Guidelines for Transcription of the Manuscripts of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue

This account of the principles we have established so far in our transcription of the manuscripts of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue is not intended as a final statement of transcription policy even for this part of the Canterbury Tales. Rather, it is a discussion document, partly that we may explain to ourselves and to others what we are doing, and partly that the act of explanation may lead to debate about and refinement of our transcription of the manuscripts.1 In the course of our work we have come to realize that no transcription of these manuscripts into computer-readable form can ever be considered ‘final’ or ‘definitive’. Transcription for the computer is a fundamentally interpretative activity, composed of a series of acts of translation from one system of signs (that of the manuscript) to another (that of the computer). Accordingly, our transcripts are best judged on how useful they will be for others, rather than as an attempt to achieve a definitive transcription of these manuscripts. Will the distinctions we make in these transcripts and the information we record provide a base for work by other scholars? How might our transcripts be improved, to meet the needs of scholars now and to come? At the same time, we ask scholars to consider that decisions which may seem somewhat arbitrary might have a long history of argument and counter-argument behind them. These guidelines are based on our experience of transcription of fortyeight of the fifty-nine surviving manuscripts and pre-1500 printed editions of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue.2 The first transcription of these was done partly by us, partly by other transcribers.3 There were many inconsistencies from manuscript to manuscript, and indeed within manuscripts, in these first transcripts. We realized that consistency would only be possible if we established guidelines, to be applied to all new manuscripts transcribed thereafter and in the three checks to be made of each transcript. In the course of a first check of these forty-eight transcripts, carried out entirely by the authors, we set ourselves the task of developing guidelines which could be so applied. This document is the first statement of these guidelines. We expect that the revised guidelines which will issue from consideration of this document will serve as a base for completion of the transcription of all the witnesses of the Wife of Bath’s Prologue, and for the greater task of transcription of all the text in all the manuscripts and pre-1500 printed editions of the Canterbury Tales.4 These guidelines are not proposed as any sort of standard system for transcription of medieval English manuscripts. Our task is the transcription of manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales and these guidelines have been devised for that end. Thus, we pay particular attention to transcription of characters at the ends of words, because of the bearing this may have on final -e and