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The Hengwrt Chaucer manuscript is an early-15th-century manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, held in the National Library of Wales, in Aberystwyth.It is an important source for Chaucer's text, and was possibly written by someone with access to an original authorial holograph, now lost.
The question of whether The Canterbury Tales is a finished work has not been answered to date. There are 84 manuscripts and four incunabula (printed before 1500) editions [4] of the work, which is more than for any other vernacular English literary text with the exception of Prick of Conscience.
It is seen as an important source for efforts to reconstruct Chaucer's original text and intentions, though John M. Manly and Edith Rickert in their Text of the Canterbury Tales (1940) noted that whoever edited the manuscript probably made substantial revisions, tried to regularise spelling, and put the individual Tales into a smoothly running ...
John Matthews Manly (September 2, 1865 – April 2, 1940) was an American professor of English literature and philology at the University of Chicago.Manly specialized in the study of the works of William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer.
The frame story of the poem, as set out in the 858 lines of Middle English which make up the General Prologue, is of a religious pilgrimage. The narrator, Geoffrey Chaucer, is in The Tabard Inn in Southwark, where he meets a group of 'sundry folk' who are all on the way to Canterbury, the site of the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket, a martyr reputed to have the power of healing the sinful.
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories, mostly in verse, written by Geoffrey Chaucer chiefly from 1387 to 1400. They are held together in a frame story of a pilgrimage on which each member of the group is to tell two tales on the way to Canterbury, and two on the way back.
The Prologue to the Tale of Beryn begins upon the pilgrims’ arrival in Canterbury, where they lodge at the inn, “The Checker of the Hoop.” (1–12).While the company is dining at the inn, the Pardoner, disgusted with how the meal is served according to social hierarchy, leaves the fellowship to instead speak with the barmaid, Kit (13–22).
It is not clear whether these are sincere declarations of remorse on Chaucer's part or a continuation of the theme of penitence from The Parson's Tale.It is not even certain if the retraction was an integral part of the Canterbury Tales or if it was the equivalent of a death bed confession which became attached to this his most popular work.