Material on the production and transmission of medieval literature and the early formation of the canon of English poetry. A wide range of poets is covered - Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve, the Gawain poet, Langland, and Lydgate, along with the translator of Claudian's De Consulatu Stilichonis. The Turnament of Totenham is read in termsof theory of the carnivalesque and popular culture, and major contributions are made to current linguistic, editorial and codicological controversies. Going beyond the Middle Ages, the book also considers the sixteenth-century reception of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women and Post-Reformation reading of Lydgate. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the production and transmission of medieval literature, and in the early formation of the canon of English poetry. Contributors: JULIA BOFFEY, J.A. BURROW, CHRISTOPHER CANNON, MARTHA DRIVER, SIAN ECHARD, A.S.G. EDWARDS, KATE D. HARRIS, S.S. HUSSEY, KATHRYN KERBY-FULTON, CAROL M. MEALE, LINNE R. MOONEY, CHARLOTTE C. MORSE, V.I.J. SCATTERGOOD, ELIZABETH SOLOPOVA, ESTELLE STUBBS, JOHN THOMPSON.

Essays bringing out the richness and vibrancy of pre-modern textual culture in all its variety. Linne R. Mooney, Emeritus Professor of Palaeography at the University of York, has significantly advanced the study of later medieval English book production, particularly our knowledge of individual scribes; this collection honours her distinguished scholarship and responds to her wide-ranging research on Middle English manuscripts and texts. The thirteen essays brought together here take a variety of approaches - palaeographical, codicological, dialectal, textual, art historical - to the study of the English medieval book and to the varied environments (professional, administrative, mercantile, ecclesiastical) where manuscripts were produced and used during the period 1300-1550. Acknowledging that books and readers are no respecters of borders, this collection's geographical scope extends beyond England in the east to Ghent and Flanders, and in the west to Waterford and the Dublin Pale. Contributors explore manuscripts containing works by key writers, including Geoffrey Chaucer, John Gower, John Wyclif, and Walter Hilton. Major texts whose manuscript traditions are scrutinized include Speculum Vitae, the Scale of Perfection, the Canterbury Tales, and Confessio Amantis, along with a wide range of shorter works such as lyric poems, devotional texts, and historical chronicles. London book-making activities and the scribal cultures of other cities and monastic centres all receive attention, as does the book production of personal miscellanies. By considering both literary texts and the letters, charters, and writs that medieval scribes produced, in Latin and Anglo-French as well as English, this collection celebrates Professor Mooney's influence on the field and presents a holistic sense of England's pre-modern textual culture.

Scribes played a crucial part in the flourishing and availability of literature in English during the time of Chaucer. This book reveals for the first time who they were, where and how they worked, and the crucial role they playedin bringing this literature to a wider public. A sensational book... will permanently affect and change the way we see the history of the book in England. Professor Derek Pearsall, Harvard University. Geoffrey Chaucer is called the Father of English Literature notbecause he was the first author to write in English - he wasn't - but because his works were among those of his generation produced in sufficient numbers to reach a wider audience. He and his contemporaries wrote before the age of print, so the dissemination of his writings in such quantity depended upon scribes, who would manually copy works like The Canterbury Tales in manuscripts. This book is the first to identify the scribes responsible for the copying of the earliest manuscripts (including Chaucer's famous scribe, Adam). The authors reveal these revolutionary copyists as clerks holding major bureaucratic offices at the London Guildhall, working for the mayor andaldermen, officiating in their courts, and recording London business in their day jobs - while copying medieval English literature as a sideline. In particular, they contributed to the new culture of English as the language of notonly literature, but government and business as well. LINNE R. MOONEY is Professor of Medieval English Palaeography in the Department of English and Related Literature, and Director of the Centre for Medieval Studiesat the University of York; ESTELLE STUBBS is a researcher in the School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics based at the Humanities Research Institute at the University of Sheffield.