Update on the Chaucer Commentary Editions, May 2000
Alistair, Charlotte and I are glad to report that substantive progress has been made this year toward bringing the Chaucer Commentary Editions to reality. This has been a learning year as we have explored the various forms an electronic edition may take, the kinds of efforts required to produce those editions, and the ways in which we might "pull it off". We have explored links with the NEH, the AHRB, and several private foundations, as well as holding very fruitful discussions with a major publishing house with experience in medieval electronic scholarship. We have talked to editors at the Perseus Project (Tufts U), the Canterbury Tales Project (DeMontfort U), and at SEENET. This has been complicated by the fact that both Charlotte (in London) and Alistair (in California) have been away from their home bases this term, but we've managed.
At the New Chaucer Society meeting in July 2000 we plan to be able to announce the form these editions will take, explain the kinds of editorial processes that will be involved, and invite interested scholars to propose editions. We're firming up the details now--I hate to be this vague, but there are still I's to be dotted and T's to be crossed. Because of the difference in our schedule and the publishing house's schedule we may not be able to announce a firm commitment from the publisher in July but we hope to be quite concrete on other details.
Please plan to join us on the afternoon of July 13 for this announcement from 2-4 pm in the Senate House of the University of London. There is a list of discussion questions posted on this website that we hope you will think about before coming to the meeting.
I'll post material here, too, after the conference, so that those of
you who can't get to London will have as much news as we have at that time.
--Jo Koster, Associate Editor, Chaucer Commentary Editions
kosterj@winthrop.edu