Note 463 — from the Origins To the Renaissance (continued 5)

An incomplete translation of the "Roman" in English verse has come down to us in a single MS. preserved in the Hunterian collection, Glasgow. It is anonymous; a study of this text, by Lindner and by Kaluza, has shown that it is made up of three fragments of different origin, prosody, and language. The first fragment ends with line 1705, leaving a sentence unfinished; between the second and third fragments there is a gap of more than 5,000 lines. The first fragment alone might, on account of its style and versification, be the work of Chaucer, but this is only a surmise, and we have no direct proof of it. The "Romaunt" is to be found in Skeat's edition of the "Complete Works" of Chaucer, 1894, vol. i. For Fragment I. the French text is given along with the English translation.