Manuscripts and Texts: Editorial Problems in Later Middle English Literature ed. by Derek Pearsall (review)

SWDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER If anything, this internal negotiation strengthens the challenge of this book. With the publication ofNegotiating the Past, Lee Patterson ushersin a new moment in the history ofmedievalism and joins R. HowardBloch as one ofthe voices by which scholars in other disciplines and other fields will learn what we are doing and what we ought to be doing. JOHN M. GANIM University of California, Riverside DEREK PEARSALL, ed. Manuscripts and Texts: EditorialProblems in Later Middle English Literature. Essays from the 1985 Conference at the University of York. Cambridge and Wolfeboro, N.H.: D.S. Brewer, 1987. Pp. 170. $40.00, .£22.50. This second collection to emerge from the York conferences on fifteenth­ century manuscript studies includes twelve essays from the third meeting in 1985. They range from A.S. G. Edwards's "observations" on the history of Middle English editing over two and a half centuries to Diana Wyatt's account ofher experience doing simultaneously a dissertation and a REED volume on the history ofperformance in Beverly. All the authors are editors of medieval texts, and their tendency is to be pragmatic rather than theoretical. Thorlac Turville-Petre gives voice to their common principle when he says in the first paragraph of "Editing The ITTirs ofAlexander": "Every text faces the editor with different problems, to which, in the end, every editor has to find individual solutions, but in my own experience it has been instructive to examine the range of solutions applied to a wide variety of texts ..." (p. 143). Experience and specificity permeate the collection. The result is a volume that every scholar interested in medieval manuscripts will find useful. Edwards's "Observations on the History ofMedieval Editing" is the only general essay. It seeks to give "a preliminary sketch" and to concentrate on the period betweenStowe's Chaucer(1598) and Madden's collection (1839) ofthe Gawain poet's work. Madden's "conservationist cast," his interest in accurately representing his manuscript, sets a pattern followed by most modern editors ofMiddle English texts. Two prominent exceptions are the Skeat Chaucer and the B version ofPiers Plowman by Kane and Donaldson with theircommon emphasis on interpretation and emendation, especially 270 REVIEWS with regard to metrics. Edwards finds in thePiersPlowman methodological advance that will challenge future editors-accuracy, candour, and full presentation of evidence...joined to restraint (p. 48). Three of the other essaysmake specific contributions to our knowledge of metrics. The authors base their contributions on careful statistical study of the manuscripts. Turville-Petre reports on the conclusions reached by him and his fellow editor H. N. Duggan with respect to the alliterative versifica­ tion of The Wars ofAlexander. Their caution on the complex problems of formulas both verbal and syntactic is exemplary. Their study of rhythm leads them to thefinding that the basic aaIax alliterative pattern will never have two sequences of more than a single unstressed syllable in the second half line. They also found that two other alliterative poems extant in more than one manuscript, The Siege ofJerusalem and the Parlement of the Three Ages, observe this same rule. The other two essays on metrics have to do with decasyllabic couplets. Judith Jefferson uses Hoccleve's holograph manuscripts to determine that 98 percent of his lines without the ambiguity of final -e's have exactly ten syllables. She then finds that a similar percentage (96 percent) results from pronunciation of final -e's, whereas not pronouncing them drops the percentage of ten-syllable lines to under half.Jefferson tests her results by studying lines where the possibility of elision, the use of pleonastic that, or variation in the form of adverbs or in inflections gave Hoccleve a choice that would affect his syllable count. Her clear conclusion that Hoccleve wrote ten-syllable lines cannot be extended to cover any finding with respect to stress patterns. On the other hand, Janet M. Cowen, currently at work with George Kane on an edition of The Legend of Good Women, concludes from a small but rigorous selection of unambiguous lines that Chaucer wrote "a ten-syllabic line of five stresses with a predominantly rising rhythm" (p. 28). There follows a sensitively controlled discussion of the...