University of Virginia Library

I want to thank the Huntington Library, where HM140 is housed, for making the MS available to me and for providing me with a congenial working environment. I want to thank the NEH for supporting the initial stages of this study with a summer grant, and Baruch College and the CUNY Research Foundation for their continuing support of my work. I also want to thank Martin Stevens for his supportive criticism. Finally, I thank Steven Kruger and Peter Hitchcock who read and offered valuable suggestions in the final stages of this essay. The mistakes, however, are mine.

One stanza is addressed to the "lordynges" and the other refers to the "Wife of Bath" (E1163-1176). All references to the modern edition of the "Clerk's Tale" are to the Riverside Chaucer.

Lerer himself seems to be aware of this difficulty, for early in his essay he suggests that he is using the term "scribes" in the widest construal of those who "read, wrote and rewrote Chaucerian manuscripts for their own purposes" (311). His employment of "scribe" as a metonymy for the whole process of textual transmission covering a period of more than half a century is a helpful and convenient way of specifying agency in the transcription of a text. Yet the way he uses the term in his discussion can be confusing. Sometimes he seems to use it as a marker of "intentionality" to explain textual changes. Consequently, the sense that these changes are overdetermined, which is included in his original formulation, tends to be neglected. I think we always have to be careful to regard these changes as the product of a multiple set of scribal/editorial practices carried out over an extended period of time. Hence, lacking external "evidence," we should always be aware of the difficulty, if not impossibility, of specifying exactly when and why and by whom they were made.

Unlike Manly and Dutschke, I consider quires 7 to 9 to be a separate, unfinished booklet that was combined with the other two booklets in the early sixteenth century when the manuscript was bound. I discuss the issue of the manuscript's composite structure in an article, "A Codicological Analysis of the Quire Structure of MS HM140 and Its Implications for a Revised Ordinatio."

I am following Manly and Dutschke in the identification of the hands. I also consulted with Ralph Hanna III about several key junctures, such as the change of scribal hands at the end of the Clerk's Tale. The following is a breakdown of the hands in the first booklet: Scribe 1: ff1-30v (quires 1&2), ff47-62v (quire 4—i.e. if textual ordination is followed, this should be quire 3, but probably was transposed with quire 4 when the MS was bound). Scribe 2: ff31-46v (quire 3, but as already noted should be quire 4), f63 (quire 5), ff83 line 29-84, ff85 line 17-85v line 9, ff91 line 14-91v line 20 (quire 6). Scribe 3: ff63v-83 line 28 (virtually all of quire 5 which ends at f77, and quire 6, ff78-83, ff84v-85 line 16, ff85v line 10-86 line 20, ff 89-90, f91 lines 10-13, ff91v line 21-92v line 7 (all in quire 6). Scribe 4: ff 86 line 21-88v, ff90v-91 line 9, f92v lines 10-35 (all in quire 6); Scribe 5: f92v lines 8-9 (quire 6).

As I noted above, the order of the third and fourth quires was transposed when the manuscript was bound. As it stands now Scribe 1 inscribed quires 1, 2, and 4. Scribe 2 copied quire 3 which was originally quire 4.

Although Manly notes "no supervision; few corrections . . ." (434) in the copying of the Clerk's Tale, his evaluation was probably based on explicit marks of supervision, such as marginal notation, of which there are none.

Lerer concludes that the manuscript was probably produced in the household of the "northern gentry" (312). This accords with Ralph Hanna's suggestion to me that production features of the manuscript indicate that it might have been produced in a private household, not a commercial shop. Such a provenance might help to explain the transcription problems in quire 6. But as Parkes and Doyle have argued, scribes often worked in close collaboration on commercially produced manuscripts. From the external evidence we have it is not possible to determine with any certainty where the manuscript was produced.

The text of the Testamentum runs to the end of the verso of f92. My examination shows that this folio has been cut away leaving a one inch strip.

"Here endith the glorious lyf and passyoun of the blessid martir Seint Albone and seint Amphiball which glorious livis were tranlatid oute of ffrenssh and latyn by dane John Lydgate monke of Bury at the request and prayer of Master John Whetamstede the yere of oure Lorde M CCCC xxxix [1439] and of the said Master John Whetamstede of his Abisse xix."

MacCracken thinks the monogram at the end of the poem "Uppone A Crosse" "looks like J L" (Minor Poems, Part I.254). "Midsomer Rose" ends with an Explicit followed by "JL" and "Song of Virtu" ends with an "Amen" followed by "JL." (See Minor Poems, Part II.785, 838). The point is arguable, but my own examination of the MS confirms this opinion. More to my point, however, is that if these are attributions of authorship they are far less explicit than the full one given to St. Albon.

For example, f13v has the following words underlined: Albon, martire, Albot, clerke, Anapt, lybrarie, coffers, poyettis, prudent, phelozyfires, ethiologie, whete, Whete, glenys, phelozifers, memory, Reportery, knyghthod, passion. Towards the end of the work, beginning with f65 the refrain 'O prothomartir of Brutis Albion" is underlined in red. It occurs twelve times in the closing stanzas.

Some other examples follow: On f15 the end of the prologue of the second book has a rubricated division marker, "Her Endith the Prollogg. And begynnth the Seconde Boke of the Glorious Prothomartir Seint Albon Howe he was made Gourernour of the Cite of Verolamye." F59 has a rubricated, inter-stanzaic line in Latin repeated four times, two recto and two verso: "Albanus Ver Egregius Martir Extat Gloriosus." On f60 the end of the second book is marked by the following rubric: "Explicit passio sancti Albani Incipit passion Sancti Amphibali sociorumque suorum cum Translatione Sancti Albani."

I think that there are a number of reasons for the change in the verse format of the Clerk's Tale to what I call a prose formatting, and that this change reflects more the textual and ideological status of the tale rather than production values per se. I discuss this reformatting in an article interpreting the tale in its HM140 context, "The Consequences of 'Treuth': Reading Two Versions of the Clerk's Tale." But the changes in decoration do reflect the downscaling of its production priority.

The 70 lines that are missing would very comfortably fit into the number of lines per page, which varied from 31 to 37. According to the pattern of the quire structure, this folio would have been of vellum.

In my examination of the transcription of the Clerk's Tale I focused on the major "errors" and lacunae, and for the most part noted those variations at the unit level of a line or greater. I did not record variations within the line, though there are many. I did note and record one scribal "correction" where a dropped line was inserted between two already written lines. The purpose of my examination is not to provide an exhaustive description of the copying of the tale, but to generate sufficient information to evaluate the quality of the scribes' work. In the listing of the variations in the transcription of the tale I also give reference to the Riverside Edition of Chaucer's Works, indicating either the missing line or the section where line transpositions occurred.

Quire 5 (ff68v to 77; 9 1/2 folios):

• 1 f68v lacuna: "Prologue" [E1-56]
• 2 f71 lacuna: line missing between lines 24 & 25 [E353]
• 3 f71v transposition: lines 19 & 20 between lines 23 & 24 [E379-385]
• 4 f72v correction: line 6 squeezed between lines 5 & 7 [E399]
• 5 f72v transposition: lines 31 & 32 transposed [E456-462]
• 6 f73 repetition: line 1 repeats penultimate line (31) on f72v [E458]
• 7 f73 transposition: lines 2 & 3 transposed [E459-460]
• 8 f74v lacuna: line missing between lines 2 & 3 [E558]
• 9 f74v lacuna: line missing between lines 8 & 9 [E565]

Quire 6 (ff78 to 84, line 11; 6 1/6 folios):

• 10 f78 lacuna: line missing between lines 4 & 5 [E798]
• 11 f78 lacuna: line missing between lines 22 & 23 [E817]
• 12 f79 lacuna: line missing between lines 21 & 22 [E886]
• 13 f81 lacuna: 7 lines (stanza) missing between lines 2 & 3 [E1009-15]
• 14 f83 lacuna: 14 lines (2 stanzas) missing between lines 21 & 22 [Lordynges and Wife of Bath stanzas, E1163-76]
• 15 f83v transpositions: multiple line transpositions in Envoy, lines 18 to 24 [18, 20, 22, 23, 19, 21, 24]

The six extant manuscripts with "independent" versions of the tale are: Harley 1239 (Ha1), Harley 5908 (Hl4), Longleat 257 (Ll1), Naples XIII.B.29 (Np), Rawlinson C86 (Ra4), and HM140.

In the first two-and-one-half folios, ff68v to 70v, there are no major lacunae or line transpositions. In the next four, ff71 to 74v, there are eight major mistakes, at least one per folio (except f73v), and three folio pages that have two each, ff72v, 73, and 74v. In the next three folios, ff75 to 77v, there are none. In the first one-and-one-half folios of quire 6, ff78 to 79R, there are three major errors, two on one page. On the next one-and-one-half folios, 79v to 81v, there are none. On f81 there is a major lacuna of seven lines, followed by one-and-one-half folios, ff81v to 82v, where there are no errors. Finally, on f83, there is the major lacuna of fourteen lines, the "Lordynges" and "Wife of Bath" stanzas, and on f83v, Scribe 2, who has taken over the writing at the end of f83, has several line transpositions in the final lines of the envoy. The lacunae increase in frequency and size as the transcription of the tale progresses.

I am not counting the error I listed as #4 because it is, as I note, an interlinear insertion of a line, that is, a correction of a missed line.

In quire 5 there are three separate lacunae, all consisting of one line each. In quire 6 there are five instances of omission, three of one line each, one of seven lines, and one of fourteen lines, totalling twenty-four lines.

There are several possible reasons for transposing a line. The most obvious is that the scribe was following the transposition order of his exemplar, which may be the case in the transpositions in lines 31 and 32 on f72v and lines 2 and 3 on f73. Another is that the scribe just mixed up the lines. But a third may be that the scribe missed a line, realized he had done so, and then added it after the line he had just transcribed. Looking at the one correction I listed in quire 5 and the cluster of errors at the end of f72v and the beginning of f73 will give a good illustration of scribe 3's working procedure and make my conclusion about his practice more concrete. In the first example, the missed line correction on f72, line 6 is squeezed between lines 5 and 7:

• 5 As in a cote or in a ox stall
• 6 |But noryshid in an Emprous hall|
• 7 To euery wyght waxen she is so dere
• 8 |But| And worshipfull that folke there she was

The "But" in line 8 is superlinear and partially erased. This correction is very interesting because it gives us a rare opportunity of "seeing" scribe 3 correct a mistake. I surmise that scribe 3 missed line 6 beginning with, "But noryshid" and later caught his omission. The partially erased superlinear "But" on line 8 indicates that he probably was going to place the omitted line there, but corrected this and squeezed it between 5 and 7, which is the proper order. This potentially missed line shows the scribe correcting himself and suggests that the quality control of the writing was still probably quite good. A second series of textual variations to consider occurs at the end of one folio and the beginning of another, which may account for some confusion. Near the end of f72v, scribe 3 transposed the last lines of the folio, 31 and 32. He then repeated the penultimate line (31) of 72v as the first line of f73 and transcribed lines 2 and 3 on f73:

• f72v 30 He had assayed here inowe before
• 31 Her for to tempt and alway more and more
• 32 And founde here euer goode what nedith it
• f73 1 Here for to tempe and all way more and more
• 2 But as for me I say euyll it sitte
• 3 Thought som men preyse it for asotill witte

Here is the passage from the Riverside Chaucer for comparison: Here we have a cluster of three mistakes; the first two, at least, are closely connected. The earlier transposition of lines 31 and 32 probably resulted in the second mistake of line repetition. When scribe 3 started f73 he probably referred to line 32, the last line on F72v, beginning "And founde . . ." (one of the transposed lines). He then repeated the line beginning, "Here for to tempe. . . ." This suggests that his exemplar had the proper line order. The scribe then wrote the next two lines in transposed order, which suggests that the work had been much interrupted. Both these line transpositions were made in the texts of manuscripts that Manly identifies as having a close textual affiliation to that in HM140: lines 456 and 457 in Rawlinson Poetry 223 (Ra3) and lines 459 and 460 in Harley 7335 (Ha5) and Trinity College Cambridge R.3.3. So it is plausible that these transpositions, especially that of lines 459 and 460, were in the scribe's exemplar.

Those manuscripts in the group where Manly placed HM140 are: Additional 35286 (Ad3), Harley 7335 (Ha5), Rawlinson Poetry 223 (Ra3), Trinity College Cambridge R.3.3. (Tc1), Cambridge Dd.4.2 (Dd), Egerton 2864 (En3), Additional 5140 (Ad1), Harley 7334 (Ha4), Sion College (Si), Naples XIII.B.29 (Np), Royal 17 D.XV (Ry1), Laud 739 (Ld2), Additional 24178 (Ad2), Hatton Donat (Ht), McCormick (Mc), Rawlinson Poetry 141 (Ra1), Lichfield 2 (LC), Morgan 249 (Mg), Corpus Christi 198 (Cp), Landsdowne 851 (La), and Sloan 1686 (Sl2).

I made a detailed examination of the microfilm of these four MSS: Additional 35286 (Ad3), Harley 7335 (Ha5), Rawlinson Poetry 223 (Ra3), and Trinity College Cambridge R.3.3. (Tc1). Except for one set of two line transpositions in the passage E456-460, none of these manuscripts has any of the other omissions or transpositions that HM140 has. All have the Prologue, and three, Ad3, Ra3 and Tc1, have the "Lordynges" and "Wife of Bath" stanzas, as well as the envoy. It is not possible to ascertain whether or not Ha5 originally had these stanzas because the text breaks off at E1105, probably because of lost folios.

Naples XIII.B.29 is a special case, because its missing lines may very well be the result of folios lost after the transcription of the tale. The text of the tale starts at E92 and is missing lines E1114 to 1194, the section where the "Lordynges" and "Wife of Bath" stanzas are located. Since Np contains an "independent" version of the Clerk's Tale, the prologue may have been eliminated to begin with. Either the "Wife of Bath" or the "Lordynges" stanzas may not have been included in the original transcription of the MS since the 80 lines that are missing add up to about 10 more than the average number of 35 lines per folio in the MS. There are, however, folios of 41 lines in Np so it is entirely possible that they were originally there.

To quote Bakhtin: "Form and content in discourse are one, once we understand that verbal discourse is a social phenomenon—social throughout its entire range and in each and every of its factors, from the sound image to the furthest reaches of abstract meaning" (259). For a synoptic overview of his theory of dialogic discourse see my article, "The Dialogic Other: Bakhtin's Theory of Rhetoric."

See Gianni Vattimo for discussions of the relation of a work of art and "truth" in the chapter, "Ornament/Monument" (79-89), and of our relation to the classic texts of the Western tradition in the chapter entitled "Hermeneutics and Anthropology" (145-163, especially 161).