Troilus and Criseyde: A Facsimile of Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS. 61 by M. B. Parkes, Elizabeth Salter

Abstract

REVIEWS One of the most refreshing features of Medieval Eloquence is the gen­ erosity with which its authors point the way to future work in a vineyard that seems still very lush.Faulhaber (p.85) notes "the absence of editions of key works" by the dictatores. Parkes (p.139) suggests that "the key to the understanding of medieval punctuation lies . . . in the concern of the scribe or corrector to elucidate the text transmitted to him according to the needs of his own audience....This hypothesis is offered tentatively to stimulate further, more detailed investigations of the practices of in­ dividual scribes and correctors in medieval manuscripts." Jackson J. Campbell (p.197) reports that "careful study of Old English literature from the point of view of classical rhetoric has little more than begun." Aldo Scaglione (p.269) concludes his essay by observing that "Dante's style, both Latin and vernacular, both in prose and verse, still remains largely unexplored...." And Robert 0.Payne (p.271) offers an explora­ tion of Chaucer's poetry that "may open some new possibilities for future work on Chaucer and the rhetoricians." This is, altogether, an excellent volume. It will enjoy good company with Professor Murphy's Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance and his edition of Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts. RrcHARD L. HoFFMAN Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University M. B. PARKES and ELIZABETH SALTER, introd. , Troilus and Criseyde: A Facsimile of Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS. 61. Cambri�ge: D.S.Brewer, Ltd., 1978. Pp.xxiv, 302. £65. Chaucerians can only welcome with enthusiasm and gratitude this handsome facsimile of one of the three pre-eminent mss of the Troilus and Criseyde. Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS. 61 is of interest not only because it provides the text (a gamma, according to Root's classification) upon which most editions, whether rightly or wrongly, have been based, and because it boasts one of the most handsome and famous frontispieces in medieval literature, but because it is a splendid example of late medieval book-making which is frozen, as it were, after most of the preparation had been completed but before the finishing, STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER except for the frontispiece, had been done. With the projected facsimiles of the Campsall (Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 817) and the St. John's College Cambridge MSS. of Troilus which are to be produced in the course of the Variorum Chaucer, scholars will be in an entirely new and highly advantageous position in their studies of the text of the great­ est of Chaucer's poems. D. S. Brewer, Ltd., and the Scalar Press are to be congratulated for their achievement by which a valuable ms is well photographed and the facsimile clearly produced, and the book provided for a scholarly audience at a reasonable price. Had Corpus Christi 6r been finished, it would probably have surpassed the Ellesmere in its overall beauty and lavishness (the frontispiece is, of course, far superior to any single piece of work in Ellesmere). As it was left, it presents a strange appearance, with its glowing frontispiece followed by colorlessness, except for the red incipits and explicits at book divisions. The two scribalhands are solidly professional and legible, their littera quadrata so precise a textura as to make even the hair-line strokes nearly always clearly visible in the photographs. The hands are in harmony, differing primarily in size, the second hand being smaller and rather more square than the first, in which the bulk of the poem is written. Legibility suffers, for readers of the facsimile, only occasionally when the scribe is writing on the hair side of the membrane and the fine strokes get lost in the rough surface. The unfinished state of the ms raises a number of interesting questions which are discussed by M. B. Parkes in his section of the introduction. Parkes' introduction is valuable, in no small part due to the fact that his has been among the most important work in recent paleographical an­ alysis and classification. Parkes and A. I. Doyle have, in recent years, been the most active scholars in investigating...