Chaucer's Works, Volume 1 — Romaunt of the Rose; Minor PoemsChaucer, Geoffrey
General
Chaucer's Works, Volume 1 — Romaunt of the Rose; Minor Poems
Chaucer, Geoffrey
English poetry -- Middle English, 1100-1500
The resemblance of Th. and G. is very close; however, each sometimes
corrects _small_ faults in the other, and the collation of them is, on this
account, frequently helpful. Both are remarkable for an extraordinary
misarrangement of the material, in which respect they closely agree; and we
are enabled, from this circumstance, to say, definitely, that the C-portion
of O. (i. e. their common original) was written (doubtless on vellum) in
quires containing 8 leaves (or 16 pages) each, there being, on an average,
24 lines upon every page. Of these quires, the fourth had its leaves
transposed, by mistake, when the MS. was bound, in such a manner that the
_middle_ pair of leaves of this quire was displaced, so as to come next the
two _outer_ pair of leaves; and this displacement was never suspected till
of late years, nor ever (so far as I am aware[191]) fully appreciated and
explained till now[192]. This displacement of the material was first
noticed in Bell's edition, where the editor found it out by the simple
process of comparing the English 'translation' with the French 'Roman'; but
he gives no account of how it came about. But a closer investigation is
useful as showing how exactly 'Th.' and 'G.' agree in following an original
displacement in 'O.', or rather in the still older MS. from which the
C-portion of O. was copied.
In the fourth sheet (as said above), the pair of middle leaves, containing
its 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th pages (G, H, I, K, with the contents recorded
in note 2 below) was subtracted from the middle of the quire, and placed so
that the 7th page (G) followed the 2nd (B), whilst at the same time, the
10th page (K) came to precede the 15th page (P). The resulting order of
pages was, necessarily, A, B, G, H, C, D, E, F, L, M, N, O, I, K, P, Q; as
is easily seen by help of a small paper model. And the resulting order of
the lines was, accordingly, 6965-6988, 6989-7012, 7109-7133, 7134-7158,
7013-7036, 7037-60, 7061-84, 7085-7108, 7209-7232, 7233-7256, 7257-7280,
7281-7304, 7159-7183, 7184-7208, 7305-7328, 7329-7352; or, collecting the
successive numbers, ... -7012, 7109-7158, 7013-7108, 7209-7304, 7159-7208,
7305, &c. And this is precisely the order found, both in Th. and G.
We see further that the fourth and last quire of this C-portion of O.
consisted of 7 leaves only, the rest being torn away. For 7 leaves
containing 48 lines apiece give a total of 336 lines, which, added to 7352,
make up 7688 lines; and, as 10 of the pages seem to have had 25 lines, we
thus obtain 7698 lines as the number found in O.
The A-portion of O. was probably copied from a MS. containing usually 25
lines on a page, and occasionally 26. Four quires at 50 lines to the leaf
give 32 × 50, or 1600 lines; and 2 leaves more give 100 lines, or 1700
lines in all. If 5 of the pages had 26 lines, we should thus make up the
number, viz. 1705. Of the B-portion we can tell nothing, as we do not know
how it was made to join on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account