Chrystis Kirk of the Grene : a critical edition
Date
1990
Authors
Harker, C. Marie
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Abstract
This Master's thesis is a critical edition of an anonymous Middle Scots comic poem of twenty-three stanzas, commonly known as "Chrystis Kirk of the Grene". The goal of this edition was to approximate the (probably) early fifteenth-century original work by examining extant witnesses and evaluating the relative authority of their texts. The authoritative witnesses available for this preparation spanned nearly two centuries of transmission (1568-1724). The separation of the oldest of the documents from a putative date of origin by more than a century argued against either a diplomatic edition or critical edition based on a designated "best-text". Consequently, a (conservatively) eclectic method was adopted: manuscript witnesses were transcribed; a copy-, or base text was selected on the basis of age, inclusiveness, and linguistic quality; the readings of the other witnesses were collated against those of the copy-text; where variants were demonstrably more authoritative (more likely to have been present in the ur-text), the copy-text was emended. The edited text was presented with expanded abbreviations, slightly modernized orthography, and editorial punctuation. The text is preceded by an extensive introduction in which the probable author and date of composition -- the poem's language, genre, narrative, and influence -- the physical and textual states of the witnesses -- and the editorial principles of this edition -- are considered. Following the text are apparati, critical notes, a selective glossary, the bibliography and two appendices. Substantive and (linguistic) accidental variants were separated into two apparati. All emendations are discussed fully in the notes. The appendices contain, respectively, a discussion of the poem's satire and historical context, and two non-original stanzas common to several of the witnesses.