Surprised by Sound: The Achievement of the Ellesmere Editor

Abstract

ABSTRACT Although many have criticized John M. Manly and Edith Rickert’s suggestion that the scribe of the Ellesmere manuscript of the Canterbury Tales “edited” the text he copied, Derek Pearsall embraced the view in many writings over many years. The very form of this critique remains instructive, however, and represents one of the least noticed accomplishments of Pearsall’s extraordinary career. In criticizing the “Ellesmere editor” iteratively, engaging again and again with metrical minutiae to show how, in decision after decision, this editor’s “intelligence” was flawed, Pearsall also showed that reading Chaucer always involves such engagement. It was fundamental to Pearsall’s understanding of Chaucer’s meter that its originality resided in a certain irregularity—that its vivacity often resulted in a deviation from the norms it otherwise established. But in criticizing the “Ellesmere editor” for misunderstanding this constitutive quality of a whole host of lines, Pearsall made clear just how every reader of Chaucer is always suspended in a variety of metrical possibilities. Even if the “Ellesmere editor” did not exist, Pearsall used the figure as a foil for a lengthy debate, to show us exactly how Chaucer’s meter worked.