Legend of Good Women

This critical edition of the text brings together for the first time full manuscript variants and the results of recent palaeographical and codicological work on the manuscripts. It differs from earlier editions in attempting to identify textual originality from the quality of variant readings, and in giving grounds, in the analysis of variants, for the identification of the likelier derivative variant. The textual apparatus records not only all substantive variants but also morphological and spelling variants where there is potential ambiguity or where the form of a variant would seem to indicate the direction of variation. In their choice and treatment of copy text (Bodleian Library MS Tanner 346) the editors have adhered to the principle that the copy text is to be chosen for the appropriateness of its accidentals, and have maintained the distinction between accidentals and substantive readings which has not often been valued or observed in the editing of Chaucer. In examining the differences between the text of the Prologue to The Legend of Good Women in Cambridge University Library MS Gg. 4.27 and that preserved in the other manuscripts of the poem, the editors address the problem of distinguishing between authorial and scribal variation.