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I am grateful to Peter Robinson and the Centre for Technology and the Arts for the invitation to read an earlier version of this paper at De Montfort University, Leicester, 26 April 2000.
The first maxim I know only at second hand; see for example, its ascription to Bentley in Eleanor Prescott Hammond, A Chaucer Handbook (New York, 1908) 146. Cf. the differing appreciations of William Empson, Some Versions of Pastoral (London, 1935) 149-191, and E. J. Kennedy, The Classical Text (Berkeley CA, 1974) 71-74, 100-101. For Housman, see D. Ivnii Ivvenalis Satvrae (London, 1905) xii-xiii.
Peter Robinson, ed., The Wife of Bath's Prologue, CD-ROM (Cambridge, 1996). (I hasten to say that Cambridge University Press's outrageous pricing precludes my owning it.)
I refer, of course, to John M. Manly and Edith Rickert, The Text of the Canterbury Tales, 8 vols. (Chicago, 1940), which is the source of all my sigla for manuscripts of the poem.
Following the various demonstrations of N. F. Blake, most fully The Textual Tradition of the Canterbury Tales (London, 1985).
`Canterbury Tales D 117: A Critical Edition', originally in Speculum 40 (1965), reprinted in Speaking of Chaucer (New York, 1970) 119-130.
`A Stemmatic Analysis of the Fifteenth-Century Witnesses to The Wife of Bath's Prologue', The Canterbury Tales Project Occasional Papers 2 (1997) 69-132 at 76.
The production teams derived marginal annotations from a copy of Jerome here and (often more flamboyantly) in Dorigen's complaint in `The Franklin's Tale'. But the only place I'm aware that the book, surely present in the scribal milieu, actually interpenetrated the text is the insertion unique to Ha4 at `The Parson's Tale' 869 `secundum Ieronimum contra Iouinianum'. For the `Melibee', see Albert E. Hartung, `A Study of the Textual Affiliations of Chaucer's Melibeus Considered in its Relation to the French Source' (unpublished Lehigh Ph.D. dissertation, 1957), described Dissertation Abstracts 17 (1957) 2259-60. Hartung unfortunately construed these readings as evidence for a Chaucerian revision of the work.
See my discussion, `The Hengwrt Manuscript and the Canon of The Canterbury Tales', reprinted from English Manuscript Studies 1 (1989) in Pursuing History (Stanford, 1996) 140- 155.
Scribe D was identified and most of his work described by A. I. Doyle and M. B. Parkes, `The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century', in Parkes and Andrew G. Watson, eds., Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker (London, 1978) 163-203. On this version of the text, see my `(The) Editing (of) the Ellesmere Text', in Martin M. Stevens and Daniel Woodward, eds., The Ellesmere Chaucer: Essays in Interpretation (San Marino CA, 1995) 225-243, especially 229-230, 240 n9.
Or what I have elsewhere described as a koiné. The same features interestingly occur in the transmission of one of Chaucer's Latin sources here, Walter Map's `Dissuasio Valerii'; see Ralph Hanna and Traugott Lawler, using materials collected by Karl Young and Robert A. Pratt, Jankyn's Book of Wikked Wyves, Volume 1: The Primary Texts (Athens GA, 1997) 103-107.
These are D 44a-f, 575-584, 605-612, 619-626, and 717-720. See for example, Beverly Kennedy, `Contradictory Responses to the Wife of Bath as evidenced by Fifteenth-Century Manuscript Variants', Occasional Papers 2 (1997) 23-39 at 29-32, views sensationally released to and reported by the British tabloid press (cf. Robinson 124-126). More sensible is Elizabeth Solopova, `The Problem of Authorial Variants in the Wife of Bath's Prologue', ibid. 133-142 at 133-137.
The full set of variants from the four MSS in my sample (I have eliminated the superscripts from the sigla) includes:
110 a scribal line Bw (a version of General Prologue 186). and his foore] in his lore Ld; and his lore Ln Ry [in in Dl Ps Sl1, on in Ra2; lore in 35 witnesses total].
111 wol] wolde Bw Ld Ln Ry [in 38 witnesses].
112 And] om. Bw Ld Ln Ry. lordynges] Lordes Ld Ry [also Ph3].
113 the flour of] om. Bw Ld Ln Ry.
114 in] in þe Bw Ln; om. Ld Ry [the in 15 witnesses].
117 of] in Bw, interlined Ln, om. Ry [Bw = Py Se; Ln is unique, but 6 witnesses, like Ry, om.]. wis] and so wijs Ln. a wight] þat were Bw; a wriʒt Ld Ln Ry. y-] It Ln.
118 Trusteth] Truste it Ln. were nat] Nere Bw Ry.
119 and] I Ln (I in 5 witnesses]. bothe] om. Bw [omitted in 11 witnesses].
120 maad] makid Bw Ld Ry [also Gg Si].
121 our bothe] other Bw Ld Ry; of oþer Ln [Ln of in 10 witnesses; 6 further witnesses agree fully with Bw Ld Ry, and 10 additional witnesses include other].
123 no] now Bw.
124 wel] om. Bw Ld Ry; þat Ln [20 witnesses omit; Ln agrees with Ph3 Pw].
125 the] þese Bw; ʒe Ln [thise in 9 witnesses, ye in 13]. nat] om. Ld.
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