Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition ed. by Paul G. Ruggiers

Abstract

REVIEWS "a modest increment in our understanding of the language spoken and written five hundred years ago." LISTER M. MATHESON University of Michigan PAUL G. RUGGIERS, ed. Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition. Norman, Oklahoma: Pilgrim Books, 1984. Pp. 301. $34.95. This collection of essays provides an epic accoun� of the giants who have wrestled with the monster Error for our reading of Chaucer's text. There is some irony in this endeavor since Chaucer himself seems to have been nearly as unconcerned as Shakespeare about the preservation of his writ­ ings. The caveat at the end of Troy/us (V.1793 ff) shows that he was aware of the problems of textual transmission; but unlike his friendJohn Gower, who at the end of his life seems to have devoted himself to setting his literary house in order by supervising the production of authoritative manuscripts of his poems, Chaucer evidently died without overseeing the production of a single authoritative manuscript of any of his works-in spite of the tantalizing reprimand to Adam, his own scrivener. The manuscripts thathave come down to us were all put together by friends and dealers, probably from sources nearly as diverse as those for the First Folio. Set against this lack of authorized texts is the fact that the readings of the good manuscripts and early printings are remarkably satisfactory. It is possible to wax righteous about ignorance and contamination, but when one begins to collate, it turns out that the variations are largely verbal and orthographic and dropped or added lines. The most troublesome problem is the order of the tales in the Canterbury collection. Again ironically, in the Hengwrt manuscript, whose text is the most satisfactory, the tale order is least satisfactory.Editors have tried to cope with the problems presented by thefifteenth-centurymanuscriptsand incunabulareditionsby choosing or inventing readings and tale orders according to their own tastes and judgments or by applying logical and mechanical editorial methods. It seems that on the whole the most satisfactory editions have been the most eclectic and judgmental (Speght, Tyrwhitt, Skeat, Robinson), and the least successful have been the most logical and mechanical (Urry, Root, Manly-Rickert). 239 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER The interesting and detailed essays in this collection onWilliam Caxton by Beverly Boyd,William Thynne byJames Blodgett,John Stow by Anne Hudson, Thomas Speght by Derek Pearsall,John Urry byWilliam Alder­ son, Thomas Tyrwhitt by B. A.Windeatt, Thomas Wright by Thomas Ross, F.J. Furnivall by Donald Baker,W.W. Skeat by A. S. G. Edwards, R. K. Root by Ralph Hanna, and F. N. Robinson by George Reinecke provide an exegesis of the growing sophistication of the reading of Chau­ cer. The improving apparatus receives the highest marks from the ex­ positors. Even the life, the annotations, and the glossary in Urry (none of them, of course, by Urry) are praised, and Tyrwhitt and Skeat provide the backbone for this body of material. But none of the texts escape censure. Through Tyrwhitt the method for establishing text was to use the previous edition as copy text (Tyrwhitt used Speght, not Urry), which meant that over the centuries a primers' vulgate developed. Beginning with Thynne- or for that matter with CX2 - editors compared the vulgate with the manuscripts and substituted readings that appeared to them preferable.Tyrwhitt was the last to employ this method. His text was the best until then produced because his editorial principle dictated that he never introduce an emendation that was not found in some manuscript, and because his extensive acquaintance with medieval and classical lan­ guages and literatures enabled him to make better selections than previous editors. Nevertheless, his edition was a subjectively improved version of the vulgate. ThomasWright was the first editor to recognize the fallacy of thismethod and to adopt the "best text" method that had been established by classical scholars- that is, using the best contemporary manuscript as the copy text. However, Wright chose an inferior manuscript of The Canterbury Tales (Harleian 7334) as his copy text, and his notes were so skimpy that his edition was not influential. The Athenaeum reviewofWright's edition called attention to the super­ iority of the Ellesmere...