New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall ed. by Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, John J. Thompson, and Sarah Baechle (review)

Abstract

KATHRYN KERBY-FULTON, JOHN J. THOMPSON, AND SARAH BAECHLE, eds., New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices: Essays in Honor of Derek Pearsall. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014. Pp. xxii, 551. isbn: 978-0-268-03327-9. $66Potential readers of this volume might wonder how a scholar who is already recipient of two festschrifts could end up with a third coming in at almost 600 pages. The answer is that this is really two books in one cover-or rather, if we isolate the shadow festschrift for Elizabeth Salter herein, three. One essay, Susan Powell's 'Wings, Wingfields, and Wynnere and Wastoure,' which replaces the author's contribution to the conference from which most of the essays were taken, is entirely a response to Salter's work. Made manifest, this festschrift would have been the second dedicated to Salter. The Pearsall-Salter collection, as one would expect, contains many fine contributions, some of which I will discuss in a moment. It is a bit heavy on the 'praise of Derek' genre (those who use 'Pearsall' are notable for being so few), especially in the unnecessary prefaces to the seven separate parts. In short, one collection of about 100 pages for Salter could have provided the core of a nice tribute, and another of about 230 pages would have made this a focused and appropriate collection in honor of Derek Pearsall.The third book herein is a collection of fine manuscript studies, about 180 pages' worth, by junior women closely affiliated not with Derek Pearsall but with the University of Notre Dame and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, who goes so far as to quote from an anonymous reader's report's claim that 'in its longer history, this collection will be most esteemed as the place where a whole new generation of manuscript scholars...got their start' (xix). She says six essays by her current or former students appear here; I find eight. I have little doubt that future readers will remember, if not esteem, this book as much for its inclusion of these essays as anything else, simply because there are no precedents for this sort of thing.Of the remainder, readers will find, among much else, essays by A.C. Spearing and Oliver Pickering that tease out the implications of their earlier important work; considered approaches to manuscript transmission and literary history by Julia Boffey, Peter Brown, A.I. Doyle, A.S.G. Edwards, Stephen Partridge, and Jocelyn Wogan- Browne on manuscripts, their production, and their histories; a thoughtful approach to Chaucerian quotation in the Nun's Priest's Tale by Elizabeth Scala; and provocative treatments of the text of Piers Plowman by Jill Mann and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton. …