Manuscript Description Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.15 (595) | |
MS Appellation: | M. R. James catalogue 595; Tc2 (Manly and Rickert) |
Title: | Canterbury Tales |
Author: | Chaucer |
Contents: | ff1-3 16th century tracts; ff3v-4v Prologue to Canterbury Tales (from Thynne's edition); ff5-315 Canterbury Tales; f 316 Piers Plowman's Crede |
Language: | English |
Date Range: | 1485-1550; after 1485 (Seymour and Manly and Rickert). Additions are 16th century. |
Scribal Hands: | Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms. |
Dialect: | Standardised/Colourless |
Material: | Paper |
No of Folios: | Newer paper flyleaf + older paper flyleaf with table of contents on verso in later hand, 19th c? + fols 1-4, 4a, on which are written 'Eight Goodlie Questions', 'Balade' by Hoccleve and the Prologue to CT and very beginning of KnT, by a 16th c. hand + fols 5- 316 (black foliation, or) 9-620 (red pagination) + 317-328 (pp 621-?? Numbering goes crazy from 709 to 801, 803, 805, 807, 809, 901, 903 by same 16th century hand with text beginning 'Cros and curteis' |
Pagination: | Modern foliation up to f141 and red crayon pagination on rectos from beginning of Canterbury Tales (9). |
Quiring: | Mainly in 12's. |
Signatures: | None, but quires numbered by modern pencil in lower right of first folios each quire. |
Catchwords: | Catchwords in elaborate scrolls by scribe near centre of lower margin |
Page Size: | 375 x 205 |
Frame: | 4 x vertical in two lines very close together for each side of text, 5 x horizontal under bottom line and both bottom and top of running title line and top line; grey-brown ink like text. |
Writing Space: | 184 x 127 |
Incipits and Explicits: | In rubric, with names underlined in red and red ink on ascenders of top lines. |
Marginal Headings: | Gloss work in red ink. |
Running Titles: | None |
Table of Contents: | Added to front flyleaf (unnumbered, but would be i) by a much later hand. |
Flourished Initials: | 2-line red lombard initials flourished with brown ink to begin tales. |
Other Names (not owners): | Given to Trinity by Thomas Neville, Master of Trinity (1593-1615). However, the red crayon foliation is of a style which suggests earlier ownership by Archbishop Parker (1504-1575). |
Miscellaneous Info: | Monogram of TW on f5. |
Further Information: | A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge. 5 vols. Cambridge: University Press, 1856-67. Manly, John M. and Rickert, E. The Text of the Canterbury Tales, 8 vols, vol. I, 527-531, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940. Seymour, M. C. A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts, The Canterbury Tales, vol. 2, pp. 69-73. Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press, 1997. |