La Estorie del Evangelie: Middle English Texts, cartea 30

'La Estorie del Euangelie', a metrical life of Christ based on the gospels, was probably composed in Norfolk in the late thirteenth century. The title of the poem was given to it by C. Horstmann, who took it from the brief introduction in Anglo-French that precedes the fragment of the poem surviving in the Vernon manuscript. Despite the French introduction, no source in French or any other language has been identified, and the poem is apparently an original English work. 'La Estorie del Euangelie' survives in seven manuscripts, though all versions are incomplete in one way or another - even the longest breaks off well before the end. A Middle English work that has survived in so many different manuscripts written in several geographical areas and over a period of more than a century must have been very popular. Nevertheless, no critical edition has been published, and two of the extant versions, including the longest one, have never been printed. One of the reasons for the poem's neglect is probably the fact that none of its surviving versions is complete; one must read at least three or four of the versions to get a good idea of what the original poem was like. No single line of the poem is attested by more than four versions, and approximately half the lines survive in only one or two texts. This edition of the 'Estorie' presents all the known texts of the poem, printed in parallel to facilitate easy comparison and to allow the poem to be read as a continuous unit.