Editing The Canterbury Tales (section)

===Order===
{{Main|Order of The Canterbury Tales|List of The Canterbury Tales characters}}
There is no consensus as to whether a complete version of the ''Tales'' exists, and also no consensus regarding Chaucer's intended order of the stories.<ref name = seven>Cooper, 7</ref><ref>Pearsall, 14–15.</ref>

Textual and manuscript clues have been adduced to support the two most popular modern methods of ordering the tales. Some scholarly editions divide the ''Tales'' into ten "Fragments". The tales that make up a Fragment are closely related and contain internal indications of their order of presentation, usually with one character speaking to and then stepping aside for another character. However, between Fragments, the connection is less obvious. Consequently, there are several possible orders; the one most frequently seen in modern editions follows the numbering of the Fragments (ultimately based on the Ellesmere order).<ref name = seven/> Victorians frequently used the nine "Groups", which was the order used by [[Walter William Skeat]] whose edition ''Chaucer: Complete Works'' was used by Oxford University Press for most of the twentieth century, but this order is currently seldom followed.<ref name = seven/>{{why|date=May 2024}}

{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Fragment
! Group
! class="unsortable" | Tales
|-
| <span style="display:none">01</span>Fragment I || A
|
[[General Prologue]]
<br> [[The Knight's Tale]]
<br> [[The Miller's Tale]]
<br> [[The Reeve's Tale]]
<br> [[The Cook's Tale]]
|-
| <span style="display:none">02</span>Fragment II || B<sup>1</sup>
|[[The Man of Law's Tale]]
|-
| <span style="display:none">03</span>Fragment III || D
|[[The Wife of Bath's Tale]]<br>[[The Friar's Tale]]<br>[[The Summoner's Tale]]
|-
| <span style="display:none">04</span>Fragment IV || E
|[[The Clerk's Tale]]<br>[[The Merchant's Tale]]
|-
| <span style="display:none">05</span>Fragment V || F
|[[The Squire's Tale]]<br>[[The Franklin's Tale]]
|-
| <span style="display:none">06</span>Fragment VI || C
|[[The Physician's Tale]]<br>[[The Pardoner's Tale]]
|-
| <span style="display:none">07</span>Fragment VII || B<sup>2</sup>
|[[The Shipman's Tale]]<br>[[The Prioress's Tale]]<br>[[Sir Thopas]] Tale<br>[[The Tale of Melibee]]<br>[[The Monk's Tale]]<br>[[The Nun's Priest's Tale]]
|-
| <span style="display:none">08</span>Fragment VIII || G
|[[The Second Nun's Tale]]<br>[[The Canon's Yeoman's Tale]]
|-
| <span style="display:none">09</span>Fragment IX || H
|[[The Manciple's Tale]]
|-
| <span style="display:none">10</span>Fragment X || I
|[[The Parson's Tale]]
|}

An alternative ordering (seen in the early 15th-century manuscript [[Harley MS. 7334]]) places Fragment VIII before VI. Fragments I and II almost always follow each other, just as VI and VII, IX and X do in the oldest manuscripts. Fragments IV and V, by contrast, vary in location from manuscript to manuscript.