Propaganda of the Hundred Years War: poems on the Battles of Crecy and Durham (1346): a critical edition
The two poems edited here celebrate the English victories in 1346 over France ( Crecy ) and Scotland ( Durham ) in the early part of the Hundred Years War. Together with another on the siege of Calais in 1346–47 ( Cantica leticie ) they are by a writer I have labeled the “Anonymous of Calais.” They were first printed in 1859, but Wright's edition is flawed not only by errors of transcription and a clear failure to follow the sense (notably by accepting Valeys “Valois” at Crecy 272, where Kaleys “Calais” is essential), but also by his textual procedure, which implies that there was a single authorial original from which the manuscript witnesses deviated. I have tried to show here that there are two distinct versions, one an adaptation of the other.