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The Middle
English "Mirror": An Edition Based on Bodleian Library, MS Holkham misc.
40. Edited by Kathleen Marie Blumreich. Medieval and Renaissance Texts
and Studies, 182; Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance,
9. Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies;
Turnhout: Brepols, 2002. Pp. xlv + 558. $55.
This edition of The Middle English "Mirror," a translation of Gretham's
Anglo-Norman Miroir, is, I am afraid, a disappointment. The editor tackles
a hitherto large unpublished collection of sixty prose sermons for Sundays
and various saints' days. The Middle English version is extant in six
manuscripts, whereas the Anglo- Norman text is found, as one can gather
from a brief discussion by Blumreich (p. xxxii), in three manuscripts.
I shall proceed by discussing three particular areas that I find problematic:
the editorial procedure, the introduction, and the edition itself.
Denis Renevey
University of Lausanne
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