A fifteenth century prose paraphrase of Robert of Gloucester's 'Chronicle'

This first critical edition of a mid-fifteenth century prose paraphrase of Robert of Gloucester's metrical Chronicle (Version 1) is based on the previously unedited Cambridge University Library MS L1.2.14, ff. 1-143{dollar}sp{lcub}rm r{rcub}{dollar} (hereafter CUL) with emendations suggested by another unedited paraphrase of Robert of Gloucester in Bibliotheca Bodmeriana Codex 43 (hereafter Bodmer). These two paraphrases descend from a now lost common archetype. A passage twelve folios long in CUL is found nearly verbatim in Bodmer. CUL begins imperfectly, with the opening material corresponding to line 2029 of Wright's edition of the metrical Chronicle. It then follows the metrical version closely, though with several folios missing, to a passage corresponding to line 11,807 near the end of Wright's edition. CUL is completed in the same hand by a prose Brut not included in this edition. Besides the material from the metrical chronicle, CUL has three interpolations. The first, describing the destruction of Cirencester, may be from the shorter recension (Version 2) of the Chronicle. The second adds an often recorded miraculous vision to the story of Edward the Confessor. The third is a version of the Ring Miracle in the Life of Edward, details of which are found elsewhere only in Caxton's Golden Legend, in Bodmer, and in a thirteenth-century version of Osbert of Clare's Vita beati Eadwardi.; The introduction describes the MS, traces ownership, examines language, and explores this work's textual relationship to the metrical versions and other prose version. It also examines paraphrasing technique and the translation of poetry into prose. Accompanying the textual apparatus are explanatory notes, a select glossary, and a complete glossarial index.; The prose paraphrase of Robert of Gloucester is interesting as fifteenth-century revision of an early fourteenth-century work. Because the original metrical chronicle is in a difficult and somewhat early ME dialect, this dissertation makes more accessible the valuable history in the Chronicle. An extensive dialectological analysis of CUL following The Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English supports an internal localizing reference to Leicestershire. Because of its relation to Bodmer and its localization, CUL is useful to scholars interested in textual studies, linguistics, dialect, and paleography.