The Otiose Labour of William Darker: Some Light on Ambiguous Strokes in Fifteenth- to Sixteenth-Century English Manuscripts

Abstract

Abstract An otiose stroke in scribal practice is a mark whose linguistic signification is obscure—yet such strokes abound as calligraphic additions to certain letters in English manuscripts of the fourteenth to sixteenth centuries. This article seeks an explanation for the deployment of certain apparently otiose strokes, whose careful and persistent execution suggests a deliberate purpose in deployment. The vernacular production of the Carthusian scribe William Darker (working c.1481–1512) is chosen as an exemplum, and four common strokes in his work whose function is deemed ambiguous are examined in detail. Statistical and contextual analysis of the deployment of these strokes reveals semantic behaviours and patterns of use that suggest the marks had significant meaning for the scribe: though they do not necessarily function as abbreviations, they appear to bear linguistic meaning, and act with some consistency as signals of vowel length, pronunciation, and morphology. While these ‘otiose’ strokes remain resistant to full explication, the patterns here uncovered suggest a scribal intention to encode linguistic information via the conscious placement of calligraphic marks.