A Critical Edition of Menaphon

Robert Greene

2018-10 · B&R Samizdat Express

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This dissertation presents the first critical edition of Menaphon by Robert Greene with the Preface by Thomas Nashe. The work was originally published in 1589 in London and was reprinted four times in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (1599, 1605, 1610, and 1616). For this edition three copies of the first edition and copies of all the other early editions have been collated. None of the later editions contains any revisions or additions that can be ascribed to either Nashe or Greene. Therefore the first edition is used in this edition as the copy-text. A full textual apparatus records all substantive variants and emendations of the text. The Introduction Includes bibliographic descriptions of the various early editions and discusses the relationship between the texts of the early editions. An essay on Nashe’s Preface places it in the context of his developing prose style. Greene’s Menaphon is treated in a separate essay concerned with the self-consciousness of the work, and its relation to various sources and influences such as Greek romance, Euphuism, and Sidney’s Old Arcadia. The Glossary at the end includes words which might not be easily understood, either because of peculiarity of spelling or because of specialized, archaic, or obsolete meaning.