Pore Caitif

The Pore Caitif is an anonymous late fourteenth-century manual of devotion and religious instruction destined for a lay readership. The text, in its various forms, circulated widely and was evidently very popular, as the fifty of so extant manuscripts and fragments readily attest. Of them, no fewer that twenty-eight transmit a full text showing remarkable fidelity to the now presumably lost archetype. As such, the Pore Caitif invites comparison with the considerable production and diffusion of religious texts in English which figure prominently in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In this respect, it is to note that some critics have argued for the presence of Lollard interpolators or commentators in a number of the extant manuscripts, including the influence of the Wycliffite Bible translation.

This edition will be published in two volumes. This, the first, provides a full Introduction to the manuscripts and their transmission, classifying them in groups, while examining some of the trends observable in some of the more notable variants they inevitably preserve. A commentary on the text is followed by a full glossary. The second volume will discuss manuscript relationships and the problems arising therefrom.