PREFACE
sions in method and, largely, in motive. For the form adopted is prose; it preserves, as closely as possible, the very words of Chaucer and his characteristic constructions; it aims by faithful accuracy to present a text which shall be efficient in promoting the study of the original. In working principle, it has taken advice from the poet himself in his Prologue:
“For this ye knowen al-so wel as I,
Who-so shal telle a tale after a man,
He moot reherce, as ny as ever he can,
Everich a word, if it be in his charge,
Al speke he never so rudeliche and large;
Or elles he moot telle his tale untrewe,
Or feyne thing, or finde wordes newe.”
Briefly, then, the method followed has been to present, so far as possible, Chaucer’s ipsissime verba; to err rather in the direction of literal fidelity than literary license. No archaisms, however, have been retained which are not fairly intelligible. The necessary changes which have been made are: first, omissions on the score of propriety, of intelligibility (as when a long paraphrase would have been required for a trivial matter), and (very seldom) of redundancy; secondly, rare and slight rearrangements for the sake of clearness; thirdly, translation and paraphrase required by clearness and the necessities of prose-style. Proper names have been altered to their classical or modern forms only in the case of historical characters or places fairly familiar to-day. The text of Professor Skeat has been followed almost always and his notes very largely.
The number of tales selected is the result of the particular scope of this volume, which, as I have said, seeks only to present a representative part of the Canterbury Tales. The choice of the tales has been further limited by the expediency of selecting from among those which are neither too broad (as the Summoner’s), nor too prolix (as the Parson’s). To the ten tales chosen have been added those prologues, epilogues, and links which directly pertain to them in the Chaucerian design. The Squire’s Tale, though unfinished, has been included for the sake not only of its own
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