Hengwrt Chaucer
The Hengwrt Chaucer manuscript is an early-15th-century
The Hengwrt Chaucer is part of a collection called the
History of the manuscript
The Hengwrt Chaucer has been in Wales for at least 400 years. This was one of the collection of manuscripts amassed at the mansion of
The Hengwrt manuscript's very early ownership is unknown, but recent research suggests that Chaucer himself may have partly supervised the making of the manuscript, before his death in October 1400, according to the Welsh newspaper The Western Mail.[3] By the 16th century it can be identified as belonging to Fouke Dutton, a draper of Chester who died in 1558. It then seems to have passed into the ownership of the Bannester family of Chester and Caernarfon, and through them was in the possession of an Andrew Brereton by 1625; by the middle of the 17th century it had been acquired by Vaughan.[1]
Description
Peniarth MS 392 D contains 250 folios with a page size of around 29 x 20.5 centimetres (11½" x 8"). It is written on heavily stained and rather damaged parchment. Vermin have eaten around nine centimeters (3½") from the outer corners of the leaves. It is less complete than the Ellesmere manuscript, and the tales are in an order that is unique to itself.[4] The main textual hand has been identified with one found in several other manuscripts of the period (see below); there are a number of other hands in the manuscript, including one of a person who attempted to fill in several gaps in the text. This has been tentatively identified as the hand of the poet Thomas Hoccleve.[5]
There is some
Scribe and relationship to other manuscripts
The Hengwrt manuscript was written by the same scribe as the lavishly illustrated
The scribe of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts has been identified by Linne Mooney, a palaeographer at the University of York, as Adam Pinkhurst, a scrivener.[7] The attribution has been widely accepted, and other manuscripts have since been added to Pinkhurst's scribal canon.[8] However, other scholars, including Jane Roberts, who drew Mooney's attention to Pinkhurst in the first place, have expressed skepticism about the identification on various palaeographical, literary, and historical grounds.[9][10]
Order
The tales are presented in the following order:
- General Prologue
- The Knight's Tale
- The Miller's Tale
- The Reeve's Tale
- The Cook's Tale
- The Wife of Bath’s Tale
- The Friar's Tale
- The Summoner's Tale
- The Monk's Tale
- The Nun's Priest's Tale
- The Manciple's Tale
- The Man of Law's Tale
- The Squire's Tale
- The Merchant's Tale
- The Franklin's Tale
- The Second Nun's Prologue and Tale
- The Clerk's Tale
- The Physician's Tale
- The Pardoner's Tale
- The Shipman's Tale
- The Prioress' Tale
- Sir Thopas
- The Tale of Melibee
- The Parson's Tale
See also
References
- ^ a b "The Hengwrt Chaucer". www.llgc.org.uk. Retrieved 2017-08-09.
- ^ See Manly and Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales, I: Descriptions of the Manuscripts, 1940, p.266
- ^ "Original Chaucer Masterpiece on Show for the World to See." Western Mail (Cardiff, Wales). 2014. Archived 2017-08-09 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ ISBN 978-0470752128. Retrieved 11 October 2017.
- ^ Mosser, Daniel W. "Hg". Digital Catalogue of the Manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, Second Edition. Retrieved 2022-07-12.
- ^ Horobin, S. The Language of the Hengwrt Chaucer Archived 2008-07-25 at the Wayback Machine, Canterbury Tales Project
- S2CID 162796458.
- ISSN 0890-2917.
- JSTOR 43632873.
- S2CID 165260821.