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Manuscript Description
Oxford, New College MS 314
 
MS Appellation:Ne (Manly and Rickert)
Title:Canterbury Tales
Author:Chaucer
Contents:Canterbury Tales
Language:English
Date Range:1450-1475
Scribal Hands:
Examples of the hand. Click on the link above for full details and images of individual letter forms.
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Dialect:No LP; County : Norfolk
Material:Parchment
No of Folios:ii + 311 + ii
Pagination:Modern pencil foliation, upper outer corner recto.
Quiring:8
Signatures:Some visible such as 'ciiij' on f12, F1 on f31, N in quire 13, 'P iij' on f101, z in quire 20 and bb-gg in quires 23-28.
Catchwords:By the scribe in significantly smaller script in bottom right of text box.
Page Size:272-275 x 190-195
Frame:2 x vertical, 4 x horizontal enclosing top and bottom lines; brown crayon.
Writing Space:183 x 100-120
Incipits and Explicits:In rubric on lines left for them in text. 'Explicit Tractatus Galfridi Chauser de gestis peregrinorum versus Cantuariam' by the scribe on f311v in rubric.
Marginal Headings:Rubric headings, red in initial letters, red underlining
Running Titles:In red on recto and verso preceded by blue paraphs
Paragraph Marks:Blue paraphs precede running titles.
Flourished Initials:2-line blue lombard initials and minimal red penwork decoration
Other Names (not owners):At the top left of f43v is 'ferm[er] Wyllm
on f126v is 'Wyllm ferm[er]. At the top of f68v and upside down is 'Hvmfrey Ward Hvmf' and 'Hvmf' is repeated on f70v. On the lower edge of f104r is 'Ant Gage'. The name 'monyngs' appears at the top of f115v. 'Anthony Shute' appears in the lower margin of f178v. On f311v after explicit and added in 16th century hand is 'Wyll god and I shall quoth L A et alyas / galfrydi chauser vates et fama Poesis materna ex(?) / ecx(?) sacrasum tumulatus humo
Welsh verses added to f311v signed 'quod David ap Edmund; at top of f311v and partly cropped is 'Hemrouth'???
Miscellaneous Info:According to Mosser (2010),'The same scribe copied Bodleian MS Dugdale 45 (S.C. 6533), a copy of Hoccleve's Regiment of Princes (identified by Stephen B. Partridge), and 'a little more than one quire of British Library MS Harley 2248, a copy of the prose Brut' (Mooney 2006, p. 104, n. 30, citing Jason O'Rourke's identification; the Ne scribe copies fols. 91-100 in Harley 2248).
Further Information:Coxe, Henry O., 'Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum qui in Collegiis Aulisque Oxoniensibus Hodie Adservantur'. 2 vols. Oxford: University Press, 1852. Manly, John M. and Rickert, E. The Text of the Canterbury Tales, 8 vols, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1940. 1:381-6. McCormick, Sir William and Janet E. Heseltine. The Manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Oxford: Clarendon, 1933. 357-67. Seymour, M. C. A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts, vol. 2, The Canterbury Tales. Aldershot, Hants: Scolar Press, 1997. 205-209.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP