This deeply informed and lavishly illustrated book is a comprehensive introduction to the modern study of Middle English manuscripts. It is intended for students and scholars who are familiar with some of the major Middle English literary works, such as The Canterbury Tales, Gawain and the Green Knight, Piers Plowman, and the romances, mystical works or cycle plays, but who may not know much about the surviving manuscripts. The book approaches these texts in a way that takes into account the whole manuscript or codex-its textual and visual contents, physical state, readership, and cultural history. Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts also explores the function of illustrations in fashioning audience response to particular authors and their texts over the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Linda Olson, and Maidie Hilmo-scholars at the forefront of the modern study of Middle English manuscripts-focus on the writers most often taught in Middle English courses, including Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, the Gawain Poet, Thomas Hoccleve, Julian of Norwich, and Margery Kempe, highlighting the specific issues that shaped literary production in late medieval England. Among the topics they address are the rise of the English language, literacy, social conditions of authorship, early instances of the "Alliterative Revival," women and book production, nuns' libraries, patronage, household books, religious and political trends, and attempts at revisionism and censorship. Inspired by the highly successful study of Latin manuscripts by Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (also published by Cornell), this book demonstrates how the field of Middle English manuscript studies, with its own unique literary and artistic environment, is changing modern approaches to the culture of the book.
Kathryn Kerby-Fulton is The Notre Dame Professor of English at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author most recently of Books Under Suspicion: Censorship and Tolerance of Revelatory Writing in Late Medieval England, which won the Haskins Medal from the Medieval Academy of America. She is coeditor with Maidie Hilmo of The Medieval Professional Reader at Work: Evidence from Manuscripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempe, and Gower and The Medieval Reader: Reception and Cultural History in the Late Medieval Manuscript and coeditor with Linda Olson of Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages. Maidie Hilmo, an affiliate of the University of Victoria, is the author most recently of Medieval Images, Icons, and Illustrated English Literary Texts: From the Ruthwell Cross to the Ellesmere Chaucer. She is coeditor with Kathryn Kerby-Fulton of The Medieval Professional Reader at Work: Evidence from Manuscripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempe, and Gower and The Medieval Reader: Reception and Cultural History in the Late Medieval Manuscript. Linda Olson is a writer and developer of distance education courses in English literature for the Open Learning Program at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. She is the coeditor with Kathryn Kerby-Fulton of Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages.
Preface Acknowledgments Abbreviations Glossary of Key Manuscript Terminology Note on Transcriptions and Transcription Symbols THE FRONT PLATES: Transcriptions, Scripts, and Descriptive Analysis for Learning to Read Literary Texts on the Manuscript Page How to Transcribe Middle English / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton -Bare Essentials 1: A Transcription Is Not an Edition Introduction: The Order of the Plates and Scripts Most Commonly Found in Middle English Literary Texts / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton 1. The Land of Cokaygne (British Library, ms Harley 913) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton 2. "Ihesu Swete" (Newberry Library, MS 31) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton 3. The Pricke of Conscience (Newberry Library, MS 32.9) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton 4. Chaucer's "Cook's Tale" (Hg) (National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 392D, Hengwrt MS 154) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton 5. Chaucer's "Cook's Tale" (Cp) (Corpus Christi College, MS 198) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton 6. Omnis plantacio (formerly The Clergy May Not Hold Property) (Huntington Library, MS HM 503) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton 7. Hoccleve 's "Chanceon to Somer" and Envoy to Regiment des Princes (Huntington Library, MS HM 111) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton 8. Langland, Piers Plowman (Bodleian Library, MS Douce 104) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton 9. Sir Degrevant (Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.1.6, Findern MS) / Linda Olson 10. Wisdom (Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.a.354, Macro MS) / Linda Olson Chapter 1. Major Middle English Poets and Manuscript Studies, 1300-1450 / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton A Brief Overview of Topics Covered in This Chapter I. BL MS Arundel 292, Archaism, and the Preservation of Alliterative Poetry c. 1300-c. 1450 II. BL MS Harley 2253 and Principles of Compilatio, or: Why Read the Harley Lyrics in their Natural Habitat? -Bare Essentials 2: Anglicana Script and Profiling the Individual Scribe III. Gawain and the Medieval Reader: The Importance of Manuscript Ordinatio in a Poem We Think We Know -Bare Essentials 3: Assessing Emendation in a Modern Edition IV. The Rise of English Book Production in Ricardian London: Professional Scribes and Langland's Piers Plowman -Bare Essentials 4: Some Basic Concepts of Editing, Types of Written Standard Middle English, and Scribal Handling of Dialect V. Some of the Earliest Attempts to Assemble the Canterbury Tales VI. The Scribe Speaks at Last: Hoccleve as Scribe E Chapter 2. Romancing the Book: Manuscripts for "Euerich Inglische" / Linda Olson -Middle English Romances in the Auchinleck, Thornton, and Findern Manuscripts I. Englishing Romance: The Auchinleck Manuscript II. Romancing the Gentry Household: Robert Thornton's Homemade Family Library -Thornton Names in the Lincoln and London Manuscripts III. Courting Romance in the Provinces: The Findern Manuscript Chapter 3. The Power of Images in the Auchinleck, Vernon, Pearl, and Two Piers Plowman Manuscripts / Maidie Hilmo I. Looking at Medieval Images II. The Auchinleck Manuscript III. The Vernon Manuscript IV. The Pearl Manuscript V. Two Piers Plowman Manuscripts and the Ushaw Prick of Conscience VI. Conclusion Chapter 4. Professional Readers at Work: Annotators, Editors, and Correctors in Middle English Literary Texts / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton I. Categories of Marginalia: The Annotating and Glossing of Chaucer II. The Annotations in Manuscripts of Langland's Piers Plowman III. Annotations and Corrections in the Book of Margery Kempe: Cruxes, Controversies, and Solutions -Appendix on the Red Ink Annotator and Previous Annotators in BL MS Add. 61823 IV. The Quiet Connoisseur: The First Annotator(s) of Julian of Norwich's Showings in the Amherst Manuscript (British Library, MS Add. 37790) Chapter 5. Illuminating Chaucer's Canterbury Tales: Portraits of the Author and Selected Pilgrim Authors / Maidie Hilmo I. Introduction II. The Decoration and Borders of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere Manuscripts III. The Historiated Initial with an Author Portrait: A Further Development of the Hengwrt Tradition IV. The Ellesmere Traditions: Illustrated Pilgrim Authors V. Conclusion Chapter 6. "Swete Cordyall" of "Lytterature": Some Middle English Manuscripts from the Cloister / Linda Olson I. Nourishing the Spirit of Religious Women: Vernacular Texts and Manuscripts II. Monastic Manuscripts of Chaucer: Literary Excellence under Religious Rule -The Contents of London, British Library, MS Harley 7333 III. Lots of Lydgate and a Little Hoccleve: Chaucer's Successors in Monastic Hands IV. "Sadde Mete" for Mind and Soul: Contemplative and Visionary Texts in the Cloister V. Taking it to the Streets: Middle English Drama from the Cloister References Cited Illustration Credits Index of Manuscripts and Incunabula General Index
"The book has an engaging, conversational tone. Reading it is like being in a seminar taught by three excellent scholars deeply engaged in a burgeoning field and eager to cultivate new approaches and voices... Fittingly for a work that examines book design as an intellectual enterprise, the book is beautifully produced and very generously illustrated with excellent color reproductions of the widest variety of works... In sum, the present work is a sterling demonstration of what the history of the book has to offer literary studies."- Erik Inglis, The Burlington Magazine (January 2014) "... for undergraduate teachers like myself who have struggled to bring codicology into the classroom, this book is a gift... the authors do an excellent job of building characters around the shadowy figures of scribes, compilers, illuminators, binders, rubricators and annotators, explaining their impact on literature... Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts does an excellent job of...working to break down barriers between manuscript, print and digital cultures as well as distinctions between medieval and contemporary, author and reader, student and specialist, and elite (i.e. manuscript-holding) and non-elite institutions."-Janine Rogers,Review of English Studies (Feb 2014) "Few universities in the US and the UK are able to offer their graduate students with properly supervised access to medieval manuscripts, despite the demand for such training. This superb volume fills a much-needed gap... The authors offer not just a masterly synthesis of the most recent (and even forthcoming) scholarship; they also break new ground."- Ruth Evans, Manuscripta: A Journal for Manuscript Research (2013) "[A]n attractively laid out and richly illustrated book...This book will be of interest to the seasoned manuscript scholar as to the neophyte."-Julia Boffey, Times Literary Supplement (May 24, 2013) "One of the crucial accomplishments of this volume is establishing without a doubt the very foundational nature of manuscript work to all scholarship on the Middle Ages. In a volume that devotes itself to a pedagogical mission, self-consciously unpacking its freight for both novices and experts alike, Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts provides a great service to us all... Like the lectern-sized Riverside edition Kerby-Fulton discusses, It will become a standard in the field for both teaching and research purposes, and will hopefully drive a new generation of scholars into manuscript study."-Kathleen E. Kennedy, The Medieval Review (14 September 2013) "This very exciting book will help all of us rethink how we teach Middle English literature. The historian Le Roy Ladurie said that historians seem to be either parachutists, floating high above the field with a wide-angle view, or truffle-hunters, poking around in the field for small, juicy tidbits. With this book one enjoys both of these experiences at the same time."-William Robins, University of Toronto "Manuscript studies has recently come into its own and this book will find an eager audience among both new and established scholars. Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts is all inclusive, advancing new knowledge about how manuscripts should be read while providing basic skills in Middle English paleography and codicology. The writing is clear, compelling, and concise, and the authors have chosen excellent images to complement their text."-Raymond Clemens, Illinois State University, coauthor of Introduction to Manuscript Studies "Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts is a masterly introduction to manuscript studies marked by the tangy personal tone of the authors' writing. There is throughout an incredible amount of detailed information about manuscripts, but the technical detail itself is always related to the literary text or to some major aspect of the history of the book and makes some valuable point about them. This book is a marvelous resource for teachers and students."-Derek Pearsall, University of York, author of The Life of Geoffrey Chaucer: A Critical Biography
