Problems of 'Best Text' Editing and the Hengwrt Manuscript of 'The Canterbury Tales'
- Author / Editor
- Hanna, Ralph,III.
Problems of 'Best Text' Editing and the Hengwrt Manuscript of 'The Canterbury Tales'
- Published
- Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Texts (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987), pp. 87-94.
- Description
- The grounds for "best-text" editing are uncertain. In following a "best-text," an editor may seek to "place the modern audience in the position" of the Ur-audience. Hanna questions Hengwrt as basis for "best text" and Manly-Rickert's method of recension (grouping manuscripts by shared error to create stemmata).
- Variorum editors have seized "lovingly upon the deviant lines" of Hengwrt, "editorialized out" in Ellesmere. It is incongruous to argue that the Ellesmere scribe was more Chaucerian than Chaucer. Hengwrt should be examined more carefully on a variant-by-variant basis.
- Alternative Title
- Manuscripts and Texts.
- Chaucer Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies.
- Canterbury Tales--General.