Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts

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. 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. Kerby-Fulton and Hilmo are coeditors 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.

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) An 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) 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) 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) 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)

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsAbbreviationsGlossary of Key Manuscript TerminologyNote on Transcriptions and Transcription SymbolsTHE FRONT PLATES: Transcriptions, Scripts, and Descriptive Analysis for Learning to Read Literary Texts on the Manuscript PageHow to Transcribe Middle English / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton—Bare Essentials 1: A Transcription Is Not an EditionIntroduction: The Order of the Plates and Scripts Most Commonly Found in Middle English Literary Texts / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton1. The Land of Cokaygne (British Library, ms Harley 913) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton2. "Ihesu Swete" (Newberry Library, MS 31) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton3. The Pricke of Conscience (Newberry Library, MS 32.9) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton4. Chaucer's "Cook's Tale" (Hg) (National Library of Wales, Peniarth MS 392D, Hengwrt MS 154) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton5. Chaucer's "Cook's Tale" (Cp) (Corpus Christi College, MS 198) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton6. Omnis plantacio (formerly The Clergy May Not Hold Property) (Huntington Library, MS HM 503) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton7. Hoccleve 's "Chanceon to Somer" and Envoy to Regiment des Princes (Huntington Library, MS HM 111) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton8. Langland, Piers Plowman (Bodleian Library, MS Douce 104) / Kathryn Kerby-Fulton9. Sir Degrevant (Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.1.6, Findern MS) / Linda Olson10. Wisdom (Folger Shakespeare Library, MS V.a.354, Macro MS) / Linda OlsonChapter 1. Major Middle English Poets and Manuscript Studies, 1300–1450 / Kathryn Kerby-FultonA Brief Overview of Topics Covered in This ChapterI. BL MS Arundel 292, Archaism, and the Preservation of Alliterative Poetry c. 1300–c. 1450II. 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 ScribeIII. 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 EditionIV. 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 DialectV. Some of the Earliest Attempts to Assemble the Canterbury TalesVI. The Scribe Speaks at Last: Hoccleve as Scribe EChapter 2. Romancing the Book: Manuscripts for "Euerich Inglische" / Linda Olson—Middle English Romances in the Auchinleck, Thornton, and Findern ManuscriptsI. Englishing Romance: The Auchinleck ManuscriptII. Romancing the Gentry Household: Robert Thornton's Homemade Family Library—Thornton Names in the Lincoln and London ManuscriptsIII. Courting Romance in the Provinces: The Findern ManuscriptChapter 3. The Power of Images in the Auchinleck, Vernon, Pearl, and Two Piers Plowman Manuscripts / Maidie HilmoI. Looking at Medieval ImagesII. The Auchinleck ManuscriptIII. The Vernon ManuscriptIV. The Pearl ManuscriptV. Two Piers Plowman Manuscripts and the Ushaw Prick of ConscienceVI. ConclusionChapter 4. Professional Readers at Work: Annotators, Editors, and Correctors in Middle English Literary Texts / Kathryn Kerby-FultonI. Categories of Marginalia: The Annotating and Glossing of ChaucerII. The Annotations in Manuscripts of Langland's Piers PlowmanIII. 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. 61823IV. 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 HilmoI. IntroductionII. The Decoration and Borders of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere ManuscriptsIII. The Historiated Initial with an Author Portrait: A Further Development of the Hengwrt TraditionIV. The Ellesmere Traditions: Illustrated Pilgrim AuthorsV. ConclusionChapter 6. "Swete Cordyall" of "Lytterature": Some Middle English Manuscripts from the Cloister / Linda OlsonI. Nourishing the Spirit of Religious Women: Vernacular Texts and ManuscriptsII. Monastic Manuscripts of Chaucer: Literary Excellence under Religious Rule—The Contents of London, British Library, MS Harley 7333III. Lots of Lydgate and a Little Hoccleve: Chaucer's Successors in Monastic HandsIV. "Sadde Mete" for Mind and Soul: Contemplative and Visionary Texts in the CloisterV. Taking it to the Streets: Middle English Drama from the CloisterReferences CitedIllustration CreditsIndex of Manuscripts and IncunabulaGeneral Index