Canterbury Tales

Hitchcox, Kathryn Langford. "Alchemical discourse in "The Canterbury Tales" Signs of gnosis and transmutation." PhD thesis, Rice Univ.,. 

Spargo, J.W. "The Canon s Yeomans prologue and tale." In Sources and analogues of Chaucer s Canterbury Tales, eds. W.F. Bryan and G. Dempster, 658-698. New York London Humanities P Routledge Kegan Paul, 1958. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey. "The Canon s Yeoman s tale." In Canterbury tales, 465-490. Penguin, 1960. 

Chaucer, Geoffrey.The Canterbury tales a modem prose rendering. Translated by David Wright. London 1965 reprint,. ... 

Geoffrey Chaucer (1340-1400) in his Canterbury Tales written between 1386-90, provided a portrait of the society of his times. Within this collection of stories, the Canon Yeoman s tale, gives us an insight into some of the ways in which alchemy was viewed at that time. Chaucer obviously had more than a superficial undertsanding of alchemy"... 

Chaucer, Geoffrey.The General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales and The Canon s Yeoman s Prologue and Tale. Edited by A.V.C. Schmidt. Edited by A.V.C. Schmidt. New York Holmes Meier, 1976. 

Fisher, Sheila. "Chaucer s poetic alchemy a study of value and its transformation in The Canterbury tales." PhD thesis, Yale University, Department of English Language and Literature, 1982. 

Grennen, Joseph E. Saint Cecilia s "chemical wedding" the unity of the Canterbury Tales, Fragment VIII. J Engl Germ Philol 65, no. 3 (1966) 466-481. 

Raybin, David. " And pave it al of silver and of gold the humane artistry of the Canon s Yeoman s Tale." In Rebels and rivals the contestive spirit in The Canterbury Tales, ed. Susanna Greer Fein, 189-212. Kalamazoo (MI) Medieval Institute Publications, 1991. 

In one of the Canterbury Tales, Chaucer gave the name Placebo to a sycophantic character, and in another (The Parson s Tale) he wrote that Flatereres been the develes chapelleyns, that syngen evere placebo (flatterers are the Devil s chaplains, always singing Placebo).3... 

Chaucer, G. (1386). The Canterbury Tales (The Canon Yeoman s Tale). 

Cb] Cbaucer, Geoffrey, The Canterbury Tales, bttp //www.towson.edu/ -duncan/cbaucer/duallangS.btm. 

Not only with authorities who were concerned with the protection of the stability of state coinage and currency from the feared debasement by false gold, but with the cultivated classes quite generally the alchemists were held in evil repute. Dante (about 1300) in his Divina Corn-media pictures them in the tortures of the deepest regions of the Inferno Petrarch (in 1366) satirizes their deceptions and Chaucer in his Canterbury Tales (about 1388) voices the low estimate in which the alchemists were held. 

The pilgrims whose journey is followed in Geoffrey Chaucer s masterpiece The Canterbury Tales represent... 

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, trans. David Wright (Oxford Oxford University Press, 1985), 427-50, at 430. 

Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales A Verse Translation, trans. 

It appeared, for example, in the "Canon s Yeoman s Tale" in Chaucer s Canterbury Tales. 

Alchemy appears in the Canterbury Tales in the Canon sYeoman s Tale , in which the yeoman relates the story of his master s futile quest for transmutation and subsequent swindling of a fellow priest. Given the detail of the story, it seems probable that Chaucer himself had studied alchemy, and may have even been a practitioner. His fi-iend John Gower may have also been involved... 

Chaucer, Geoffrey. The Canterbury Tales in Great Books of the Western World. Volume 22. Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago. 1952. Chekhov, Anton. The Three Sisters. Translated by Tyrone Guthrie and Leonid Kipnis. Bard Books, New York. 1965. 

Chaucer, G. 1957, The Canon s Yeoman s Prologue and Tale , in N. Coghill (ed.), Chaucer The Canterbury Tales, Penguin, Harmondsworth. 

Now, back to The Canterbury Tales. The CYT Prologue sets the scene. The canon, a clergyman who, in this tale, is also an alchemist, is accompanied by his yeoman or assistant as they encounter a group of travelers on the road. The canon is dismissed by the group s host and the ash-darkened, poverty-stricken, indentured yeoman, who has been badly used by his master, tells a bitter and ironic tale of alchemical chicanery. The canon appears to be part puffer (earnest but misguided seeker of The Stone) and part charlatan. 

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