[Glaslyn] Scribe Who Immortalized 'Canterbury Tales' Unmasked

[M TURNAGE]

This was in Reuters - July 20, 2004

Scribe Who Immortalized 'Canterbury Tales' Unmasked
By Andrew Cawthorne

LONDON (Reuters) - Six centuries after immortalizing British medieval author 
Geoffrey Chaucer's seminal work "The Canterbury Tales," an anonymous scribe 
has been unveiled as the long-haired son of an English landowner.

Adam Pinkhurst -- whose name was found by a U.S. handwriting expert -- wrote 
the 14th century manuscripts of Chaucer's pilgrims' stories, the most 
celebrated work of medieval English literature.

"I was amazed he had not been found before," Pinkhurst's discoverer 
Professor Linne Mooney, an American academic at Cambridge University, told 
Reuters on Tuesday. Mooney came across his signature in a London library 
during a study of medieval scribes, known as "scriveners." She immediately 
saw it was the same as the manuscripts. "It took about a second to 
recognize! I was so excited," she said. Cambridge University has endorsed 
the find as authentic.

The crucial signature identifying Pinkhurst came from an oath he signed soon 
after 1392 when formally joining the Scriveners' Company of London, an 
association of fellow scribes. It was around that time when he was working 
for Chaucer, making proper copies of the author's own versions of "The 
Canterbury Tales" probably made on poor-quality parchments.

"THOU WRITE MOR TREW"

Stories such as The Wife of Bath's Tale, the bawdy adventures of a 
sex-crazed, middle-aged woman, and The Knight's Tale, partial inspiration 
for a recent Hollywood film, are a classroom staple and masterful portrayals 
of medieval ways.

But prior to this week, all literary academia knew about the scribe came 
from a typically blunt Chaucer poem about him.

In it, he wishes scabs to appear under the "longe locks" of Adam scrivener 
if he continues to make transcription errors:

"But (unless) after my makinge thou write mor trew,

So oft a day I mot (must) thy werke renewe

It to correct, and eke to rubbe and scrape,

And all is thorowe thy necligence and rape (haste)."

That may have been over-harsh on Pinkhurst.

"We've never had any complaints about the accuracy of his copying of The 
Canterbury Tales," Mooney said. "Maybe he was young and after being 
chastised, he became a better scribe? Maybe Chaucer's handwriting was awful 
and he couldn't help making these mistakes because the scribbled pages were 
so bad?"

Pinkhurst was thought to have come from a farming area of Surrey, in 
southern England, and worked for Chaucer in the last two decades of the 14th 
century.

"Pinkhurst was thus a son of a small landowner within a relatively short 
distance of London, who went into the City to learn the trade and make his 
living as a writer of court letter," a Cambridge University statement said.

"We do not yet know how he came to the notice of the poet, but Chaucer was 
well connected in the city."

Pinkhurst's manuscripts can be found in the National Library of Wales and 
the Huntington Library in California.

Mooney, usually based at The University of Maine in the United States, has 
spent the last year at Cambridge working on computer-assisted identification 
of scribes' handwriting.

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