The "Canterbury Tales": Early Manuscripts and Relative Popularity.

Author / Editor
Owen, Charles A., Jr.

Title
The "Canterbury Tales": Early Manuscripts and Relative Popularity.

Published
Journal of English and Germanic Philology 54 (1955): 104-10.

Description
Questions Germaine Dempster's 1948 suggestions about the production of "manuscripts postulated as heads of genetic groups" and lines of descent for CT witnesses, offering several alternative explanations. Includes attention to the change of ink in the Hengwrt manuscript at MerT 4.2318, and offers surmises about the relative popularity of individual tales in early reception history.

Chaucer Subjects
Canterbury Tales--General
Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Merchant and His Tale