Raymo, Robert E., and Elaine E. Whitaker, eds. The Mirroure of the Worlde: A Middle English Translation of “Le Miroir du monde.” Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2003. Pp. x; 644 (Ruth).

Summary

Editors Raymo and Whitaker provide the first scholarly edition of MS Bodley 283, a fifteenth-c. manuscript which contains a Middle English translation of the French Miroir du monde (c.1270). The original French text is a significant work of lay religious instruction, one mandated by the Fourth Lateran Council (1215). The Middle English Bodley manuscript is richly decorated with naturalistic pen drawings by several artists; these illustrations (which are not reproduced in the edition) add an artistic flair to the didactic contents.

Given the size of the manuscript (186 leaves), the edition is a rather weighty tome, with a format common to scholarly editions: an introduction that includes a description of the manuscript; the background and sources of the Miroir du monde; a discussion of the translation's language, the date of the manuscript (c.1440–c.1450), its translator (supposedly Stephen Scrope — there is no conclusive proof); and an overview of the editorial procedure used in preparing this rendering. The principal text follows, with textual and explanatory notes, a glossary, a bibliography, and an index of names completing the edition.

The introductory material is satisfactory, apart from the section devoted to editorial procedure, which is not as comprehensive as a textual critic would wish (comprising less than two full pages, 26–28). Also, the reader is often unsure as to the editorial policy the editors have chosen; for example, they note that they have kept interventions to a minimum, and that they provide them only “to supply omissions and correct scribal and authorial errors” (26). Following this statement is a declaration that an elimination of all textual errors would entail a misrepresention and distortion of the translation (ibid.). To be sure, the editors are facing a translation of a French text, which is a unique venture in and of itself, as it tests their knowledge of this foreign language; however, in a sense, their statements also serve as an opening apology for any errors contained in the edition. This rendering, then, is distinctive in that it has to permit errors in order to keep the spirit of the translation, but annotations would have explained these circumstances to the reader.