Les Fables de Marie de France : édition critique de Fables choisies

One of the most important fable collections of the Middle Ages, the Esope of Marie de France, has not been edited in its entirety since Karl Warnke published his Die Fabeln in 1898. This study has been the standard edition for almost a century even though many of the nineteenth-century editorial practices to which Warnke was an heir have been rejected by modern editors. Consequently, Warnke's attempt to reconstruct Marie's original text by regularizing his Anglo-Norman base text with conjectural emendations drawn not only from other manuscripts of the Fables but also from other contemporary works does not fulfill the needs of modern scholars and critics.
The present edition, a prolegomenon to a complete critical edition, reproduces the prologue, epilogue, and ten selected fables from the British Library MS., Harley 978.
The base manuscript has been modified only when it is clearly in error. The introductory chapters discuss Marie de France, the fable genre, the language and versification of the fables under consideration, and a description of the relevant manuscripts. The critical apparatus includes significant variants from all the extant manuscripts, rejected readings from the base manuscript, textual notes, an index of proper names, a glossary, and a table of rhymes.