New essays on late medieval manuscripts highlight the complicated network of their production and dissemination. One of the most important developments in medieval English literary studies since the 1980s has been the growth of manuscript studies. Long regarded as mere textual repositories, and treated superficially by editors, manuscripts are now acknowledged as centrally important in the study of later medieval texts. The essays collected here discuss aspects of the design and distribution of manuscripts in late medieval England, with a particular focus on vernacular manuscripts of the late fourteenth, fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Those in the first half consider material evidence for scribal decisions about design: these range from analysis of individual codices to broader discussions of particular types of manuscripts, both religious and secular. Later essays look at the evidence for the production and distribution of manuscripts of specific English texts or types of text. These include the major Middle English poems The Canterbury Tales and Piers Plowman, as well as key religious works such as Love's Mirror, Hilton's Scale of Perfection, the Speculum Vitae and The Pricke of Conscience, all of which survive in significant numbers of manuscripts. The comparison of secular and devotional texts illuminates shared networks of production and dissemination, and increases our knowledge of regional and metropolitan book production in the period before printing. Contributors: DANIEL W. MOSSER, JACOB THAISEN, TAKAKO KATO, SHERRY L. REAMES, AMELIA GROUNDS, ALEXANDRA BARRATT, JULIAN M. LUXFORD, LINNE R. MOONEY, MICHAEL G. SARGENT, JOHNJ. THOMPSON, MARGARET CONNOLLY, RALPH HANNA, GEORGE R. KEISER.

Groundbreaking surveys of the complex interrelationship between the languages of English and French in medieval Britain. With co-editors: CAROLYN COLLETTE, MARYANNE KOWALESKI, LINNE MOONEY, AD PUTTER, and DAVID TROTTER England was more widely and enduringly francophone in the middle ages than many standard accounts of its history, culture and language allow. The development of French in England, whether known as "Anglo-Norman" or "Anglo-French", is deeply interwoven both with medieval English and with the spectrum of Frenches, insular and continental, used withinand outside the realm. As the language of nearly a thousand literary texts, of much administration, and of many professions and occupations, the French of England needs more attention than it has so far received. The essaysin this volume form a new cultural history focussed round, but not confined to, the presence and interactions of French speakers, writers, readers, texts and documents in England from the eleventh to the later fifteenth century.Taking the French of England into account does not simply add new material to our existing narratives of medieval English culture, but changes them, restoring a multi-vocal, multi-cultural medieval England in all its complexity, and opening up fresh agendas for study and exploration. Contributors: HENRY BAINTON, MICHAEL BENNETT, JULIA BOFFEY, RICHARD BRITNELL, CAROLYN COLLETTE, GODFRIED CROENEN, HELEN DEEMING, STEPHANIE DOWNES, MARTHA DRIVER, MONICA H. GREEN, RICHARD INGHAM, REBECCA JUNE, MARYANNE KOWALESKI, PIERRE KUNSTMANN, FRANCOISE H. M. LE SAUX, SERGE LUSIGNAN, TIM WILLIAM MACHAN, JULIA MARVIN, BRIAN MERRILEES, RUTH NISSE, MARILYN OLIVA, W. MARK ORMROD, HEATHER PAGAN, LAURIE POSTLEWATE, JEAN-PASCAL POUZET, AD PUTTER, GEOFF RECTOR, DELBERT RUSSELL, THEA SUMMERFIELD, ANDREW TAYLOR, DAVID TROTTER, ELIZABETH M. TYLER, NICHOLAS WATSON, JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE, ROBERT F. YEAGER

Influential scholars from Britain and North America discuss future directions in rapidly expanding field of manuscript study. The study of manuscripts is one of the most active areas of current research in medieval studies: manuscripts are the basic primary material evidence for literary scholars, historians and art-historians alike, and there has been an explosion of interest over the past twenty years. Manuscript study has developed enormously: codices are no longer treated as inert witnesses to a culture whose character has already been determined by the modern scholar, but are active participants in a process of exploration and discovery. The articles collected here discuss the future of this process and vital questions about manuscript study for tomorrow's explorers. They deal with codicology and book production, with textual criticism, with the material structure of the medieval book, with the relation of manuscripts to literary culture, to social history and to the medieval theatre, and with the importance to manuscript study of the emerging technology of computerised digitisation and hypertext display. The essays provide an end-of-millennium perspective on the most vigorous developments in a rapidly expanding field of study. Contributors: A.I. Doyle, C. David Benson, Martha W. Driver, J.P. Gumbert, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Linne R. Mooney, Eckehard Simon, Alison Stones, John Thompson. DEREK PEARSALL is former Professor and Co-Director of the Centre for Medieval Studies, York, and Professor of English at Harvard University.

The Library of Trinity College, Cambridge, contains the largest collection of medieval manuscripts of any college in Great Britain, and one of the most important collections in the world. The subjects contained therein cover the whole range of topics usual to medieval manuscripts, with the single bias being that the majority were produced in Britain. Particularly noteworthy are Wycliffite translations of the Bible, sermons, and Wycliffite tracts; three manuscripts containing Nicholas Love's 'Mirror of the Blessed Lif of Ihesu Crist'; and major collections of devotional texts. Trinity is also rich in medieval scientific manuscripts, many of which came through Roger Gale's interest in this field; they include a number of large medical manuscripts whose compilers were apparently trying to bring together much of the current knowledge of the day, from tracts by such men as John of Arderne and Gilbertus Angelicus, with recipes for treatments, under a single cover. The collection also contains major compilations of alchemical tracts; historical and legal material; and unique Middle English translations of classical and early medieval texts. Finally, a number of known Middle English texts not previously thought to be in the Trinity Collection are identified, opening new areas for study of Trinity's manuscripts, especially the medical and scientific texts which have much to tell of scientific learning in England in the later middle ages. LINNE R. MOONEY is Associate Professor of English at the University of Maine (and a former graduate of the Center for Medieval Studies at Toronto).

Groundbreaking surveys of the complex interrelationship between the languages of English and French in medieval Britain. With co-editors: CAROLYN COLLETTE, MARYANNE KOWALESKI, LINNE MOONEY, AD PUTTER, and DAVID TROTTER England was more widely and enduringly francophone in the Middle Ages than our now standard accounts of its history, culture and language allow. The French of England (also known as Anglo-Norman and Anglo-French) is the language of nearly a thousand literary texts, of much administration, and of many professions and occupations. English literary, linguistic and documentary history is deeply interwoven both with a continually evolving spectrum of Frenches used within and outside the realm, and cannot be fully grasped in isolation. The essays in this volume open up andbegin writing a new cultural history focussed on, but not confined to, the presence and interactions of francophone speakers, writers, readers, texts and documents in England from the eleventh to the later fifteenth centuries. They return us to a newly-alive, multi-vocal, complexly multi-cultural medieval England, in which the use of French and its interrelations with English and other languages involve many diverse groups of people. The volume's size testifies to the significance of England's francophone culture, while its chronological range shows the need for revision across the whole span of our existing narratives about medieval English linguistic and cultural history.. Contributors: HENRY BAINTON, MICHAEL BENNETT, JULIA BOFFEY, RICHARD BRITNELL, CAROLYN COLLETTE, GODFRIED CROENEN, HELEN DEEMING, STEPHANIE DOWNES, MARTHA DRIVER, MONICA H. GREEN, RICHARD INGHAM, REBECCA JUNE, MARYANNE KOWALESKI, PIERRE KUNSTMANN, FRANCOISE H. M. LE SAUX, SERGE LUSIGNAN, TIM WILLIAM MACHAN, JULIA MARVIN, BRIAN MERRILEES, RUTH NISSE, MARILYN OLIVA, W. MARK ORMROD, HEATHER PAGAN, LAURIE POSTLEWATE, JEAN-PASCAL POUZET, AD PUTTER, GEOFFRECTOR, DELBERT RUSSELL, THEA SUMMERFIELD, ANDREW TAYLOR, DAVID TROTTER, ELIZABETH M. TYLER, NICHOLAS WATSON, JOCELYN WOGAN-BROWNE, ROBERT F. YEAGER