Geoffrey Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess: A Hypertext Edition ed. by Murray McGillivray (review)

REVIEWS technical terms (such as "copy text" and "variorum edition") or specific well-known editorial "cases-studies" (such as the debate over the relative merits of the "Hengwrt" and "Ellesmere" manuscripts of The Canterbury Tales) are introduced or alluded to early on in the book, but are not actually explained until much later. While a few essays append reference and source lists, their inclusion seems to have been at the discretion of the individual author, and their presence is not signaled in the list of contents. More significantly, there is no general bibliography whatso­ ever, far less a sectioned and annotated guide to further reading. A glos­ sary of technical terms is an equally inexplicable omission, especially given Moffats's own observations about the irritation the reader feels on turning to the back of a work and not finding one (p. 237). This over­ sight is particularly unforgivable given the risible attempt at an index, which is only two pages long and omits far more key names and editorial terms than it includes. In summary, one of the volume's main failings is that it is not user­ friendly. Another is that the project seems to have been inadequately planned and unevenly executed. No work of editing will ever be un­ problematic. As Greetham's postduction explains-inintrospective and unnecessary detail-the editors of this volume encountered more prob­ lems than most. A well-edited text will explain the practical and theo­ retical difficulties that have been faced and hopefully overcome in the course of its production. It will be reflective and self-conscious. But at the end of the day, the reader will want to have finished text, not one in which the seams show. A Guide to Editing Middle English is, then, some­ thing ofa patchwork: made of fine fabric but sewn together roughly and frayed around the edges. DIANE WATT University of Wales, Aberystwyth MURRAY MCGILLIVRAY, ed. Geoffrey Chaucer's Book of the Duchess: A Hypertext Edition. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1997. 1 CD-ROM. $25.00 Murray McGillivray's hypertext edition of The Book ofthe Duchess takes on the ambitious task of presenting not only a new critical edition of 513 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER the poem but also all the textual material McGillivray used in creating his edition, so that readers can evaluate the evidence for themselves and form their own judgments about his editorial decisions. In fact, McGil­ livray invites users to suggest corrections or improvements to the proj­ ect, making it (in the long run, one can imagine) rather like The Book of the Duchess itself-not a single fixed text but a series of revised versions unfolding over time. It explores the possibilities offered by modern technology to associate electronic texts and images in ways not easily accomplished with their printed counterparts and in the process creates a collection of resources that has something to offer to both undergrad­ uates and advanced scholars. The CD-ROM brings together a variety of texts and images useful for studying the poem's relations to its sources and its preservation in manuscript and early print versions. It contains a critical edition of The Book ofthe Duchess with textual notes; a reading edition with links to a glossary, explanatory notes, and sound files of the poem recited in Middle English; complete transcriptions of all the witnesses to the text (Bodleian Library manuscripts Tanner 346, Fairfax 16, and Bodley 638, plus William Thynne's 1532 edition); electronic images of every page of the poem in each of the witnesses (full-color photographs of the manuscript pages in small and enlarged versions, scanned images of Thynne); plus several works thought to have influenced Chaucer's com­ position of The Book of the Duchess, each provided in the original Old French or Latin with selected passages translated by McGillivray into modern English. Full texts are provided of Guillaume de Machaut's Jugement dou roy de Behaingne, the Fonteinne amoreuse, selected Machaut lyrics, and Froissart's Paradis d'amour. Excerpts are included ofthe Roman de la rose, Machaut's Remede de Fortune, the eleventh book of Ovid's Meta­ morphoses, the Ovide moralise, and Statius's Thebaid...