Report of CCE Sessions at Kalamazoo

Report from the 34th International Congress on Medieval
Studies, Kalamazoo, May 1999

and from the 6th Early Book Society Conference,
Glasgow, July 1999

The 34th International Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo, MI, included two sessions on the Chaucer Commentary Editions, co-chaired by Alastair J. Minnis and Charlotte C. Morse, Executive Editors, and Josephine Koster , Associate Editor, who serves as Website Managers.

What has led to the Chaucer Commentary Editions?
After a welcome, Morse described some of the problems that have led contributing editors of the Variorum Chaucer to think of moving to an electronic edition: long delays between a contributor's submission and the General Editor's vetting for publication, poor communications, and opaque legal, financial and institutional controls in the Variorum. To help set a context for the discussion, the co-chairs solicited statements from Daniel J. Ransom, General Editor of the Variorum Chaucer (read by Koster) and from Peter Robinson, Director of the Canterbury Tales Project (read by Minnis). Ransom reviewed the history, especially the publication history of the Variorum, and counseled patience. Robinson offered cooperation of several kinds to the CCE project, including technical assistance, sharing of data, and perhaps coordination in scheduling publication of work. The CTP has some flexibility now, having just been awarded funding for five years by Britain's new Arts and Humanities Research Board, a granting agency now much more handsomely funded than the National Endowment for the Humanities.

How will the Chaucer Commentary Editions operate?
Minnis and Morse have been developing an organizational structure for the CCE, which will include an Advisory Board and an Editorial Board. Professors John Burrow and Eric Stanley (UK) and Larry Benson, Mary Carruthers, Hoyt Duggan (USA) have agreed to serve on the Advisory Board, which will remain relatively small. A working Editorial Board is very much a work-in-progress. The shape of its membership will depend in part on the choices about what to include in the CCE. Malcolm Andrew, Elizabeth Solopova, and Joseph Wittig are among the first to agree to serve on the Editorial Board. More organizational work needs to be done. As there seems to be a consensus supporting the CCE amongst editors already involved in the preparation of volumes for the Variorum and also other medievalists, Minnis and Morse will continue to work on building a structure for the CCE.
To facilitate discussion at Kalamazoo, the co-chairs presented a set of talking points, with options. Discussion did not rigidly follow the talking points, but did indeed look forward to an electronic edition, not backward to the history of the Variorum. None of the options offered was intended to preclude eventual publication of CCE material in a Variorum volume.

What will the Chaucer Commentary Editions include?
Because the electronic CTP now exists, as it could not have when the Variorum began (1967), participants in the Kalamazoo sessions seemed to accept that the CCE, at least for the CT, should not include the textual introduction now characteristic for the Variorum. Morse reported that Larry Benson (and Houghton Mifflin) will grant permission for the CCE to use the Riverside Chaucer as a text on which to hang the (mostly explanatory) notes. The introductory survey of criticism/history of reception and explanatory notes would then constitute the CCE.
That editors in the CCE might choose what text to use for their commentary and notes seemed desirable to some participants, particularly those who have already completed textual work. Several found the idea of Riverside's Ellesmere-influenced CT text and its punctuation distasteful, and would like to use their own texts. To what degree the CCE can be flexible about allowing editors to choose texts may depend on what funding agencies will think reasonable, on what Benson and Houghton-Mifflin will allow, and on what other likely CCE editors think. Further discussion acknowledged that there are technical problems that the CCE would need to address, given that the CCE, like the Variorum, would have more interest than Riverside has in scribal additions. But there are parts of the Chaucer canon on which very little or no work has been done by Variorum editors (as far as Minnis and Morse know). In the case of the Troilus, doing a new edition so soon after Windeatt's edition and the Riverside seems needless work. Some noted that Variorum editions for English literature do not always supply a text, which is another option. Privately, one participant noted that, though Joyce scholars fight ferociously about the text, they have agreed upon a text, as a matter of convenience, for a variorum-style commentary.

What technical constraints have been considered?
    At the end of the first session, Koster demonstrated Morse's sample of the Clerk's Tale, showing how text, corpus of variants, textual notes, and explanatory notes could be presented using Microsoft Frontpage and html. Morse pointed out that CCE probably should not be presenting a text with variants and textual notes, but offered the sample in the spirit of exploration of technical aspects of the CCE. There are at least two reasons why this is so for the CT: first is the dependence of the Variorum CT texts on Manly-Rickert (the Variorum CT text has been criticized for not being based on all the manuscripts and for pretending to an authority that does not accrue to a text constituted as the Variorum CT has been); second is the redundancy, given the CTP, of vetting the CT text, which is extremely labor intensive.
    At the beginning of the second session, Elizabeth Solopova demonstrated SGML, a much more powerful markup language than html, frequently used in computerized projects in the humanities. While most of the audience was rather ignorant about SGML and its differences from html, Solopova's demonstration and subsequent discussion helped to clarify, in principle, what is at stake. Duggan, who is using SGML for the Piers Plowman manuscripts, strongly supported the view that SGML markup (or something at least as powerful) is the only way to prepare materials for long-life. Html, while easy to use, is comparatively fragile and less searchable than text in SGML. Morse commented that Duggan had offered to teach her SGML in three days. That it is tedious, no one denies, and marking up commentary will present different problems from marking up manuscript transcriptions. Anyone doing sophisticated tagging (there are other markup languages now in use) must understand very clearly what is wanted. The work is tedious, but not stupid. Duggan recommended, and others seconded, a need to do several samples from different parts of an edition, presenting different problems, to discover what needs to be marked. Some further discussion of technical/logical analysis, necessary for tagging, followed, making it clear that everyone involved will need to learn more than most now know about tagging.
    Tagging did promise to offer a way to accommodate different desires about texts. Duggan pointed out that it would be possible to tag text with alternative line-numbering systems, to accommodate Riverside, CTP, and Chaucer-Society/Variorum. A reader could choose which line-numbering system to activate. There was also some discussion of whether to cross-link to a database, or to make a database, of abstracts of articles (Skip Dickerson had compiled such a base for his edition of BD, which Laurel Broughton has updated to 1995). Mark Allen noted that it would be possible to crosslink, soon, to the bibliography he maintains for Studies in the Age of Chaucer, sponsored by the New Chaucer Society; abstracts, however, extend back only to 1975.

Who's going to pay for this?
There was some discussion of funding sources. Morse plans to speak with the NEH, which is sometimes quite helpful to large projects as they are starting out. British participants Stephen Knight, Helen Phillips, and Alastair Minnis fell into some discussion of the new British methods of "counting" research and what sort of university home(s) might be appropriate institutional bases for a grant application to the AHRB for UK participants. So far as we know, Americans have little reason to suppose that there will be much public or foundation funding available for the CCE, but all need to be alert to opportunities.

Where do we go from here?
Before a convincing proposal for the project can be made to a granting agency, a good many decisions must be made. Minnis, Morse, and Koster will be holding a session at the Early Book Society Conference in Glasgow in July; the session will be held Thursday July 8 from 2-5 p.m. Peter Robinson and other members of the CTP will also be in Glasgow. And so the session ended with.... "On to Glasgow!"
After Glasgow, CCE will be setting guidelines (where practical, the same as the Variorum guidelines), making technical decisions, and developing organizational structure to make possible a grant proposal that can win funding. Morse promised to inquire about the NEH; Minnis, with help from Knight, are the likely leaders of a UK proposal.

Update from Glasgow
We will be adding more information about the discussions in Glasgow, which were very informative, as soon as Charlotte returns from London. However, a brief precis is in order. There seems to be a strong movement towards going with an independent commentary edition linked to a standard(ized) text, though this would not preclude scholars from creating their own texts if they so desired. SGML appears to be the way to go in coding--virtually everything, including the Middle English Compendium, is headed that way. However, it may not be necessary for each scholar to prepare his or her edition in SGML if a centralized body (a university or publisher) is coordinating matters. Alistair and Charlotte are continuing to explore the possibility of finding a publisher to work with us. Peter Robinson generously shared his experience and made some recommendations about the necessity of finding a central home and having one team do all the coding based on his experience with the Canterbury Tales project. We're very grateful to Peter, and especially to Graham Caie and Ros Field, for a great deal of useful input in Glasgow. Once we've digested it all, we will be putting it up on the web for you.