PREFACE
LIFE OF CHAUCER
THE CANTERBURY TALES
The General Prologue
The Knight’s Tale
The Miller’s tale
The Reeve’s Tale
The Cook’s Tale
The Man of Law’s Tale
The Wife of Bath’s Tale
The Friar’s Tale
The Sompnour’s Tale
The Clerk’s Tale
The Merchant’s Tale
The Squire’s Tale
The Franklin’s Tale
The Doctor’s Tale
The Pardoner’s Tale
The Shipman’s Tale
The Prioress’s Tale
Chaucer’s Tale of Sir Thopas
Chaucer’s Tale of Melibœus
The Monk’s Tale
The Nun’s Priest’s Tale
The Second Nun’s Tale
The Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale
The Manciple’s Tale
The Parson’s Tale
Preces de Chauceres
THE COURT OF LOVE <1>
THE CUCKOO AND THE NIGHTINGALE <1>
THE ASSEMBLY OF FOWLS
THE FLOWER AND THE LEAF <1>
THE HOUSE OF FAME
TROILUS AND CRESSIDA
CHAUCER’S DREAM <1>
THE PROLOGUE TO THE LEGEND OF GOOD WOMEN
CHAUCER’S A.B.C.
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
Transcriber’s Note.
1. Modern scholars believe that Chaucer was not the author of
these poems.
Transcriber’s Notes:
Credits: This e-text was scanned, re-formatted and edited with extra notes by
Donal O’ Danachair (kodak_seaside@hotmail.com). I would like to acknowledge the
help of Edwin Duncan, Juris Lidaka and Aniina Jokinnen in identifying some of
the poems no Longer attributed to Chaucer. This e-text, with its notes, is
hereby placed in the public domain.
Preface: The preface is for a combined volume of poems by Chaucer and Edmund
Spenser. The Spenser poems will shortly be available as a separate E-text.
Spelling and punctuation: These are the same as in the book as far as possible.
Accents have been removed. Diereses (umlauts) have been removed from English
words and replaced by “e” in German ones. The AE and OE digraphs have been
transcribed as two letters. The British pound (currency) sign has been replaced
by a capital L. Greek words have been transliterated.
Footnotes: The original book has an average of 30 footnotes
per page. These were of three types:
(A) Glosses or explanations of obsolete words and phrases.
These have been treated as follows:
1. In the poems, they have been moved up into the right-hand
margin. Some of them have been shortened or paraphrased in
order to fit.
Explanations of single words have a single asterisk at the
end of the word and at the beginning of the explanation*. *like this
If two words in the same line have explanations
the first* has one and the second**, two. *like this **and this
Explanations of phrases have an asterisk at the
start and end *of the phrase* and of the explanation *like this*
Sometimes these glosses wrap onto the next line, still in the
right margin. If you read this e-text using a monospaced font
(like Courier in a word processor such as MS Word, or the
default font in most text editors) then the marginal notes are
right-justified.
2. In the prose tales, they have been imbedded into the text in
square brackets after the word or phrase they refer to [like this].
(B) Etymological explanations of these words. These are
indicted by a number in angle brackets in the marginal
gloss.* The note will be found at the *like this <1>
end of the poem or section.
(C) Longer notes commenting on or explaining the text. These
are indicated in the text by numbers in angle brackets thus: <1>.
The note will be found at the end of the poem or section.
Latin: Despite his declared aim of editing the tales “for popular perusal”,
Purves has left nearly all Latin quotations untranslated. I have translated
them as well as I could — any errors are my fault, not his.