Editorial Assumptions and the Manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales

Simon Horobin challenges the entrenched editorial assumptions that have shaped modern approaches to the manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales, particularly the privileging of the Hengwrt (Hg) and Ellesmere (El) manuscripts. He argues that textual scholarship has too often begun from speculative hypotheses about Chaucer’s compositional and revisional practices—especially assumptions about prior circulation and authorial revision—and then interpreted manuscript evidence in ways that merely confirm those premises. This circular methodology, Horobin contends, has narrowed the field of inquiry and marginalized the majority of extant witnesses.

Horobin criticizes the reliance on tale-order as a primary diagnostic tool, noting that it can support mutually incompatible theories depending on initial assumptions, as exemplified by the opposing conclusions of Blake and Benson. Instead, he calls for a reversal of method: analysis should begin with textual evidence across a broad range of manuscripts, without presupposing a narrative of the poem’s early history. To demonstrate the value of this approach, Horobin examines British Library MS Additional 35286 (Ad3), a fifteenth-century manuscript traditionally dismissed because of its late date, eclectic affiliations, and unusual tale-order.

Close analysis reveals that Ad3 preserves readings that complicate the Hg–El binary. In some cases, it appears to record an early compositional stage (notably in the Second Nun’s and Canon’s Yeoman’s Tales); in others, it may preserve evidence of later revision, as in unique passages shared only with El in The Franklin’s Tale. Horobin concludes that such neglected manuscripts challenge the notion of a stable authorial text and demonstrate that neither Hg nor El can be equated with The Canterbury Tales itself.