The Canterbury Tales; England, 1450s × 1460s

Title

The Canterbury Tales; England, 1450s × 1460s

Shelfmark

MS. Rawl. poet. 223

Place of origin

London, according to Kathleen Scott, A Mid-Fifteenth-Century English Illuminating Shop and Its Customers

England

Date

1450s × 1460s

15th century, third quarter

Language

Latin

Middle English (1100-1500)

Contents

Form

codex

Support

parchment

Physical extent

ii (modern paper, 1985) + i (paper, Rawlinson) + 271 leaves

Hands

Gothic hybrida, designated the work of a Hooked-g scribe or scribes; see Daniel W. Mosser and Linne R. Mooney, The Case of the Hooked-g Scribe(s) and the Production of Middle English Literature, c. 1460–c. 1490; Holly James-Maddocks, The Illuminators of the Hooked-g Scribe(s) and the Production of Middle English Literature, c. 1460–c. 1490 (who refers to the copyist as Hooked-g Scribe 2).

Decoration

Initials and borders, decorated with sprays of foliage, flowers and gold disks, at the beginning of Tales and Prologues on fols. 44r, 55r, 63r, 79v, 90v, 149r, 165v, 175r, 204r, 115v, 219r, 233v.

fol. 142r Type initial T Subject Friar with raised hand, standing in pulpit (Prologue to the Friar's Tale). fol. 183r Type initial A Subject Melibee(?) or Geoffrey Chaucer(??) in fine dress, seated at lectern with an open book (The Tale of Melibee).

Rubricated with enlarged display script and added flourishes. Running heads, with instructions for copying found occasionally at the right foot of pages, such as fol. 255r (dorigen) and 255v (arveragus).

Binding

Formerly in an 18th-century binding, tanned calf over laminated pulpboard.

Rebound in brown buckram with calf spine, sewn on six thongs, 1985.

Acquisition

Likely bequeathed to the Bodleian c. 1748, separately from his 1755 bequest. Former shelfmark, Arch. C. Bodl. 83

Provenance

On fol. 169v, below the writing space, in drypoint, is wyke.

Sixteenth-century inscriptions, John Opowell (fol. 270v), T. Hull (fol. 240r), Ann Taylor (fols. 43r and 249r), John Crowland (fol. 270r). The word pope has been erased at II. 234 and elsewhere. John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, eds., The Text of the Canterbury Tales Studied on the Basis of All Known Manuscripts (Chicago, 1940), 1:468–71 suggest possible identifications.

Sir Norton Knatchbull (1602-1685): at his sale, Bullord S.C. 22 June 1698, lot 39; bought by:

Thomas Sclater Bacon (d. 1737‏): at his sale, Bullord S.C. 14 March 1736/7, lot 2075; bought by:

Richard Rawlinson, 1690–1755.