Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Bibliography of Jill Mann's works
- 1 The Man of Law's Tale and Crusade
- 2 The Language Group of the Canterbury Tales
- 3 ‘Save man allone’: Human Exceptionality in Piers Plowman and the Exemplarist Tradition
- 4 The Land of Cokaygne: Three Notes on the Latin Background
- 5 The Canterbury Tales and Gamelyn
- 6 The Cheerful Science: Nicholas Oresme, Home Economics, and Literary Dissemination
- 7 The Poetics of Catastrophe: Ovidian Allusion in Gower's Vox Clamantis
- 8 Preaching with the Hands: Carthusian Book Production and the Speculum devotorum
- 9 The Necessity of Difference: The Speech of Peace and the Doctrine of Contraries in Langland's Piers Plowman
- 10 Chaucer's Complaint unto Pity and the Insights of Allegory
- 11 Amor in claustro
- 12 ‘And that was litel nede’: Poetry's Need in Robert Henryson's Fables and Testament of Cresseid
- 13 The Art of Swooning in Middle English
- 14 The Theory of Passionate Song
- List of contributors
- Index
- Tabula gratulatoria
5 - The Canterbury Tales and Gamelyn
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Bibliography of Jill Mann's works
- 1 The Man of Law's Tale and Crusade
- 2 The Language Group of the Canterbury Tales
- 3 ‘Save man allone’: Human Exceptionality in Piers Plowman and the Exemplarist Tradition
- 4 The Land of Cokaygne: Three Notes on the Latin Background
- 5 The Canterbury Tales and Gamelyn
- 6 The Cheerful Science: Nicholas Oresme, Home Economics, and Literary Dissemination
- 7 The Poetics of Catastrophe: Ovidian Allusion in Gower's Vox Clamantis
- 8 Preaching with the Hands: Carthusian Book Production and the Speculum devotorum
- 9 The Necessity of Difference: The Speech of Peace and the Doctrine of Contraries in Langland's Piers Plowman
- 10 Chaucer's Complaint unto Pity and the Insights of Allegory
- 11 Amor in claustro
- 12 ‘And that was litel nede’: Poetry's Need in Robert Henryson's Fables and Testament of Cresseid
- 13 The Art of Swooning in Middle English
- 14 The Theory of Passionate Song
- List of contributors
- Index
- Tabula gratulatoria
Summary
The twenty-five manuscripts of the Middle English metrical romance Gamelyn make it, in numerical terms, by far the most popular extant Middle English verse romance.1 But numbers do not convey Gamelyn's appeal accurately: it occurs only in copies of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; it has no wider circulation. The relationship between the romance and Chaucer's work has never been satisfactorily clarified. There is no evidence for Gamelyn's date or place of origin. It has proved impossible to explain where it came from and why it was included so often with the Canterbury Tales. The questions it raises are obvious in nature but difficult of resolution: how does it come to survive only in manuscripts of Chaucer's work? And, given its association with Chaucer, could it actually be by Chaucer?
The problem of Gamelyn was initially addressed when it was first published in 1721 by John Urry as part of his edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer. He had this to say about its place in the Chaucer canon:
So many of the MSS have this Tale, that I can hardly think it could be unknown to the former Editors of this Poet's Works. Nor can I think of a Reason why they neglected to publish it. Possibly they met only with those MSS that had not this Tale in them, and contented themselves with the Number of Tales they found in those MSS. If they had any of those MSS in which it is, I cannot give a Reason why they did not give it a Place amongst the rest, unless they doubted of its being genuine. But because I find it in so many MSS, I have no doubt of it, and therefore make it publick and call it the Fifth Tale[…]
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- Information
- Medieval Latin and Middle English LiteratureEssays in Honour of Jill Mann, pp. 76 - 90Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2011