14 - Chambers' graduate students

Summary

One of the important observations that Knott had made in his 1915 article was that establishing a text of A was contingent upon establishing a text of B. Chambers and Grattan had explicitly recognised the truth of this remark: ‘So inter-related are the texts, that before you can have a final A-text, you must have an adequate B- and C-text.’ This crucial point is one that has seriously bedevilled Piers Plowman textual investigation, for reasons that become distressingly evident as familiarity with the manuscripts increases: if editing A requires prior editing of B (and C), then by the same token editing B (and C) requires prior editing of A and C (or A and B). The circularity of these requirements is daunting, and at the very least means that the editorial project is destined to eat up a good deal of time. Almost certainly one of the reasons why Chambers' editing of A stretched out over so many years, and seemed ultimately to lose impetus, is that he realised the strength of Knott's observation that, given the insecurity of Skeat's text of B (and by implication C), decisions on editing A made with the help of these two editions could only be provisional: once the three texts had been edited in the first place, it would be necessary to start all over again (see p. 244 above).

Chambers addressed the problem of B at an early stage, setting to work a remarkably able graduate student, Elsie Blackman, on a study of the poem.