Diplomatic Edition Research Articles

Towards a Digital Edition of the Medieval High German Transmission of the 'Vierde Partie' of the 'Spiegel Historiael': Poster Dh Ss Leuven 2013

This poster discusses the possibilities of a digital edition of the medieval transmission of the High German prose translation of the Middle Dutch ‘Vierde Partie’ of the Spiegel Historiael. Main objective of this edition project is to provide international research with a diplomatic edition of the medieval High German sources that contain the ‘Vierde Partie’ encoded in TEI-conformant XML. The web interface of the edition will offer the text of each source separately and allow to show variant readings. This material will be available Open Access as downloads (PDF, XML) to stimulate further research. Additional desirable features like facsimiles, a reading text, or a translation, are discussed under the aspect of added value vs. resources.

An Early Tibetan Commentary on Atiśa’s Satyadvayāvatāra: Diplomatic Edition with Introduction and Notes

An earlier article (Apple, J Indian Philos 41(3): 263–329, 2013) identified for the first time a brief Tibetan commentary to Atiśa Dīpaṃkaraśrījnāna’s (982–1054 c.e.) well-known “Entry to the Two Realities” (Satyadvayāvatāra) and provided an annotated translation of the work. This article provides an annotated diplomatic edition of the Tibetan commentary. The manuscript of the commentary is a facsimile reprint located in the recently published “Collected Works of the Bka’-gdams-pas” (bka’ gdams gsung ’bum). The early Tibetan commentary to Atiśa’s Satyadvayāvatāra provides direct textual evidence of the beginnings of scholasticism in Tibet and offers an early perspective on the formative developments in the intellectual history of Tibetan Madhyamaka.

A rationale of digital documentary editions

Publishing the diplomatic edition of a document on the web instead of in print implies a series of methodological and practical changes in the nature of the published text and in the operations to be performed by the editors. For print the choice of which features to include in the transcription is limited largely by the limits of the publishing technology. In contrast, the digital medium has proved to be much more permissive and so editors need new scholarly guidelines to establish where to stop . This article discusses a list of criteria and parameters for choosing which features to include in transcriptions. It also sketches the theoretical implications which result from the change of medium and technology. It is argued that the very definition of diplomatic edition needs to be substantially revised if the edition is published on the web. Even more importantly, the discussion argues for the existence of a new editorial object which is generated by the changed conditions: a new publication form called the digital documentary edition which is composed of the source, the outputs and the tools able to produce and display them.

“The Tale of Gamelyn” of the Canterbury Tales: An Annotated Edition (review)

Reviewed by: “The Tale of Gamelyn” of the Canterbury Tales: An Annotated Edition A. S. G. Edwards Nila Vázquez, ed. “The Tale of Gamelyn” of the Canterbury Tales: An Annotated Edition. Lewiston, N. Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, 2009. Pp. 466. $175.30. The Middle English romance of Gamelyn (902 lines in couplets in its fullest form) survives in twenty-seven manuscripts, far more than for any other such romance. Its survival seems less an indication of its popularity than of the company it keeps: it appears only in manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales, generally as a continuation of The Cook's Tale. No [End Page 377] critical edition has ever been published based on the evidence of all the manuscripts. Nila Vázquez's edition does not fill this gap. It contains two main elements. There is what is termed a “Critical Edition” of Gamelyn (294– 332), together with an “Apparatus Criticus” (332–79). This is preceded by a series of what are termed “diplomatic editions” of ten manuscripts. These are the basis for what is termed a “Synoptic Edition,” which, she explains, “is conformed by [sic] the different diplomatic editions of the manuscripts in which the text appears” (37). Vázquez goes on to describe the reasons for the choice of these manuscripts: The manuscripts to be collated against the base text [Corpus] were selected taking into account a combination of significant criteria. On the one hand, their nature as old (i.e. closer to Chaucer's lifetime) and valuable manuscripts. On the other hand, their representativeness within the general classification in the textual tradition of the Canterbury Tales. . . . Bearing all these criteria in mind, a first group of manuscripts, comprising [Harley 7334, Lansdowne 851 and Petworth] was selected. . . . A second group of manuscripts includes [CUL Mm.II.5, Lichfield Cathedral and BL Royal 18.C.II], which together with [Petworth], are some of the best representatives of type d. . . . Thirdly, [Fitzwilliam McClean 181] and [sic] exemplify type d with some variations. Finally [Christ Church 152] was selected on account of its classification as another worthy manuscript and its close relation with the oldest exemplars. (36) Several aspects of these statements of method may be unclear to many students of Middle English manuscripts. What is a “synoptic edition”? Does it differ from a critical edition? Such questions do not receive answers. What is clear is that the grounds on which the majority of surviving manuscripts of Gamelyn are ignored are wholly unsound. The assumption that only “old” manuscripts should be of concern to the editor is wholly without justification. Age does not provide a criterion for ignoring the majority of the manuscripts of Gamelyn: there is no reason why later manuscripts should not preserve forms of the text, or particular readings, that need to be considered by the editor. And to choose to select manuscripts for scrutiny on criteria that may have no bearing on the text of Gamelyn (“some of the best representatives of type d” of the Canterbury Tales and “another ‘worthy’ manuscript”) is simply nonsensical. The only responsible way the textual tradition for Gamelyn [End Page 378] can be established is through collation of all manuscripts and analysis of the evidence from such a collation. These fundamental confusions about method extend into the form of this edition. Why are ten “diplomatic” transcripts of manuscripts actually presented in this volume? Especially since Vázquez has no clear understanding of what a diplomatic transcript is: in hers, the expansion of contractions is silent; and at times (e.g., 262, line 547; 266, line 711), they are not expanded at all; seemingly otiose terminal flourishes are, however, regularly recorded. What is gained by providing “diplomatic” transcriptions of a number of manuscripts rather than collating all of them? No answer presents itself to this question. But what comparison of these transcripts with the “Apparatus Criticus” reveals is that, far from actually recording “all the details regarding different manuscript occurrences” (294), there are a number of substantive readings occurring in the “diplomatic transcripts” that do not appear in this “apparatus.” Space permits only examples from Lansdowne 851 (L) and Harley 7334 (H), lines 1–20; Vázquez's text provides...

Claude Pichois, Poetry, and the Art of Comparative Literature

The specificity of Claude Pichois as a comparative critic appears to originate in a passion to which he remained faithful throughout his life: a passion for poetry. His freedom as a critic, and his productivity, are rooted in his attachment to Baudelaire’s poetry – a choice which dates back to his student years. He received his training in the study of Baudelaire from Jacques Crepet, who edited Baudelaire’s works, and from Georges Blin, a professor at the College de France. Throughout his career Claude Pichois (Claude for short in the following) provided critical editions of Baudelaire’s works, most notably a fourvolume edition in the prestigious Bibliotheque de la Pleiade published by Gallimard (Œuvres completes/Complete Works, 1975–1976, and Correspondance/Correspondence, 1973)1 and, in 2005, a diplomatic edition of Les Fleurs du Mal published by Champion shortly after Claude had passed away.2 Claude’s choice of Baudelaire required both lucidity and courage. At that time, the author of Les Fleurs du Mal was still stigmatized in France as an ‘immoral’ writer: the juridical rehabilitation of Baudelaire’s work only took place amazingly late in 1949. Claude’s recognition of Baudelaire as an emblematic figure in literature was by no means

A LATIN-IRISH TEXT ON FASTING IN THE <i>LEABHAR BREAC</i>

A LATIN-IRISH TEXT ON FASTING IN THE <i>LEABHAR BREAC</i>

Fragment eines altwestnordischen Arzneibuches aus dem 13. Jahrhundert

Only few medicine books in Norron language have survived till today. Concerning Norway and Iceland, just seven fragments of manuscripts are known to us. The oldest manuscript has been dated at about the 13 th century, the youngest, which was found in Ireland, at about the time between 1500 and 1550. In medieval times, genuine Scandinavian medical literature did not exist. All seven manuscripts are connected with Continental European sources that are derived from monastic medicine and classical antiquity. The names of Galen, Hippocrates of Kos and Dioscorides are mentioned in some of the texts. Obviously, Norway and Iceland were the recipients of an intensive knowledge transfer from the South via Denmark to the North. Henrik Harpestrœng's book of herbs and the well-known 'Macer floridus' (11 th century) are the main sources of the Norron manuscripts that are highly related to each other. The text and its variations was made use of during a long period of time and it was widely distributed. A diplomatic edition of the oldest fragment, manuscript AM 655 XXX, and a translation into modern German are the core of the article.

Die Nibelungen zogen nach Dänemark: Eine Neuinterpretation der Erzählung 'Von Hven zwischen Seeland und Schonen' by Peter Hvilshøj Andersen

914 Reviews I7. Jahrhundert' by Lieven Rens, published inTheatrumEuropaeum (Munich: Fink, I982), which may have been consulted by one or other of theauthors of thiswelcome new volume spanning a cultural period extending from I400 to I625. Surprisingly, however, it lacks the comprehensive bibliography one expects in awide-ranging work of thiskind. All thirteencontributors have interestingpoints to make, but thearea inwhich they areworking is a specialized one which isunlikely tohave much immediate appeal out side Dutch Studies. However, at the centre of the collection, Peter Happe, a British Ben Jonson specialist, opens up awider view in 'Pyramus and Thisbe: Rhetoricians and Shakespeare', a contribution which deserves the attention of a broader reader ship.Oddly enough, only tenof his fellow contributors arementioned in thebrief but interesting 'Notes on Contributors'. Carla Dauven-Van Knippenberg, theauthor of a particularly focused examination of 'borderline texts', i.e. texts written on the linguis ticborder between theCologne/Lower Rhine area,Maastricht, and theNetherlands, is leftout and so, too, isFemke Kramer, whose contribution, 'Producing Late Medi eval Dutch Plays Today', is an engagingly illustrated account of the efforts made by students and teachers ofDutch literature tobring a selection of such plays to lifeby 'recontextualizing' them and performing them at drama festivals sometimes farbe yond theirareas of origin. The omission of information about these authors reinforces the impression that this potentially valuable book could have done with some close final copy-editing; signs of haste are also evident in the informative introduction by Elsa Strietman and Peter Happ6, which includes a 'timeline' or chronology starting in 1270 and ending appropriately with thePeace ofMiinster in I648. As Gary K. Waite shows in his thoughtful contribution entitled 'Rhetoricians and Religious Compro mise during the Early Reformation', the rederijkers' rough-hewn plays contributed significantly to the sixteenth-century cultural and social evolution of theNetherlands, but by the I630s theywere already being replaced by the loftierrhetoric ofHolland's 'golden age'. UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL PETER SKRINE Die Nibelungen zogen nach Ddnemark: Eine Neuinterpretation der Erzahlung 'Von Hven zwischen Seeland und Schonen'. By PETER HvILSH0J ANDERSEN. (Bre mer Beitriige zur Literatur- und Ideengeschichte, 48) Bern: Peter Lang. 2007. 443 pp. E68.50. ISBN 978-3-631-56II8-8. Unravelling the tangled narrative strands of theNibelungen tradition has long been a favourite sport of scholars. This is a remarkable book, a brave and enthusiastic attempt to rekindle interest in and rehabilitate the so-called Hven Chronicle, a short Danish prose narrative dating from I603, which as long ago as I889Wolfgang Golther dismissed as 'eindanisches gelehrtesMachwerk'. This remarkhas coloured reception of it ever since-in so far as ithas received any scholarly attention at all (Andersen gives a fullaccount of previous research inChapter 3). In sharp contrast toGolther's opinion stands Andersen's assessment of itas an 'auBerst kunstvolle Erzihlung' and a 'hervorragende literarische Leistung' (p. 22). In i892 Otto Jiriczek published a diplomatic edition of it from the better of the twomanuscripts, MS K 23 40 in the Royal Library at Stockholm, but his introduction, focusing exclusively on palaeo graphical and linguistic features,was so utterly uninformative thatnot a single word was devoted to the content of the text.The text,headed 'On Hven between Seeland and Schonen' in theStockholm manuscript, is, in fact,not a chronicle at all but part of the richGerman-Scandinavian legacy ofNibelungen material. It sets the familiar story of Siegfried, Hagen, and Kriemhild on the once Danish, now Swedish islet of MLR, I03.3, 2oo8 9I5 Ven (formerlyHven) in theBaltic. The author was theCopenhagen pastor, professor, and (from i602) royal historiographer Jon Jakobsen (before I559-I 6o8), who called himself Venusin(us) afterhis birthplace, Ven itself,and inplayfully learned allusion to theRoman poet Horace, who was born atVenusia (now Venosa) inApulia. In a wide-ranging discussion that comprehensively analyses theHven Chronicle's place in the broader Nibelungen tradition,Andersen shows thatVenusin, who studied at Rostock and tookhisMA at Wittenberg in I58o, adapted theNibelungen storyusing material from theDanish Hundredvisebogen, compiled by Anders Sorensen Vedel (I542-I6I6), the Swedish Didrikskrdnikan, German Nibelungen poems such as the Rosengarten zu Worms and theLied vonHurnen Seyfrid, and various lesser sources such as the story ofMelusina in Sigmund Feyerabend's Buch der Liebe (I587). He moulded it...

Some accretions to genealogical material in a manuscript boxed with the Book of Leinster

It is well known that several pages of manuscript boxed with the Book of Leinster (Trinity College, Dublin, MS 1339 [H. 2. 18]; hereafter LL) do not belong to the Book proper, but were left unbound by Edward Lhuyd and later placed with LL in Trinity College Library merely on the grounds of their large size. Despite the fact that these pages have only an accidental association with the rest of MS 1339, they were reproduced in the lithographic facsimile of LL, edited by Robert Atkinson, where they make up sections Q, R and S (pp. 377–96, 397–408 and 409–10 respectively). In contrast to Atkinson, Anne O'Sullivan, editor of the final volume of the diplomatic edition of LL undertaken by the Dublin Institute of Advanced Studies, took a strict view of what constituted the ‘Book of Leinster’, and did not include the items which have no original connection to the main manuscript.

Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks (review)

Reviewed by: Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks Ciano Aydin and Herman Siemens Rüdiger Bittner (Ed.). Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks. Trans. Kate Sturge . ( Cambridge Texts in the History of Philosophy.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. 286 pp. ISBN 0-521-80405-1 (cloth), 0-521-00887-5 (paperback). £37,50 (cloth), £13,95 (paperback); $39.50 (cloth), $19.99 (paperback). Without question, the chief obstacle for English-language Nietzsche researchers is the absence of a reliable translation of the Nachlass corpus and the late writings in particular. Since 1967, English-only readers have been reliant on Kaufmann's translation and edition of The Will to Power, itself based on the 1906/1911 "Taschen" edition published by Naumann. As Kaufmann himself recognizes, this edition was arranged systematically, under the false and untenable perspective of it being Nietzsche's philosophical "Hauptwerk," and with massive and violent editorial intervention by Nietzsche's sister and his friend Peter Gast. Rather bizarrely, Kaufmann justifies his use of the false systematic arrangement on practical grounds (WP xv), as if we could just overlook the misleading relations it establishes between the texts. He also believes that with the help of the notes, added by the editor Otto Weiss to the 1911 edition, he can correct editorial distortions. But as Montinari puts it: "Die Anmerkungen widerlegen den Text" (KSA 14: 10); nor are the notes by any means complete (see KSA 14: 392 f.). Add to this Kaufmann's inclination toward tendentious, strongly interpretative translations, and it is clear that there is a need for a new translation of the late Nachlass. In Nietzsche: Writings from the Late Notebooks, the editor Rüdiger Bittner does not, however, improve on Kaufmann's reliance on an unreliable edition by supplying a good translation of the best available edition, namely, that in the Colli-Montinari edition. Instead, Bittner supplies us with another selection drawn from KGW (VII and) VIII/KSA (11,) 12, and 13.1 If the long and twisted editorial [End Page 94] history of the notebooks teaches us anything, it is the need for extreme caution in selecting the material.2 Indeed, one could even go so far as to say: Do not select at all. Even the Colli-Montinari edition has been subject to critical scrutiny for its selection principles. Despite their scrupulous efforts at carefully controlling omissions, there are sufficient questions to warrant a new diplomatic edition of the notebooks that are the basis for the selections in KGW VII-3, VII-4.2, and VIII (KSA 11: 423 ff., 12, 13).3 The ongoing KGW Abteilung IX offers differentiated transcriptions of the actual manuscripts (reproduced in facsimile on a CD-ROM) without any selections whatsoever.4 While it is worthwhile checking specific notes in the critical edition against the transcriptions in KGW IX and especially against the corrections (Berichtigungen) listed in its Nachbericht sections, the critical edition remains a pretty reliable and far more practical basis for research. Still, the lesson is: select with extreme caution, if select you must. The texts themselves are well translated and a welcome, if only partial, complement to Kaufmann's translations in The Will to Power.5 But as we will try to indicate below, the edition is fundamentally flawed because Bittner offers a purely personal selection based on dubious claims about what is and what is not philosophically relevant. Worst of all, his selection leaves out numerous texts that would problematize the interpretation of the late notes he offers in the introduction. The result is that we get a weak interpretation of Nietzsche's late thought, supported by a misleading selection of the notes. The problem for those reliant on English translations is compounded by delays in the Stanford University Press translation of the KSA, the project titled The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche.6 This means that Bittner's volume is not just one selection from the late Nachlass among others that can be compared against the best available critical edition. Until the publication of the Stanford translations of KSA 11, 12, and 13, currently projected for 2013, Bittner's selection could well become the edition through which the next generation of anglophone readers first...

Baudelaire's World

This is an evocation of Baudelaire's world for the whole of the English-speaking world. It is a tour de force, in that it leaves no area untouched — the poetry, the prose, the prose poetry, the criticism of art and literature, the correspondence, the unfinished projects — and yet it maintains a lightness of touch, which conceals the lifetime of erudition underpinning it. Claude Pichois is quoted as remarking that, with the published work of Baudelaire, we see only the tip of the iceberg; indeed no-one was better placed than he to make such an observation, given the Herculean task which he completed, just before his death, in relation to the diplomatic edition of Les Fleurs du mal. The depth and shifting complexity of the area beneath the Baudelairean surface are brought out so effectively by Lloyd because, eschewing more obvious potential presentations in terms of chronology, theme or form, she has opted instead for a kaleidoscopic pattern, inspired by that of Baudelaire himself in Le Spleen de Paris. This is coupled with close readings of some central poems, notably ‘Le Cygne’, recurring in different and mutually enriching contexts. Such an approach yields handsome dividends, especially in the chapter on ‘The Art of Transposition’, where the boundaries between critical and creative writing are rejected, the subtleties of light effects in painters' skies are translated into prose and sculpture is studied for its effects of anamorphosis — all features which herald the twentieth century. Throughout the different ‘worlds’ evoked in this lucid and beautifully written book — the worlds of childhood, women, friends, dreams, city life — the emphasis is twofold: bringing out the importance of creative participation on the part of the reader and highlighting the combination of the eternal and the contingent in Baudelaire's modernism.

A New Early Source of Basque: The Willughby Glossary of 1664

AbstractWe present a diplomatic edition of a seventeenth‐century English manuscript containing previously unpublished lexical material in Bizkaian Basque. We offer a linguistic analysis of this, and explain the significance of the manuscript and its content in the history of linguistics and Basque scholarship.

Latin Prayers Added into the Margins of the Prayerbook British Library, Royal 2.A.XX at the Beginnings of the Monastic Reform in Worcester

This edition of 35 Latin prayers added in the tenth century to the margins of an early ninth-century prayer book in Worcester, British Library, Royal 2.A.XX, provides a diplomatic edition and a critical edition of each, thorough research of other sources and variants, analysis of the hands, and consideration of the historical context. These prayers were copied, mostly by a non-professional who separately added Old English glosses, in the third quarter of the tenth century for use in the regular life of a Benedictine monastery. Two of the sources having the most prayers in common with this group are associated with Oswald's reform.

A Bibliographical Introduction of Shingen's Ojo uragaki _??__??__??__??_ in the Kanazawa-bunko Museum

The text of the Ojo uragaki _??__??__??__??_ is owned by the Kanagawa Prefectural Kanazawa-bunko Museum. This is a fragmentary version consisting of 14 sheets and lacking the introductory and final parts. “Ojo uragaki _??__??__??__??_” apparently was a provisional title. The formal title of the work is unknown. However, I compared it with the Ojo yoshu uragaki _??__??__??__??__??__??_ version in the Shimpuku-temple _??__??__??_, and my conclusion is that they are almost identical texts and that the original title was “Ojo yoshu uragaki _??__??__??__??__??__??_”.The Ojo yoshu uragaki _??__??__??__??__??__??_ is an an annotation of the Ojo yoshu _??__??__??__??_ by Shingen _??__??_ (1064-1136). The work actually represents an investigation into the textual sources of the Ojo yoshu _??__??__??__??_.I compared the Kanazawa-bunko version of the Ojo yoshu uragaki with the Shimpuku-ji version, and the characteristics of the former became clear: 1) Judging from the number of its Chinese characters, the Kanazawa-bunko version represents a third of the Shimpuku-ji text. 2) The sheets in the Kanazawa-bunko version are not arranged in the correct order. 3) The missing introductory part amounts to about 3 sheets.The Ojo yoshu uragaki _??__??__??__??__??__??_ has been so far known only in its Shimpuku-ji version. The discovery of the Kanazawa-bunko version makes it possible to collate the two texts and opens the way for a critical edition. I hope that my diplomatic edition and study will contribute to this.

Monkey Business--or What is an Edition?

Digital editions make it possible to create a collection of all existing copies of a text including digital facsimiles. Is this a problem if it means that there will be editions that are in fact collections of full variant texts with no selected or edited reading text? This paper argues that both archival editions with digital facsimiles and encoded source texts (digital diplomatic editions) and digital critical texts can and must exist side by side. It is also suggested that from high quality diplomatically encoded source texts it is possible to automatically extract texts that either directly or with some further encoding/editing can function as a base text for editions of different types and which build on different editorial philosophies. The editions produced at the Wittgenstein Archives in Bergen and in the project Henrik Ibsen’s Writings in Oslo are used as examples of projects supporting the author’s arguments.

Nu slaet u zeere doer Cristus eere!

This article contains the first edition of three recently discovered unique Middle Dutch texts of the flagellants' ritual which took place in 1349. These are a liturgy, a song in praise of the Virgin Mary and a sermon, handed down on a scroll dating from the middle of the fourteenth century. It is likely that this scroll was carried along in flagellants' processions and was used by the precentor. The texts are published in a critical edition, all three are supplied with an introduction, an explanation of words and a commentary. The appendixes contain the diplomatic editions of the three texts, together with corresponding passages from German, French and Dutch parallel texts.

The Versioning Machine

This article describes the background and architecture of The Versioning Machine, a software tool designed to display and compare multiple versions of texts. The display environment provides for features traditionally found in codex-based critical editions, such as annotation and introductory material. It also takes advantage of opportunities afforded by electronic publishing, such as providing a frame to compare diplomatic versions of witnesses side by side, allowing for manipulatable images of the witness to be viewed alongside the diplomatic edition, and providing users with an enhanced typology of notes.

Troubadour Manuscripts and the Medium of Transmission: Remarks on Compilatio , by Elizabeth W. Poe

TROUBADOUR MANUSCRIPTS AND THE MEDIUM OF TRANSMISSION: REMARKS ON COMPILATIO, BY ELIZABETH W. POE I In order to understand a manuscript we surely must read it; in order to understand a body of literature transmitted to us in manuscripts , we surely must read the manuscripts that contain it. The body of poetry by the troubadours is transmitted through manuscripts, 95 major ones and a number of fragments that fluctuates with sporadic losses and gains. If these and all the other medieval Occitan literary manuscripts, excluding archival documents, could be placed end to end on library shelves, they would fill about thirty feet.1 How then is it imaginable that in about two centuries of serious study of the troubadours , we have not really read the troubadour manuscripts—read each one, I mean, with an intention to understand everything we can about it as an elaborate, multifaceted artifact? I can think of two reasons. For one, our interest has focused not on the transmission but on the poetry transmitted. This I consider forgivable oreven understandable, and perhaps even right, so I am not sure that our efforts have been completely wrong-headed. We are drawn to the troubadours, or at least I am, because of their brilliant, witty, sexy, poignant, funny, pretty, melodious songs, and it is because ofthis attraction that we realize, perhaps tardily, that we need to look carefully at their manuscripts. But there is more. Only a real understanding ofthe manuscripts will lead back to understanding the poetry and its development from the beginning onward, including the advent ofthe extant manuscripts around 1250. Transmission is a part of the history ofthis art, as well as our only means ofaccess to it. To understand the poetry and the evolving culture that sustained it, we must understand transmission and the manuscripts. A second reason is that reading the manuscripts is hard. If for no other reason, it would be hard just because of the difficulty of ON COMPILATIO physical access. Not even Italian or French scholars have access to troubadour manuscripts as easy as their access to printed books about them, and physical access in itself is not enough to allow real understanding of a manuscript without repeated visits over an extended time. Furthermore, direct reading of the manuscript as an artifact demands skills in codicology, paleography, and other specialties. And the language, too, is hard. To read a manuscript at first hand requires the skills of a team of specialists who could have mediated between the reader and the manuscript, facilitating the task ofreading it—but at the risk ofdistancing the manuscript from the reader and so defeating the purpose ofthe reading. Far better, despite all our inadequacies, to read the manuscripts ourselves. II In her book Compilado (2000a), Elizabeth Poe has given us what is to my knowledge the most circumstantial, detailed, and penetrating reading we yet have of any troubadour manuscript. She has chosen manuscript //, compiled between Treviso and Padua in northern Italy in the last quarter ofthe thirteenth century, and held today by the Biblioteca Vaticana under the shelf number Latin 3207. She builds on the foundation laid by Maria Careri ( 1990), who studied manuscript //in terms ofcodicology and paleography. (Careri in turn built on the foundation laid by LouisGauchat and Heinrich Kehrli, who published a diplomatic edition ofmanuscript Hin 1891 .) Poe adds to Careri's reading ofthe physical artifact a reading ofits literary content and historical development. She engages in dialogue with Gustav Gröber, whose pioneering analysis ofthe relations among the major chansonniers was published in 1877. Although she considers herself a "latter-day student " ofGröber, she differs from him on the fundamental point ofher study. Gröber dismissed the third part of manuscript //. which he called H3 (folios 43-61), as lacking order, oras Poe paraphrases him, as "hopelessly disorganized." 2 Poe dedicates her book to showing instead that H3 "is in fact acoherent compilation drawn from a number ofsmaller collections, each having a discernible character ofits own" (2000a: 14). WILLIAM D. PADEN In each ofherchapters Poe focuses on a distinct textual component of manuscript H. In the first three chapters she works on the coblas in H3: first the coblas esparsas...

Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux (review)

298 Short Notices This is an extremely useful text and the entire series will be of immense help to manuscript scholars specializing in this field. Judith Collard Art History and Theory University ofOtago Short, Ian and Roy Pearcy, eds., Eighteen Anglo-Norman Fabliaux (Plain Te Series 14), London, Anglo-Norman Text Society, 2000; paper; pp. 1,42; RRP not for sale to public; ISBN 0905474406. In his important survey of work done in Anglo-Norman from the end of the World War till the mid-sixties ('Anglo-Norman Studies: The Last Twenty Years', Australian Journal ofFrench Studies, II (1965), 113-55; 225-78), Keith Sinclair regretted that Dominica Legge had omitted all mention of the fabliau genre in her studies of Anglo-Norman literature. This Anglo-Norman genre has indeed been traditionally disparaged, so it is a pleasure to see here collected in one volume items written in Anglo-Norman which seem tofitinto the envelope 'fabliaux'. There are 18 fabliaux published in this slim volume. Each is edited from a single manuscript, clearly identified under the title of each text. The most recent earlier editions are briefly mentioned at the same place, and, where relevant, a reference is given to any published discussion of the manuscripts containing a version of that text. Manuscripts serving as witnesses for texts include M S S London B L Harley 527, 978 and 2253; M S . Oxford Bodleian Digby 86; M S Cambridge Corpus Christi College 50; and M S . Clermont-Ferrand Archives du Puy-de-D6me F2. Rejected readings are collected in a section at the back of the book, though no notes or glossary are offered to the reader. The literary quality ofthese texts is, it must be admitted, not ofthe highes level, the principal themes being the guiles of w o m e n and their innate lechery. The obscenity of many is indicated by the titles of a few: Du chevalier qui fit les consparler (No. 14); De Mi. dames qui troverent .i. vit (No. 15); Cele qui foutue et desfoutue (No. 17). Yet this is of course a trait common to most fabliau both Anglo-Norman and Continental. Four of the published fabliaux come from Marie de France's Fables; seven alreadyfigurein A. Hilka and W . Soderhjelm's 1922 edition of the Disciplina Clericalis. O f the remaining seven fabliaux, so have often been published, others have hitherto only been the subject of diplomatic editions in the twentieth century. Short Notices 299 The introduction, though short, is of high interest for its succinct tracing of changes in the definition of the word 'fabliau'. Short and Pearcy find that fabliau humour has as its basis logic, and this is their criterion for inclusion or exclusion of candidates for their collection. The editors justify the existence of this small anthology byfirstreferring to 'linguistic heritage', then to the question of what constitutes a fabliau, from the eighteenth-century edition of Legrand d'Aussy to the latest 'Recueil complef ofW . N o o m e n and N. van den Boogaard, and, finally, to a desire to demonstrate what contribution the Anglo-Norman corpus made to the genre as a whole. Maxwell J. Walkley University of Sydney Sutton, Marilyn, ed., Chaucer's Pardoner's Prologue and Tale: An Annotated Bibliography, 1900-1995 (The Chaucer Bibliographies), Toronto, University ofToronto Press, 2000; cloth; pp. liii, 445; R R P US$95.00; ISBN 0802047440. In 1940, G. G. Sedgewick, reviewing commentary on 'The Pardoner's Tale', observed that 'research and criticism and interpretation have been busy with the noble ecclesiasf; 60 years later, the busy-ness goes on apace, with well over 1,000 items published up to 1995. M u c h of this discussion is sharp and full of interest, as Marilyn Sutton says, treating a figure w h o disturbs, fascinates, but also compels responses that reveal as much about his audience as him. So it always was, from the moment of the Host's retort; the Tale seems to have been admired by its first audience, while thefifteenth-centuryresponse, according to Strohm, was to write out the discordant and disreputable, or to ignore the tale altogether. Sutton's Bibliography performs its...

Le Livre du Voir Dit (Le Dit veridique) (review)

It is a pleasure to herald the recent publication of Paul Imbs' critical edition of the Voir Dit, perhaps the greatest work of the French fourteenth century and certainly one of the masterpieces of the vernacular literature of the European Middle Ages. The edition, which Imbs did not live to see published, appears now in the distinguished Lettres Gothiques series, introduced and fully revised by Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet. The paperback volume thus constitutes the sole critical edition of Guillaume de Machaut's most famous work, which was first published in the willfully "non-scientific" and "non-philological" form given to it by Paulin Paris in his 1875 edition, 1 [End Page 830] and which has since appeared, in Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's diplomatic edition of one manuscript (BN fr 1584, fols. 221-306), in Middle French and English in the Garland Library of Medieval Literature. 2 As such, the "Livre de Poche" under consideration here represents the very work that, according to Ernst Hoepffner's original and unrealised plan for the publication of Machaut's works, was to have appeared as the fourth volume of his Œuvres de Guillaume de Machaut. 3 It offers the reader a faithful edition of the text of a good fourteenth-century manuscript (BN fr 22545), lightly corrected when necessary, and accompanied by footnotes that signal variants found in the other principal manuscripts of the work. The text of the Dit appears here with an excellent translation into modern French, an exhaustive index of proper names, and an extensive glossary.