Letter from the Editor

Abstract

Letter From The Editor This fourth issue of Studies in the Age ofChaucer marks the end of my service as editor of the New Chaucer Society's yearbook. I shall be spending the upcoming academic year on sabbatical leave at the Univer­ sity ofQueensland in Brisbane, Australia, and at La Fondation Camargo in Cassis in the south of France, and the problems I apprehend in attempting to continue with the editorship under those circumstances have persuaded me that this would be an appropriate time to resign the position and relinquish direction of the journal to my successor. At this moment of leave-taking, I would like to express my appreciation to the large-and necessarily largely anonymous-group of colleagues and friends who in various ways have helped make the rather daunting enterprise of launching a new journal on the long-populated sea of Chaucer scholarship both a profitable and a pleasing experience. My thanks are due first of all to Professor Paul G. Ruggiers, the Executive Director, and to the initial Board of Trustees of the New Chaucer Society, for appointing me founder-editor of the society's jour­ nal. I hope that the contribution made to date by the journal in promoting Chaucer studies has been such as to justify their confidence in its potential usefulness. Making some allowance for difficulties inherent in initiating a new venture of this kind, I must admit myself generally well pleased with its achievements. The policy favoring publication of comparatively long articles with a significantly theoretical bias which draw connections between Chaucer's works and their cultural matrix has established Studies in the Age of Chaucer as an independently valuable vehicle for the publication of Chaucer research of this nature, and, as the existence of the journal becomes better known among members of the scholarly community, is generating a constantly increasing number of submissions. It was not my intention as editor to exclude from the journal articles which dealt with fourteenth- or fifteenth-century authors other than Chaucer, or in a general way with the concerns of the late medieval English literary scene. That such articles have not appeared reflects the fact that few, if any, have been submitted for consideration, 247 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER not that they have been systematically rejected. Studies in the Age of Chaucer, as its name implies, was conceived to embrace a wider range of interests than specifically and exclusively Chaucerian materials, and I would personally be gratified to see it becoming more catholic in its contents, but the new editor's ability to effect such a change, should he wish to do so, will depend on the willingness of future contributors to furnish him a wider spectrum of submissions from which to make his final selections. A special debt ofgratitude is owed to Professor John H. Fisher, who kindly undertook compilation of the annotated Chaucer bibliography, and to the numerous workers in this particular vineyard who volunteered assistance with the unglamorous task of writing annotations. They performed their assigned duties diligently and conscientiously. Their reward is most meaningfully to be found in the enthusiastic appreciation expressed by the Chaucer scholars who have profited from the results of their endeavors. I would also like to thank those colleagues who re­ sponded with such gracious cooperativeness to my invitations to review books, or who gave their time and special skills to evaluate manuscripts. Finally, it is my pleasure to acknowledge that without the contribution of editorial expertise and secretarial assistance from my wife Christine, Studies in theAge ofChaucer would undoubtedly have fallen far short ofthe professional standards of production on which she patiently but firmly insisted. It remains ro wish the new editor and the journal itselfevery success in the future. 248 Roy J. Pearcy University of Oklahoma ...