The Chronology of Lydgate's Chaucer References

Abstract

John Lydgate gives no direct evidence of having known or known of Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales until about 1421-22, when Lydgate wrote the prologue to his Siege of Thebes. In casting his narration as an additional new tale—or recasting it, if, as has been suggested, the prologue was written after the narration proper was finished—Lydgate coins the phrase "Canterbury talys" (18), metri causa perhaps, the only earlier reference being Chaucer's own slightly differing "the tales of Caunterbury," in the prose Retractions (1086). 1 Lydgate here makes particular reference to the tales of "the Cook þe millere and the Reve" (28), "the pardowner, beerdlees al his Chyn" (33), and "the frere" (35). 2 He alludes indefinitely to the variety of other tale-tellings:

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