METS, the Middle English Texts Series
2 comments
·April 15, 2025thaumasiotes
I checked out the Alliterative Morte Arthure ( https://metseditions.org/read/KWj7bbRIl0RBUmG9uG60zTv8Wak97Z... ).
I'm charmed by the Middle English footnoting style of providing glosses for words that may trouble the modern-English-speaking reader without bothering to note which words those glosses are for.
However, this edition isn't typeset correctly, and the glosses are appearing attached to the wrong lines. (At least, I'm assuming that "great", glossing an empty line, is meant to gloss "grete" on the following line, and "shameful deeds", on the line "And the precious prayer / of his pris Moder" is actually meant to gloss the following line "Sheld us fro shamesdeede / and sinful workes".)†
This is a pretty serious problem.
More generally, these appear to be edited critical editions, and I wish academic texts would actually display the text of the work they represent. I don't mind displaying a standardized "editor's rendering", but show the actual text too. I want to know what the scribe wrote. This is an electronic reference. We can afford the space.
† Tangentially, it's also interesting that "sinful" counts as alliterating with "shield" and "shame".
> many noble clerkes have endevoyred them to wryte and compyle many notable werkes and historyes to the ende that it myght come to the knowlege and understondyng of suche as ben ygnoraunt, of which the nombre is infenyte.
From The Game and Playe of the Chesse, which I misread as cheese and clicked on out of bafflement. It’s a book of moral lessons to be drawn from the chessmen.