MS Laud Misc Research Articles

Attitudes towards Exempla in the Wycliffite Latin Sermon Cycles of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 200

ABSTRACT This article examines the contradictory attitudes towards the use of exempla in the two Wycliffite Latin Sermon Cycles of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 200. While the author of the sermons condemns exempla that are not scripturally derived, he in fact employs a range of examples, several of which are extra-biblical. There is thus a divide between his theory and practice. These sermons complicate our views of Wycliffite preaching theory, demonstrating that the debate for some dissenting preachers was about what was suitable material for exempla, rather than if exempla were in themselves appropriate for sermons.

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

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

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.

Le lien des images avec le texte dans les manuscrits tardifs de l’“Epistre Othea”: un indice de leur parenté avec les cycles iconographiques des manuscrits de présentation?

In the late manuscripts of the Epistre Othea, the filiation of the images takes on different aspects. The miniatures of MS Laud Misc. 570 present iconographic similarities with those of MSS BnF, fr. 606 and BL, Harley 4431, which were illuminated under Christine de Pizan’s supervision. On the contrary, MS Erlangen, UB 2361 includes numerous miniatures, which illustrate different themes from those which the author chose at the beginning of the fifteenth century. In MSS Bodley 421, Bodmer 49 and Lille, BM 175, the filiation of the images seems to be more complex. Some miniatures of MSS Lille, BM 175 and Bodley 421, that have an identical iconography, but differ from those of MSS Français 606 and Harley 4431, draw particularly the reader’s attention.The unifying thread of this contribution consists in taking account of the link between text and images which characterizes the manuscripts of the Epistre Othea illuminated under Christine de Pizan’s supervision. As the images participate in the meaning together with the text in these manuscripts, the analysis of the link between images and text in late manuscripts could permit to study the transmission of the original link, but also to detect the existence of kinship relations between the iconography of late manuscripts and that of lost manuscripts of presentation.

Crooked Instruments: Obscene Scribal Creativity in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 416

In his didactic poem Instructions to His Son, Peter Idley tells the story of Semiramis, the notoriously lecherous queen of ancient Assyria. He emphasizes her sexual voracity with the rhyme royal refrain, “With hir croked instrument to encrees and multeplie” (2.B.1790–1825), repeating the pejorative female genital term “croked instrument” a total of six times. One late fifteenth-century scribe named Roger Newton, who copied the Instructions in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 416, substituted a compendium of inventive, less-derogatory genital synonyms for “croked instrument.” This essay focuses on Newton’s act of scribal creativity and linguistic experimentation. It analyzes Newton’s unique passage in conversation with popular fifteenth-century discourses of father-son sexual education and medieval renditions of the Semiramis narrative. It closes by exploring the passage’s manuscript context and premodern readership, showing how nuns from Syon Abbey wrote their names in the manuscript in the early sixteenth century and probing the possibilities of nuns reading Newton’s bawdy textual interventions.

The Function of “O Man Unkynde” in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 330, and Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.2.53

ABSTRACT This article examines the function of the fifteenth-century Middle English penitential lyric “O Man Unkynde” in two manuscripts. This lyric, which appears in five manuscripts, asks readers to “see” Christ's wounds. In three cases, this instruction is fulfilled by the presence of an accompanying image. In the two manuscripts with which I am concerned, the lyric appears without any complementary illustration. It discusses the way in which this absence of a visual referent might have altered the way in which the lyric was read by the readers of these two codices. In both instances, it argues that the interaction between the lyric and the other texts in the manuscripts suggests that it was regarded as a tool that might be used in the preparation of the reader for the sacrament of confession, and that inward visualization was key to the use of the lyric in these contexts.

Copying Couplets: Performing Masculinity in Middle English Moral Poetry

ABSTRACT A late medieval, middle class, masculine, social self is performed in the content and prosodic, rhetorical, and textual form of moral poetry consisting of exchangeable, aphoristic couplets of advice, voiced from man to man, which reappear over a large range of poems in manuscripts owned or compiled by men. Manuscripts discussed are: Bodleian, MS Laud Misc. 108; Oxford, MS Balliol 354 (Richard Hill’s Book); BL, MS Harley 2252 (John Colyns’s Book); Bodleian, MS Rawlinson C. 813 (The Welles Anthology); Beinecke MS 365 (The Book of Brome); BL, MS Additional 37049 (a Carthusian miscellany); Durham University Library, MS Cosin V.III.9; St George’s Chapel, Windsor, MS E.I.I; and Bodleian, MS Eng. poet. e.1. The couplets’ repeatability as units of poetic exchange allows the men who wrote them into the flyleaves, blank spaces, and margins of manuscripts, or into their own household books, to perform reading and composing practices that reflect and create the social and textual networks in which the individual men are embedded. The “fungible couplets,” as the essay names them, perform the complications of middle class masculinity itself, marking its inescapable social components even while simultaneously expressing defensiveness and anxiety about the social sphere’s undesirable influences on the practice of self-management.

Chaucer and Religious Controversies in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras by Nancy Bradley Warren

Reviewed by: Chaucer and Religious Controversies in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras by Nancy Bradley Warren Kathleen Forni Nancy Bradley Warren. Chaucer and Religious Controversies in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2019. Pp. 228. $100.00 cloth; $45.00 paper. It will probably come as little surprise to most readers that Chaucer's ambiguity and malleability regarding orthodoxy and heterodoxy made him a useful figure in "religiopolitical conflicts" in his postmedieval reception. But while Chaucer's Lollard leanings and perceived proto-Protestantism have received abundant critical attention, his association with continental female spirituality in his own age and his role in premodern Catholic counter-tradition polemics have been less studied. Nancy Bradley Warren fills this lacuna in the poet's reception, situating Chaucerian invocation within efforts to "establish religious and national identities on both sides of the Atlantic" (13). Armed with meticulous research and careful close reading, Warren convinces that the political value of the Protestant Chaucer (which I and others have proposed) provides only a partial account of his postmedieval canonization. Using a "transnational and transperiod approach" (13), Warren suggests that Chaucer represented a masculine cultural authority who could "save the English Catholic past from feminization" (4). The pejorative feminine [End Page 457] here is associated with both mystical spiritualism and (surprisingly) vernacular religious texts. While Warren's narrative is not a corrective to those who link his postmedieval canonization to his perceived Wycliffite leanings, Chaucer occasionally emerges as "a figure who masculinizes and rationalizes the English Catholic Middle Ages" (99). Warren maintains that his female monastic pilgrims reveal Chaucer's "awareness of and interest in the emergence of Lollardy—the greatest English religious controversy of his lifetime—as well as his cognizance of the burgeoning visionary, mystical, and prophetic spirituality of Continental holy women" (9). Chapter 1, "Female Spirituality and Religious Controversy in The Canterbury Tales," revisits The Prioress's Prologue and Tale and The Second Nun's Prologue and Tale within the context of the Brigittine spirituality associated with St. Birgitta of Sweden (1349–73), whose revelations emphasize the power of the Virgin Mary and maternal intercession, as well as the efficacy of vernacular religious translation and female spiritual instruction. The Second Nun's Prologue not only emphasizes the power of Mary's virginal maternity but also posits the legitimacy of vernacular translation (the "mother tongue"). And St. Cecilia herself demonstrates that female "conseil" can lead to salvation; as such, the tale nicely "quits" the denigration of womanly counsel found in The Nun's Priest's Tale (which immediately precedes The Second Nun's Tale in the Ellesmere manuscript). Warren rereads The Prioress's Prologue as a reflection of the popular cult of the Virgin Mary in the fourteenth century, and highlights its "salvific power" of maternal suffering and the "the dynamics of Incarnation" (30), providing a layer of sophistication to what is sometimes seen as an infantilizing expostulation. Nonetheless, it is difficult to get around the notorious anti-Semitism of the tale; Warren concurs that the tale of the little "clergeon" lacks some "spiritual and intellectual sophistication," which is perhaps owing to "imperfect religious knowledge, imperfection that could be ameliorated by access to vernacular translations of religious texts" (36, 37). One might add, however, that St. Birgitta's Prophesies and Revelations itself is littered with denigrating references to the Jews—revealing a less salutary aspect of her spirituality, and an aspect of Marian devotion that continues to unsettle. Real nuns also read some Chaucer, or at least texts that mention Chaucer. Chapter 2, "Chaucer, the Chaucerian Tradition, and Female Monastic Readers," explores Chaucer's literary legacy as attested to by the manuscripts owned by several prominent English nunneries with [End Page 458] Lancastrian affiliations (Warren meticulously traces the family back-grounds and surprising political connections of the women in these monastic houses). The Brigittine nuns at Syon possessed a miscellany (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud misc. 416) that included—in addition to Lydgate's Siege of Thebes and several other texts on ethics, political advice, history, and philosophy—The Parliament of Fowls (or at least lines 1–142 of the poem, since the manuscript...

Don't Mention the War!: Geography, Saracens and King Horn's ‘Diplomatic’ Poet

ABSTRACTScholarship of the Middle English King Horn (c. 1250–1290) has grappled inconclusively with its obscure toponyms Westernesse and Suddene and with identification of its nebulous Saracen antagonists. Recent work on the literary impact of the historical crises of the Norman Conquest and the Crusades may offer fresh resolution, positing that thirteenth-century romances responded to contemporary realpolitik both by avoidance of taboo issues – here Edward's difficulties in Wales and Scotland, by apposite reference to Havelok the Dane, also in MS Laud Misc. 108 – as well as by fostering a national narrative of identity including the Normans, here evinced in the accentuation of difference between nascent Englishness and the foreign otherness of the Saracens. Thus, a more generative hypothesis is that the text's place names and antagonists may be strategically vague, and analysis of other analogues of the Horn story suggests that detail is ambiguated rather than lost. This interpretation may catalyse a new reading of the poem where imprecision serves political as well as stylistic exigencies.

Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformations ed. by Nicole R. Rice

Reviewed by: Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformations ed. by Nicole R. Rice Alexandra Barratt Rice, Nicole R., ed., Middle English Religious Writing in Practice: Texts, Readers, and Transformations (Late Medieval and Early Modern Studies,21), Turnhout, Brepols, 2013; hardback; pp. x, 278; 2 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. €75.00, ISBN 9782503541020. This collection of eight essays considers various later Middle English devotional texts (mainly prose) and their uses and adaptations during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Part I, 'Continental Religious Women in English Practice', opens with Jennifer N. Brown on the fates, in manuscript and print, of three English translations of texts associated with Catherine of Siena: a letter from the head of the Grande Chartreuse, supporting her canonization, Raymond of Capua's life of the saint, and the Orchard of Syon. Michael G. Sargent unravels the complexities of the French and English textual traditions of Marguerite Porete's Mirouer des simples âmes, and details the extraordinary story of the text's treatment in the twentieth century. Martha W. Driver considers John Audelay's verse prayer to St Birgitta of Sweden, found in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce 302, in its liturgical and devotional contexts. In Part II, 'Manuscript Compilation and the Adaptation of Religious Practice', Mary Agnes Edsall writes on the fifteenth-century Fyler Manuscript (San Marino, Huntington Library, MS HM 744), belonging to a family of merchants, and its antecedents. Nicole R. Rice describes Cambridge, Jesus College, MS Q. D. 4 and Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ii. 4. 9, fifteenth-century clerical collections of pastoralia, both containing copies of The Abbey of the Holy Ghost and The Charter of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost. Part III, 'Negotiating Orthodoxy: Revision, Circulation, Annotation', contains Moira Fitzgibbons on the 'interplay' (p. 182) between the early fifteenth-century Dives and Pauper and the late fourteenth-century Pore Caitif. Stephen Kelly and Ryan Perry write on Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 23, an anthology of texts of religious instruction with theologically mixed allegiances, which contains the unique copy of a 'radical' (p. 230) unedited sermon, possibly written for Wycliffite readers, on the nature of the Christian community. Margaret Connolly concludes with an essay on the book ownership and reading in the mid-sixteenth century of two generations of the Roberts family of Middlesex. They owned, and used, at least eight extant books which, Margaret Connolly suggests, were acquired following the dissolution of local monasteries. [End Page 274] This collection provides a useful cross-section of current work in this area, with a welcome emphasis on manuscript studies. Alexandra Barratt University of Waikato Copyright © 2017 Alexandra Barratt

The Verses of Bodleian Library, Ms Laud Misc. 77

The Verses of Bodleian Library, Ms Laud Misc. 77

“Ovre londe” / “Irlonde”: Appropriating Irish Saints in the Aftermath of Conquest

A pair of textual errors in the Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 108, South English Legendary Lives of St. Brendan and St. Brigid (ca. 1280–1320) misidentify these two saints as coming from “ovre londe” (“our land”; implicitly, England) and “Scotlond” instead of from Ireland. These errors reflect English anxiety about possessing and reclaiming Irish culture as well as Irish land during a period when Anglo-Norman forces are colonizing and occupying portions of Ireland. The Brendan error claims Ireland for England in order to justify England’s colonization projects. The Brendan and Brigid errors also construct Ireland as well as Scotland as exotic spaces whose wonders distinguish them from England, while at the same time appropriating Celtic exoticism for English culture and Celtic lands for an Anglo-Norman empire.

The Siege of Jerusalem ed. by Adrienne Williams Boyarin (review)

adrienne williams boyarin, ed., The Siege of Jerusalem. Broadview Anthology of British Literature. Toronto: Broadview, 2014. Pp. 198. isbn: 978-1-55481-158-8. $18.95.When it appeared in the late fourteenth century, The Siege of Jerusalem was not the first Christian text to explore and revise Josephus' account of the Flavian siege of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., nor was it the first to portray fictively Christianized Romans taking up a campaign as an act of vengeance against the Jews. It was, however, the first rendition to appear in alliterative long line verse, situating the violent tale within the aesthetically adorned literary and emotive context of late medieval English poetry. Because of the anti-Semitic horrors that fill The Siege of Jerusalem, it is difficult to comprehend how the poem was situated and appreciated as an effective religious production and work of art. Yet, as Boyarin is quick to point out, the work offers attentive audiences a better understanding of many of the critical issues which drive premodern scholarship, including uses of genre, textual borrowing and adaptation, Christian medieval receptions and uses of Judaism, hagiography, eschatology, historiography, reliquary culture, conversion, and crusading, to name only a few. It is, of course, not Boyarin's aim to draw attention away from the horrific treatment of the poem's Jews; the text allows a clear understanding of medieval Christian antiSemitism, especially in relation to a range of different crusading impulses that shaped the medieval period. It is in opening up such critical discussions that the translation is so useful, particularly in undergraduate classrooms where levels of familiarity with Middle English vary; the Modern English edition widens the circle of students able to engage with the important questions which the poem raises.Scholars over the past decade have been working to make the Siege more available for scholarly critique. Boyarin's Modern English text joins Ralph Hanna III and David Lawton's Middle English edition published by the Early English Text Society in 2003, the latter a useful update to the earlier, full edition by Eugen Kolbing and Mabel Day published by EETS in 1932. The Siege poem has circulated in partial, anthologized form, in Thorlac Turville-Petre's Middle English excerpt in Alliterative Poetry of the Later Middle Ages, and in full, in Michael Livingston's edition for the TEAMS Middle English Texts Series (2004), which simplified and glossed aspects of the Middle English for classroom use. Boyarin's Modern English translation of The Siege of Jerusalem is the first of its kind, and a valuable undergraduate classroom resource. Boyarin's base-text, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 656, fols. 1v-19r, represents one of the oldest of the more complete manuscripts containing the poem, and is the text used (with some justifiable reservations) by Hanna, Lawton, and Livingston. Boyarin's plan for her translation, for use alongside current editions in Middle English, maintains the divisions and lineations of those editions.While Boyarin situates her work as a supporting apparatus to the Middle English editions, it should be noted that she does not slavishly follow the poem's prior editors at every step. …

FIONA SOMERSET. Feeling Like Saints: Lollard Writings after Wyclif

FIONA SOMERSET. Feeling Like Saints: Lollard Writings after Wyclif

The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: The Shaping of English Vernacular Narrative

Book Review| April 01 2014 The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: The Shaping of English Vernacular Narrative The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: The Shaping of English Vernacular Narrative. Edited by Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2011. Pp. xxi + 328; 12 illustrations. $185. Orietta Da Rold Orietta Da Rold Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Journal of English and Germanic Philology (2014) 113 (2): 230–232. https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.113.2.0230 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Orietta Da Rold; The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: The Shaping of English Vernacular Narrative. The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 1 April 2014; 113 (2): 230–232. doi: https://doi.org/10.5406/jenglgermphil.113.2.0230 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveUniversity of Illinois PressThe Journal of English and Germanic Philology Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright 2014 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois2014 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: The Shaping of English Vernacular Narrative ed. by Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch (review)

The Texts and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 108: The Shaping of English Vernacular Narrative ed. by Kimberly K. Bell and Julie Nelson Couch (review)

Tradition and Innovation in Later Medieval English Manuscripts (review)

Tradition and Innovation in Later Medieval English Manuscripts. By Kathleen L. Scott. (London: The British Library. 2007. Pp. xiv, 194. $75.00. ISBN 978-0-712-34936-0.) This volume examines five little-studied English manuscripts of the later medieval period that contain rare or enigmatic decoration and iconography. Scott uses these examples to argue that although fifteenth-century manuscript illumination has often been derided as derivative and dull, these specific manuscripts not only contain strikingly inventive pictorial elements but also raise intriguing questions about the broader contours of English book production and the function of illustrations in late-medieval manuscripts. The first chapter concerns Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 156, an English modelbook for a work known as the Postilla litteralis super totam Bibliam, a widely used literal exegesis of the Bible composed by Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1349). Although this manuscript does not include the full text of the commentary, which typically ran from three to five volumes, it contains illustrations intended to accompany the text, including images that depict practical information about the Bible such as diagrams, plans, and illustrations of the Temple of Solomon, the Table of Shewbread, the Brazen Sea, the Altar of the Holocaust, and so on. She posits that the Bodleian manuscript was a kind of archetypal exemplar or modelbook that provided copyists with a repertoire of imagery for use in the numerous other copies of the work produced during the period.The second chapter considers All Souls Library, Oxford, MS 10, the only surviving copy of an illustrated French Bible written in England. The origins of this manuscript are especially mysterious, as the text was written in French at a time when Wycliffite Bibles were readily available, but produced in an English illuminating shop by a prolific and well-known artist who seems to have moved in the highest circles of noble book-commissioning patrons. Although the manuscript contains many of the standard features of English book art, some of its iconography was clearly influenced by French models; moreover, it prominently features miniatures of readers and books. Scott unravels some of the potential implications of this evidence for ownership and, intriguingly, proposes that the book may have been commissioned by a French patron in forced residence in England such as Charles d'Orleans. Scott then focuses on British Library, Stowe MS 39, the only surviving English manuscript of the Abbey of the Holy Ghost, a Middle English treatise of spiritual guidance that employs architectural motifs to depict aspects of interiority. …

Defiant Devotion in MS Laud Misc. 108: The Narrator of Havelok the Dane and Affective Piety

Resituating the early Middle English romance Havelok the Dane in its hagiographical manuscript context helps to account for its effusive, emotional narrator. Juxtaposed to the personal, prayerful narrator of the South English Legendary found in the same manuscript, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 108, the narrator of Havelok emerges as an instigator of affective, meditative response. Reading the responsive role of the Havelok audience as possessing a meditative aspect aligns the poem with the manuscript's devotional concerns and practices. Ultimately, Havelok directs an audience's affective receptivity toward an investment in rightful secular power.

A remarkable prayer roll attributed to the Master of Sir John Fastolf (Rouen, c .1440, Museum Catharijneconvent Utrecht, MS ABM h4a)

A small roll in the library of Museum Catharijneconvent (Utrecht, the Netherlands) was identified by Peter Gumbert as having been written by an English copyist. In addition to a number of prayers in Latin mixed with contemplations in French, the roll contains decoration attributed to an artist who has been named the Master of Sir John Fastolf after is most important commission in the manuscript of the Epitre d'Othea by Christine de Pisan made for the English nobleman Sir john Fastolf in 1450 (Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 570). The master can be localized by his work in Paris, Rouen (c. 1420-40) and England (1450). The roll in Museum Catharijneconvent was made for a certain Henricus, who is called famulus of Christ. He is depicted in the initial Q below the Crucifixion miniature. What might have been his device, a ragged staff, is depicted as a symbol on the cover on the prie-dieu, and in line fillers throughout the text. Text and miniatures are closely related in content. The paper summarizes our knowledge of the oeuvre of the Master, but, at the same time, calls for new research.

Kings and Kingship in British Library MS Harley 2253

ABSTRACT British Library MS Harley 2253 contains a number of texts, in English, French, and Latin, in which historical and legendary kings feature. Like other works in the manuscript, these interact so that each text acquires meaning that it does not have if read in isolation; in certain texts the authority of kingship is undermined through the particular nature of the works' relationship. Links can be established between one of the texts and the putative connections of the compiler and scribe of the manuscript. This may have had a bearing on the way it and the other works about kings were read. Anyone who has heard of the fourteenth-century manuscript British Library MS Harley 2253 knows that it contains lyrics: in particular, the earliest surviving collection of lyrics in English on secular subject-matter. But recent writing on the manuscript has focused on the other material it contains--not just lyrics, and not just texts in English, but works in French and Latin as well, ranging from saints' lives to fabliaux, from romances to more 'practical' material. (1) The critical interest that these texts have attracted has usually been directed towards items adjacent in the manuscript, works in the same language, or those perceived as having generic affinities. (2) It is the argument of this essay that scrutiny across the codicological, linguistic, and generic boundaries of MS Harley 2253 throws further light on the interests of its compiler, and opens up interpretative possibilities for its texts that are alternative to those by which they have previously been interpreted. Isolation of the texts from their manuscript context, comparison of the texts with their sources, or association of the works with texts of the same genre: all offer strategies for analysis of the items in MS Harley 2253, but within the manuscript other associations and comparisons are suggested and invited, throwing into relief elements and aspects of the texts that may be disregarded if they are read in other contexts. Critical assumptions about the works are challenged when they are examined in this way, and so too are cultural ones about the compiler of the manuscript. The interest of MS Harley 2253 lies not only in its texts per se, but in what the interaction of those texts suggests about the milieu in which the miscellany was assembled. (3) After the lyrics, the text in MS Harley 2253 that has probably received most attention is King Horn. Unlike most of the lyrics, this work is not unique to MS Harley 2253--it survives in two earlier manuscripts also--but like the lyrics, it represents a 'first': it is usually classed as the earliest extant romance to have been composed in English. (4) If not published on its own, it has been published in the company of other romances, and it has been discussed as a romance, in the context of other romances, most influentially in Susan Crane's study Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English Literature. (5) This is despite the fact that the rubric to the text in MS Harley 2253 describes it as a 'geste', (6) and despite the fact also that within the manuscript, there are no other texts of the same genre, in English or French, with which King Horn might be compared. It is worth pointing out here that in one of the other manuscripts in which the text is preserved, the late-thirteenth-century Bodleian Library MS Laud Misc. 108, King Horn is found in the company of a group of saints' lives, and it may have been viewed by the compiler and readers of this manuscript as another text of the same kind--as hagiography, rather than romance. (7) While there is no indication that the compiler of MS Harley 2253 saw it in the same light, there is no indication either that he associated it with other romance texts, or that he was interested in it as a representative of the romance genre; he was certainly not interested in associating it with other romances within his manuscript, or in prompting any other users of the manuscript to associate it with such texts. …