Abstract
Recent years have seen a marked increase in scholarly attention to Middle English (ME) romance manuscripts and their relevance to our literary-critical and historical-critical appreciation of the romances which they contain. The effect of much of this attention has been codicological, that is, concerned with the study of manuscripts as wholes, rather than merely with particular items in their contents or some one aspect of their make-up, such as script or watermarks. Thus the sometimes disparate approaches of textual scholarship and literary criticism concerning ME romance have had more exchange, and there now exists a considerable body of scholarly literature which combines the two approaches, or closely bears on their combination. Surprisingly, there is no analytical survey of these studies yet in print. As a result, those interested in investigating the subject need themselves to expend some effort in assembling a working bibliography. My essay is meant to facilitate this process by providing an overview of recent work on the subject. I shall deal first with conceptual background for the field and some other foundational material, then with three influential scholars for the combination of romance manuscript studies with literary criticism, and finally with examples of the two predominant directions of recent studies to date.
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Notes
M. B. Parkes, in J. J. G. Alexander and M. T. Gibson (eds), Medieval Learning and Literature: Essays Presented to R. W. Hunt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976) pp. 115–41.
On this and related material, see also A. I. Doyle and M. B. Parkes, ‘The Production of Copies of the Canterbury Tales and the Confessio Amantis in the Early Fifteenth Century’, in M. B. Parkes and Andrew G. Watson (eds), Medieval Scribes, Manuscripts and Libraries: Essays Presented to N. R. Ker (London: Scolar Press, 1978) pp. 163–210
A. J. Minnis, Medieval Theory of Authorship: Scholastic Literary Attitudes in the Later Middle Ages (London: Scolar Press, 1984)
and Judson Boyce Allen, The Ethical Poetic of the Later Middle Ages: A Decorum of Convenient Distinction (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982)
One useful introduction to paleographical terminology and kinds of medieval script is in Anthony G. Petti, English Literary Hands from Chaucer to Dryden (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977) pp. 1–41
See, for example, John J. Thompson, ‘The Compiler in Action: Robert Thorton and the “Thornton Romances” in Lincoln Cathedral MS 91’, in Derek Pearsall (ed.), Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, Biblio, 1983) pp. 113–24, where he infers the processes by which Thornton as ‘compiler’ brought about the final form of his ‘romance unit’ (p. 114, emphasis added) which includes nine romances and additional items.
The Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral MS 91), intro. D. S. Brewer and A. E. B. Owen (1975; rpt. with revised intro., London: Scolar Press, 1977)
The Auchinleck Manuscript: National Library of Scotland Advocates’ MS 19.2.1, intro. Derek Pearsall and I. C. Cunningham (London: Scolar Press in assoc. with the National Library of Scotland, 1977)
Cambridge University Library MS Ff.2.38, intro. Frances McSparran and P. R. Robinson (London: Scolar Press, 1979)
Pearsall’s figures on the Auchinleck romances relate to that larger caveat concerning romance manuscript survival raised, among numerous other noteworthy caveats, by A. S. G. Edwards in ‘Middle English Romance: the Limits of Editing, the Limits of Criticism’, in T. W. Machan (ed.), Medieval Literature: Text and Interpretation (State University of New York, Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991) note 1: ‘Of the ninety-four separate verse romances recorded in the revised Manual of the Writings in Middle English, ed. J. B. Severs, vol. 1 (New Haven, CT: Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1967), nearly fifty survive in only a single manuscript’. Pearsall adds in his essay on fifteenth-century romance (see note 39 below) that on his own count of 95 ME verse romances, ‘only 30 occur in copies that pre-date the Thornton manuscripts (c. 1440), even though 61 at least would be regarded as of fourteenth-century provenance’ (p. 58).
See also Manfred Görlach, ‘Recent Facsimile Editions of Middle English Literary Manuscripts’, Anglia, vol. 105 (1987) p. 126.
See also Derek Pearsall, ‘Middle English Romance and its Audiences’, in Mary-Jo Arn and Hanneke Wirtjes, with Hans Jansen (eds), Historical and Editorial Studies in Medieval and Early Modern English for Johan Gerritsen (Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff, 1985) pp. 37–47.
Happily we occasionally have information about manuscripts’ scribes, which can help investigations about original audience. Regarding Robert Thornton, for example, scribe of Brit. Lib. Additional MS 31042 and Lincoln Cathedral Lib. MS 91, see George R. Keiser’s articles: ‘Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 91: Life and Milieu of the Scribe’, Studies in Bibliography, vol. 32 (1979) pp. 158–79
‘More Light on the Life and Milieu of Robert Thornton’, Studies in Bibliography, vol. 36 (1983) pp. 111–19
‘The Nineteenth-Century Discovery of the Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral Library MS 91’, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 77 (1983) pp. 167–90
A critique of Pearsall’s view may be found in Timothy Shonk, ‘A Study of the Auchinlek Manuscript: Bookmen and Bookmaking in the Early Fourteenth Century’, Speculum, vol. 60, no. 1 (1985) pp. 71–91.
For useful reviews of these and other recent MS facsimiles, see A. S. G. Edwards, ‘“The Whole Book”: Medieval Manuscripts in Facsimile’, Review, vol. 2 (1980) pp. 19–29
Julia Boffey, Manuscripts of English Courtly Love Lyrics in the Later Middle Ages (Woodbridge, Suffolk: D. S. Brewer, 1985).
For her more recent overview of Shirley, see Julia Boffey and John J. Thompson, ‘12. Anthologies and Miscellanies: Production and Choice of Texts’, in Jeremy Griffiths and Derek Pearsall (eds), Book Production and Publishing in Britian, 1375–1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989) pp. 284–7.
John J. Thompson, Robert Thornton and the London Thornton Manuscript: British Library MS Additional 31042 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1987).
For other examples, see also Karen Stern, ‘The London “Thornton” Miscellany: A New Description of British Museum Additional Manuscript 31042’, Scriptorium, vol. 30 (1976) pp. 26–37, 201–18
Laura Hibbard Loomis, ‘The Auchinleck Manuscript and a Possible London Bookshop of 1330–40’, PMLA, vol. 57 (1942) pp. 595–627.
but see P. R. Coss’s argument for the earlier existence of bookshops in ‘Aspects of Cultural Diffusion in Medieval English: the Early Romances, Local Society and Robin Hood’, Past and Present, vol. 108 (1985) pp. 60–62
See I. C. Cunningham and J. E. C. Mordkoff, ‘New Light on the Signatures in the Auchinleck Manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland Adv. MS 19.2.1)’, Scriptorium, vol. 36 (1982) p. 291, for the suggestion that Scribe 1 may not initially have conceived of the MS as a whole.
Dieter Mehl, Middle English Romances of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968).
Gisela Guddat-Figge, Catalogue of Manuscripts Containing Middle English Romances (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1976).
Guddat-Figge’s discussion is also superior to the abstract and general observations in Harriet Hudson, ‘Middle English Popular Romances: the Manuscript Evidence’, Manuscripta, vol. 28 (1984) pp. 67–78.
P. R. Robinson, ‘“The Booklet”: a Self-contained Unit in Composite Manuscripts’, Codicologica, vol. 3 (1980) pp. 46–69.
Ralph Hanna III, ‘Booklets in Medieval Manuscripts: Further Considerations’, Studies in Bibliography, vol. 39 (1986) p. 105 and passim.
Derek Pearsall, ‘The Development of Middle English Romance’, in Derek Brewer (ed.), Studies in Medieval English Romances: Some New Approaches (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1988) pp. 11–35 (originally appearing in Mediaeval Studies, vol. 27 (1965) pp. 91–116);
‘The English Romance in the Fifteenth Century’, Essays and Studies, vol. (1976) pp. 56–83.
Derek Pearsall, Old and Middle English Poetry, Routledge History of English Poetry, vol. 1 (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977).
George R. Keiser, review of Pearsall, Manuscripts and Readers, in Publications of the Bibliographical Society of America, vol. 79 (1985) p. 242.
Sarah M. Horrall, ‘The London Thornton Manuscript: a New Collation’, Manuscripta, vol. 23 (1979) pp. 99–103
Ralph Hanna III, ‘The Lincoln Thornton Manuscript: a Corrected Collation’, Studies in Bibliography, vol. 37 (1984) pp. 122–30
‘The Growth of Robert Thornton’s Books’, Studies in Bibliography, vol. 40 (1987) pp. 51–61.
Murray J. Evans, ‘The Explicits and Narrative Division in the Winchester MS: a Critique of Vinaver’s Malory’, Philological Quarterly, vol. 58 (1979) pp. 263–81
‘The Two Scribes in the Winchester MS: the Ninth Explicit and Malory’s “Hoole Book”’, Manuscripta, vol. 27 (1983) pp. 38–44
See Murray J. Evans, ‘Ordinatio and Narrative Links: the Impact of Malory’s Tales as a “Hoole Book”’, in James W. Spisak (ed.), Studies in Malory (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1985) pp. 29–52.
For a different approach to Malory using ME romance MS collections to illuminate the variety of his themes, see Felicity Riddy, Sir Thomas Malory (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1987).
Phillipa Hardman, ‘A Mediaeval “Library in Parvo”’, Medium Aevum, vol. 47 (1978) pp. 262–73.
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Evans, M.J. (1992). Manuscript Studies: New Directions for Appreciating Middle English Romance. In: Simons, J. (eds) From Medieval to Medievalism. Insights. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22233-9_2
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