The Canterbury Tales - Second Edition / Edition 2

by Geoffrey Chaucer, Robert Boenig, Andrew Taylor

Overview

The Broadview Canterbury Tales is an edition of the complete tales in a text based on the famous Ellesmere Manuscript. Here one may read a Middle English text that is closer to what Chaucer’s scribe, Adam Pinkhurst, actually wrote than that in any other modern edition. Unlike most editions, which draw on a number of manuscripts to recapture Chaucer’s original intention, this edition preserves the text as it was found in one influential manuscript. A sampling of facsimile pages from the original manuscript is also included, along with a selection of other works that give the reader a rich sense of the cultural, political, and literary worlds in which Chaucer lived.

The second edition includes a new Middle English glossary, a timeline of Chaucer’s life and times, and detailed page headers showing the fragment and line numbers to assist readers in finding a specific section of the poem.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781554811069
Publisher:	Broadview Press
Publication date:	04/16/2012
Series:	Broadview Editions
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	550
Sales rank:	407,215
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Robert Boenig is Professor of English at Texas A&M University.

Andrew Taylor is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

• Chaucer’s Life and Times
  The Construction of The Canterbury Tales
  Chaucer’s English
  Chaucer’s Versification
  The Reception of Chaucer’s Poetry
  Close Reading and Interpretation
  Editorial Principles

CHAUCER TIMELINE

THE CANTERBURY TALES

Fragment I

• The General Prologue
  The Knight’s Tale
  The Miller’s Prologue
  The Miller’s Tale
  The Reeve’s Prologue
  The Reeve’s Tale
  The Cook’s Prologue
  The Cook’s Tale

Fragment II

• Introduction to the Man of Law’s Tale
  The Prologue of the Man of Law’s Tale
  The Man of Law’s Tale

Fragment III

• The Wife of Bath’s Prologue
  The Wife of Bath’s Tale
  The Friar’s Prologue
  The Friar’s Tale
  The Summoner’s Prologue
  The Summoner’s Tale

Fragment IV

• The Clerk’s Prologue
  The Clerk’s Tale
  The Merchant’s Prologue
  The Merchant’s Tale

Fragment V

• The Squire’s Prologue
  The Squire’s Tale
  The Franklin’s Prologue
  The Franklin’s Tale

Fragment VI

• The Physician’s Tale
  The Pardoner’s Prologue
  The Pardoner’s Tale

Fragment VII

• The Shipman’s Tale
  The Prioress’s Prologue
  The Prioress’s Tale
  The Prologue to Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas
  Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas
  The Prologue to Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee
  Chaucer’s Tale of Melibee
  The Monk’s Prologue
  The Monk’s Tale
  The Nun’s Priest’s Prologue
  The Nun’s Priest’s Tale

Fragment VIII

• The Second Nun’s Prologue
  The Second Nun’s Tale
  The Canon’s Yeoman’s Prologue
  The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale

Fragment IX

• The Manciple’s Prologue
  The Manciple’s Tale

Fragment X

• The Parson’s Prologue
  The Parson’rsquo;s Tale
  Chaucer’s Retraction

Appendix: Background Documents

1. Saint Jerome, Against Jovinian (400)
2. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy (524)
3. William Thorpe’s Testimony on Pilgrimages (1407)
4. Benedict of Canterbury, The Miracles of St. Thomas Becket (1170s)
5. The Twelve Conclusions of the Lollards (1395)
6. Jean de Meun, The Romance of the Rose (c. 1275)
1. False Seeming
2. The Old Woman
7. William Langland, Piers Plowman (1360s–80s)
1. The Fair Field of Folk
2. The Friar
8. Guillaume de Machaut, The Judgment of the King of Navarre (1351)
• The Plague
9. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron (1353)
1. The Black Death
2. Patient Griselda
10. Jean Froissart, Chronicles (1400)
1. The Black Death, Flagellants and Jews (1349)
2. The Campaign of 1359
3. The Peasants’ Revolt in England (1381)
4. The Election of Henry IV
11. The Anonimalle Chronicle (1396–99)
• The Rising is Suppressed
12. A Model Indulgence (1300)
13. Rudolph of Schlettstadt, The Host and Libels against the Jews (1303)
14. The Remedy against the Troubles of Temptation(late fourteenth century)
• An Exemplum about Despair
15. The Tale of Beryn (1410–20)
• The Pilgrims Arrive at Canterbury and Visit the Shrine

A BASIC CHAUCER GLOSSARY
BIBLIOGRAPHY
TEXTUAL SOURCE LIST

Editorial Reviews

I can already tell you that this text—unlike any other Chaucer text—makes it easy for students to read and understand Chaucer. It has certainly made my job easier!” — Mary Flowers Braswell, University of Alabama at Birmingham

“This attractive, readable edition features Chaucer’s Middle English text, marginal glosses, explanatory footnotes, and illustrative facsimile pages. Especially helpful are the appended ‘background documents,’ historical and literary, which provide key contexts for the interpretation of Chaucer’s work. A useful bibliography concludes the volume. Highly recommended.” — Ann W. Astell, University of Notre Dame

“Britain’s greatest medieval poem by its greatest non-dramatic poet: this new edition will be attractive to students, scholars, and general readers alike. Facsimiles of individual leaves from the Ellesmere Manuscript have been scattered throughout the volume to give us a real sense of what it would have been like to open The Canterbury Tales for the first time in the years immediately following Chaucer’s death.” — Larry Scanlon, Rutgers University

“With its meticulously edited text, generous glosses and notes, abundant selections from relevant medieval sources, and attractive reproductions of the sumptuous pages of the Ellesmere Manuscript, the Broadview Canterbury Tales will become the obvious choice for teachers, students, and general readers alike.” — John T. Sebastian, Loyola University New Orleans

“This is the best edition of the Tales I’ve found to date.” — John Marlin, College of Saint Elizabeth

From the Publisher