Absent Glosses: A Crisis of Vernacular Commentary in Late-Medieval England?

Where have all the English (or indeed Latin) glosses on Middle English texts gone? To be more precise, why weren't they written? ¹

Admittedly, occasional glosses may be found in certain manuscripts of Geoffrey Chaucer's works, particularly the Canterbury Tales, and the sporadic Latin commentary which John Gower himself seems to have provided for his English Confessio amantis has received at least some of the attention which it deserves. The mid-fifteenth-century Court of Sapience does include an extensive apparatus of Latin source-references (unfortunately omitted in the latest edition of the work), ² but there is none of the explication de texte which medieval commentary characteristically provides. Things seemed to have been somewhat better in Scotland, to judge by Gavin Douglas's plan to write a commentary to accompany his translation of the Aeneid (1553): "I haue alsso a schort comment compylyt / To expoun strange histouris and termys wild . . . " (conclusion, "Heir the translatar . . . ," ll. 141-2). ³ In his text and gloss Douglas refers to, and draws on, the commentaries of Servius, Cristoforo Landino, Lorenzo Valla, and Josse Badius Ascensius in the 1507 version. Either all of these accompanied the original text in the printed edition of Virgil that he used—printed editions containing as many as five commentaries had been published—or Douglas is bringing together materials which he found in separate copies of the Aeneid. Yet he was not content to rely on the commentaries of others; it is evident that scholarly sources were consulted at first hand, such as Augustine's De civitate Dei, Boccaccio's Genealogia Deorum, and Livy's Ab urbe condita. Unfortunately, as we have it (and presumably as far as Douglas wrote it) the commentary ends halfway through the translation of Book 1. However, it may be noted that Douglas regarded his entire translation project as, in some measure, a work of academic commentary. This comes out, for example, in his remark that one "proffit" of his book will be its usefulness to those who "Virgill to childryn expone": "Thank me tharfor, masteris of grammar sculys" (conclusion, "Heir the translatar . . . ," ll. 41-8).

But thereafter, little of relevance seemed to occur in either Scotland or England until "E. K." produced his glosses on Edmund Spenser's Shepheardes Calender (1579). In particular, the contrast between the situation in England under Richard II and his Lancastrian successors and the circumstances appertaining in other European countries at roughly the same time is quite marked. In endeavoring to gauge the dimensions of the problem, first I shall offer some evidence to establish just how substantial the cultural discrepancy actually was, and then proceed to suggest some reasons for it.

Within twenty years of Dante's death in 1321 at least eight commentaries on the Comedy (some written in Latin, others in Italian) had been produced, including expositions by Dante's two sons Iacopo and Pietro and by Giovanni Boccaccio. ⁴ The commentaries on the Divine Comedy constitute the single most important corpus of contemporary criticism on any medieval vernacular writer. There is considerable debate over the relative datings, but there is no question of the volume of commentary or of its hermeneutic sophistication. Much of the credit for the institution of Dante-commentary must go to Dante himself, who (among so many other things) is one of the most important figures in the history of vernacular hermeneutics. His confidence as self-commentator—in the Vita nova and, more formally, in the Convivio—provided a powerful precedent for lesser mortals. Following in his master's footsteps, Boccaccio equipped his own Teseida (1339-41?) with a vernacular commentary, which in style and scope imitates the Latin commentaries on such classical epics as Virgil's Aeneid and Lucan's Pharsalia. Moreover, it could be argued that he saw himself as writing within a tradition of vernacular criticism. For, in the chiose on the...