Re: homo(phones/graphs/nyms)

From: Peter T. Daniels (grammatim_at_worldnet.att.net)
Date: 11/18/04 

Date: Thu, 18 Nov 2004 17:42:46 GMT

Brian M. Scott wrote:
>
> On Thu, 18 Nov 2004 04:04:39 GMT, "Peter T. Daniels"
> <grammatim@worldnet.att.net> wrote in
> <news:419C1F58.6F4A@worldnet.att.net> in sci.lang:
>
> [...]
>
> > Do we have any Chaucer autographs?
>
> No certain ones, but there are two serious possibilities.
> One is a memorandum (in Anglo-Norman) of his appointment of
> a deputy controller for the wool quay, Port of London, in
> May of 1378. The other is the MS. of 'The Equatorie of the
> Planetis'.

So an edition of the latter would presumably mention whether his
orthography is self-consistent.

NB Some of the Canterbury Tales are told in dialect, so he may have had
to come up with ad hoc representations of speech varieties. But those
may well not have survived the ms. transmission process. 

-- 
Peter T. Daniels                       grammatim@att.net

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