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Establishment of the Text Readability, functionality, coherence, and ease of use have been the guiding principles in the design of this online edition. At the heart of the edition is the main "Belle Dame - Manuscripts & Texts" page. Here, the reader will find a grid which outlines the eighteen manuscripts known to contain the poem. Hyperlinks embedded within this grid will convey the reader to five different views of the poem: an archeological edition of each manuscript witness, a critical edition of the same, an "Editor's Choice" edition (a variation of the 'best text' edition) ,a facsimile of the manuscript witnesses, and a modern English translation of the Editor's Choice edition. A detailed description of the editing principles followed in presenting each one of these views of the poem may be found below. Once in the archeological view of a given manuscript (viewable by clicking on the manuscript name), a reader will be able to click on any individual line in the text to compare that line to the same one in each of the seventeen other manuscript witnesses. Searches of various kinds -- on particular glossary items, rhyme words, idiomatic expressions, and other, may also be conducted from this page. From the Editor's Choice edition, a reader can request to see the text of any of the other manuscripts, displayed in a frame opposite the Editor's Choice text for easy comparison. From the grid, readers will also have extensive access to codicological and philological information on both the manuscripts and poem. A click of a manuscript's siglum, for example, will reveal a complete description of the codex and its contents. In terms of editorial procedures, this edition conforms, in principle, with Editing Old French Texts, by Alfred Foulet and Mary Blakely Speer. Any variations have been made with a view to facilitating the reading of the text. The ARCHEOLOGICAL EDITIONS of La Belle dame qui eut mercy fully and completely respect the spelling, unresolved abbreviations, lack of capitalization and punctuation, corrections, marginalia, and other textual or extratextual markings found in the manuscripts. I have made no editorial corrections or emendations to the transcriptions. The CRITICAL EDITIONS of each manuscript witness, on the contrary, contain a judicious amount of editorial intervention. The orthography of the manuscripts has been respected as closely as possible, with corrections being made only in those cases where the reading is incomprehensible or manifestly faulty. I have distinguished i and j according to modern usage. The letters u and v are also distinguished, whereas they are both represented by the grapheme u in the manuscripts. The habitual fluctuation in Old and Middle French between se and the hypothetical si has not been corrected. On the other hand, I have corrected the occurrences of qui used in the place of the relative pronoun que (either putting que or qu=il / qu=ilz, depending on the case). I have also corrected the use of ce where the reflexive pronoun se was needed, and of se when used instead of ce. I have placed emendations to the text in square brackets. Documentation on the original readings, as well as letters or words which have been crossed out or written in the margins, are included as hyperlinks. In those cases where I have adopted the corrections from earlier editors, I have indicated my source. All hypermetric and hypometric lines have been left as such; corrections have been made only if absolutely necessary according to the principles noted above. All abbreviations have been resolved. Punctuation, which is non-existent, incomplete, or faulty in the manuscript, has been established according to modern usage. An apostrophe is used where an article, pronoun, or a possessive adjective elides before a word which begins with a voyelle (l'hyver, j'ay, m'ame). Quotation marks are not used to indicate discourse; instead I have included the identification of the speaker by a rubric, a technique used in the majority of the manuscript witnesses. Accent marks, totally absent in the manuscripts, will be included according to the principles enumerated in Foulet and Speer's manual. The sharp accent (accent aigu) will be inserted in the case of a final tonic e (although I have not corrected the text when a z takes the place of such an accent on a final tonic e, i.e. voullentez); of an e followed by an s in the second person plural form of a verb (i.e. sachés for sachez), in order to distinguish it from the second person singular form; of a masculine plural past participle which ends in s or z , to distinguish it from the feminine plural; or to distinguish a monosyllabic word like lés (meaning a 'place') or lés de (preposition meaning 'near') from a homonym like the definite article les. The trema is used according to the needs of the meter or to give to a vowel the syllabification that it had in Middle French, which may differ from modern usage. The trema may also indicate the presence of hiatus at the cesura. The trema has not been used for the verb veoir, as this verb is always dissyllabic in Old French (cf. Foulet and Speer, 71-72). The cedilla indicates that the letter c is softened. In both the archeological and the critical editions, capitalization is used on the first letter of the first word of a verse. In the critical edition only the first letters of proper nouns and words for personnified abstractions are capitalized. In all versions, the numbers to the left of the text indicates the number of the verse. The numbers to the right of the text indicate the foliotation or pagination of the manuscripts. The symbol 17r°a refers, for example, to folio 17, on the right or upper side, the first column. The symbol 21v°b refers to folio 21, back side, second column. The EDITOR'S CHOICE EDITION is based on Paris, Bibliothèque nationale, f. fr. 1131, a 15th century manuscript which also contains a considerable number of works by Alain Chartier and Oton de Granson. This manuscript witness is missing no lines, contains the fewest blatant errors, and reflects the lessons of the majority of the other witnesses, thus has been judged by this editor to be one of the best readings of the poem. FACSIMILES of the manuscript folios consulted in the preparation of this edition are presented without any correction or editorial intervention. The ENGLISH TRANSLATION of La Belle dame sans mercy is based on the 'Editor's Choice' manuscript. In preparing this translation, I have tried to remain as close as possible to the original Middle French text, allowing for idiomatic differences between the two languages. Constructive comments and suggestions from readers on the design and content of this edition are welcome. A Guest Book is provided on this site for this purpose. Visitors to this site are also invited to post comments, questions, and reactions to the poem in the "Belle Dame Qui Eut Mercy" Discussion List linked to this site. |