Editiones Arnamagnæanæ. Series B - 01.10.1965, Síða 14
XII
AM 181 b and Holm 46 respectively. I shall use A and B
to facilitate comparison of the two editions, but I must
emphasize that in doing so I do not intend to imply
that A takes precedence over B. I shall refer to the others
merely by their numbers (i.e. 4859), since there are no
cases of ambiguity. More complete descriptions for most
of the MSS may be found in the printed catalogues of
the respective libraries—the Arnamagnæan Collection, the
Royal Library in Copenhagen, the National Library of
Iceland, and the Royal Library in Stockholm. A com-
parable catalogue does not yet exist for the Icelandic
material in the British Museum, although one is now
being prepared by Professor Jón Helgason. I shall there-
fore give a somewhat fuller description of the two B. M.
MSS than of the others; for the information I am in-
debted to Professor Helgason.
The need for a new edition is twofold. First, ES is a
prose translation of the medieval verse epic Erec of Chré-
tien de Troyes.2 The Erec material forms an important
part of medieval European literature with Chrétien’s
Erec, Hartmann von Aue’s Erek, the Welsh (so-called
“Mabinogi”) Geraint, and the West Scandinavian ES.
Second, GC knew of only three of the MSS of ES, A,
B, and 4859 (GC, p. IX, misprint 8459!). He does not
seem to have made any particular use of 4859, and it is
not clear whether he ever saw the MS. He remarks at
one point that the text of A is illegible because of a blot
(GC, p. 43, note to lines 5-6), but 4859 clearly has
eirninn (as do 246 and 1708) and was probably copied
while the text was still legible. The demands of scholar-
ship today require something more than that which is
provided by GC’s edition, with its normalized recon-
2 Erec imd Enide, ed. Wendelin Foerster, Christian von Troyes
sámtliche Werke, Vol. 3 (Halle, 1890); all references to the French
text are to lines in this edition.