An excellent question! I will only begin the response; Joe Loewenstein,
Patrick Cheney, and Elizabeth Fowler will all be able to add valuable
information.
1. There is recent textual work by a team of Japanese editors that needs
to be better known in this country. I can't provide the citation at this
moment, but will do so soon if someone else doesn't get there first.
William Proctor Williams has high praise for this new work.
2. Yes, we are closer to a "standard edition" and there are lots of folks
who care. Along with technical advisor John Tolva, Loewenstein, Cheney,
Fowler and I are beginning the long and tricky job of reediting a complete
Spenser. The editorial problems are different than those presented by
drama, but they aren't trivial or transparent, and there is certainly room
to improve on the work of earlier editors, especially if we can take
advantage of digital technology.
3. We haven't seen McCabe's work yet either, but we understand that he
found previous editors to have made many choices we might not now endorse.
In other words, his new edition may present a greater number of new
editorial readings than your comment would suggest, or than any of us might
have expected.
Our own project is still in its initial stages, so we can't (yet) tell you
much that is certain. Bear with us; we have every intention of keeping the
scholarly community fully apprised and of seeking many scholars' input,
once we know definitely what the shape, timetable, and likely venues of our
work will be. We are planning a session on this subject at the next MLA.
--David
At 07:49 PM 2/2/00 -0600, you wrote:
>May I christen the new address with a question about editions?
>
>At the end of his Spenser Encyclopedia article on the FQ, having reviewed
>the textual history of the poem, William Proctor Williams states that the
>"best modern eds" are "Variorum 1-6, J. C. Smith (1909; rpt. by Hamilton in
>ed 1977), or Roche (1978). Note: Smith, Roche, Hamilton are three good
>reading editions, but the Variorum presents the fullest textual evidence to
>date" (SE 259).
>
>I'm assuming that this last bit does NOT mean that the Variorum editors
>were more careful than Smith, or that the Roche text has fallen away from
>the editorial purity achieved by the Variorum, but only that the Variorum
>editors included a fatter app. crit. than Smith and Roche.
>
>My question is this: are we any closer to a standard edition of Spenser's
>works than we were ten years ago, and does anybody care (the way people
>care about messy texts like Lear or Hamlet)? (Please note that by standard
>edition I mean not a once-and-for-all definitive edition, but merely the
>edition that careful scholars cite when they're not trying to make an
>editorial point -- the Riverside Chaucer, for instance, or Margoliouth's
>Marvell.) It might be argued that the Variorum text IS still the standard
>edition, but an informal sampling of recent citation practice doesn't
>really bear this out.
>
>Part B (if anyone's still reading): what is the word on McCabe's new
>edition of the Shorter Poems? (It's not out in North America until May.)
>I'm assuming that -- with the (possible) exception of the SC, which
>appeared five times over the course of the poet's lifetime -- there's not
>much room for controversy on the text itself; no notoriously corrupt
>passages spring to mind anyway.
>
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
>David Wilson-Okamura http://geoffreychaucer.org [log in to unmask]
>Macalester College Chaucer: An Annotated Guide to Online Resources
>-----------------------------------------------------------------------
David Lee Miller
Professor of English Associate Dean
University of Kentucky College of Arts & Sciences
Lexington, KY 40506-0027
(606) 257-6965 (606) 257-6689
FAX (606) 323-1072 FAX (606) 323-1073
home: (606) 252-3680
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