The Tale of the Man of Lawe: The Pardoners Tale; The Second Nonnes Tale (Classic Reprint) - Softcover

Excerpt from The Tale of the Man of Lawe: The Pardoners Tale; The Second Nonnes Tale

The pronunciation of English during the fourteenth century differed materially from that now in use. The following is an abstract of the conclusions at which Mr. Ellis has arrived respecting the pronunciation probably in use among the highly educated southern speakers for whom Chaucer wrote, and directions are subjoined for modern readers who wish to imitate it.

A long=ab, as in father, alms, are; the usual continental sound of long a. The present pronunciation of a, as ai in wait, seems not to have become thoroughly established till the beginning of the eighteenth century.

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This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Excerpt from The Tale of the Man of Lawe: The Pardoners Tale; The Second Nonnes Tale

For remarks upon Grammatical Forms occurring in Chaucer, I must beg leave to refer the reader to the Introduction to Dr. Morris's edition of the Prologue, Knight's Talc, &c.; and to some further remarks in the Introduction to my edition of the Prioresses Tale, &c. (Clarendon Press Series), p. xlix.

Remarks upon the Metre and Versification will be found in the Introduction to the Prioresses Tale, p. liii.; followed by a Metrical Analysis of Part I. of the Squire's Talc, p. Ixvi.

An account of the manner in which the text of the present edition has been formed will be found in the same volume, p. Ixxiii. It may suffice to repeat here that the text follows, in general, the readings of the Ellesmere MS. (called ' E.' in the footnotes), with occasional variations from six others, viz. the Hengwrt, Cambridge, Corpus, Petworth, Lansdowne, and Har-leian MSS., denoted respectively by the symbols Hn., C., Cp., Pt., Ln., and HI. Of these, all but the Harleian MS. are printed in full in Mr. Fumivall's splendid Six-text Edition, published for the Chaucer Society; whilst MS. HI. is substantially the same as the text in Wright's, Morris's and Bell's editions. The text of Tyrwhitt's edition comes near to that of the Ellesmere MS., and docs not much differ from that in the present volume. As in 1 The Prioresses Tale,' &c., the Grouping of the Tales and the numbering of the lines exactly correspond with those of the Six-text edition, for the purpose of convenience of reference. The Tales here chosen belong partly to Group B (see Introd. to Prior. Tale, p. xii.); partly to Group C; and partly to Groups G, H, and I. Group G, containing the Second Nun's Tale and the Canon's Yeoman's Talc, is printed here in full.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.