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Manuscript Description
Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Rawlinson poet. 141
 
MS Appellation:Ra1 (Manly and Rickert); SC 14635
Title:Canterbury Tales
Author:Chaucer
Contents:Canterbury Tales
Language:English
Date Range:1425-1450
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:LP : 237; County : Shropshire
Material:Parchment
No of Folios:ii paper flyleaves + 157 + ii paper flyleaves
Pagination:Ink foliation to 73. Thereafter foliated in pencil but the ink numbering becomes a pagination.
Quiring:8's but some quires missing as well as individual folios.
Catchwords:On final folios of quires beginning with f103v (pencil foliation). The catchwords are in dark ink and surrounded by a four-sided box also in ink.
Page Size:250 x 184
Frame:2 x vertical; 1 x horizontal which defines the top of the letters in the top line of text. Ink frame with ruling in brown crayon, now mainly erased, but visible in the right margins in some places.
Writing Space:190 x 108
Incipits and Explicits:Mainly present in red ink.
Marginal Headings:Some marginal glossing in the ink of the text and preceded by red and blue paraphs with flourishing in the opposing colour.
Running Titles:In red ink on most folios both recto and verso. The name of the pilgrim in red is preceded by blue paraphs flourished with red ink.
Paragraph Marks:Red with blue flourishing and blue with red flourishing frequently alternating. Also used to mark stanzaic division.
Flourished Initials:Blue 2-4 line capitals with red flourishing extending into margins. Used at the beginning of prologues and tales.
Other Names (not owners):Very little of any help survives in the manuscript. It was left by Richard Rawlinson to the Bodleian after 1755.
Miscellaneous Info:Very closely affiliated with the old McCormick, now University of Chicago MS 564
Further Information:Manly and Rickert I: 450-454. Seymour II: 182-184.
Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York, King's Manor, York YO1 7EP