Margaret Connolly's
Textual Criticism
Why edit?
Utility - to make texts available to:
- students - need for student-friendly texts to support undergraduate & taught pg courses
- researchers - ease of access; permits large-scale comparative projects overall effect = to introduce new/unknown/unread/inaccessible material into circulation
Some examples of different student (as opposed to scholarly) editions:
- Beowulf: A Student Guide, ed. George B. Jack (Oxford UP, 1994)
- provides good text with on-page glossing & notes
- incorporates & distils modern scholarship into digest for students
- up-to-date bibliography
- priced affordably & published in paperback
- Medieval English Lyrics 1200-1400, ed. Thomas G. Duncan (Penguin, 1995)
- most extensive collection of lyrics available
- more user-friendly than existing anthologies (glosses, notes, good introduction)
- 'translated' ME lyrics into Chaucerian English = easier for students to read - also a bold editorial decision
- priced affordably, paperback, widely available [nb. now sadly out of print!]
- The Idea of the Vernacular, ed. Joceyln Wogan-Browne et. al (Exeter, 1999)
- collection of prologues to many later medieval vernacular texts
- very useful one-volume textbook for course on medieval literary theory
- covers lots of otherwise disparate, hard to locate material
- excellent headnotes, glosses & also critical essays included
Effect/value of such student editions:
- can improve teaching & help 'package' medieval courses more attractively
- can change & expand what is offered on syllabus - issues that could previously only be taught at pg level (due to lack of material) can be offered to undergraduates
- Regular need for new editions of texts/anthologies on undergraduate courses
Back to Margaret Connolly's Textual Criticism.
Why edit? Editing prose texts Own experience of editing How to edit? Bibliography