Library MS Research Articles

The Sinclair Women and Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden. B. 24

ABSTRACT This article develops the suggestions of previous commentators that Elizabeth, Jean, and Margaret Sinclair read Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden. B. 24 and/or oversaw its second scribe’s work. It does not advance new proofs in demonstration of these eventualities. Instead, it seeks to establish the place of the Sinclair women in the first audience of the codex and to explore the literary-critical implications of the book’s reception in their orbit. This approach facilitates fresh readings of the topic of advocacy in the second scribe’s texts—the Letter of Cupid, the Lay of Sorrow, the Lufaris Complaynt, and the Quare of Jelusy. Who, these poems seem to ask, can speak for women? The depiction of marriage in the Kingis Quair—for which the second scribe supplies a 140-line conclusion—is also considered. The argument closes with reflections on speculation, book history, and the interest of reception studies for readers of late medieval literature.

Borrowed Feathers: The Spurious Older Scots Ending to Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls in Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden. B. 24

ABSTRACT Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden. B. 24 has attracted attention in recent years for the witness it bears to the reception of Chaucer in late medieval Scotland. Its most striking example is the spurious seventy-nine-line ending attached to the Parliament of Fowls, edited afresh for this article. This article teases apart the work of the spurious ending’s author from that of the Selden copyist and investigates how, when, and why this peculiar Scottish rewriting of the end of Chaucer’s Parliament came about. That the spurious ending is indeed a Scottish composition is demonstrated through its linguistic features and sly allusions to two fifteenth-century Scots poems, Henryson’s “The Cock and the Fox” and Richard Holland’s Buke of the Howlat. These, in combination with textual and codicological details explored here, suggest strongly that this ending was written in conscious defiance, rather than ignorance, of Chaucer’s conclusion to the Parliament.

The Monastic in the Dynastic: King Robert of Anjou and Morgan Library and Museum MS M.626

The Monastic in the Dynastic: King Robert of Anjou and Morgan Library and Museum MS M.626

Lydgate, Chaucer, and Lady Margaret Beaufort

ABSTRACT In an early book on Lydgate, Derek Pearsall was dismissive of Lydgate’s verse legend of Saint Margaret of Antioch. While perhaps of limited literary interest, the poem merits some claim to attention in its occurrence in the Devonshire Chaucer (New Haven, Yale Beinecke Library MS Takamiya 24). There it is paired with the Canterbury Tales in a context that has led to the suggestion that the manuscript might be the Canterbury Tales bequeathed by Lady Margaret Beaufort (1443–1509), Countess of Richmond and Derby, and mother of Henry VII, to her nephew of the half-blood, John St. John. This article refines the argument and offers an explanation for its early provenance in the Knyvett family. It explores the circumstances of the commissioning of Lydgate’s poem, and the context in which it might have circulated singly and been selected for adding to a manuscript of the Canterbury Tales, a context that reveals a network of family connections—Staffords, Hollands, Beauchamps, Beauforts, Knyvetts, and Bourchiers.

The Context of Sir Orfeo in a Miniature Library, Harley 3810, Section I

ABSTRACT Derek Pearsall wrote influentially about the contexts in which Middle English romances were transmitted, paying particular attention to large manuscript “libraries” offering mixed edification and diversion. Two copies of Sir Orfeo, a romance in which he was especially interested, survive in just such contexts, in capacious anthologies. The third copy, however, in London, British Library MS Harley 3810, section I, is rather different, and has attracted less attention. This article discusses the features of this section of Harley 3810, its relationship to the other sections of the manuscript, and what can be hypothesized about its early readership and circulation. Unlike the other manuscripts in which Sir Orfeo appears, this small-format anthology has the characteristics of a pocket-book.

The medieval Irish legal fragment lost from British Library MS Egerton 92

ABSTRACT: According to the hand-written list of contents bound with British Library MS Egerton 92, the last six pages, numbered 55–60, contain early Irish legal material related to fines for injury. A note added by Eugene O’Curry in 1849 notes that there were no legal texts contained in the volume. This article presents evidence that the last six pages of Egerton 92 have not been lost, but rather that they were bound with British Library MS Egerton 90 at some point after the original list of contents in Egerton 92 was written, but before O’Curry saw the manuscript.

The Cross in London, British Library MS Harley 2253

Research for this article has been funded by the Spanish Research Agency (Agencia Española de Investigación), through Research Project ‘Missions and Transmissions: Exchanges between Iberia and the British Isles during the Broad Early Modern Period’ Ref PID2020-113516GB-I00.

Failing Femininities: The Femmes of MS Additional 37049

This article offers a gendered analysis of the illuminations that bleed, sin, and pray their way through a fifteenth-century Carthusian miscellany from Northern England. British Library MS Additional 37049 may have been a tool for private affective devotion or it may have moved beyond the borders of the charterhouse to meet the spiritual needs of the pious laity. Each of its users would have encountered an extensive, didactic illustrative program that is so interwoven with the text as to be inseparable. These illuminations have previously received academic attention for their performative potential, significations of morality through medieval dress, and their role in affective devotion. A gendered analysis, however, remains to be done despite recognition of the illuminator’s reliance on performative bodies.  The comprehensive, symbolic nature of the Carthusian miscellany makes it a rich case study for thinking through late medieval femininities. From submissive monks and beastly whores to penetrative devotional acts and deadly sins bedecked in all the fashionable excesses of fifteenth-century England, this article argues that the illuminations in this manuscript can benefit from a framework that accommodates femininities beyond binary bounds. In turn, it advocates that this manuscript — itself a hybrid creature of poetry, prose, and image — illuminates medieval complexities that invite a rethinking of modern expectations about the past and future of gender.

Landscape in Middle English Romance: The Medieval Imagination and the Natural World

Landscape in Middle English Romance: The Medieval Imagination and the Natural World

Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England

Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England

How cranial surgery was performed in Italy during the centuries after the Roman Empire but before the rise of the medieval universities: Integrating paleopathology and medical history

How cranial surgery was performed in Italy during the centuries after the Roman Empire but before the rise of the medieval universities: Integrating paleopathology and medical history

Middle English Manuscripts and Their Legacies: A Volume in Honour of Ian Doyle

Middle English Manuscripts and Their Legacies: A Volume in Honour of Ian Doyle

“Rede hit sofft”: John Audelay's Practice of Care

“Rede hit sofft”: John Audelay's Practice of Care

Fashioning the "Order of Saint Clare." A Rule illuminated by Neri da Rimini: Princeton University Library MS 83 in context

Fashioning the "Order of Saint Clare." A Rule illuminated by Neri da Rimini: Princeton University Library MS 83 in context

Shannon McSheffrey and Ad Putter, The Dutch Hatmakers of Late Medieval and Tudor London, with an Edition of their Bilingual Guild Ordinances. Medieval and Renaissance Clothing and Textiles. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2023, 153 pp, 15 b & w ill.

The core of this book is Guildhall Library MS 15838, a never-before-edited work that contains what is most probably the earliest bilingual English-Dutch document in existence. The manuscript contains three texts: the bilingual Ordinances of the Hatmakers (written ca. 1501 though likely recording older usage), followed by an English-only agreement of 1511 between the Hatmakers and Haberdashers, in which the former were amalgamated into the latter, and finally an English oath of the wardens of the Haberdashers of the early to mid-sixteenth century. An edition of these texts comprises the last quarter of the book, accompanied by a selective glossary of the more unfamiliar terms used. The choice of the glossary terms ranges from clarification of middle English phrasing to translation of Dutch dialect terms (where appropriate). Based on a linguistic analysis of the Dutch used, the authors hypothesize that the first scribe who wrote the Ordinances was from the northwest Netherlands on the border with Germany, while the second was from the southwest, possibly Flanders, though both were clearly also fluent in English. The edited text portion does not specifically indicate changes in script, although chapter four fills these potential lacunae admirably, assisted by figures 8–11.

Middle English Romances: Authoritative Texs, Sources and Backgrounds, Criticism, selected and ed. by Stephen H. A. Shepherd. 2nd ed. A Norton Critical Edition. New York: W. W. Norton, 2023 (orig. 1995), xxix, 825 pp.

The second edition of this hefty tome in paperback is a good indicator that research and teaching of Middle English literature have gone through profound changes, moving well beyond the ‘classical’ canon of Langland, Chaucer and Hoccleve. Late medieval English romances receive increasing attention, and this for good reasons. In contrast to many other similar anthologies, Stephen H. A. Shepherd, Professor of English at Loyola Marymount University, presents only complete works, based on a critical edition of the relevant manuscript version. This makes the present edition also highly useful for research, although the primary purpose of this book and the entire series aims to make this literature more accessible for student readers. This is demonstrated through the heavy glossing on the side of the text, offering practical translations, and an extensive apparatus at the bottom. The first note always gives the source of the respective text, such as in the case of Havelok, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 108, fols. 204r–219v. Subsequent notes offer textual interpretations. Unfortunately, those notes are in a very small font size and barely readable. This minimalization comes as a result of the editor’s effort to provide a maximum of romances and explanations. The 1995 edition contained seven complete romances, to which now are added eight more. Those are altogether (* marks those in the previous version): Havelok (*), Ywain and Gawain (*), Of Kyng Robert of Cisyle, Hou Pride dude Him Begyle, Sir Orfeo (*), Sir Launfal (*), Athelston, The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyne (*), The Weddyng of Syr Gawen and Dame Ragnell for Helpyng of Kyng Arthoure (*), The Grene Knight, The Sege off Melayne (*), and The Taill of Rauf Coilyear, How He Harbreit King Charlis.

"The Best Book of Romance": The Gawain Manuscript and Composite Miscellaneity

abstract: British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x contains the unique copies of four important alliterative Middle English poems including Sir Gawain and the Green Knight —the chief source of the book's fame and focus of scholarly attention over the last century. At one point, this composite codex also contained two Latin manuscripts, compiled with the Middle English poems by early modern antiquarian collector Sir Robert Cotton. More than three centuries after Cotton assembled the volume, however, the British Museum extracted the Latin material and bound it separately from Gawain and the other English poems. This essay discusses the unique form of codicological miscellaneity that characterizes composite manuscripts like Nero A.x. The story of its early modern assembly and modern disaggregation illustrates how material histories can determine how we access and interpret medieval texts today.

Two New Sources for Frederic Tubach’s Index Exemplorum 639 and Further Justification for Robert Holcot as a Source of A Christian Mannes Bileeve

In the introduction to the edition of the Middle English explanation of the Apostles’ Creed, known as A Christian Mannes Bileeve (hereafter CMB), I note that Robert Holcot’s Convertimini, a compilation of examples used by preachers, stands as the source for the exemplum of birds dying in the woods during the Passion week.1 This example is catalogued as entry 639, ‘Birds die in Passion Week’, in Frederic Tubach’s Index Exemplorum, a handbook of 5,400 religious exempla culled from thirty-seven different medieval collections.2 There, Tubach describes a Saracen leading an Englishman to a wood where they witness dead birds that will resurrect at Easter. He cross-references J. A. Herbert’s Catalogue of Romances in the Department of Manuscripts in the British Museum to provide only two sources of that avian story: Holcot’s Convertimini and John Mirk’s ‘Sermon on Corpus Christi’ from his collection of homilies known as the Festial.3 This note adds two additional instances of this same example to Tubach, thus bringing the total number of medieval texts using the reference to birds dying in the woods during the Passion to four. The first of these new sources is CMB, a 12,000-word Middle English explanation of the Apostles’ Creed dating from the late fourteenth century, which uses the example in CMB’s section on the fourth article of the faith, Passus sub Pontio Pilato, crucifixus, mortuus et sepultus [He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and buried] to foreshadow the miracle of Christ’s resurrection.4 The second is British Library MS Harley 2247, a fifteenth-century collection of Temporale sermons that includes a revised version of Mirk’s Corpus Christi sermon. There the homilist positions the exemplum as a mnemonic device to encourage heartfelt remembrance of Christ’s crucifixion.5 This note also provides additional clarification that the example in Holcot’s Convertimini—and not Mirk’s Corpus Christi sermon or its revision in Harley 2247 (both identified in the edition, and the latter not named in Tubach)—is the ultimate source of the exemplum as it appears in CMB.

The Phoenix and the Interlingual Dimensions of Early English Literary Culture

The Phoenix and the Interlingual Dimensions of Early English Literary Culture

Harley Manuscript Geographies: Literary History and the Medieval Miscellany

Harley Manuscript Geographies: Literary History and the Medieval Miscellany