the 1687 edition makes it possible to see exactly what he faced as an editor and reader and how he responded. Some of his decisions are not easily accounted for, such as his decision to omit "Christ" in the lines from the Wife of Bath's Prologue, but in general Blake performed competently and sensibly under the circumstances. This is not to say that he improved the text as he found it; indeed, he often exacerbated the eccentric rhythms introduced by the modernizing compositors of the Speght editions, and made some bad guesses, usually in places where the glossary was unhelpful. For instance, he appears to have decided that "Chivauchy" was a place in France once visited by the Squire:

Speght's text reads: The 1687 glossary offers only "chiuancie, . . . chivalry, riding," which is not close enough in spelling to be easily recognizeable, and not obviously appropriate in meaning. Blake's guess may be wrong, but it isn't unreasonable.

Another line in the description of the Squire was no doubt modified because it bore an implication that Blake was trying to suppress. He changed the 1687 "Curteis he was, lowly, and servisable," to "Curteis he was, and meek, and serviceable." In a letter to Stothard's publisher Cromek, Blake had condemned Stothard's version of the Pilgrims for being "low" (Keynes 129), and a major theme of his Descriptive Catalogue is that Chaucer's subject is exalted. By making this change, Blake avoided implications that the Squire was "lowly" in the modern sense. Given these purposes, "and meek" is the best possible solution, satisfying both metrical and critical requirements.

But Blake's scholarship is less at issue than is our own. Those who want to understand Blake's perspective on Chaucer in the Descriptive Catalogue and in the pictures themselves should continue to consult all the editions that might have been available to him between 1806 and 1825, not to mention other works commenting on the subject, but they should look first in 1687 Speght, Blake's Chaucer.

Notes

Works Cited

• 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.