Middle and Early Modern English Texts – Serie

Odo de Meung’s De Viribus Herbarum was one of the most widely known pieces of Fachliteratur in the latter part of Middle English, corroborated on account of the number of translations hitherto preserved in the different European vernacular languages such as French, German and Danish. In Middle English, there are up to nine complete versions of Macer Floridus’ rendering, together with a number of fragmentary pieces. Still, Glasgow University Library, MS Hunter 497 (ff. 1r-92r) is the only English version of the text which remains so far unedited.The present edition offers the diplomatic transcription of MS Hunter 497, also accompanied by a glossary, notes and introduction. The latter has been conceived as a state of the art of the Hunterian witness, containing the textual transmission of the text, a codicological/palaeographic description together with a comprehensive analysis of its linguistic provenance and scribal practices. Therefore, the edition conforms itself as a primary source for research not only in Historical Linguistics but also in other related fields such as History of Medicine or Ecdotics.

The present edition offers the diplomatic transcription of MS Wellcome 542, housing a late Middle English hitherto unedited remedy-book based on the medical lore of Hippocrates, Socrates and Galen. A glossary, notes and introduction also accompany the edition. The introduction has been conceived as a state of the art of this scientific treatise, and deals with the textual transmission of the text, a codicological/palaeographic description together with the scribe’s dialect and idiolect. The edition therefore conforms itself as a primary source for research not only in Historical Linguistics but also in other related fields such as the History of Medicine or Ecdotics.

One of the three most important medical herbals composed in Middle English, both in terms of physical length and for the number of species treated, and regularly quoted not only by the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary or the Middle English Dictionary but also by historians of Natural Sciences in Britain since the 1700s, a printed version of the treatise compiled in 1373 by the otherwise unknown Herefordian schoolmaster John Lelamour was surprisingly not yet available to the general public. The present volume fills this gap by offering a critical edition of the text contained in the sole extant copy, together with a detailed introduction discussing such topics as authorship and Quellenforschung, the dialect of the text, or the history of the manuscript; a large collection of explanatory notes which throw light on the textual transmission of the text, translation and copy mistakes, identification of parallel passages, and species identification; a full glosary, and two appendixes, one with the current botanical names of the plants mentioned in the text, and another crossreferencing diseases to the lines in the edition where these appear.