Medieval Manuscript Miscellanies

This book situates the medieval manuscript within its cultural contexts, with chapters by experts in bibliographical and theoretical approaches to manuscript study.

An investigation of the fascinating, not-so-miscellaneous miscellanies

Miscellanies may easily make up the single largest group of medieval manuscripts. It was especially in the Late Middle Ages that the number of such multi-textual manuscripts, often compiled by lay and religious individuals for personal or communal use, grew substantially. In spite of their seminal relevance for the reconstruction of medieval culture, such manuscripts have not until recently garnered much scholarly interest. The present volume pinpoints the societal and cultural relevance of 14th- and 15th-century miscellanies as well as their role in the understanding of textual creation, transformation and complexity, in both late medieval and early modern societies. The contributions scrutinise, on the one side, text corpora and textual traditions that had a seminal impact on late medieval European culture: the texts of Geoffrey Chaucer and Reginald Pecock, the manuscripts of Dante's Commedia, late medieval Italian and Latin poetic anthologies, but also miscellanies from the Council of Basel and multi-textual manuscripts containing anti-Hussite texts. On the other side, the volume takes into account individual scribes/compilers and collections: from remarkable cases such as Pico della Mirandola and Leonardo da Vinci, to personal collections made up by lesser-known but not less significant compilers and users. Under a strong pan-European umbrella, the volume embarks on specific problems, among which authorship, non-autonomy, composition, reception and use, along with more general issues such as multilingualism or the relationship between image and text. Though ubiquitous and complex, miscellanies blend the diverse cultural, economic and social tendencies of their prosumers, thus proving to be tokens of the appropriation of medieval knowledge and providing snapshots of a dynamic textual culture.

'Insular Books' discusses literary texts written in Anglo-French, Middle English, Older Scots, and Middle Welsh. The particular focus of the collection is one type of manuscript: the miscellany - essentially a multi-text manuscript whose contents are of a varied nature, often accumulated over time and added by different users.

Essays exploring different aspects of late medieval and early modern manuscript and book culture. Late medieval manuscripts and early modern print history form the focus of this volume. It includes new work on the compilation of some important medieval manuscript miscellanies and major studies of merchant patronage and of a newly revealed woman patron, alongside explorations of medieval texts and the post-medieval reception history of Langland, Chaucer and Nicholas Love. It thus pays a fitting tribute to the career of Professor A.S.G. Edwards, highlighting his scholarly interests and demonstrating the influence of his achievements. Carol M. Meale is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Bristol; the late Derek Pearsall was Professor Emeritus at Harvard University and Honorary Research Professor at the University of York. Contributors: Nicolas Barker, J.A. Burrow, A.I. Doyle, Martha W. Driver, Susanna Fein, Jane Griffiths, Lotte Hellinga, Alfred Hiatt, Simon Horobin, Richard Linenthal, Carol M. Meale, Orietta Da Rold, John Scattergood, Kathleen L. Scott, Toshiyuki Takamiya, John J. Thompson.