Talk:The Canterbury Tales (unsourced)

This is not the original Middle English text, at least not for all of the books. It's a manuscript text with a complex history, and hence we should probably be working from scans to achieve something really valuable there. I'm a trifle bit concerned that some of the modern English texts may be from copyrighted translations.--Prosfilaes (talk) 21:53, 13 November 2009 (UTC)

The formatting varies pretty wildly as well. Mglovesfun (talk) 14:40, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

There are Middle English text in editions: 1795, 1810 etc.--Philip J.1987qazwsx (talk) 20:17, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Those seem like the wrong time period; either we go for something early enough to be authentic (Caxton's Chaucer may not be best, but it's got its own importance) or late enough to get the best scholarship we can. Skeat's The Eight-text Edition of the Canterbury Tales is possibly about the best of the pre-1923 Tales, unless we want to trade scholarship for ease of reading; even then I suspect a 20th century Tales will be better than a 18th or early 19th century Tales.--Prosfilaes (talk) 04:47, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Just wanted to point out that scans of the great Ellesmere manuscript are online, and are large. It is written in a script that may be difficult to read, but anyone familiar with it should be able to make sense out of it. You probably know this already but thought I'd throw it out there. Magnoliasouth (talk) 23:26, 17 March 2022 (UTC)