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Evolutionary biology unlocks the secrets of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales

26 August 1998

Cambridge molecular biologists, working with manuscript scholars from the Canterbury Tales Project at Leicester's De Montfort University, have applied the latest techniques developed for analysing DNA sequences to literature for the very first time in order to discover which of the 88 surviving versions of The Canterbury Tales are closest to Chaucer's original.

In a paper to be published in Nature this week, Cambridge scientists Dr Christopher Howe and Dr Adrian Barbrook, and their colleagues Professor Norman Blake and Dr Peter Robinson from the Canterbury Tales Project, use techniques from evolutionary biology to conclude that a number of neglected manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales are close descendants of Chaucer's original version, while many manuscripts often used by scholars are actually more distant relatives.

Portrait of Geoffry Chaucer from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, GG.4.27(1), University Library Cambridge. Copyright: Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

As scribes copied early manuscripts such as Chaucer's Tales by hand, every mistake and variation they made was included in subsequent copies. Until now, scholars have relied on laborious manual systems for identifying the original version of the text. This analysis is similar to computerised techniques used by biologists to reconstruct evolutionary trees of different species from their DNA. Dr Howe explains:

"I was talking to friends about their work on tracing the origins of manuscripts when it struck me that I was doing exactly the same thing tracing the origins of new species."

Concentrating on the 'The Wife of Bath's Prologue', the team produced a computer generated family tree showing the relationships between 58 different fifteenth century versions of this Tale. The results show that a number of manuscripts mostly neglected by Chaucer scholars are in fact likely to be close descendants of the original. This and other work suggests that Chaucer's original text was not a single complete one, but a working draft containing alternative passages as well as Chaucer's own notes of sections to be deleted or added. Dr Robinson is delighted with the results:

"This work has given us a radically more efficient way of unlocking the early history of the text of The Canterbury Tales. It has already suggested vital new approaches to long-unsolved problems, which will bring us much closer to understanding what Chaucer left behind him at his death."

Illustration of the Wife of Bath from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, GG.4.27(1), University Library Cambridge. Copyright: Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

Dr Barbrook comments:

"The potential of the latest computerised analysis is considerable as it can handle so much data and be used for any text in any language."

PHOTOGRAPHS AVAILABLE Reproductions of illuminations from a fifteenth century version of Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, including a portrait of Chaucer and an illustration of the Wife of Bath are available from Jacinta Feltis on 01223-332300.