From the Archives...

Cambridge University Press is about to launch the Wife of Bath's Prologue on CD-ROM, the first fruits of the Canterbury Tales Project. This research database consists of the digitized images, transcripts, and collation of all 58 pre-1500 manuscripts and printed editions of the Wife of Bath's Prologue. With such a resource in hand no longer can we speak easily of a single text of the Prologue.

It is interesting to note that twenty years ago Todd K. Bender concluded that,

In the library of the future the works of authors will be conceived in a way radically different from the conception which underlies our current practices. The process of creation; the variations of spelling, punctuation, and style to suit shifting audiences; the development of the author's thought and attitudes in sequences of revisions will not be simplified and reduced to an editor's single choice. Ambiguities of the textual transmission will be preserved and investigated as a source of interest and not resolved or hidden in editorial selection. This more sophisticated view of the work is possible only when the work is conceived free from the limitations of printed paper as the vehicle for its representation (Computers and the Humanities 10:4 (1976), 198).

[Table of Contents] [Letter to the Editor]

Computers & Texts 11 (1996). Not to be republished in any form without the permission of CTI Textual Studies.

HTML Author: Michael Fraser (mike.fraser@oucs.ox.ac.uk)
Document Created: 25 April 1996
Document Modified: 27 April 1996

The URL of this document is http://info.ox.ac.uk/ctitext/publish/comtxt/ct11/archive.html