Following the Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale (CYT), Chaucer’s Manciple’s Tale (MancT) constitutes Fragment IX and the penultimate story in the Canterbury Tales, preceding the didactic sermon of the Parson’s Tale. The dating of the tale is contested, as those critics who think it a poor tale consider it a product of Chaucer’s early years. For critics who see the tale as a more accomplished work or a parody of John Gower’s version of the story in the Confessio Amantis, it suggests a date post-1390; Baker argues for a date between 1388 and 1399 (11-13). Opening with a sordid interchange between the Manciple and the Cook in the Prologue, it is presumably a short retelling of Ovid’s Metamorphoses etiology of how the once white crow was turned black. Earlier scholarship has often dismissed the Manciple’s Tale as...

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Citation: Obermeier, Anita. "Manciple's Tale". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 21 December 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34224, accessed 09 June 2026.]