Producing Manuscripts and Editions.

Incidental references: Attacks on K-D suggest that most readers look for the apparent certainty provided by a recorded manuscript version. The history of Trevisa’s Polychronicon-a work that passed from its author’s control to that of a patron and thence to a second set of patrons who commissioned the works public dispersal-suggests the potential inadequacies of a stemmatic model, which presupposes the constancy of degeneration as a product of dissemination. K-D are correct that no constructed stemma can edit a text, but “no other method provides a way to historicize textual generation and to link this behaviour to specific human work.” And K-D’s rejection of the value of attestation involves a surrender of any interest in the historical development of the text.