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  • “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...

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