Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century. Ed. by Vincent Gillespie and Anne Hudson.

The Early English Text Society (EETS) was founded in 1864 by Frederick James Furnivall (1825–1910). The main original purpose of EETS was not textual but lexical, to provide materials for the Oxford English Dictionary, then in its initial planning stages. This association with the OED is reflected in a continuing lengthy preoccupation in EETS editions with linguistic matters. The Society's engagement with matters of editorial method over a century and half has been more intermittent and often not explicit. For example, when the Society chose to initiate a series of diplomatic transcripts of versions of the Ancrene Riwle (including versions in Latin and French as well as those in English) the rationale for this extended project was not explained in the published versions.

For the first time in its history, in 2010, EETS held a conference on editing, the papers from which largely constitute the present volume. Both in the overall design and in a number of particular discussions these papers reveal a rather unfocused approach to editorial matters. It would be possible to linger over the opaque title (the source for which is incorrectly given on p. 2, fn. 2), were there not larger problems of both conception and execution. In a volume subtitled ‘Editing Medieval Texts from Britain’ the longest essay (pp. 167–94) is on Peter of Limoges, a late thirteenth-century French author. Other papers are concerned with lexical, not editorial matters—on the Anglo-Norman Dictionary and on ‘New Software Tools for the Analysis of Computerized Historical Corpora’, for example. I do not propose to discuss these papers, since they seem outside the asserted scope of this volume. The geographical range of ‘Britain’ is seen as warranting the inclusion of papers not just on Scottish texts, but on those in Anglo-Norman, Celtic, Welsh and medieval Latin. Thus, the linguistic and geographical scope of this volume extends into areas generally outside EETS's concerns, while at the same time the historical range of EETS editions is not fully represented—the Society has published quite a lot of early modern editions, they get no mention here. The criteria of inclusiveness here seem rather confused.

Difficulties about the scope of this volume do not stop with its geographical and chronological range. The first paper is not on editing, but on the history of EETS, covering the years 1930 to 1950. Helen Spencer's account of this period focuses on the Editorial Secretary at this time, Mabel Day. Though her paper is well written and carefully researched it is hard to see why this period in particular provides a focus in a volume ostensibly concerned with editing, since it is primarily biographical, and this is not a particularly significant period in the development of EETS. That this should be so is perhaps explained by a striking point, one not made by Spencer. Few of the EETS Council members in this period (they are listed, pp. 21–22) were actually Middle English editors—there were lexicographers, experts in place names, Celticists and Elizabethan scholars like Greg and McKerrow. This seems to have been a rather slack period in Middle English editorial studies in England. Not much can be usefully achieved, in the context of this volume, by highlighting it.

Several of the papers are keen to consider modern methodological questions in relation to editing. One issue for some is the role of electronic editing. Bella Millett poses the question: ‘Whatever Happened to Electronic Editing?’ in a lucid and very helpful overview of trends over the last twenty or so years. Her conclusions about the future of internet editorial projects are largely pessimistic, although she does claim that ‘new technology has … opened new possibilities for editors, allowing them to explore the manuscript tradition of medieval works in much greater depth and detail, to create easily searchable edited texts, and to make the manuscripts themselves more accessible to the reader’ (p. 53). This is true, but the benefits of searchability are not always very tangible, and there is the increasing danger that a new generation of editors will see electronic surrogates as synonymous with the real thing. I would welcome more evidence about the possibilities of exploring ‘the manuscript tradition of medieval works in much greater depth and detail’, of how this might be done and what its effect might be on modifying editorial method.

Thorlac Turville-Petre, writing about ‘Editing Electronic Texts’, is more optimistic: ‘I feel certain that electronic texts have an important part to play in the scholarship of the future, as long as editors can be found who are sufficiently knowledgeable and sufficiently patient to produce editions that are accurate’ (p. 70). These are, of course, credentials that should be required of any editor—they are not peculiar to editors of electronic texts and Turville-Petre never succeeds in explaining what the advantages of electronic editions are. Nothing of what he asserts seems able to identify distinctive aspects of such editions qua editions. The claim that ‘not only can the readers of the electronic edition study the hand in glorious detail … they can also use the full linguistic analysis … to follow up spellings and dialect in as much detail as they want’ (p. 63) presents benefits that have little to do with the edition itself as a textual construct.

Some papers address the current state of editing of particular texts in a specific period. Katherine O'Brien O'Keeffe examines the translation of the Old English Boethius often ascribed to Alfred, and Caedmon's Hymn. She sees the recent edition by Susan Irvine and Malcolm Godden of the Boethius as embodying ‘editing at the limit of the codex form’ (p. 85). In contrast, D. P. O'Donnell's edition of Caedmon's Hymn is ‘a mixed media experiment’ (p. 87). The articulation of contrasting methodologies and their implications is helpful. Malcolm Godden succinctly discusses textual problems in a number of Old English prose texts, particularly related to revision. There is much to be grateful for here, but the articulation of problems is not linked to possible methodological solutions—to how the problems he identifies might be addressed by editors.

Other essays in this section are ostensibly concerned with issues of editorial method in later medieval texts. Not all of them are. William Robins, in a disjointed paper, offers some speculations about the circulation of Dante, the Canterbury Tales and the South English Legendary. Whatever his purposes, they have no obvious editorial implications. More fruitfully, Ardis Butterfield and Helen Deeming consider the medieval song ‘Worldes blis’ which survives in about thirty manuscripts, examining three in considerable detail. Their analysis leads them to advance the case for diplomatic transcripts of at least some witnesses (pp. 164–65) so that the evidence of musical notation can be fully presented. Their careful reasoning justifies what might otherwise seem an overly conservative approach. Ralph Hanna discusses the practicalities of ‘Editing Texts with Extensive Manuscript Traditions’ showing (in the context of this volume) a rare understanding of problems of emendation, with some useful examples.

A substantial section of this volume is devoted to the variant. Derek Pearsall writes provocatively about the concept of textual mouvance and what needs to be done about it. He (very properly) does not reach any broad conclusions, and is content to acknowledge that different texts require different strategies of presentation. He does acknowledge (p. 202) the need to distinguish between scribal variation and authorial revision, but (very wisely) does not explain how it is possible to be clear on the distinction, thereby deftly avoiding an issue that has preoccupied many recent editors of Middle English texts. His essay could be read in conjunction with Sue Powell's essay ‘In Praise of the Variant: Why Edit Critically?’. Powell offers what she terms ‘a pragmatic viewpoint’ based on her experience of editing John Mirk's sermons, but the essay suffers somewhat from its closeness to its subject. Much of it is not about the variant but rather about the history of her own edition. She does point, not very compellingly, to some possible limitations of a textual apparatus and the recording of variants (pp. 281–82). Her analysis of variants is very perfunctory and discussion drifts off into lexical not textual questions (pp. 286–89). Furnivall might have approved of this.

Rosamund Allen examines what she terms ‘popular’ Middle English texts, particularly romances—works that usually survive in small numbers of witnesses and have obscure textual affiliations. She makes some astute points about the methodological problems such texts pose and offers some suggestions for their resolution, but her thinking is shaped by the assumption that for such texts it is possible to supply ‘putative authorial readings’ (p. 297). The extent to which such popular texts were the discernible creation of a single author whose original readings can be recovered is a matter about which it is possible to be sceptical.

The variant is not always considered in editorial terms—some are concerned with scribal correction. There is much thoughtful detail in Daniel Wakelin's piece, but as he rightly points out ‘the implications of this for editing are not obvious’ (p. 246). He concludes that ‘scribes seem more like editors than we give them credit for, and in the precision of their attention they seem more like close readers and critics of all stripes’ (pp. 258–59). This is a conclusion that others have reached before. Stephen Morrison's essay ‘What is Scribal Error, and what Should Editors Do (or not Do) About It?’ is concerned with the questions of textual mouvance that arise from his experience of editing a fifteenth-century sermon cycle. As with Wakelin's paper the value here lies in the intelligent focus on specific readings and the analysis of the problems that arise from them, rather than from any larger questions of editorial method. Richard Beadle discusses the problem of assessing scribal accuracy, drawing on various examples of scribes who copied portions of the same text twice or copied text from an identifiable exemplar. As he rightly notes, such passages do not ‘provide the basis for any far-reaching conclusions’ (p. 238) and it may be open to doubt whether the generally high level of accuracy in the instances he cites provides proper grounds for challenging those who seek ‘a spurious validity for each copy of a text as somehow a new work in its own right’ (p. 239). Presumably such claims would be made on far more detailed textual grounds.

Not all the articles on scribal variation display such attention to the specifics of texts. Matthew Fisher's essay ‘When Variants Aren't: Authors as Scribes in Some English Manuscripts’ never succeeds in transcending the opacity of its title. In one manuscript he invokes, British Library Royal 12 C. xii, the scribe is not the author, and discussion is limited to brief discussion of a single text and controlled by the undemonstrated assumption that, because it differs from other surviving manuscripts, the variations elsewhere (which are never discussed) must be scribal. The other manuscripts he invokes, by Thomas Hoccleve and Ranulf Higden, are holographs that have been studied extensively previously. The examination of Hoccleve's manuscripts concludes that ‘as a scribe he intended to copy his text, and did so’ (p. 212). The analysis of Higden's autograph copy of his Polychronicon in Huntington Library HM 132 is particularly inconsequential, merely reiterating the fact that he was both scribe and compiler.

Sally Mapstone's paper is the only one here to offer an overview of the history of editing in a particular field. Her account of the treatment of older Scots texts is particularly helpful in its discussion of the relative authority of manuscript and (often late) print sources. It stands in contrast to the other paper on older Scots texts in this volume in which Emily Wingfield talks about the fragmentary Scottish Troy Book. In its final pages (pp. 340–42) she urges the desirability of a ‘new, accessible critical edition of the [Scottish Troy Book] … and the prime aim of any such edition must first and foremost be to increase awareness of and access to the little known [Scottish Troy Book] fragments’ (p. 340). This is a curious formulation—many might feel that the ‘prime aim’ of an edition is actually to establish the text. On that basis it may then be possible for others to consider the merits of the work in question, but no guidance is offered about editorial method. There are three separate fragments, apparently from the same poem, only one of which is common to its two surviving manuscripts. Accurate transcriptions have long existed of all these fragments and there is nothing in this essay to suggest how they might form the basis for a critical edition. Or why? This is a paper more concerned with asserting literary merit for these fragments than offering any articulation of the textual and editorial problems they raise.

Helen Fulton is also concerned with a vernacular version of the Troy legend, in her case the Welsh Ystorya Dared. The perceived need to contextualize this work means that only the final section of her article discusses the actual editorial problems involved. The methodology, a parallel text edition, with collation of a limited number of witnesses, is clearly articulated and justified and set in illuminating contexts of Welsh scribal activity. Michelle Doran considers a very short medieval Irish text, the Baile Binnbérlach mac Búain, and the various ways it might be edited. Her conclusion that it should be edited by ‘a combination of methods’, that is, a series of transcripts (not an edition) and what she terms ‘an eclectic edition’ (p. 354), by which she seems to mean a critical edition. If the latter strategy is to be employed (with proper apparatus) the publication of transcripts seems redundant. Throughout, her discussion is hampered by a lack of textual evidence to buttress her arguments.

David Moreno Olalla's essay ‘A Plea for Middle English Botanical Synomyma’ argues that such texts need to be edited, but has virtually nothing to say about how they should be edited. One sentence in his penultimate paragraph is the closest he gets: ‘As with any critical editions, major variants between manuscripts should be recorded in the appropriate apparatus; but minor variants, so frequently discarded in normal practice, should also be listed separately at the end of the volume’ (p. 400). As a statement of editorial method this seems very strange. No editor would distinguish between ‘major variants’ and ‘minor variants’—terms that do not seem to be attempts to find unhappy synonyms for ‘substantive’ and ‘accidental’ readings following the distinction first formulated by W. W. Greg. Nor is it clear what kinds of variants would be ‘discarded’. It is hard to imagine what an edition based on such procedures might look like or what purpose it could serve.

Peter J. Grund's essay ‘Editing Alchemical Texts in Middle English: The Final Frontier?’ makes some clear, if unsurprising, observations about the fluidity of such texts. His conclusion, that in some instances such texts could be presented through ‘an electronic edition that makes available all the manuscripts’ (p. 438), may be a pragmatic one. But it does seem to abandon editing for transcription and to place accessibility as the chief benefit of editorial (or rather, non-editorial) engagement.

The final section of this volume offers what are termed a series of ‘Middle English Case Studies’. John Thompson asks ‘Why Edit the Middle English Prose Brut? What's (Still) in It for Us?’. For him the dilemma faced by any future prose Brut editor is how to capture the evidence of provenance in the surviving texts and manuscripts in sufficient detail to enable a clearer and more comprehensive picture of the original production to emerge (p. 461). This seems doubtful—provenance is unlikely to be a matter of textual moment. What matters editorially is the transcription (at least) of the variant textual forms of the Brut to enable their specific textual features to be distinguished. From such materials further textual research may be possible.

The title of Marie Stansfield's ‘Parallel Texts and a Peculiar Brut: A Case Study’ might seem to offer some support for such a way of proceeding, but she is concerned with the desirability of presenting two manuscripts of what she feels to be the same version in parallel. This enables what is, in effect, an abandoning of the editorial role: ‘in this approach, judgement is transferred to the reader … the editor stops short of making any overt judgement’ (p. 475). This tactic may make things simpler for the (non) editor, but to some it may seem an example of unwise passivity.

Orietta Da Rold discusses ‘New Challenges to the Editing of Chaucer’. She offers some insights into how the relationship between codicology—particularly quire structure and ink—and text can inform editorial method. A. V. C. Schmidt discusses contamination in some manuscripts of Piers Plowman. At times the discussion has a daunting inwardness: ‘Before M was copied, its exemplar (the source of which could in principle have been ß itself) appears to have been collated with another ß manuscript, this one belonging to the multi-member ß subfamily y, more specifically of its group w of which W is the best known representative’ (p. 495). But his arguments are firmly rooted in the particularities of variation and show the thought processes of an experienced and sensitive editor.

Much of Michael Sargent's essay on Hilton's Scale of Perfection is concerned with recounting the lengthy and wholly unsuccessful efforts of a number of earlier scholars to produce an edition of this work, a history too complex to summarize here. Sargent describes a work still in progress over ninety years after the earliest modern efforts to establish Hilton's text. He concludes that his projected edition (for EETS) ‘will not privilege any of the surviving forms of the text as necessarily more ‘authoritative’ than any other … since each form of the text isThe Scale of Perfection as it was known to fifteenth-century readers’ (p. 532). One cannot help recalling Richard Beadle's comments, quoted above, about the ‘spurious validity’ of seeing ‘each copy of a text as somehow a new work in its own right’.

Overall, this volume seems rather unreflective and unfocused. Virtually all of the thirty papers originally delivered at the 2010 conference are included here. Their collective translation into print does not reflect a uniformly high quality of content. A number of those who contribute have limited (or no) experience of editing and say little of significance. A smaller volume, with some efforts at quality control, would have been more valuable. As it stands, this is a collection of limited value. Only infrequently are questions of editorial method or procedure presented in ways that offer insights likely to be of benefit to the aspiring editor.

It is unfortunate that the editors did not have the opportunity to check the ‘Abbreviations’ in this volume. Readers of The Library will be startled to find the designation ‘STC’ attached to Donald Wing's short-title catalogue, generally known as ‘Wing’ (the confusion is compounded by the fact that several contributors use the form correctly to refer to pre-1640 printed books); ‘JEGP’ and ‘PMLA’ are not abbreviations but titles; the MED is not ‘ed. by Hans Kurath and S. M. Kuhn, 1952–’, but ‘ed. by Hans Kurath, S. M. Kuhn, and R. E. Lewis, 1952–2001’; the final volume of the ‘Extra Series’ of EETS was published in 1935, even though it was for the year 1920 (at least ten volumes in this series were published after 1920). Readers of this journal in particular will regret that Henry Bradshaw's dates (1831–1886) are given incorrectly (p. 328).