The Canterbury Tales

as we read them today stand at the end of centuries of reading, editing, and interpretation.

But even when we dig as far back in the textual record as possible, it is not always clear what Chaucer wrote. That's because the Tales, unlike many of the poems you've read this term, exist in many manuscripts (about 80 in all). . .

. . . And they differ.

Differences in manuscripts occur for several reasons:

A change by the author -- an addition that didn't find its way to every copy, or a deletion that some copyists left in
	A mistake by the scribe -- misreading a word or letter, repeating a line or word, or leaving a line out when his eye skipped down the page (this error even has a name, "eyeskip")
A conscious change by the scribe using his memory, a different copy of his source, common sense -- or a particular point of view

. . .But do these things really matter?