Chaucer's Works, Volume 5 — Notes to the Canterbury Tales

This volume is for the reader who has ever wondered: what did Chaucer actually write? The notes gathered here represent decades of scholarly detective work, tracing The Canterbury Tales across the medieval manuscripts that carry its words. Here one finds the painstaking arguments for and against attribution, the silent wars over which passages belong to Chaucer and which to scribes, collaborators, or outright forgers. The introduction alone stands as a fascinating history of how editors from the 18th century onward have wrestled with the slippery problem of establishing an authentic text when every manuscript differs from every other. These are not dry corrections but windows into how medieval literature was made, transmitted, and sometimes misread. For the serious Chaucer student, this volume unlocks questions that the tale themselves barely hint at: Who was the hand that held the pen? What did Chaucer revise, and what did his successors add? The notes illuminate language, source traditions, and the complex textual landscape that any reader of Middle English must navigate.