The poem consists of 25,750 lines and is retained in two manuscript copies and was printed in 1841; a critical edition wasn't published until 1940.[1] This edition, by Edmond-René Labande, advanced two ideas about the poem. The first was that it should be dated to the middle of the fourteenth century rather than earlier in that century, and the second that it was written by two poets—the first a very capable writer with a fine sense of humor, the second a much less original one.[4]