IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/nat/nature/v394y1998i6696d10.1038_29667.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The phylogeny of The Canterbury Tales

Author

Listed:
  • Adrian C. Barbrook

    (University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road)

  • Christopher J. Howe

    (University of Cambridge, Tennis Court Road)

  • Norman Blake

    (Humanities Research Institute, Arts Tower, University of Sheffield)

  • Peter Robinson

    (Gateway House, De Montfort University)

Abstract

Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales survives in about 80 different manuscript versions1. We have used the techniques of evolutionary biology to produce what is, in effect, a phylogenetic tree showing the relationships between 58 extant fifteenth-century manuscripts of “The Wife of Bath's Prologue” from The Canterbury Tales. We found that many of the manuscripts fall into separate groups sharing distinct ancestors.

Suggested Citation

  • Adrian C. Barbrook & Christopher J. Howe & Norman Blake & Peter Robinson, 1998. "The phylogeny of The Canterbury Tales," Nature, Nature, vol. 394(6696), pages 839-839, August.
    • Handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:394:y:1998:i:6696:d:10.1038_29667
    DOI: 10.1038/29667
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.nature.com/articles/29667
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1038/29667?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Duncan Learmouth & Robert. H. Layton & Jamshid. J. Tehrani, 2024. "The evolution of cultural diversity in Pama-Nyungan Australia," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 11(1), pages 1-16, December.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nat:nature:v:394:y:1998:i:6696:d:10.1038_29667. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nature.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.