Corsa, Helen Storm, ed., The Canterbury Tales: The Physician's Tale (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press. A Variorum Edition of the Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. Vol. 2, part 17., 1987). ISBN: 80612038
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Text name(s): The Canterbury Tales; The Physician's Tale

Number of pages of primary source text: 61

Medieval Author(s): Chaucer, Geoffrey

Dates: 1385 - 1388

Archival Reference: Hengwrt

Original Language(s): English - Middle English;

Translation: Original language included.

Translation Comments:

Geopolitical Region(s): England;

County/Region: Kent; Canterbury

Apparatus: Index Bibliography Introduction

Comments:

This edition of the Physician’s Tale is aimed at serious students and scholars, and gives a detailed picture of scholarship on and ideas about the Tale from the Renaissance through the 1980s. Although the Physician says that the story he tells is from Livy, Chaucer may not have gotten it directly from Livy’s History, but from a version of the story in the Roman de la Rose. The Hengwrt manuscript is thought to be the oldest manuscript of the Tales, copied within ten years of Chaucer’s death around 1400. Hengwrt may have been copied by the same scribe who copied the Ellesmere manuscript. Hengwrt is not as complete as Ellesmere is (Hengwrt is missing the end of the Parson’s Tale, Chaucer’s Retraction, and some linking verses), but many scholars believe that it is closer to Chaucer’s original text. Besides Hengwrt and Ellesmere, manuscripts of the Tales include Corpus Christi 198, Cambridge Dd 4.24, Cambridge Gg 4.27, Harley 7334, Lansdowne, and Petworth. The first printed version of the Tales, by William Caxton, appeared in 1476, followed by a second edition in 1482; several printed editions followed that were based on Caxton’s versions. In the late 18th century printers began to use original manuscripts to work from. Considered by many to be one of the greatest poets of the English language, Geoffrey Chaucer was born in London in the 1340s. He was a page in the household of Elizabeth, Countess of Ulster, who was married to Prince Lionel, one of King Edward III’s sons, and fought in France in 1359. After that he served Edward as a messenger and diplomat, customs agent, clerk of the king’s works (where he oversaw construction and renovation of the king’s houses and properties), and Justice of the Peace. His literary career began in translating works such as the Romance of the Rose and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy into English, and his first original work, the Book of the Duchess, was written in 1369-70. He died in or around 1400; the date on his 16th-century tomb in Westminster Abbey is October 25, 1400.

Introduction Summary:

The 86-page introduction discusses sources for the Physician’s Tale, its date, a history of critical works and thought on it, and the manuscript and printed editions of the Canterbury Tales.

Cataloger: RLL