Manuscript Variants Research Articles

Hammurabi's Laws: Text, Translation and Glossary

Richardson supplies a new translation and transcription (which incorporates the most important manuscript variants) of the most famous of all ancient Mesopotamian texts. He also provides a complete lexical analysis of every word that is used in it. The edition covers the prologue and epilogue as well as the laws themselves. Students of the Bible, ancient Near Eastern law and general Semitics are now provided with an indispensable reference tool in a convenient form. The detailed information in the glossary, where the full context of every quotation is given, will also be a tremendous help to those who want to learn or revisit Akkadian.

Job, Boethius, and Epic Truth by Ann W. Astell

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER The publication of these volumes prompts some general reflections on the direction of the Variorum Chaucer. The gap between the cutoff date of 1985 (p. xv) for citations in Andrew's work and the publication date must be a cause for some concern. In an age of advanced computer technology, such a hiatus is not easy to justify, even in a volume as substantial as this one. Clearly some further thought needs to be given to the factors that have occasioned such delay if future volumes are not to be in need of consider­ able revision by the time they are published. More fundamentally, one must wonder increasingly about the validity and purpose of the textual portions of this work. Is it in any real sense an edition at all? A variorum is, by definition, a record of annotation. The assembling of such commentary needs to be hung on some sort of textual peg. But the record of manuscript variants largely duplicates that in Manly-Rickert. Nor is it clear what value is served by the extensive, if unsystematic, collation of nonsubstantive printed editions, whose readings are of interest only at a small number of points. Would not much fruitless industry be avoided by simply keying the Commentary to the readings of a standard edition, like the Riverside, or even to those of a single manuscript, such as Hengwrt? For clearly the lasting value of this undertaking will be found only in the quality of its record of annotation, not in its text. And if future editors can match the standard of Andrew's scholarship, we will have much for which to thank the Variorum Chaucer. A. S. G. EDWARDS University of Victoria ANN W. AsTELL.job, Boethius, and Epic Truth. Ithaca, N.Y., and London: Cornell University Press, 1994. Pp. xiii, 240. $32.95. Ann Astell's ambitious goal in this well-written, innovative, and carefully argued study is to outline a new theory of literary-historical development, a theory that will account for the phenomenon that literary historians refer to as "the decline of epic and the rise of romance." The crux of Astell's challenging thesis is that two great works, the biblical Book of Job and Boethius's De consolatione phi/osophiae (as it was interpreted by Gregory the Great and other authoritative Christian exegetes), served jointly as models for the medieval formal and philosophical redefinition of the "epic truth" of 160 REVIEWS Homer and Virgil, especially in a significant portion of those narratives we group under the rubric of "romance." Astell's detailed account ofhow "epic truth" made its way through Job and Boethius into "romances" and other works by Dante, Chaucer, Spenser, Milton, and other writers is far too complex to summarize in the present brief review. I shall concentrate in­ stead on Astell's discussions of Chaucerian texts. In chapter 4, "Hagiographic Romance" (pp. 97-126), Astell treats the Clerk's tale of patient Griselda and the Man of Law's tale of Constance in light of the medieval explications ofJob and Boethius that have been set out in preceding chapters. Johan materials in The Clerk's Tale are of course not far to seek. Griselda echoes Job's "Naked came I out of my mother's womb" speech (Job 1:21) in The Clerk's Tale 871-72; Griselda's father, Janicula, echoes Job's cursing the day of his birth (Job 3:3) in lines 902903 ; and there is an explicit reference to Job, whose patience Griselda's is said to surpass in lines 932-38. Finding Boethius in The Clerk's Tale is another matter, however, and Astell fails to clinch her case because she is unable to cite unequivocal echoes of the De consolatione. In The Man ofLaw's Tale, Astell finds a "simultaneous confluence and opposition of Boethian and Johan themes" similar to that which she finds in The Clerk's Tale (p. 107). Reading The Man of Law's Tale as a satire, Astell concludes that Chaucer's primary satiric object was not the tale's sentimental and materialistic lawyer-narrator but "the popular piety" he is made to exemplify (p...

Le Jeu de Robin et Marion by Adam de la Halle

Reviews399 exactly seem earned by the preceding analysis. A close explication of the opening scene oí Laforza del destino, for instance, ends with this not uninteresting non sequitur: "Far from being a linear, steady itinerary, Verdi's artistic development follows a tortuous, intermittent path" (p. 139). And Petrobelli grandiosely concludes from Bellini's ransacking of a French play for his / puritani that the composer thus "discovered ... his cultural roots. And he connected himself to them, made use of them, kept them as a model with a clarity of vision we find only in the true artist" (p. 189). A more full and up-to-date bibliography of Verdi scholarship from this author would have been a valuable addition to this volume, and some repetitious passages stating his methodological principles should have been edited out. It is odd that a learned book like this should appear without an index. No one would accuse the author—on the basis of this book, at least—of possessing a sense of humor. There is one moment of unintended glee, however, that his editor or translator might have saved him from: his remark about "the only leading character in the entire Verdian corpus who has no first name, who is merely 'Lady Macbeth '" (p. 143). Verdi, of course, was following his idol "Schaspeare," who famously failed to specify either how many children she had or her name. A good thing, too, since the first name of the historical Lady Macbeth would have been the devil to sing. According to Lord Haile's Annals of Scotland, it was Gruach. GARY SCHMIDGALL New York City Adam de la Halle. Le Jeu de Robin et Marion, ed. Shira I. SchwamBaird (text) and Milton G. Scheuermann (music). Garland Library of Medieval Literature, 94A. New York: Garland Publishing, 1994. Pp. xxxiv + 153. The enduring fascination on the part of audiences and scholars alike for Adam de la Halle's late thirteenth-century Play of Robin and Marion is evident in the continuing emergence of editions, recordings, and live performances of this work. The most recent addition to the play's bibliography is Shira Schwam-Baird's scholarly performing edition with English translation for Garland's extensive Library of Medieval Literature under the general editorship of James Wilhelm and Lowry Nelson, Jr. Schwam-Baird's effort adds to a growing number of accessible editions and English translations of the text of the play, many of which were produced by renowned scholars. With reliable editions and translations generally available, one may wonder at Garland's decision to undertake such a project that appears, on the surface, to be 400Comparative Drama essentially redundant. Certainly, the publication of Schwam-Baird's edition must solicit expectations of fresh insights into the play based on significant new scholarship. In the "Literary Introduction" to the edition, Schwam-Baird claims to have "freshly transcribed" the text from MS. P "with little editorial emendation" (p. xxii). The choice of MS. P is in keeping with all but a few published editions, most notably that of Ernest Langlois1 who arrived at his text through an attempt to exploit the Picard dialect and a conflation of all three known manuscript sources of the play (P, Pa, and A).2 Indeed, with the exception of adding modern punctuation, Schwam-Baird does appear to stay with the text of MS. P even when the reading may not scan properly or make sense. In such cases, explanatory notes are provided in a section following the play to help clarify the reading. Following the "Notes" section is an exhaustive list of manuscript variants compiled in an easy-to-read tablature format. Schwam-Baird's edition also includes the anonymous Jeu du Pèlerin and the two interpolations inserted in the MS. P version of Robin and Marion. Despite claims of "freshness," Schwam-Baird's transcription differs only in the slightest degree from that of Jean Dufournet's comprehensive 1989 edition3 and of Kenneth Varty's earlier publication.4 Dufournet chose to emend the few confused verses of the MS. P text while providing the original readings in footnotes on the page; thereby Dufournet made sense of the text and documented his alterations while avoiding the...

Samuel Beckett by Andrew K. Kennedy, and: Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory and Text by Steven Connor

REVIEWS Andrew K. Kennedy. Samuel Beckett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989. Pp. xiv + 175. $34.50. Steven Connor. Samuel Beckett: Repetition, Theory and Text. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988. Pp. ? + 222. $34.95. With his recent passing at the age of 83, the literary career of Samuel Beckett has now attained the historical closure so often denied to the characters of his novels and plays. "What remains" (a Beckettian echo) is our attempt to understand this now-fully-claimed place, to situate historically a literary career that spanned seven decades and to map its internal lines of relationship. Two books that appeared in the year and a half before the author's death suggest that this critical retrospective is already underway and that the largely consistent literary portrait that unified Beckett studies during its first thirty years is in the process of being replaced by divergent historical and aesthetic accounts. Samuel Beckett is Andrew K. Kennedy's contribution to the Cambridge series on British and Irish Authors. Kennedy, author of Six Dramatists in Search of a Language (1975) and Dramatic Dialogue (1983), here offers a critical introduction to Beckett's career. Samuel Beckett attempts to trace "the essential contours of the Beckettian terrain'' by combining an overview of literary and historical contexts with more particular exploration of individual texts. The "overall unity" asserted through this approach to Beckett's work is as follows: "a vision of diminishing human faculties (a tragicomic failing and falling) written into texts of diminishing language, ever more daringly lessened forms of drama and fiction" (p. 1). After a brief but concise introduction outlining the biographical, literary, and philosophical influences on Beckett's work, the book proceeds through analyses of the major plays between Waiting for Godot (1949) and Play (1963) and the trilogy of novels Molloy (1947), Malone Dies (1948), and The Unnamable (1950). The publisher's description promises a study that will constitute both a general critical introduction to Beckett's plays and "an original perspective ," a book "stimulating for both beginners and advanced students of Beckett" (p. i). That presses (such as Cambridge) should persist in trying to link these radically discrepant purposes and audiences remains bewildering since such constraints force intelligent critics (such as Kennedy) into an uncertain field of address where analytic sophistication must contend with more elementary discussion. This need to accommodate the beginner as well as the expert steers Kennedy into the general and the well-known; into the selection of "major" texts over the many less familiar works that provide much of the richness of the Beckettian canon; into familiar observations on such topics as plot, character, and dialogue; and into descriptions of Beckett's work in terms of "general human experience" (p. 33) and "metaphors for all time" (p. 81). 363 364Comparative Drama At the same time, however, Kennedy, often managing to transcend the limitations presented by the book's twin loyalties, brings striking insight to even the most well-worn "issues" concerning Beckett's drama and fiction. His discussion of Beckett's work is informed by a sure, yet unobtrusive command of literary and dramatic tradition, manuscript variants, and performance history; while often brief, his analyses are both focused and allusive. Although he occasionally retraces paths first cut in his earlier books, Kennedy is especially illuminating on questions of language: the "inner bilingualism" of Beckett's Anglo-Irish heritage (p. 6); the "chance writings . . . like 'found poems'" (p. 78) that Winnie reads on toothbrush and medicine bottle; and the narrative concern, in Mahne Dies, to find "a voice that can enact its own decay" (p. 131). It is arguably the plays that bring out the best in Kennedy's analysis, for the concern with dramatic language first evident in his earlier studies is enriched, in Samuel Beckett, by an attention to the actual stage and to the physical embodiment of speech. Hence, Kennedy characterizes Endgame as a "theatricalizing [of] the condition of the character prone to monologue" (p. 65) and Happy Days as a transforming of "literary fragments into theatrical events" (p. 82). In part because of its concern with the play as a "performance-driven dramatic score," this book will offer much even to the most...

Manuscript Variants and Old English Word Forms

Manuscript Variants and Old English Word Forms

Horatian Notes IV: despised readings in the manuscripts of Satires Book 1

In three earlier instalments of these ‘Horatian Notes’ (1969, 1971, 1982) I have tried to weigh the claims to truth of manuscript variants in the transmitted text of Odes and Epodes. In the Satires there is so much of that sort of thing that I have had to restrict myself to Book 1. Now, as well as earlier, disagreements with the decisions of all or most contemporary editors arise. I note, however, that this paper was written before D. R. Shackleton Bailey's edition appeared in 1985. Readers of the present notes will find that we have come, independently if perhaps unsurprisingly, to similar conclusions on a number of passages.There is then much to say, and because of a plethora of evidence I do not propose to comment on the numerous cases where editors of the last half-century or so make what I regard as the right choice, yet, in one way or another, give rise to the suspicion that they do so for the wrong reasons. Thus at 1.1.38 very few editors now follow Keller and Vollmer, not to mention many of their early predecessors, in printing patiens to describe ‘the tiny ant’ in the animal fable designed to illustrate human failings. With Lambinus and Bentley, they do now print sapiens; yet a perusal of commentaries shows how right was A. Palmer, not usually a herald of Bentley's virtues, to refer to Bentley's note both in his app. crit. and his commentary. It is possible to print sapiens and yet to misunderstand it as ‘prudent, thrifty’; so e.g. L. Mueller. A reference to Bentley (and here also to Lambinus), which can be provided briefly in an app. crit. as much as in a commentary, is here and often elsewhere a reminder of good sense. Nevertheless, in order to save space I pass by such cases in this paper. Nor, as a rule, do I discuss cases where the quality of variants, whether preserved directly or indirectly, happens to be more or less balanced.

Notes on Lugale

The method of editing Sumerian literary texts has been the subject of heated debate in recent years. It used to be that Sumerian text editions followed the practice of classical philologists, giving the text with an apparatus criticus of manuscript variants, but this method has an inherent flaw: the editor must either choose to use as his main text an ‘eclectic text’ combining the best readings of all the manuscripts, or select one manuscript as the best version. Moreover, although the apparatus may reveal manuscript variants, it often does not inform the reader of how much of any one line is preserved in any one text. Since Sumerian literary texts may show a considerable number of variants between duplicates, the Partitur format has been proposed and utilized, in which every line of every manuscript is given in full, although the system has been opposed on grounds of waste of space.

Zur metrik in einem tantratext

AbstractIn editing (anonymous) texts like the asāhasra Sahitā there are few possibilities to reach a correct/authentic text. One of them is to pay close attention to the rules of Śloka metre in general, as well as to the various deviations from the standard form actually occuring in a text. By observing conscientiously the manuscript variants of the metrically (mostly) correct (and older) MS A of the a.Sah., 28 emendations can be proposed with regard to the text edition of J. Schoterman. Also, another 5 passages can, following this method, be indicated which are metrically incorrect and should be studied again by re-checking the MSS available.

THE TEXT AND MANUSCRIPT VARIANTS OF THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE'S PSALMS

THE TEXT AND MANUSCRIPT VARIANTS OF THE COUNTESS OF PEMBROKE'S PSALMS Get access G. F. WALLER G. F. WALLER Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Review of English Studies, Volume XXVI, Issue 101, February 1975, Pages 1–18, https://doi.org/10.1093/res/XXVI.101.1 Published: 01 February 1975