Unlike books familiar to us from print culture, every medieval book is unique, the product of individual circumstances of planning, execution, and history. This is a fundamental difficulty for study, particularly for those beginning the investigation of texts in manuscript. There are two conventional ways of approaching this difficulty: explaining the series of processes by which a manuscript book is constructed and explaining how to construct a professional description of a manuscript book. Neither addresses a problem fundamental for beginners: what happens when a librarian presents you with a manuscript? How should you proceed? Fundamentally, this is a problem of visual examination, and taking its procedure from the grand M. R. James and M. B. Parkes, this book attempts to stimulate the visual and experiential. It attempts, in a heavily exemplified account, to explain what might be there in a manuscript to perceive and what it might mean. The argument follows a process of examination that begins with the physical bulk of what's in front of you (and its cover, or binding) and ends with traces of the book's history.

John Ridewall's Fulgencius metaforalis is a moralising commentary on Fulgentius's sixth-century Mitologiae, an introduction to the classical gods and their stories. Composed in Oxford in the 1330s and subject to almost immediate local (and broader English) use, the work was a pan-European success, and more than 100 manuscripts preserve Ridewall's text in some form. Fulgencius metaforalis has been edited before, nearly a century ago, by a great medievalist, Hans Liebeschütz; he, however, did not recognise that the manuscript he presented was a fragment, containing only about one-third of the whole. This volume provides Ridewall's entire text, as usually communicated, with a translation. In addition, it contains a substantial introduction; this outlines various difficulties in the transmission of Fulgencius and evidence for the work's extensive medieval reception. Annotation to the text identifies and indexes Ridewall's sources – most of his mythographic knowledge reflects either Remigius of Auxerre's commentary on Martianus Capella or the Third Vatican Mythographer; and offers one manuscript tabula/index, useful for seeing how readers may have accessed the work piecemeal (by manuscript consultation, not, as frequently claimed, as a set of 'memory diagrams').

The 'De venenis' attributed to 'Malachias Hibernicus' is a portable discussion of vices and virtues. Probably composed about 1280, originally as an aid for Franciscan preachers, it adopts the innovative metaphor that sin is a poison removed by various 'treacles'. Its argumentative mode is to adduce scientific data about venomous beasts, the sins, and the antidotes to their poisons, the 'remedial' virtues. From these 'facts' of natural history, Malachy constructs homiletic similitudines (analogical figures). These, typically of a sort designed for use in sermones ad status, he applies to vicious and virtuous activities, and perhaps particularly ones peculiar to Ireland. Although Malachy the Irishman and his On Poison have received only a handful of scholarly notices in the last century, in the later Middle Ages, his was a widely known book. A lengthy introduction presents evidence for the wide circulation of Malachy's text and the little that is known of the author. It further addresses literary issues: the work's genre, hovering between a treatise on vices and virtues, a compendium of scientific information, and a handbook for preachers; Malachy's efforts at compilation of authoritative materials; and a preliminary account of some early users, including William Langland and Robert Holcot. The introduction concludes by examining the insuperable difficulties involved in editing the text. The centre of the volume presents an annotated preliminary text and translation, together with some account of early interpolations the text received. The volume concludes with three indexes, one with all biblical citations, one of all Malachy's other citations, and a third of Malachy's similitudines, his moralised scientific information.

This volume brings together a variety of studies, some reprinted, some new; all are devoted to the literate culture of the English later Middle Ages. The studies hover about four foci: normative English polylingualism (across three grammatically distinct languages); the messiness and discontinuities of medieval manuscript production; drawing conclusions about historical audiences/literary communities on the basis of book-evidence; and finally, the Middle English poem Piers Plowman. In general, although all the essays here arrive at broad conclusions, their point is other. The essays exemplify methods of study, the identification of problems and the recognition of tools appropriate or helpful in addressing them. Perhaps particularly the volume gestures toward a range of skills appropriate for the task; these range from narrow observation of book-production techniques to bringing a local historical record to bear on an individual volume or group of them.

This book offers an introduction to medieval English book-history through a sequence of exemplary analyses of commonplace book-historical problems. Rather than focus on bibliographical particulars, the volume considers a variety of ways in which scholars use manuscripts to discuss book culture, and it provides a wide-ranging introductory bibliography to aid in the study. All the essays try to suggest how the study of surviving medieval books might be useful in considering medieval literary culture more generally. Subjects covered include authorship, genre, discontinuous production, scribal individuality and community, the history of libraries and the history of book provenance.

This book offers an introduction to medieval English book-history through a sequence of exemplary analyses of commonplace book-historical problems. Rather than focus on bibliographical particulars, the volume considers a variety of ways in which scholars use manuscripts to discuss book culture, and it provides a wide-ranging introductory bibliography to aid in the study. All the essays try to suggest how the study of surviving medieval books might be useful in considering medieval literary culture more generally. Subjects covered include authorship, genre, discontinuous production, scribal individuality and community, the history of libraries and the history of book provenance.

New approaches to religious texts from the Middle Ages, highlighting their diversity and sophistication. From the great age of pastoral expansion in the thirteenth century, to the revolutionary paroxysms of the English Reformation, England's religious writings, cultures, and practices defy easy analysis. The diverse currents of practice and belief which interact and conflict across the period - orthodox and heterodox, popular and learned, mystical and pragmatic, conservative and reforming - are defined on the one hand by differences as nuanced as the apophatic and cataphatic approaches to understanding the divine, and on the other by developments as profound and concrete as the persecution of declared heretics, the banning and destruction of books, and the emergence of printing. The essays presented in this volume respond to and build upon the hugely influential work of Vincent Gillespie in these fields, offering a variety of approaches, spiritual and literary, bibliographical and critical, across the Middle Ages to the Protestant Reformation and beyond. Topics addressed include the Wycliffite Bible; the Assumption of the Virgin as represented in medieval English culture; Nicholas Love and Reginald Pecock; and the survival of latemedieval piety in early modern England. LAURA ASHE is Professor of English Literature and Tutorial Fellow, Worcester College, Oxford; RALPH HANNA is Professor of Palaeography (emeritus), Keble College, Oxford. Contributors: Tamara Atkin, James Carley, Alexandra da Costa, Anne Hudson, Ian Johnson, Daniel Orton, Susan Powell, Denis Renevey, Michael G. Sargent, Annie Sutherland, Nicholas Watson, Barry Windeatt.

A survey of the history, holdings, decoration, and conservation of one of England's finest medieval libraries, with full catalogue. The Willoughby family, from Wollaton, Nottinghamshire, built up an extensive medieval library, including the notable Wollaton Antiphonal; theirs is the largest surviving library gathered by a gentry family of the period, the product of a single acquisitive burst, beginning around 1460 and mainly completed at about the time of the Dissolution in 1540. The manuscripts remain unique because of the very substantial core which survives more or less in situ, together with a huge collection of family archives, at the University of Nottingham, just a few miles from their original home. This book focuses upon the ten manuscripts now in the Wollaton Library Collection as well asthe famous Antiphonal. Essays explore the history of the library and the Willoughby family, the books of Sir Thomas Chaworth, the art and function of the Antiphonal, the works of pastoral instruction, the decoration of the Frenchmanuscripts (including the earliest fully illustrated manuscript of romances), the Confessio Amantis, and the conservation of the collection. The essays are followed by a full catalogue of the Wollaton Library Collection aswell as of manuscripts and early printed books now dispersed as far afield as Tokyo and New York. Contributors: Alixe Bovey, Gavin Cole, Ralph Hanna, Dorothy Johnston, Rob Lutton, Derek Pearsall, Alison Stones, Thorlac Turville-Petre.

The 'De venenis' attributed to 'Malachias Hibernicus' is a portable discussion of vices and virtues. Probably composed about 1280, originally as an aid for Franciscan preachers, it adopts the innovative metaphor that sin is a poison removed by various 'treacles'. Its argumentative mode is to adduce scientific data about venomous beasts, the sins, and the antidotes to their poisons, the 'remedial' virtues. From these 'facts' of natural history, Malachy constructs homiletic similitudines (analogical figures). These, typically of a sort designed for use in sermones ad status, he applies to vicious and virtuous activities, and perhaps particularly ones peculiar to Ireland. Although Malachy the Irishman and his On Poison have received only a handful of scholarly notices in the last century, in the later Middle Ages, his was a widely known book. A lengthy introduction presents evidence for the wide circulation of Malachy's text and the little that is known of the author. It further addresses literary issues: the work's genre, hovering between a treatise on vices and virtues, a compendium of scientific information, and a handbook for preachers; Malachy's efforts at compilation of authoritative materials; and a preliminary account of some early users, including William Langland and Robert Holcot. The introduction concludes by examining the insuperable difficulties involved in editing the text. The centre of the volume presents an annotated preliminary text and translation, together with some account of early interpolations the text received. The volume concludes with three indexes, one with all biblical citations, one of all Malachy's other citations, and a third of Malachy's similitudines, his moralised scientific information.

Arthurian Literature has established its position as the home for a great diversity of new research into Arthurian matters. It delivers fascinating material across genres, periods, and theoretical issues. TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT A wide range of Arthurian material is discussed here, reflecting its diversity, and enduring vitality. Geoffrey of Monmouth's best-selling Historia regum Britannie is discussed in the context of Geoffrey's reception in Wales and the relationship between Latin and Welsh literary culture. Two essays deal with the Middle English Ywain and Gawain: the first offers a comparative study of the Middle English poem alongside Chretien's Yvainand the Welsh Owein, while the second considers Ywain and Gawain with the Alliterative Morte Arthure in their northern English cultural and political context, the world of the Percys and the Nevilles. It isfollowed by a discussion of Edward III's recuperation of his abandoned Order of the Round Table, which offers an intriguing explanation for this reversal in the context of Edward's victory over the French at Poitiers. The final essay is a comparison of fifteenth- and twentieth-century portrayals of Camelot in Malory and T.H. White, as both idea and locale, and a centre of hearsay and gossip. The volume is completed with a unique and little-known medievalGreek Arthurian poem, presented in facing-page edition and modern English translation. Elizabeth Archibald is Professor of English Studies at Durham University, and Principal of St Cuthbert's Society; David F. Johnson is Professor of English at Florida State University, Tallahassee. Contributors: Christopher Berard, Louis J. Boyle, Thomas H. Crofts, Ralph Hanna, Georgia Lynn Henley, Erich Poppe

English literary culture in the fourteenth century was vibrant and expanding. Its focus, however, was still strongly local, not national. This study examines in detail the literary production from the capital before, during, and after the time of the Black Death. In this major contribution to the field, Ralph Hanna charts the development and the generic and linguistic features particular to London writing. He uncovers the interactions between texts and authors across a range of languages and genres: not just Middle English, but Anglo-Norman and Latin; not just romance, but also law, history, and biblical commentary. Hanna emphasises the uneasy boundaries legal thought and discourse shared with historical and 'romance' thinking, and shows how the technique of romance, Latin writing associated with administrative culture, and biblical interests underwrote the great pre-Chaucerian London poem, William Langland's Piers Plowman.

English literary culture in the fourteenth century was vibrant and expanding. Its focus, however, was still strongly local, not national. This study examines in detail the literary production from the capital before, during, and after the time of the Black Death. In this major contribution to the field, Ralph Hanna charts the development and the generic and linguistic features particular to London writing. He uncovers the interactions between texts and authors across a range of languages and genres: not just Middle English, but Anglo-Norman and Latin; not just romance, but also law, history, and biblical commentary. Hanna emphasises the uneasy boundaries legal thought and discourse shared with historical and 'romance' thinking, and shows how the technique of romance, Latin writing associated with administrative culture, and biblical interests underwrote the great pre-Chaucerian London poem, William Langland's Piers Plowman.

Although Richard Rolle, hermit of Hampole, was perhaps the most influential spiritual author of the later English Middle Ages, the coming of print was not kind to him. Although a large collected Latin Opera appeared in the 1530s, it was scarcely exhaustive, and a number of the texts there included, notably Rolle's Latin Psalter commentary, have not been critically examined since. This volume partially redresses this silence by providing a sequence of four Latin texts that have remained in manuscript. Central to Rolle's oeuvre (and to this volume) is Rolle's meditative reading of the first three verses of The Song of Songs, 'Super Canticum'. Also included are two relatively brief unedited texts, 'Super Magnificat' and 'De vita activa et contemplativa'. In addition, the volume reassesses the universal manuscript ascription to Rolle of 'Viridarium, vel De misericordia Dei'; although the work is here reascribed, there is also an edition of selected passages. Unprinted Latin Writings also includes an introduction, critical and textual, some textual annotation, a description of all those previously undescribed manuscripts used here, and an index of the medieval sources cited.

The first full commentary on Piers Plowman since the late nineteenth century, the Penn Commentary places the allegorical dream-vision of Piers Plowman within the literary, historical, social, and intellectual contexts of late medieval England, and within the long history of critical interpretation of the poem, assessing past scholarship while offering original materials and insights throughout. The authors' line-by-line, section by section, and passus by passus commentary on all three versions of the poem and on the stages of its multiple revisions reveals new aspects of the work's meaning while assessing and summarizing a complex and often divisive scholarly tradition. The volumes offer an up-to-date, original, and open-ended guide to a poem whose engagement with its social world is unrivaled in medieval English literature, and whose literary, religious, and intellectual accomplishments are uniquely powerful. The Penn Commentary is designed to be equally useful to readers of the A, B, or C texts of the poem. It is geared to readers eager to have detailed experience of Piers Plowman and other medieval literature, possessing some basic knowledge of Middle English language and literature, and interested in pondering further the particularly difficult relationships to both that this poem possesses. Others, with interest in poetry of all periods, will find the extended and detailed commentary useful precisely because it does not seek to avoid the poem's challenges but seeks instead to provoke thought about its intricacy and poetic achievements. Volume 2, by Ralph Hanna, deliberately addresses the question of the poem's perceived "difficulty," by indicating the legitimate areas of unresolved dilemmas, while offering often original explanations of a variety of textual loci. Perhaps more important, his commentary indicates what has not always appeared clear in past approaches-that the poem only "means" in its totality and within some critical framework, and that its annotation needs always to be guided by a sense of Langland's developing arguments.

Robert Holcot (d. 1349) was a Dominican friar, most prominently connected with the convent in Oxford where he became a Doctor of Theology. Holcot is perhaps most famous today, following an important discussion by Heiko Obermann in the 1960s, for his 'semi-Pelagian' theological views. In contrast to traditional Augustinianism, he believed that God granted salvation to individuals on the basis of 'bonum quod in se est', that is, on the basis of an individual's intention to do good, rather than any achievement. While historians of theology know Holcot in these terms, his wide medieval reputation was rather different. Holcot was read all over Europe as an exegete, an explicator of biblical texts, especially the Old Testament sapiential books. This volume presents a selection, nearly a quarter of the whole, from Holcot's readings in the minor prophets, originally delivered in the 1330s as lectures in Oxford's Dominican studium. In a commentary appended to the text, it uses these selections to offer a view of exegesis, and of Holcot's strategies, that differs from customary scholarship on the topic. The commentary attempts to clarify the relation between Holcot's usually tacit discussion (a feature perhaps driven by the fact that the received text represents a reportatio or outline, not a stenographic transcription) and the biblical text at hand. It further addresses some argumentative features, principally Holcot's use of narrative and of imagistic distinctiones. The volume is fully annotated, with a facing-page translation, numerous references to analogous discussions elsewhere in Holcot (including his classic Super Sapientiam Salamonis), and full indexes of Holcot's biblical references, his parallel treatments, and his sources.

First edition of a lively medieval romance. The author of the fifteenth-century Older Scots romance of Rauf Coilyear may be unknown, but the popularity of this comic king-in-disguise tale is undisputed; it is cited by William Dunbar and Gavin Douglas at the turn of the century, and again in the mid-sixteenth century Complaynt of Scotland. The disguised king in this case is Charlemagne, and the hero a bluff collier called Ralph, who unwittingly plays host to him for one stormy night and teaches his bemused guest some rough lessons in his own version of courtesy. When Ralph is lured to court, the mistaken identities continue as he encounters the great Sir Roland and battles Saracens. Throughout, the scrappy hero maintains his dignity, as indeed does his king: both parties finish the tale immensely pleased with each other and with the bond they have forged. The text survives only in a 1572 print by Robert Lekpreuik (whose own career seems tohave been only marginally less exciting than Rauf's: he printed it in St Andrews while attempting to evade imprisonment in Edinburgh, ultimately without success). It is edited here with an introduction and notes. RALPHHANNA is Emeritus Professor of Palaeography, University of Oxford.

Essays examining the compiler and contents of two of the most important and significant extant late medieval manuscript collections. The Yorkshire landowner Robert Thornton (c.1397- c.1465) copied the contents of two important manuscripts, Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91 (the "Lincoln manuscript"), and London, British Library, MS Additional 31042 (the "London manuscript") in the middle decades of the fifteenth century. Viewed in combination, his books comprise a rare repository of varied English and Latin literary, religious and medical texts that survived the dissolution of the monasteries, when so many other medieval books were destroyed. Residing in the texts he copied and used are many indicators of what this gentleman scribe of the North Riding read, how he practised his religion, and what worldly values he held for himself and his family. Because of the extraordinary nature of his collected texts - Middle English romances, alliterative verse (the alliterative Morte Arthure only exists here), lyrics and treatises of religion ormedicine - editors and scholars have long been deeply interested in uncovering Thornton's habits as a private, amateur scribe. The essays collected here provide, for the first time, a sustained, focussed light on Thornton and hisbooks. They examine such matters as what Thornton as a scribe made, how he did it, and why he did it, placing him in a wider context and looking at the contents of the manuscripts. Susanna Fein is Professor of Englishat Kent State University; Michael Johnston is an Assistant Professor of English at Purdue University. Contributors: Julie Nelson Couch, Susanna Fein, Rosalind Field, Joel Fredell, Ralph Hanna, Michael Johnston, George R. Keiser, Julie Orlemanski, Mary Michele Poellinger, Dav Smith, Thorlac Turville-Petre.

Richard Rolle - the Yorkshire hermit, visionary and transmitter of religious counsel - was widely recognised in the later English Middle Ages as a major spiritual author. However, this influential figure poses difficulties for scholars and remains a largely untapped literary resource. Encompassing over one hundred and twenty books, Rolle's work is central to the largely uninvestigated sacred culture of that period and provides scholars with a rich source of insight. Ralph Hanna has collected and catalogued this important body of work following detailed research of the manuscript evidence over two decades. Rolle's status makes it appropriate that he will be the only Middle English author other than Chaucer to have an author-based bibliography. The catalogue describes each of Rolle's books and includes full details of contents and codicology. The book also includes an introduction to Rolle's work explaining its significance, examining the transmission of his writings, and providing a guide to the conventions of presentation used in the catalogue. A series of indexes provides useful additional resources.

This volume brings together a variety of studies, some reprinted, some new; all are devoted to the literate culture of the English later Middle Ages. The studies hover about four foci: normative English polylingualism (across three grammatically distinct languages); the messiness and discontinuities of medieval manuscript production; drawing conclusions about historical audiences/literary communities on the basis of book-evidence; and finally, the Middle English poem Piers Plowman. In general, although all the essays here arrive at broad conclusions, their point is other. The essays exemplify methods of study, the identification of problems and the recognition of tools appropriate or helpful in addressing them. Perhaps particularly the volume gestures toward a range of skills appropriate for the task; these range from narrow observation of book-production techniques to bringing a local historical record to bear on an individual volume or group of them.

Although Richard Rolle, hermit of Hampole, was perhaps the most influential spiritual author of the later English Middle Ages, the coming of print was not kind to him. Although a large collected Latin Opera appeared in the 1530s, it was scarcely exhaustive, and a number of the texts there included, notably Rolle's Latin Psalter commentary, have not been critically examined since. This volume partially redresses this silence by providing a sequence of four Latin texts that have remained in manuscript. Central to Rolle's oeuvre (and to this volume) is Rolle's meditative reading of the first three verses of The Song of Songs, 'Super Canticum'. Also included are two relatively brief unedited texts, 'Super Magnificat' and 'De vita activa et contemplativa'. In addition, the volume reassesses the universal manuscript ascription to Rolle of 'Viridarium, vel De misericordia Dei'; although the work is here reascribed, there is also an edition of selected passages. Unprinted Latin Writings also includes an introduction, critical and textual, some textual annotation, a description of all those previously undescribed manuscripts used here, and an index of the medieval sources cited.

This volume argues, through a series of selected local studies, for the importance of "textual criticism" as a fundamental act of historical interpretation and recovery, pointing out the need for attention to the physical bearers of our knowledge of the English Middle Ages, the books themselves, and the ignored and alienating features of manuscript culture. It examines medieval book production, the textual uses of manuscripts, the nature of medieval meditations, and looks in detail at work by Chaucer and Langland. In conclusion the volume considers the problem of textual annotation in the light of both history and literary theory.

This book draws on a lengthy experience of teaching graduates how to approach medieval books. It leads the reader through the stages of the editorial process, using part of Richard Rolle's Commentary on the Song of Songs as the working exemplar. In the humane sciences, the need for texts is ubiquitous; they provide the regular objects of study. But far less prevalent than editions is any discussion of the premises underlying these objects, or the mechanisms by which they have been constructed. This volume takes up both challenges. First, in a preliminary chapter, it discusses what is at stake in any edition one might read; the persistent argument is that these represent products of modern scholarly decision-making, the imposition of various kinds of unity on the extremely diverse evidence medieval books offer for any literary work. This chapter also explains broadly various options for the presentation of texts – and the difficulties inherent in them all. The remainder of the volume is given over to a step-by-step guide to the process of editing (and eventually to a finished presentation of) a heretofore unpublished medieval text. The discussion seeks to exemplify the decisions editors routinely face, and to suggest ways of addressing them.

'The Index of Middle English Prose' is an international collaborative project which will ultimately locate, identify and record all extant Middle English prose texts composed between c.1200 and c.1500, in both manuscript and printed form in medieval and post-medieval versions. The first step towards this goal has been this series of 'Handlists', each recording the holdings of a major library or group of libraries. Compiled by scholars, 'Handlists' include detailed descriptions of each prose item with identifications, categorisations and full bibliographical data. Every 'Handlist' will also contain a series of indexes including listings of opening and closing lines, authors, titles, subject matter and rubrics. For students of the middle ages 'Handlists' provide essential bibliographical tools and shed light on a wide range of subjects.

This book draws on a lengthy experience of teaching graduates how to approach medieval books. It leads the reader through the stages of the editorial process, using part of Richard Rolle's Commentary on the Song of Songs as the working exemplar. In the humane sciences, the need for texts is ubiquitous; they provide the regular objects of study. But far less prevalent than editions is any discussion of the premises underlying these objects, or the mechanisms by which they have been constructed. This volume takes up both challenges. First, in a preliminary chapter, it discusses what is at stake in any edition one might read; the persistent argument is that these represent products of modern scholarly decision-making, the imposition of various kinds of unity on the extremely diverse evidence medieval books offer for any literary work. This chapter also explains broadly various options for the presentation of texts - and the difficulties inherent in them all. The remainder of the volume is given over to a step-by-step guide to the process of editing (and eventually to a finished presentation of) a heretofore unpublished medieval text. The discussion seeks to exemplify the decisions editors routinely face, and to suggest ways of addressing them.