What is the Ellesmere Manuscript?
The Ellesmere Chaucer, or Ellesmere Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, is an early 15th-century illuminated manuscript of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, owned by the Huntington Library, in San Marino, California (EL 26 C 9). It is considered one of the most significant copies of the Tales.
Was the Canterbury Tales a manuscript?
The Canterbury Tales is traditionally dated to 1387 (although some tales appear to have been written before then). The poem survives in 92 manuscripts, but no manuscript of the work dates from Chaucer’s lifetime. The poem as we know it is the product of 15th-century scribes.
Where is the manuscript of the Canterbury Tales?
the Huntington Library
Held by the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, the manuscript is named after Sir Thomas Egerton (1540–1617), who was Baron Ellesmere and Viscount Brackley.
When were the Canterbury Tales written and in what language?
English
Middle English
The Canterbury Tales/Original languages
How many Canterbury Tales manuscripts are there?
There are 55 medieval manuscripts in existence that put together some version of the Canterbury Tales. There are also some manuscript fragments, cases where a leaf or two remains from a book otherwise lost.
How many manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales survive?
92 manuscripts
The manuscripts of the Tales often differ in the number of tales they contain, and the ordering of the tales also differs. Although the poem survives in 92 manuscripts, of varying levels of completeness (some no more than fragments, others complete codices), no manuscript is in Chaucer’s own hand.
Which Canterbury tale is the best?
The Miller’s Tale. And Nicholas amydde the ers he smoot … Perhaps the most famous – and best-loved – of all of the tales in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, ‘The Miller’s Tale’ is told as a comic corrective following the sonorous seriousness of the Knight’s tale.
Why did Chaucer not finish The Canterbury Tales?
Chaucer’s death also prevented him from resuming the framing device at the end of the pilgrims’ journey; we do not find out who won the storytelling contest as the reader might have expected from a fully framed narrative.
Which is the longest tale in Canterbury Tales?
The Tale of Melibee is the longest of The Canterbury Tales, and the most dense.