Geoffrey Chaucer: The Legend of Good Women ed. by Janet Cowen, George Kane (review)

STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER claims to "saffron" his speech with a few Latin terms, thus implying a host of associations of the spice (its expense and rarity, its color and sensuous taste) to the Pardoner's life style. In this translation the lines are thus: "A few words in the Latin tongue I say / To add a little spice to what I preach" (lines 343--44). Earlier in the Fragment, the Host responds to the Physi­ cian's tale in one of the most humorous malapropisms in The Canterbury Tales. He says that the tale has moved him so much that he almost had a "cardinacle." Again, the translators have rendered it clear: "I know you've caused this heart in me / To grieve till I am near a cardiac" (lines 312-13). Finally, to end where I began, I will cite another line from The General Prologue as an example of the will to clarify leading to error: When Zephyrus too with his sweet breath has blown Through every field and forest, urging on The tender shoots, and there's a youthful sun, His second half-course through the Ram now run. (lines 5-9) Now, unless I have missed some news on the astronomical references in The General Prologue of late, I do believe that the sun has run through thefirst, not the second, half-course. The more general and important question of whether to use translations at all is, of course, implied in any review of a translation, but that question cannot be answered by this book. The book is not wholly bad; it is just not very good. It might be useful as part of an exercise in translation; it might also be useful as a pony text for non-English majors in a major course in Chaucer, since no other translation available contains The Parson's Tale or the Melibee. However, unless one has to meet these specific needs, I would not recommend ordering this book. JOHN MICHEAL CRAFTON West Georgia College JANET COWEN and GEORGE KANE, eds. Geoffrey Chaucer: The Legend of Good Women. Medieval Texts and Studies, vol. 16. East Lansing, Mich.: Colleagues Press, 1995. Pp. xi, 344. $95.00. This is an extremely important work, and Colleagues Press is to be com­ mended for undertaking a project of this sort. The edition is modeled after 200 REVIEWS the Kane-Donaldson edition of Piers Plowman and is concerned almost exclusively with textual matters. The introduction includes manuscript descriptions and classifications, analysis of variants, slightly expanded re­ prints oftwo articles (Cowen's 1986 article on the final -e, and Kane's 1983 article on MS CUL Gg. 4.27), a three-page section explaining the treat­ ment of the prologues, and a brief section on the choice of copy-text. The edition of LGW follows, with full MS collations against Tanner 346 as copy-text; following that is an edition of the Gg prologue, partially col­ lated (the apparatus lists only the variants for lines where Gg has been emended). In their preface, the editors claim that the edition is an "experiment"-an attempt to apply the same principles used in the Kane­ Donaldson edition to a text of much less complexity. They claim further, more problematically, that the edition is "open" in that it "present[s} the manuscript evidence fully" (p. vii). There are obviously significant differences between this and the Piers Plowman edition. In addition to the much simpler manuscript situation in LGW, the object to be reconstructed is quite different. What "originality" means in the LGW edition is only what reading might account for all manuscript evidence (p. viii); i.e., an original reading is itself likely to be a scribal corruption of Chaucer's text-a text in and of itself not regarded (conventionally) as of the calibre of Piers Plowman. Consequently, the very language employed in the Piers Plowman edition is inapplicable here--e.g., the contrast between the original language and thought of a "great poet" vs. its scribal mismanagement. What I will be concerned with below are two specific issues: Kane's definition of a variant (what constitutes "full manuscript evidence"), and the status of...