Renaissance and C17 Chaucer Editions, Translations, and Commentaries

The "William Thynne" Chaucer, 1532 (facsimile).  This is one of the early Chaucer editions we do not have in an original print edition. 

• What features of this book resemble those of a modern edition like the Riverside Chaucer, and what features seem similar but strangely different, or even completely different?  Think about the book as a physical artifact, as well as a collection of texts to be read.
• The introduction to this edition may have been written by Sir Brian Tuke, according to a manuscript annotation in a copy of this edition now held by Clare College, Cambridge.  What reasons does the introduction give for collecting and printing "the workes of Geffray Chaucer" in a single volume?  Note that previous Chaucer print editions had included only single "works," like the Troilus, House of Fame, or Canterbury Tales.  Think about what readers' demands the printer might be responding to by offering them all of an author's works gathered together rather than selling individual works on their own merit.
• What works are ascribed to Chaucer by Thynne, and which of them do you find in the Riverside Chaucer?  What do you suppose accounts for the difference?
• Who was Walter Skeat, and what role did he play in editing Chaucer for the twentieth century?  How does his edition relate to the edition you find in the Riverside Chaucer?
• This very early facsimile edition, issued in a limited run of 1000 copies, is now, itself, a "rare book."  How many copies still exist that you can locate using WorldCat, ABE, and other antiquarian booksellers' online catalogues?  What "value" do they assign to it, both in the prices booksellers ask for it and in the narratives they use to justify those prices?

The "Speght Chaucer," 1598.  This volume contains a wealth of evidence about how the Renaissance English reading public understood Chaucer, his works, his importance to English literature, and the Middle English language.  It would have been the most recent Chaucer edition available during the period when Shakespeare was adapting Chaucer's Troilus to create Troilus and Cressida (1601-2).

• How many owners has this book had, that is, how many do you see evidence for, and how many can you name?  Can you tell more about who any of them were, and were any of them historically important?
• What features of this book resemble those of a modern edition like the Riverside Chaucer, and what features seem similar but strangely different, or even completely different?  Think about the book as a physical artifact, as well as a collection of texts to be read.
• What works are ascribed to Chaucer by Speght, and which of them do you find in the Riverside Chaucer?  What do you suppose accounts for the difference?
• Speght's edition introduces the first biography of Chaucer to the tradition of what belongs with his collected works.  Compare Speght's version of the poet's life with that in the Riverside Chaucer, which you can take as a reasonably accurate picture of the facts with which most scholars agree.  What political acts does Speght attribute to Chaucer that now form no part of his official life story, and why might a 1598 editor wish to believe these things about a major English poet who lived between 1340 and 1400?  How might this view of Chaucer's life affect one's reading of his works, especially Shakespeare's reading of the Troilus?
• Speght dedicates this edition to Sir Robert Cecil.  What does he say to Cecil in the dedication?  Who was Cecil--what were his rank and status and political connections?  What is the relationship between Speght, the editor, and Cecil, the noble patron?
• If you want to do further work with this edition, it probably has much to tell us.  At least since 1924, we have known that one of the owners this volume is the son of a famous artist with whom William Blake quarreled.  What did Blake think this owner's father had done?  (A scholarly Blake biography will tell you quickly.)  What effect did this quarrel have on Blake's career?  Can you find any evidence in this text, which probably was inherited by the son from his father, that Blake's charges were true or false?

Speght Chaucer Images

Geoffrey Chaucer (trans. Sir Francis Kinnaston), Amorvm Troili et Cresidae.  Libri duo priores Anglico-Latini, 1635

• Why would anyone bother to translate Chaucer's Middle English poem into Latin in 1635?  Read the dedicatory poems (in Early Modern English, mostly!).
• What does the translation say about Chaucer's status and the way Seventeenth-Century English readers understood their own literary past?
• Where was this book printed, and what might that have to do with the readers' response to Kinnaston's labors?
• One of the dedicatory poems differs from all the others in its word choice and syntax.  Which one, why, and how good a job do you think its author is doing at what he attempts to do?

Chaucer, trans. Kinnaston, Amorvm Troili et Creseidae, 1635, images.

Richard Brathwait, A comment upon the two tales of our ancient, renovvned, and ever-living poet, Sr. Jeffray Chavcer, Knight . . . , 1665

• What kinds of "comments" does Brathwait make on Chaucer, and what kind of critic/interpreter/scholar do you make him out to be?
• What portions of the tales does Brathwait choose for his "comments"?  Pick a portion of the "Miller's Tale" or the "Wife of Bath's Prologue" or "Wife of Bath's Tale" that you know well (consult your Norton Anthology or the Riverside Chaucer), and see what he has to say about it.  What is this guy up to?
• Look up Brathwait's surviving editions that are for sale on www.abe.com and notice what else he writes for sale?  How does his "comment" upon these two Canterbury Tales fit into his agenda as a writer?  What does this tell you about the social consequences of being familiar with Chaucer's work in the mid-Seventeenth-Century, and what does it tell you about readers' linguistic skills?
• Brathwait calls Chaucer "Sir Jeffray" and makes the formal "addition," "Knight," to his name.  This is a significant gesture.  If you are familiar with Sir Thomas Malory's Morte Darthur,  compare these "signatures" establishing Chaucer's noble status with Malory's signatures at the end of the "King Arthur" section, at the end of the Grail Quest, at the end of the section Vinaver calls "Launcelot and Guenivere," and at the end of the "Morte" or "hoole boke."  Or, think about Shakespeare's father's famous campaign to get a coat of arms for his family to establish their "armigerous" (arms-bearing) status, even though the elder Shakespeare never served in combat.  What has this ancient military title come to mean to sixteenth- and seventeenth-century readers.  Refresh your memory of Chaucer's biography from the Riverside--was Chaucer ever knighted?  What's Brathwait up to?
• Brathwait's title page is followed by a dedication page invoking the praise and protection of his literary patron.  To whom does he dedicate the book?  What was the patron's rank and status?

Brathwait, A comment upon the two tales of our ancient, renovvvned, and ever-living poet Sr. Jeffray Chavcer, Knight, 1665, images

John Dryden, Fables Ancient and Modern: Translated into English from Homer, Ovid, Boccacce, and Chaucer . . . , 1713

• Note that Dryden chooses the "Knight's Tale" from among the Canterbury Tales to be translated beside the works by Ovid.  The titles appear similar.  Is there also a similarity in the themes of each story?
• What significance might Dryden be intending by associating Homer, Ovid, and Boccaccio with Chaucer in this Modern English translation?
• What might it mean about the way Middle English now seemed to English readers' eyes and ears?
• If you know "Knight's Tale," compare some passages from Dryden's translation with the original and see how good Dryden is as a translator.  Most critics would call such a translation of one poet's work by another a "reading" or "interpretation" or even a "rewriting" of the original.  Is Dryden taking creative liberties with his subject, and if so, where, when, and why?

Geoffrey Chaucer, ed. Thomas Urry, THE WORKS...three Tales are Added...together with a Glossary...to the Whole is Prefixed the Author's Life..., 1721

• This is an excellent edition to compare with Speght's 1598 edition, which was being reprinted well into the late C17 and which Urry made it his life's work to replace.  Note Urry's emphasis on establishing Chaucer's canonical works, even if he was taken in by some spurious ones.  This editorial concern might be said to have begun with William Caxton's second edition of Canterbury Tales (1483), whose preface describes a young squire's visit to the printer's office to complain that the 1476 edition was less complete than the manuscript version held by the squire's father.  Thynne (1532) and Speght (1598) also make similar claims about the completeness of their editions.  What additional problems were caused by the printers' zeal for producing the "most complete" edition of Chaucer's works?
• What does Urry's preface say about his method of editing Chaucer, and how would that compare with Speght's or a modern editor's methods?
• Comparing Speght's contents with Urry's, what do you see?  What has been added and what left out?  When you compare Urry with the Riverside Chaucer, how often was he fooled by spurious works and do you see any pattern in that?
• Urry's edition, like Speght's, appeals to its audience with a claim to provide a biography of the poet.  Does Urry's biography agree with Speght's, or has "Chaucer" changed since 1598?  How does Urry's "Chaucer" compare with the Riverside Chaucer's "Chaucer" based on its biographical note at the beginning?
• Do you see evidence of ownership, owner's use of the volume, etc.?
• Is the binding original and do the pages appear to have been trimmed?  Based on the quality of its binding, what could you say about the book's apparent worth to its owner?