This second volume of Sources and Analogues of The Canterbury Tales completes the project, sponsored by the New Chaucer Society, to revise and expand the collection of Chaucer’s sources published by Bryan and Dempster in 1941. Appearing here for the first time in any such collection are investigations of the sources and analogues of The General Prologue and analogues to Chaucer’s Retraction. The other chapters cover the remaining tales not included in Volume 1 – those of the Knight, Miller, Man of Law, Wife of Bath, Summoner, Merchant, Physician, Shipman, Prioress, Sir Thopas, Canon’s Yeoman, and Manciple.

In addition to the new first-time chapters, readers will find several other significant differences between the source materials printed here and those in Bryan and Dempster. A new and greatly extended discussion of The Knight’s Tale includes not only a summary of the Teseida, but also all the relevant passages from it and from Chaucer’s other principal sources in Statius and Boethius. Other additions include one major and six “minor” sources of The Wife of Bath’s Prologue, the sources of the prologues to the tales of the Man of Law, Summoner, and Prioress, and a number of new analogues, especially to The Prioress’s Tale and The Canon Yeoman’s Tale. Three new stories from The Decameron have also been added, two identified as analogues to The Merchant’s Tale and one as an analogue to The Shipman’s Tale, providing further evidence of the belief among many contemporary scholars that Boccaccio’s work was an important influence on the development of The Canterbury Tales. At the same time, many analogues in Bryan and Dempster have been dropped by individual contributors because they are too distant in time or place from Chaucer’s work, or are lacking in word-for-word correspondences, or differ substantially in narrative structure or other plot motifs. One example of such pruning occurs in the chapter on The Miller’s Tale, where only one of the four analogues found in the earlier volume, the Flemish fabliau, is judged to be closest to Chaucer’s tale, close enough even to be considered its “near source.”

The format and purpose remain the same as in the first volume.

I. Innocent III, De Miseria Condicionis Humane 295 (ed. Robert E. Lewis)

II. Nicholas Trevet, “De la noble femme Constance” 297 (from Les Cronicles: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS français 9687)

III. John Gower, “Tale of Constance” 330 (from Confessio Amantis, ed. G. C. Macaulay)

The Man of Law’s contribution to the storytelling contest in The Canterbury Tales consists of three parts commonly referred to as the Introduction, Prologue and Tale. Their relationships to each other and to the Tales as a whole are in many respects uncertain, resulting in a number of still unsolved problems, including the Man of Law’s puzzling announcement that he will “speke in prose,” (II, 96) just before giving his brief homily on poverty (II, 99–121) and telling his tale in verse. The relationship between his Prologue and Tale has always been problematic. Many scholars have found little or no reason for any connection between them. It had long been known, however, that the Lawyer’s remarks on poverty in the Prologue and some of the passages in his Tale are derived from Pope Innocent III’s De Miseria Condicionis Humane, which Chaucer claimed to have translated under the title “Of the Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde” in the Legend of Good Women (Prologue G 414–15). In his study of the De Miseria, Robert E. Lewis defended Chaucer’s claim and proved that he was working on this lost translation during the same period (1390–5) when he was writing the Man of Law’s sequence. But Lewis’s study of the De Miseria was even more important for its argument in support of a connection between the Prologue and Tale based on Chaucer’s use of the Pope’s treatise as a source in both. For the Lawyer’s comments on poverty, Chaucer used a condensed version of a passage at the beginning of the De Miseria (I.14.1–14), in which Innocent condemns the evils of poverty and the poor. But in place of the denunciation of riches which concludes the Pope’s remarks, Chaucer substitutes an apostrophe in praise of riches and wealthy merchants (II, 122–33).

Bryan and Dempster's Sources and Analogues of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, first published in 1941, has been one of the most important reference tools in Chaucer studies. It has played a leading role in helping scholars understand and assess how Chaucer handled the many classical, patristic and medieval sources he used in fashioning his masterpiece. In the past sixty years, however, there have been many new developments in the field, and a revised and expanded edition has long been needed. This new Sources and Analogues of The Canterbury Tales is a collaborative effort by an international team of scholars to meet this need. Its purpose is essentially the same as that of its distinguished predecessor – to present the sources in the forms that Chaucer knew them, and where sources are unknown, to present the closest analogues to the tales in the forms with which Chaucer was presumably acquainted.

There are, however, several important differences in content and format between Bryan and Dempster's work and this volume. Several new sources and analogues of the Tales discovered in the past half century (e.g. Friar's Tale, Second Nun's Tale) are printed here together for the first time. Some wellknown sources of others (e.g. Man of Law's Tale, Wife of Bath's Prologue) are re-edited from manuscripts closer to those Chaucer presumably knew and used. Some source texts in Bryan and Dempster have been omitted, including especially Sercambi's Novelle, now known to have been written too late to have influenced Chaucer's idea for the frame of the Tales. The most noticeable difference is the appearance of modern English translations of all sources and analogues in foreign languages. This addition, which will make these texts more accessible to scholars and students of Chaucer, as well as to a larger audience of interested readers of the Tales, has also required expansion of this edition to two volumes.

This first volume begins with a fresh examination of the sources of the frame of the work. Helen Cooper's assertion that Boccaccio's Decameron is the one text “that can stake a primary claim to being Chaucer's model for the Tales” represents a major shift of opinion among a number of scholars who are now willing to credit the influence of this work on The Canterbury Tales, and also signals another distinct change from Bryan and Dempster.