Printing Pilgrimage

Introduction The 1721 John Urry edition of Geoffrey Chaucer’s works is a unique assemblage of this popular author’s literary achievements. This massive book includes “three tales…which were never before printed.” However, these tales are not to be found in this edition. The tales as mentioned in the title are “The coke’s tale of Gamelyn; The […]

John Urry The liberal variations that Urry has imposed upon this edition of Chaucer informs the modern reader of the audience to which Urry was directing his work. Urry has maintained his own notion of the archaic nature of Chaucer’s works. Since, Chaucer was a poet and writer just over 300 years before Urry was […]

  John Urry’s intent to create a fully composed edition of Chaucer’s works means that he was generous with his alterations. His spelling throughout the General Prologue is modernized, but not uniformly. Urry played with the flexible nature of Middle English in his altering the line metre as well as the spelling. Those familiar with […]

Urry takes it upon himself to alter the order of the tales, which effects how the tales interact with each other. The Prologues preceding the tales are thus altered slightly, as the conversation between pilgrims is altered to accommodate these changes in tale order. As stated above, two of the additional tales, as mentioned in […]