Middle English Text Production and Modern Textual Criticism.

Like many ME texts, PPl does not bear out a modern a priori editorial distinction between scribes and authors and the resulting editorial model of an authoritative text. Kane’s attempt to recover authorial intention manifests the post-Romantic conception of such an authoritative text, but authority in ME texts should derive from consideration of the collective aspects of a work’s production, transmission, and reception. WL made little effort to identify himself as the author of the A, B, and C texts or claim responsibility for his productions. Who wrote the Z text is less important than that the Z text exists and was authorial for its medieval readers.