A Witness Much Abused: BL MS Harley 7334 and the Stemma of the Canterbury Tales

Author / Editor
Conlan, J. P.

Title
A Witness Much Abused: BL MS Harley 7334 and the Stemma of the Canterbury Tales

Published
Analytical and Enumerative Bibliography 10: 120-47, 1999.

Description
Reexamines the "paradoxical evidence" of Ha4, arguing that Manly and Rickert's discussion of it was distorted by their a priori assumptions and their concluding that Chaucer's foul papers "served as the exemplar" of the manuscript. The affiliations of the manuscript reflect methodical collation; the character of its text suggests that it was copied from a working draft. While the "tightness" in its construction indicates that the scribe had all the fragments before him, its rubrics are derived rather than copied-evidence that it was copied before circulation.

Chaucer Subjects
Manuscripts and Textual Studies.