Difference between revisions of "Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte Darthur (1485)"
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The present edition has been designed for seminar purposes (click [http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1485-morte-darthur/arthur-text.htm here] for the printable copy text). Some remarks on the editorial decisions: | The present edition has been designed for seminar purposes (click [http://www.pierre-marteau.com/editions/1485-morte-darthur/arthur-text.htm here] for the printable copy text). Some remarks on the editorial decisions: | ||
| − | The text is a literal transcription of Caxton’s 1485 edition. A number of irregularities of the early print | + | The text is a literal transcription of Caxton’s 1485 edition. A number of irregularities remain characteristics of the early print: |
| − | * m and n abbreviations | + | * m and n abbreviations occur occasionally in where the reader can be expected to expand the abbreviation correctly: a dash on top of an a, e, o or u indicates in these cases an omitted next letter m or n. “Laūcelot” has to be expanded to “Launcelot”. |
* an ħ appears twice in abbreviations of “Jhesus”. | * an ħ appears twice in abbreviations of “Jhesus”. | ||
* The special character ʒ is a variant of gh (to be pronounced like the German ch in “ich” and “ach”) | * The special character ʒ is a variant of gh (to be pronounced like the German ch in “ich” and “ach”) | ||
| − | * þ is a th variant reserved to the conventional spellings þ<sup>e</sup> for “the” and þ<sup>t</sup> for “that”. | + | * þ is a th variant reserved in Caxton's text to the conventional spellings þ<sup>e</sup> for “the” and þ<sup>t</sup> for “that”. |
| − | The original paragraph setting has been preserved yet harmonised throughout the text. Caxton’s edition shows a number of variants | + | The original paragraph setting has been preserved yet harmonised throughout the text. The ¶ sign does thus appear within paragraphs, different distances from preceding letters have, however, been omitted. Caxton’s edition shows a number of variants in the formatting of headlines, most of them seem to be dictated by attempts to fill the individual pages economically. The different variants have been neglected, the present edition uses a single headline format. Caxton’s punctuation has been preserved throughout. This includes his use of virgules, though antiqua letters (as used in the present edition) would have demanded commas instead of gothic virgules even in Caxton’s time - Caxton's virgule proves to be a far more flexible punctuation mark than a modern comma would be. |
A number of Caxton’s pages ended with headlines which were then repeated on the succeeding pages (Q1v, R1v, X3r, Z7r) – the present edition has eliminated these duplicates. | A number of Caxton’s pages ended with headlines which were then repeated on the succeeding pages (Q1v, R1v, X3r, Z7r) – the present edition has eliminated these duplicates. | ||
Revision as of 12:10, 10 July 2007
Note on text
The present edition has been designed for seminar purposes (click here for the printable copy text). Some remarks on the editorial decisions:
The text is a literal transcription of Caxton’s 1485 edition. A number of irregularities remain characteristics of the early print:
- m and n abbreviations occur occasionally in where the reader can be expected to expand the abbreviation correctly: a dash on top of an a, e, o or u indicates in these cases an omitted next letter m or n. “Laūcelot” has to be expanded to “Launcelot”.
- an ħ appears twice in abbreviations of “Jhesus”.
- The special character ʒ is a variant of gh (to be pronounced like the German ch in “ich” and “ach”)
- þ is a th variant reserved in Caxton's text to the conventional spellings þe for “the” and þt for “that”.
The original paragraph setting has been preserved yet harmonised throughout the text. The ¶ sign does thus appear within paragraphs, different distances from preceding letters have, however, been omitted. Caxton’s edition shows a number of variants in the formatting of headlines, most of them seem to be dictated by attempts to fill the individual pages economically. The different variants have been neglected, the present edition uses a single headline format. Caxton’s punctuation has been preserved throughout. This includes his use of virgules, though antiqua letters (as used in the present edition) would have demanded commas instead of gothic virgules even in Caxton’s time - Caxton's virgule proves to be a far more flexible punctuation mark than a modern comma would be.
A number of Caxton’s pages ended with headlines which were then repeated on the succeeding pages (Q1v, R1v, X3r, Z7r) – the present edition has eliminated these duplicates.
Caxton’s edition appeared without a title page (the imprint was to be found on the last page) and without pagination. The present edition is equipped with an auxiliary pagination of the original sheets in square brackets. The default navigation is based, however, on the original sheet numbering: The book had a front matter of 34 pages (with incoherent labeling of the sheets) and a body of 52 sheets, regularly labeled. 24 sheets (of 16 pages each) are marked with small letters from a to z plus &. The 23 sheets of the “second alphabet” show capitals from A to Z; the last five sheets bear double small letters from aa to ee. Each sheet (with the exception of the last sheets both of the front matter and the text) gave 16 pages - that is 8 leafs, each with a recto and verso side to be referred to: a1r, a1v, a2r, a2v, a3r, a3v … a8r, a8v for the first sheet. The sheet numbering is of convenience wherever our edition is used alongside reproductions of the original sheets (as available on the web in the EEBO-collection). The original pages offer the sheet collation in the bottom lines of the first recto-pages of each sheet.
Textual “mistakes” have been retained throughout. A moderate annotation is planned to offer “correct readings”. --Olaf Simons 13:46, 7 July 2007 (CEST)
