<P> While Chaucer clearly states the addressees of many of his poems, the intended audience of The Canterbury Tales is more difficult to determine . Chaucer was a courtier, leading some to believe that he was mainly a court poet who wrote exclusively for nobility . </P> <P> The Canterbury Tales is generally thought to have been incomplete at the end of Chaucer's life . In the General Prologue, some 30 pilgrims are introduced . According to the Prologue, Chaucer's intention was to write four stories from the perspective of each pilgrim, two each on the way to and from their ultimate destination, St. Thomas Becket's shrine (making for a total of about 120 stories). Although perhaps incomplete, The Canterbury Tales is revered as one of the most important works in English literature . It is also open to a wide range of interpretations . </P> <P> The question of whether The Canterbury Tales is a finished work has not been answered to date . There are 84 manuscripts and four incunable editions of the work, dating from the late medieval and early Renaissance periods, more than for any other vernacular literary text with the exception of The Prick of Conscience . This is taken as evidence of the Tales' popularity during the century after Chaucer's death . Fifty - five of these manuscripts are thought to have been originally complete, while 28 are so fragmentary that it is difficult to ascertain whether they were copied individually or as part of a set . The Tales vary in both minor and major ways from manuscript to manuscript; many of the minor variations are due to copyists' errors, while it is suggested that in other cases Chaucer both added to his work and revised it as it was being copied and possibly as it was being distributed . Determining the text of the work is complicated by the question of the narrator's voice which Chaucer made part of his literary structure . </P> <P> Even the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Tales are not Chaucer's originals . The very oldest is probably MS Peniarth 392 D (called "Hengwrt"), written by a scribe shortly after Chaucer's death . The most beautiful, on the other hand, is the Ellesmere Manuscript, a manuscript whose order and many editors have followed even down to the present day . The first version of The Canterbury Tales to be published in print was William Caxton's 1476 edition . Only 10 copies of this edition are known to exist, including one held by the British Library and one held by the Folger Shakespeare Library . </P>

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