A range of approaches (literary, historical, art-historical, codicological) to this mysterious but hugely significant manuscript. Extravagantly heterogeneous in its contents, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86 is an utterly singular production. On its last folio, the scribe signs off with a self-portrait - a cartoonishly-drawn male head wearing a close-fitted hood - and an inscription: "scripsi librum in anno et iii mensibus" (I wrote the book in a year and three months). His fifteen months' labour resulted in one of the most important miscellanies to survive from medieval England: a trilingual marvel of a compilation, with quirky combinations of content that range from religion, to science, to literature of a decidedly secular cast. It holds medical recipes, charms, prayers, prognostications, magic tricks, pious doctrine, a liturgical calendar, religious songs, lively debates, poetry on love and death, proverbs, fables, fabliaux, scurrilous games, and gender-based diatribes. That Digby is from the thirteenth century adds to its appeal, for English literary remnants from before 1300 are all too rare. Scholars on both sides of the vernacular divide, French and English, are deeply intrigued by it. Many of its texts are found nowhere else: for example, the French Arthurian Lay of the Horn, the English fabliau Dame Sirith and the beast fable Fox and Wolf, and the French Strife between Two Ladies (a candid debate on feminine politics). The interpretationsoffered in this volume of its contents, presentation, and ownership, show that there is much to discover in Digby's lively record of the social and spiritual pastimes of a book-owning gentry family. SUSANNA FEIN is Professor of English at Kent State University. CONTRIBUTORS: Maureen Boulton, Neil Cartlidge, Marilyn Corrie, Susanna Fein, Marjorie Harrington, John Hines, Jennifer Jahner, Melissa Julian-Jones, Jenni Nuttall, David Raybin, Delbert Russell, J.D. Sargan, Sheri Smith

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.

Fresh examinations of the manuscript which is one of the chief compendiums of literature in the Middle English period. Created in London c. 1340, the Auchinleck manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland Advocates MS 19.2.1) is of crucial importance as the first book designed to convey in the English language an ambitious range ofsecular romance and chronicle. Evidently made in London by professional scribes for a secular patron, this tantalizing volume embodies a massive amount of material evidence as to London commercial book production and the demand for vernacular texts in the early fourteenth century. But its origins are mysterious: who were its makers? its users? how was it made? what end did it serve? The essays in this collection define the parameters of present-day Auchinleck studies. They scrutinize the manuscript's rich and varied contents; reopen theories and controversies regarding the book's making; trace the operations and interworkings of the scribes, compiler, and illuminators; teaseout matters of patron and audience; interpret the contested signs of linguistic and national identity; and assess Auchinleck's implied literary values beside those of Chaucer. Geography, politics, international relations and multilingualism become pressing subjects, too, alongside critical analyses of literary substance. Susanna Fein is Professor of English at Kent State University and editor of The Chaucer Review. Contributors: Venetia Bridges, Patrick Butler, Siobhain Bly Calkin, A. S. G. Edwards, Ralph Hanna, Ann Higgins, Cathy Hume, Marisa Libbon, Derek Pearsall, Helen Phillips, Emily Runde, Timothy A. Shonk, Miceal F. Vaughan.

An edition of the early Middle English verse sequence contained in the thirteenth-century Oxford Jesus College MS 29 (II) with accompanying translations in Modern English and scholarly introduction and apparatus. The sequence is varied in subject, with poems of religious exhortation set beside others of secular pragmatism. Included are: The Owl and the Nightingale, Poema Morale, The Proverbs of Alfred, Thomas of Hales's Love Rune, The Eleven Pains of Hell, the prose Shires and Hundreds of England, the lengthy Passion of Jesus Christ in English, and twenty-one additional lyrics, most of them uniquely preserved in this manuscript. Made in the West Midlands, the Jesus 29 manuscript is the lengthiest all-English verse collection known to exist in the period between the Exeter Book and the Harley Lyrics.

Created in London c. 1340, the Auchinleck manuscript (Edinburgh, National Library of Scotland Advocates MS 19.2.1) is of crucial importance as the first book designed to convey in the English language an ambitious range ofsecular romance and chronicle. Evidently made in London by professional scribes for a secular patron, this tantalizing volume embodies a massive amount of material evidence as to London commercial book production and the demand for vernacular texts in the early fourteenth century. But its origins are mysterious: who were its makers? its users? how was it made? what end did it serve? The essays in this collection define the parameters of present-day Auchinleck studies. They scrutinize the manuscript's rich and varied contents; reopen theories and controversies regarding the book's making; trace the operations and interworkings of the scribes, compiler, and illuminators; teaseout matters of patron and audience; interpret the contested signs of linguistic and national identity; and assess Auchinleck's implied literary values beside those of Chaucer. Geography, politics, international relations and multilingualism become pressing subjects, too, alongside critical analyses of literary substance. SUSANNA FEIN is Professor of English at Kent State University and editor of The Chaucer Review. Contributors: Venetia Bridges, Patrick Butler, Siobhain Bly Calkin, A. S. G. Edwards, Ralph Hanna, Ann Higgins, Cathy Hume, Marisa Libbon, Derek Pearsall, Helen Phillips, Emily Runde, Timothy A. Shonk, Miceal F. Vaughan.

This edition contains four Middle English Charlemagne romances from the Otuel cycle: Roland and Vernagu, Otuel a Knight, Otuel and Roland, and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain. A translation of the romances' source, the Anglo-French Otinel, is also included. The romances centre on conflicts between Frankish Christians and various Saracen groups, and deal with issues of racial and religious difference, conversion, and faith-based violence.

An edition and accompanying translation of this late C13th anthology of early Middle English verse. In addition to the original text and Modern English translations, the edition contains a substantial scholarly introduction, notes and a substantial bibliography. Oxford, Jesus College, MS 29 (II), a thirteenth-century manuscript, contains the longest surviving English verse sequence from the period between the Exeter Book and the Harley Lyrics. The sequence is varied in subject, with poems of religious exhortation set beside others of secular pragmatism. Included are: The Owl and the Nightingale, Poema Morale, The Proverbs of Alfred, Thomas of Hales's Love Rune, The Eleven Pains of Hell, the prose Shires and Hundreds of England, the lengthy Passion of Jesus Christ in English, and twenty-one additional lyrics, most of them uniquely preserved in this manuscript and presented here with accompanying translations in Modern English and scholarly introduction and apparatus. This scholarly presentation of the text is designed for both research and classroom use, intended for teachers, scholars and students.

This edition contains four Middle English Charlemagne romances from the Otuel cycle: Roland and Vernagu, Otuel a Knight, Otuel and Roland, and Duke Roland and Sir Otuel of Spain. A translation of the romances' source, the Anglo-French Otinel, is also included. The romances centre on conflicts between Frankish Christians and various Saracen groups, and deal with issues of racial and religious difference, conversion, and faith-based violence.