Editing and the Teaching of Alliterative Poetry.

Deep critical editing is problematic for ME alliterative poetry because of the paucity of surviving materials and the formulaic nature of much alliterative diction. The intended use of editions as class texts suggests the need for a via media between extreme editorial conservatism and extreme radicalism, as well as the need to communicate the extent of the indeterminacy of the text. Especially for editions of alliterative texts, emendation, dialect, capitalization, punctuation, and the protocols of annotation / explication impinge on forms of literary study and bear on meaning.