Daniel Wakelin. Immaterial Texts in Late Medieval England: Making English Literary Manuscripts, 1400–1500

Abstract

Daniel Wakelin’s most recent monograph is—and I do not say this lightly—one of the most engaging and thought-provoking studies of medieval English books that I have encountered. What makes this study unique is that, unlike almost all previous studies, Wakelin does not merely seek to unravel the material complexities of medieval codices (a tall enough order on its own); instead, he seeks to reveal the unstated assumptions that governed the work of medieval scribes. The argument homes in, as reflected in the title, on the immaterial aspects of medieval codices: ‘This book argues that the people who copy these manuscripts sometimes show little regard for the material form of texts. […] They of course relied on the material book but they also treated it instrumentally as a vehicle for ideas about books and for that ideational thing that is language’ (9). This is an argument both startling and counterintuitive and one that cuts against the grain of much recent scholarship; yet by the end, I was utterly convinced.