The unpunctuated Chaucer : a guide to reading the Medieval manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales.

The medieval manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales are, in the modern sense, unpunctuated. That is, no commas, semicolons, question marks, or quotation marks existed in the fourteenth century. In spite of that fact, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century readers presumably had no problems reading manuscripts of Chaucer's work. They understood Chaucer's syntax. However, Chaucer's medieval, reader-response poetry has become unfamiliar to the modern reader--in part because of the change in speech and writing, in part because of the modern practice of punctuation. Modern editors and their punctuation do much of the hard work for us when it comes to reading Middle English texts. In an admirable effort to make literature of the Middle Ages available and appealing to more readers, editors, throughout the years, altered syntax, reordered phrases, modernized spellings, and punctuated the medieval texts. In this study I: a) show that modern punctuation restricts Chaucer's art, and b) provide some guidelines for reading the unpunctuated manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales. Chapter One reviews editions of Chaucer's tales over the centuries. This chapter pinpoints the first punctuated edition and follows the increased usage of punctuation through the years from Thynne to Robinson. After Chapter One reviews the history of punctuation of The Canterbury Tales, Chapter Two shows that scholars have recently begun to question the practice of punctuating medieval texts. Presenting the major issues of recent critical articles provides a spring-board for the discussion of Chaucer's medieval syntax. Chapters Three and Four analyse how Chaucer constructed his syntax and how the medieval reader would have read. Medieval readers, scribes, and thus their scribal marks, give clues as to how Chaucer was read in the fifteenth century, and thus, how we might read him in the twentieth century. Finally, I include a transcript of the Hengwrt manuscript's "Merchant's Tale." I call Chapter Five my "un-edition" as it contains no punctuation, only scribal marks. The un-edition allows my readers to try their hands at reading the unpunctuated Chaucer while information from the preceding chapters is fresh in their minds. Further, Chapter Five contains "punctuation notes" which contain punctuated passages from various modern editions. These notes allow readers to compare punctuated vs. unpunctuated for themselves and see the restriction punctuation places on Chaucer's medieval art.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Masters

Grantor

Baylor University.

Year dc:date.issued

1992

Author dc:creator

• Kamphausen, Arminda A.

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Hanks, D. Thomas, Jr., 1941-

• Chaucer, Geoffrey, -1400. Canterbury tales.
• Chaucer, Geoffrey, -1400 -- Language.

Statement dc:rights

• Baylor University works are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. Contact libraryquestions@baylor.edu for inquiries about permission.

Language dc:language.iso

en

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/2104/15008

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:baylor-ir.tdl.org:2104/15008