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'Canterbury Tales' purchase a milestone for Pitt library
Tuesday, April 17, 2001 By Marylynne Pitz, Post-Gazette Staff Writer
Correction/Clarification: (Published April 18, 2001) A 602-year-old manuscript of Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" acquired by the University of Pittsburgh contains an illustration that is probably the earliest image of the author -- not the only image, as asserted by a caption accompanying our photograph of the manuscript in Tuesday's editions.
Geoffrey Chaucer was a linguistic rebel. While 14th-century clerics preferred Latin and bureaucrats conversed in French, the narrative poet wrote his "Canterbury Tales" in Middle English, a language used by peasants who slopped hogs.
Sometime around Chaucer's death in 1400, an unknown scribe, using an example close to the author's original version, labored lovingly and decoratively to produce an illustrated, handwritten manuscript of "Canterbury Tales."
Now the University of Pittsburgh has acquired a copy of that 602-year-old manuscript, which is one of the most valuable literary texts in the world.
Regarded as the most complete and reliable edition, the medieval manuscript contains 23 portraits of pilgrims, including Chaucer, who tell stories on a journey from London to visit the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket in Canterbury.
"It's the most complete version of 'Canterbury Tales' and it's one of the earliest. ... It's the one that almost all modern editions are based on. It is the only original edition that has all of these portraits of all of the pilgrims," said Kellie Robertson, a Pitt English professor who teaches a course on Chaucer.
The original, which is owned by the Huntington Library in San Marino, Calif., is known as the Ellesmere Chaucer because its previous owner was Sir Thomas Egerton, who became Baron Ellesmere.
Pitt paid $16,000 for its copy, one of 250 that were produced. It is bound in oak and leather and printed in 15th-century type. The book features elaborately decorated borders, colorful portraits, large ruby letters, notations and even smudges.
The purchase marks a numerical milestone: Pitt now has more than 4 million volumes in its library system.
Rush Miller, director of Pitt's library system, said the acquisition is "an investment in the future of rare books" and a boon to historians, fine arts librarians and medievalists.
"This is not just a university library," Miller said in an interview in his Hillman Library office. "This is a research library. The role of a research library is to provide significant depth in its collections."
Pitt's copy is printed on acid-free paper and displayed in a locked glass case in "The Cup and Chaucer," a Hillman Library reading room that is similar to a Barnes & Noble cafe.
The book was published by Huntington Library Press in California and Yushodo Co. Ltd. of Tokyo, Japan.
The copy of the famous manuscript, which was a milestone in the history of books, helps Robertson and other English professors explain to students of Chaucer how the text evolved.
"In our age of digital media, it's very important to understand what pre-printing press culture looks like as we seem to be exiting the era of printing press culture," Robertson said.
One lesson learned from medieval manuscripts, Robertson said, is that there are different ways of circulating knowledge.
"Literary texts are not produced in a vacuum. They are the product of a certain material moment. What this text tells us is that wealthy people were interested in owning Chaucer. That would have been seen as a sign of prestige," Robertson said.
Books are written for different audiences, too.
"A hypertext version of Stephen King presupposes, let's say, a middle-class, computer-using, popular audience. It has its own demographic to it," Robertson said.
Production of the Ellesmere Chaucer manuscript, Robertson said, "shows us that for the first time, English is becoming a public language and thought serious enough for high, literary topics."
"Up until then, the predominant languages for serious discussion would have been Latin for theology or French for governmental and administrative affairs," she added.
During his 57 years, Chaucer was a civil servant who collected taxes for the city of London, served as a justice of the peace in Kent and was clerk of the king's works.
Chaucer knew that his stories would be read aloud to members of English courts and by the wealthy, Robertson said.
So Chaucer tells readers that if they don't like a tale, they can "turn the leaf and choose another tale. He clearly anticipates readers and listeners. This would have been read aloud to groups at court in the royal houses," Robertson said.
Charles Aston, director of special collections at Pitt, said that once all copies of the original manuscript are sold, the facsimiles will become valuable, too.
"It's such a true facsimile. Once they're gone, then it becomes an out-of-print rare book and the prices begin to accelerate," Aston said.
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