The Middle English Text ofCaxton's Ovid, Books II–III: Edited From Cambridge, Magdalene College, Old Library, MS F.4.34: with a Parallel Text of The Ovide Moralisé en Prose II, Edited from Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, MS Fonds Français 137 ed. by Wolfgang Mager (review)

Printer William Caxton's translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses raises more questions than it answers. First, there are book historical issues. The text survives in no print editions and only in a single manuscript (now divided into two parts: Cambridge, Magdalene College, Old Library MS F.4.34; and Cambridge, Magdalene College, Pepys Library MS 2124). Is the manuscript, then, a copy of a printed text, or does the relationship between print and manuscript go in the other direction? Additionally, did Caxton plan or produce a print edition at all? Second, there are issues of textual criticism. We might hope the Middle English Metamorphoses could serve as another witness to Caxton's language and his translation habits, but the manuscripts are inconclusive. How faithful to his exemplar was the only remaining manuscript's scribe? Is the manuscript a reliable record of what Caxton planned for the book in its final form? Finally, there are issues of translation. Caxton translates not Ovid's Latin but, rather, a moralized French rendition in prose (Ovide moralisé en prose II; hereafter OM Pr II). The OM Pr II survives in three manuscript witnesses, but how are these texts related to one another? And which one did Caxton use to create his English text?

Despite Ovid's importance to medieval and Early Modern literary history, Caxton's Ovid remains understudied, at least partially because Caxton's text has been, until recently, difficult to acquire. Scholars thought the second half of the manuscript was lost until its rediscovery in 1964, and, for decades, Caxton's Ovid was available only in a 1968 facsimile or in rare and out-of-date editions, which often preserved just selections of Caxton's text. But Wolfgang Mager's edition of Books II and III of Caxton's Metamorphoses participates in a small flurry of editions testifying to a renewed interest in Caxton's Ovid, and Mager's book takes some preliminary steps toward elucidating the questions raised above. Mager's parallel text is part of a series, through Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg, that aims to edit Caxton's book alongside the French text Caxton used as his source. Richard J. Moll published his edition of the entire Caxton translation in 2013, so Mager's edition inevitably repeats some elements of that recent project. However, Mager's intervention, and the intervention of the Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg series as a whole, lies in bringing the French source, which has never before been edited fully, to light. Mager's parallel text edition will encourage further studies of Caxton's abilities as a translator, and it will also support future work into the complex textual history of the OM Pr II. Such work is required if we are to understand exactly how Caxton, as a translator, reshaped his source.

In his Introduction, Mager focuses equally on the French prose and on Caxton's Middle English. Though the introductory text repeats information from his 2011 Poetica article (with Hans Sauer), reprinting that work alongside the edition itself is useful. Mager's most significant claims in the Introduction emerge from his careful comparative work, which results in a revised stemma describing the relationships between the French OM Pr II manuscripts. Notably, Mager's stemma differs from that of Diana Rumrich, who edits the first volume of the Universitätsverlag Winter Heidelberg series. Readers looking at the series as a whole may find...