Daniel Sawyer
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198857778
- eISBN:
- 9780191890390
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198857778.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This introduction positions the book in relation to past work in the history of reading, introduces the materials and methods used, and lays out brief overviews of the five chapters. The history of ...
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This introduction positions the book in relation to past work in the history of reading, introduces the materials and methods used, and lays out brief overviews of the five chapters. The history of reading has an established large-scale narrative which offers little detail on the reading of vernacular poetry in later-medieval England. Readers’ own marginal comments on Middle English verse cannot supply this missing detail, as they are rare at this time, and so mark their writers out as atypical. A combination of methods is proposed for examining a broader range of evidence instead, including close reading and detailed manuscript case studies, but also quantitative surveys inspired by continental European scholarship. Middle English verse does, it is suggested, constitute an identifiable topic. A working taxonomy of canonicity in Middle English poetry is offered, and widely successful anonymous religious instructional poems such as The Prick of Conscience are proposed as useful comparanda for canonical texts. The introduction closes by summarizing what follows.Less
This introduction positions the book in relation to past work in the history of reading, introduces the materials and methods used, and lays out brief overviews of the five chapters. The history of reading has an established large-scale narrative which offers little detail on the reading of vernacular poetry in later-medieval England. Readers’ own marginal comments on Middle English verse cannot supply this missing detail, as they are rare at this time, and so mark their writers out as atypical. A combination of methods is proposed for examining a broader range of evidence instead, including close reading and detailed manuscript case studies, but also quantitative surveys inspired by continental European scholarship. Middle English verse does, it is suggested, constitute an identifiable topic. A working taxonomy of canonicity in Middle English poetry is offered, and widely successful anonymous religious instructional poems such as The Prick of Conscience are proposed as useful comparanda for canonical texts. The introduction closes by summarizing what follows.
Stefan Kamola
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474421423
- eISBN:
- 9781474476744
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474421423.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
After his experience compiling a world history and composing various theological works, Rashid al-Din returned to the Blessed History of Ghazan and applied new ideas to the text and to its ...
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After his experience compiling a world history and composing various theological works, Rashid al-Din returned to the Blessed History of Ghazan and applied new ideas to the text and to its presentation. These included new ways to represent genealogical relationships, the inclusion of a series of illustrations, and a new imperative about the reproduction and preservation of the text. This chapter traces these changes, as well as a series of textual additions and modifications made to the dynastic history. Some of these modifications were the work of Rashid al-Din himself, while others were the product of early copyists and editors leaving their mark on the historical record. This chapter reconstructs the order of these modifications and demonstrates their impact on the historical record.Less
After his experience compiling a world history and composing various theological works, Rashid al-Din returned to the Blessed History of Ghazan and applied new ideas to the text and to its presentation. These included new ways to represent genealogical relationships, the inclusion of a series of illustrations, and a new imperative about the reproduction and preservation of the text. This chapter traces these changes, as well as a series of textual additions and modifications made to the dynastic history. Some of these modifications were the work of Rashid al-Din himself, while others were the product of early copyists and editors leaving their mark on the historical record. This chapter reconstructs the order of these modifications and demonstrates their impact on the historical record.
Stefan Kamola
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474421423
- eISBN:
- 9781474476744
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474421423.003.0007
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
A century after Rashid al-Din’s death, his works experienced a period of heightened interest at the court of the Timurid ruler Shahrokh (1405-1447). Shahrokh’s court librarian, Hafez-e Abru (d. 1430) ...
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A century after Rashid al-Din’s death, his works experienced a period of heightened interest at the court of the Timurid ruler Shahrokh (1405-1447). Shahrokh’s court librarian, Hafez-e Abru (d. 1430) was involved in collecting, preserving, and correcting early copies of Rashid al-Din’s Collected Histories (Jamiʿ al-Tawarikh), and he used Rashid al-Din’s collection as a model for his own historical writing. This epilogue traces the basic contours of Hafez-e Abru’s use of Rashid al-Din’s work and shows that, were it not for the world of Hafez-e Abru, our reception of the Collected Histories would look very different than it does.Less
A century after Rashid al-Din’s death, his works experienced a period of heightened interest at the court of the Timurid ruler Shahrokh (1405-1447). Shahrokh’s court librarian, Hafez-e Abru (d. 1430) was involved in collecting, preserving, and correcting early copies of Rashid al-Din’s Collected Histories (Jamiʿ al-Tawarikh), and he used Rashid al-Din’s collection as a model for his own historical writing. This epilogue traces the basic contours of Hafez-e Abru’s use of Rashid al-Din’s work and shows that, were it not for the world of Hafez-e Abru, our reception of the Collected Histories would look very different than it does.
Stefan Kamola
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781474421423
- eISBN:
- 9781474476744
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474421423.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Middle Eastern Studies
Making Mongol History examines the life and work of Rashid al-Din Tabib (d. 1318), the most powerful statesman working for the Mongol Ilkhans in the Middle East. It seeks to integrate his most famous ...
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Making Mongol History examines the life and work of Rashid al-Din Tabib (d. 1318), the most powerful statesman working for the Mongol Ilkhans in the Middle East. It seeks to integrate his most famous work, the historical compendium, the Collected Histories (Jamiʿ al-Tawarikh), into two contexts: a developing genre of Persian historical writing and Rashid al-Din’s broader political and intellectual projects. Opening chapters offer an overview of administrative history and historiography in the early Ilkhanate, culminating with Rashid al-Din’s Blessed History of Ghazan, the indispensable source for Mongol and Ilkhanid history. Later chapters lay out the results of the most comprehensive study to date of the manuscripts of Rashid al-Din’s historical writing. Also explored is the complicated relationship between Rashid al-Din’s historical and theological writings, as well as his appropriation of the work of his contemporary historian, ʿAbd Allah Qashani. Their rivalry, as well as other personal alliances and conflicts at the court of the Ilkhans, continue to shape our understanding of Mongol history.Less
Making Mongol History examines the life and work of Rashid al-Din Tabib (d. 1318), the most powerful statesman working for the Mongol Ilkhans in the Middle East. It seeks to integrate his most famous work, the historical compendium, the Collected Histories (Jamiʿ al-Tawarikh), into two contexts: a developing genre of Persian historical writing and Rashid al-Din’s broader political and intellectual projects. Opening chapters offer an overview of administrative history and historiography in the early Ilkhanate, culminating with Rashid al-Din’s Blessed History of Ghazan, the indispensable source for Mongol and Ilkhanid history. Later chapters lay out the results of the most comprehensive study to date of the manuscripts of Rashid al-Din’s historical writing. Also explored is the complicated relationship between Rashid al-Din’s historical and theological writings, as well as his appropriation of the work of his contemporary historian, ʿAbd Allah Qashani. Their rivalry, as well as other personal alliances and conflicts at the court of the Ilkhans, continue to shape our understanding of Mongol history.
Katherine A. Brown
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049175
- eISBN:
- 9780813050034
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049175.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
The first chapter establishes three distinct types of reversal in the fabliaux: rhetorical; narrative (or sociogenic); and structural (called inversion). Examples of each type demonstrate that ...
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The first chapter establishes three distinct types of reversal in the fabliaux: rhetorical; narrative (or sociogenic); and structural (called inversion). Examples of each type demonstrate that reversal is a characteristic of the genre and that it serves to open the fabliaux to interpretation. Le Fablel de la Grue is taken as a model text in that it incorporates all three types of reversal. An analysis of the fabliau shows that they can combine different genres, such as exempla and lais, through reversal. A study of the manuscript contexts of La Grue shows how the fabliau interacts with contemporary texts and how each manuscript has its own characteristics.Less
The first chapter establishes three distinct types of reversal in the fabliaux: rhetorical; narrative (or sociogenic); and structural (called inversion). Examples of each type demonstrate that reversal is a characteristic of the genre and that it serves to open the fabliaux to interpretation. Le Fablel de la Grue is taken as a model text in that it incorporates all three types of reversal. An analysis of the fabliau shows that they can combine different genres, such as exempla and lais, through reversal. A study of the manuscript contexts of La Grue shows how the fabliau interacts with contemporary texts and how each manuscript has its own characteristics.
Daniel Sawyer
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198857778
- eISBN:
- 9780191890390
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198857778.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter summarizes the conclusions of the book, and explores some possible implications for future study in various manuscripts and texts. The manuscript presentation of Piers Plowman for ...
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This chapter summarizes the conclusions of the book, and explores some possible implications for future study in various manuscripts and texts. The manuscript presentation of Piers Plowman for reading is compared to the presentation of The Prick of Conscience, and the resulting similarities and differences illustrate the value of studying the filtration of formal choices through habits in book production. The chapter considers the presence and absence of the marking of rhyme in copies of The Canterbury Tales, and then closes by examining the work of the compiler Robert Thornton as a case study which draws together many of the book’s themes.Less
This chapter summarizes the conclusions of the book, and explores some possible implications for future study in various manuscripts and texts. The manuscript presentation of Piers Plowman for reading is compared to the presentation of The Prick of Conscience, and the resulting similarities and differences illustrate the value of studying the filtration of formal choices through habits in book production. The chapter considers the presence and absence of the marking of rhyme in copies of The Canterbury Tales, and then closes by examining the work of the compiler Robert Thornton as a case study which draws together many of the book’s themes.
Katherine A. Brown
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049175
- eISBN:
- 9780813050034
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049175.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Chapter 3 argues that Eastern frame narrative collections such as the Seven Sages of Rome were being combined with Western stories in medieval manuscripts before Boccaccio wrote the Decameron. The ...
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Chapter 3 argues that Eastern frame narrative collections such as the Seven Sages of Rome were being combined with Western stories in medieval manuscripts before Boccaccio wrote the Decameron. The fabliaux anthologies were often repositories of other short narrative collections, such as vernacular versions of the Seven Sages of Rome and the Disciplina Clericalis. More than other types of Western story collections, the fabliaux codices can be seen as prefiguring the combination of different narrative traditions in the Decameron. The levels of organization in the Decameron reflect Boccaccio's combining of the Eastern frame narrative with the Old French manuscript tradition, which also offers a structural archetype for the organization of the novellas and the arrangement of the ten days of storytelling.Less
Chapter 3 argues that Eastern frame narrative collections such as the Seven Sages of Rome were being combined with Western stories in medieval manuscripts before Boccaccio wrote the Decameron. The fabliaux anthologies were often repositories of other short narrative collections, such as vernacular versions of the Seven Sages of Rome and the Disciplina Clericalis. More than other types of Western story collections, the fabliaux codices can be seen as prefiguring the combination of different narrative traditions in the Decameron. The levels of organization in the Decameron reflect Boccaccio's combining of the Eastern frame narrative with the Old French manuscript tradition, which also offers a structural archetype for the organization of the novellas and the arrangement of the ten days of storytelling.
Daniel Sawyer
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198857778
- eISBN:
- 9780191890390
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198857778.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter argues for the variety and vitality of the reading of Middle English verse in the period c.1350–c.1500, drawing on evidence from poems themselves and from surviving evidence of their ...
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This chapter argues for the variety and vitality of the reading of Middle English verse in the period c.1350–c.1500, drawing on evidence from poems themselves and from surviving evidence of their later-medieval ownership and transmission. Since some of the successful poems used as comparanda for canonical writers in this study might be less familiar to readers, the chapter briefly introduces The Prick of Conscience and Speculum Vitae, considering their origins, organization, and internal depictions of reading. It is argued that such long, anonymous poems display interesting variety, not homogeneity. Allusions, provenance evidence from manuscripts, and records in wills and inventories all show how these texts were read in combination with many other types of material, by all kinds of readers and throughout the period, in ways which modern literary history is not necessarily capable of predicting. These findings should, it is suggested, encourage caution in the extrapolation of reading tastes and habits from individual pieces of surviving evidence.Less
This chapter argues for the variety and vitality of the reading of Middle English verse in the period c.1350–c.1500, drawing on evidence from poems themselves and from surviving evidence of their later-medieval ownership and transmission. Since some of the successful poems used as comparanda for canonical writers in this study might be less familiar to readers, the chapter briefly introduces The Prick of Conscience and Speculum Vitae, considering their origins, organization, and internal depictions of reading. It is argued that such long, anonymous poems display interesting variety, not homogeneity. Allusions, provenance evidence from manuscripts, and records in wills and inventories all show how these texts were read in combination with many other types of material, by all kinds of readers and throughout the period, in ways which modern literary history is not necessarily capable of predicting. These findings should, it is suggested, encourage caution in the extrapolation of reading tastes and habits from individual pieces of surviving evidence.
William M. Hamlin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199684113
- eISBN:
- 9780191764677
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199684113.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, European Literature
This chapter addresses the seventeenth-century vogue of distilling Montaigne's Essays into aphoristic form, assimilating Montaignian thought into vernacular-wisdom literature. It relies not only on ...
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This chapter addresses the seventeenth-century vogue of distilling Montaigne's Essays into aphoristic form, assimilating Montaignian thought into vernacular-wisdom literature. It relies not only on early modern commonplace books and study notes which extract and condense ideas from Montaigne's Essays as translated by Florio, but also upon a previously-unknown anonymous English translation of portions of Montaigne which dates from the mid-seventeenth century. Aphoristic adaptation provides an exceptionally clear instance of Montaignian reception among early modern English readers. But the impulse toward compressed extraction also helps significantly to explain the gradual demise of Florio's translation and the appearance, in 1685, of Cotton's tighter, plainer, more thoroughly censored, and far less exuberant rendering of the Essays.Less
This chapter addresses the seventeenth-century vogue of distilling Montaigne's Essays into aphoristic form, assimilating Montaignian thought into vernacular-wisdom literature. It relies not only on early modern commonplace books and study notes which extract and condense ideas from Montaigne's Essays as translated by Florio, but also upon a previously-unknown anonymous English translation of portions of Montaigne which dates from the mid-seventeenth century. Aphoristic adaptation provides an exceptionally clear instance of Montaignian reception among early modern English readers. But the impulse toward compressed extraction also helps significantly to explain the gradual demise of Florio's translation and the appearance, in 1685, of Cotton's tighter, plainer, more thoroughly censored, and far less exuberant rendering of the Essays.
Katherine A. Brown
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049175
- eISBN:
- 9780813050034
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049175.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
The Old French fabliaux are humorous short stories from the 13th century that resemble some of the most memorable tales in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (1348-1351). Yet their humor and ostensible ...
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The Old French fabliaux are humorous short stories from the 13th century that resemble some of the most memorable tales in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (1348-1351). Yet their humor and ostensible frivolity conceal a serious challenge to didactic literature. A century later, Boccaccio used these types of tales to promote the openness of literary interpretation as a choice for the reader. This study shows that the fabliaux had a greater influence on the Decameron than has previously been recognized. Boccaccio took from the fabliaux the use of reversal as a technique for manipulating narrative structure; in addition, the manuscripts in which the fabliaux were transmitted served as models for the organization of the Decameron. The use of reversal in both the fabliaux and the Decameron underscores a paradigm shift in medieval thinking away from purely didactic literature toward a literature of enjoyment. Reversal in the fabliaux brings together linguistic and thematic opposites and interchanges them in order to show that these opposites offer equally valid positions from which the stories can be interpreted. Reversal also allows the fabliaux to adapt to a variety of contemporaneous genres while still maintaining their fundamental character. The fabliaux's use of reversal disrupts the moral didacticism preserved with the texts in manuscript anthologies. As Boccaccio standardized the medieval short story in the Decameron, he drew from both the fabliaux tradition and from the manuscript anthologies in which they were transmitted in order to conjoin diverse genres and provoke a multiplicity of interpretations.Less
The Old French fabliaux are humorous short stories from the 13th century that resemble some of the most memorable tales in Giovanni Boccaccio's Decameron (1348-1351). Yet their humor and ostensible frivolity conceal a serious challenge to didactic literature. A century later, Boccaccio used these types of tales to promote the openness of literary interpretation as a choice for the reader. This study shows that the fabliaux had a greater influence on the Decameron than has previously been recognized. Boccaccio took from the fabliaux the use of reversal as a technique for manipulating narrative structure; in addition, the manuscripts in which the fabliaux were transmitted served as models for the organization of the Decameron. The use of reversal in both the fabliaux and the Decameron underscores a paradigm shift in medieval thinking away from purely didactic literature toward a literature of enjoyment. Reversal in the fabliaux brings together linguistic and thematic opposites and interchanges them in order to show that these opposites offer equally valid positions from which the stories can be interpreted. Reversal also allows the fabliaux to adapt to a variety of contemporaneous genres while still maintaining their fundamental character. The fabliaux's use of reversal disrupts the moral didacticism preserved with the texts in manuscript anthologies. As Boccaccio standardized the medieval short story in the Decameron, he drew from both the fabliaux tradition and from the manuscript anthologies in which they were transmitted in order to conjoin diverse genres and provoke a multiplicity of interpretations.
Konrad Hirschler
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9781474408776
- eISBN:
- 9781474418812
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474408776.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Middle East History
The written text was a pervasive feature of cultural practices in the medieval Middle East. At the heart of book circulation stood libraries that experienced a rapid expansion from the twelfth ...
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The written text was a pervasive feature of cultural practices in the medieval Middle East. At the heart of book circulation stood libraries that experienced a rapid expansion from the twelfth century onwards. While the existence of these libraries is well known our knowledge of their content and structure has been very limited as hardly any medieval Arabic catalogues have been preserved. This book discusses the largest and earliest medieval library of the Middle East for which we have documentation – the Ashrafiya library in the very centre of Damascus – and edits its catalogue. This catalogue shows that even book collections attached to Sunni religious institutions could hold rather unexpected titles, such as stories from the 1001 Nights, manuals for traders, medical handbooks, Shiite prayers, love poetry and texts extolling wine consumption. At the same time this library catalogue decisively expands our knowledge of how the books were spatially organised on the bookshelves of such a large medieval library. With over 2,000 entries this catalogue is essential reading for anybody interested in the cultural and intellectual history of Arabic societies. Setting the Ashrafiya catalogue into a comparative perspective with contemporaneous libraries on the British Isles this book opens new perspectives for the study of medieval libraries.Less
The written text was a pervasive feature of cultural practices in the medieval Middle East. At the heart of book circulation stood libraries that experienced a rapid expansion from the twelfth century onwards. While the existence of these libraries is well known our knowledge of their content and structure has been very limited as hardly any medieval Arabic catalogues have been preserved. This book discusses the largest and earliest medieval library of the Middle East for which we have documentation – the Ashrafiya library in the very centre of Damascus – and edits its catalogue. This catalogue shows that even book collections attached to Sunni religious institutions could hold rather unexpected titles, such as stories from the 1001 Nights, manuals for traders, medical handbooks, Shiite prayers, love poetry and texts extolling wine consumption. At the same time this library catalogue decisively expands our knowledge of how the books were spatially organised on the bookshelves of such a large medieval library. With over 2,000 entries this catalogue is essential reading for anybody interested in the cultural and intellectual history of Arabic societies. Setting the Ashrafiya catalogue into a comparative perspective with contemporaneous libraries on the British Isles this book opens new perspectives for the study of medieval libraries.
Katherine A. Brown
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049175
- eISBN:
- 9780813050034
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049175.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
In chapter 2, the relationships of fabliaux to other types of works, particularly fables, reveal the generic specificity of the fabliau form as well as the interwoven structure of the system of ...
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In chapter 2, the relationships of fabliaux to other types of works, particularly fables, reveal the generic specificity of the fabliau form as well as the interwoven structure of the system of genres in medieval literature. MS BNF 2173 offers an exemplary case, it is argued, of the manuscript compiler's deliberate mixing of genres. The analyses of various individual fabliaux demonstrate that rhetorical reversal in the fabliaux serves to undermine the genre's ostensible didactic aims, whereas similar techniques in fables reinforce the didacticism of that genre. The manuscript as a whole presents a progression of texts from the divine to the mundane.Less
In chapter 2, the relationships of fabliaux to other types of works, particularly fables, reveal the generic specificity of the fabliau form as well as the interwoven structure of the system of genres in medieval literature. MS BNF 2173 offers an exemplary case, it is argued, of the manuscript compiler's deliberate mixing of genres. The analyses of various individual fabliaux demonstrate that rhetorical reversal in the fabliaux serves to undermine the genre's ostensible didactic aims, whereas similar techniques in fables reinforce the didacticism of that genre. The manuscript as a whole presents a progression of texts from the divine to the mundane.
Sheldon Brammall
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780748699087
- eISBN:
- 9781474412384
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9780748699087.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory
Manuscript translations reveal a different side of Virgil’s reception than is apparent in printed texts. Several substantial English translations never entered print in any form during the ...
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Manuscript translations reveal a different side of Virgil’s reception than is apparent in printed texts. Several substantial English translations never entered print in any form during the Renaissance. These include an anonymous translation discovered at Castle Ashby in 1977 (now BL Add. MS 60283), the version of Book 6 Sir John Harington presented to King James and Prince Henry in 1604 and Sir William Mure’s rendition of Books 1 and 4 in the Edinburgh University Library. These courtly translations treat Virgil’s epic with a freedom that is rare in printed versions. This chapter shows that Virgil was not always stern and dour in early modern English translation. The more mischievous Aeneids found their audiences through manuscript distribution, while print offered the more obviously useful, or propagandistic, versions of the epic.Less
Manuscript translations reveal a different side of Virgil’s reception than is apparent in printed texts. Several substantial English translations never entered print in any form during the Renaissance. These include an anonymous translation discovered at Castle Ashby in 1977 (now BL Add. MS 60283), the version of Book 6 Sir John Harington presented to King James and Prince Henry in 1604 and Sir William Mure’s rendition of Books 1 and 4 in the Edinburgh University Library. These courtly translations treat Virgil’s epic with a freedom that is rare in printed versions. This chapter shows that Virgil was not always stern and dour in early modern English translation. The more mischievous Aeneids found their audiences through manuscript distribution, while print offered the more obviously useful, or propagandistic, versions of the epic.
David Watt
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780859898690
- eISBN:
- 9781781385203
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5949/liverpool/9780859898690.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
Thomas Hoccleve's Series (1419-21) tells the story of its own making. The Making of Thomas Hoccleve's Series analyzes this story and considers what it might contribute to the larger story about book ...
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Thomas Hoccleve's Series (1419-21) tells the story of its own making. The Making of Thomas Hoccleve's Series analyzes this story and considers what it might contribute to the larger story about book production in the fifteenth century. Focusing on four surviving manuscripts made by Hoccleve himself between 1422 and 1426, the first four chapters explore the making of the Series in context. They examine the importance of audience judgment in the selection and juxtaposition of forms, the extent to which the physical flexibility of books could serve the needs of their owners and their makers, the changing tastes of fifteenth-century readers, and the appetite for new paradigms for reform in head and members. The final chapter analyzes the most important non-authorial copy of the Series in order to ask what others made of it. While this study draws on Hoccleve's experience, it asserts that the Series offers a reflection on, not a reflection of, his conception of book production. The ironic contrast between what Thomas, Hoccleve's narrator, intends and accomplishes when making his book is its most redeeming feature, for it provides insight into the many conflicting pressures that shaped the way books were made and imagined in early fifteenth-century England.Less
Thomas Hoccleve's Series (1419-21) tells the story of its own making. The Making of Thomas Hoccleve's Series analyzes this story and considers what it might contribute to the larger story about book production in the fifteenth century. Focusing on four surviving manuscripts made by Hoccleve himself between 1422 and 1426, the first four chapters explore the making of the Series in context. They examine the importance of audience judgment in the selection and juxtaposition of forms, the extent to which the physical flexibility of books could serve the needs of their owners and their makers, the changing tastes of fifteenth-century readers, and the appetite for new paradigms for reform in head and members. The final chapter analyzes the most important non-authorial copy of the Series in order to ask what others made of it. While this study draws on Hoccleve's experience, it asserts that the Series offers a reflection on, not a reflection of, his conception of book production. The ironic contrast between what Thomas, Hoccleve's narrator, intends and accomplishes when making his book is its most redeeming feature, for it provides insight into the many conflicting pressures that shaped the way books were made and imagined in early fifteenth-century England.
Daniel Sawyer
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- July 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198857778
- eISBN:
- 9780191890390
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198857778.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This volume offers the first book-length history of reading for Middle English poetry. Drawing on evidence from more than 450 manuscripts, it examines readers’ choices of material, their movements ...
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This volume offers the first book-length history of reading for Middle English poetry. Drawing on evidence from more than 450 manuscripts, it examines readers’ choices of material, their movements into and through books, their physical handling of poetry, and their attitudes to rhyme. It provides new knowledge about the poems of known writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and Thomas Hoccleve by examining their transmission and reception together with a much larger mass of anonymous English poetry, including the most successful English poem before print, The Prick of Conscience. The evidence considered ranges from the weights and shapes of manuscripts to the intricate details of different stanza forms, and the chapters develop new methods which bring such seemingly disparate bodies of evidence into productive conversation with each other. Ultimately, this book shows how the reading of English verse in this period was bound up with a set of habitual but pervasive formalist concerns, which were negotiated through the layered agencies of poets, book producers, and other readers.Less
This volume offers the first book-length history of reading for Middle English poetry. Drawing on evidence from more than 450 manuscripts, it examines readers’ choices of material, their movements into and through books, their physical handling of poetry, and their attitudes to rhyme. It provides new knowledge about the poems of known writers such as Geoffrey Chaucer, John Lydgate, and Thomas Hoccleve by examining their transmission and reception together with a much larger mass of anonymous English poetry, including the most successful English poem before print, The Prick of Conscience. The evidence considered ranges from the weights and shapes of manuscripts to the intricate details of different stanza forms, and the chapters develop new methods which bring such seemingly disparate bodies of evidence into productive conversation with each other. Ultimately, this book shows how the reading of English verse in this period was bound up with a set of habitual but pervasive formalist concerns, which were negotiated through the layered agencies of poets, book producers, and other readers.
Jane Gilbert, Simon Gaunt, and William Burgwinkle
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198832454
- eISBN:
- 9780191888823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198832454.003.0006
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter consists of two manuscript case studies concerning Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS 5667 and British Library Royal 20 D 1. The former is manuscript of the Tristan en prose that ...
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This chapter consists of two manuscript case studies concerning Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS 5667 and British Library Royal 20 D 1. The former is manuscript of the Tristan en prose that is confected from two parts, one made in France and one in Italy. The second is the earliest manuscript of the second redaction of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, made in Naples but then moving from Italy to Spain and from Spain to France. Both artefacts, though in different ways, are the result of textual bricolage. We trace this bricolage in each instance and the movement of books that produce cultural networks.Less
This chapter consists of two manuscript case studies concerning Aberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS 5667 and British Library Royal 20 D 1. The former is manuscript of the Tristan en prose that is confected from two parts, one made in France and one in Italy. The second is the earliest manuscript of the second redaction of the Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César, made in Naples but then moving from Italy to Spain and from Spain to France. Both artefacts, though in different ways, are the result of textual bricolage. We trace this bricolage in each instance and the movement of books that produce cultural networks.
William M. Hamlin
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199684113
- eISBN:
- 9780191764677
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199684113.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 16th-century and Renaissance Literature, European Literature
Montaigne’s English Journey examines the genesis, early readership, and multifaceted impact of John Florio’s exuberant translation of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Published in London in ...
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Montaigne’s English Journey examines the genesis, early readership, and multifaceted impact of John Florio’s exuberant translation of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Published in London in 1603, this book was widely read in seventeenth-century England: Shakespeare borrowed from it as he drafted King Lear and The Tempest, and many hundreds of English men and women first encountered Montaigne’s tolerant outlook and disarming candour in its densely-printed pages. Literary historians have long been fascinated by the influence of Florio’s translation, analysing its contributions to the development of the English essay and tracing its appropriation in the work of Webster, Dryden, and other major writers. William M. Hamlin, by contrast, undertakes an exploration of Florio’s Montaigne within the overlapping realms of print and manuscript culture, assessing its importance from the varied perspectives of its earliest English readers. Drawing on letters, diaries, commonplace books, and thousands of marginal annotations inscribed in surviving copies of Florio’s volume, Hamlin offers a comprehensive account of the transmission and reception of Montaigne in seventeenth-century England. In particular he focuses on topics that consistently intrigued Montaigne’s English readers: sexuality, marriage, conscience, theatricality, scepticism, self-presentation, the nature of wisdom, and the power of custom. All in all, Hamlin’s study constitutes a major contribution to investigations of literary readership in pre-Enlightenment Europe.Less
Montaigne’s English Journey examines the genesis, early readership, and multifaceted impact of John Florio’s exuberant translation of Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. Published in London in 1603, this book was widely read in seventeenth-century England: Shakespeare borrowed from it as he drafted King Lear and The Tempest, and many hundreds of English men and women first encountered Montaigne’s tolerant outlook and disarming candour in its densely-printed pages. Literary historians have long been fascinated by the influence of Florio’s translation, analysing its contributions to the development of the English essay and tracing its appropriation in the work of Webster, Dryden, and other major writers. William M. Hamlin, by contrast, undertakes an exploration of Florio’s Montaigne within the overlapping realms of print and manuscript culture, assessing its importance from the varied perspectives of its earliest English readers. Drawing on letters, diaries, commonplace books, and thousands of marginal annotations inscribed in surviving copies of Florio’s volume, Hamlin offers a comprehensive account of the transmission and reception of Montaigne in seventeenth-century England. In particular he focuses on topics that consistently intrigued Montaigne’s English readers: sexuality, marriage, conscience, theatricality, scepticism, self-presentation, the nature of wisdom, and the power of custom. All in all, Hamlin’s study constitutes a major contribution to investigations of literary readership in pre-Enlightenment Europe.
Jane Gilbert, Simon Gaunt, and William Burgwinkle
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198832454
- eISBN:
- 9780191888823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198832454.003.0005
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter focuses on the manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne made in Acre between roughly 1260 and Acre’s fall in 1291. The four Acre manuscripts are not just highly sophisticated, visually ...
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This chapter focuses on the manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne made in Acre between roughly 1260 and Acre’s fall in 1291. The four Acre manuscripts are not just highly sophisticated, visually exquisite artefacts: they are also cultural productions of a specific place and time, and we situate them in the beleaguered frontier-land that is the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. That this text written in French had currency in the Latin Kingdom is significant in that French was the common vernacular in the crusader states; and the French they used was particularly mobile and translatable, thus adapted to further diffusion to audiences in Europe. Language and texts—and the vision of past, present, and future they purveyed—were one of the main instruments of the network on which the Latin Kingdom depended for its fragile survival.Less
This chapter focuses on the manuscripts of the Histoire ancienne made in Acre between roughly 1260 and Acre’s fall in 1291. The four Acre manuscripts are not just highly sophisticated, visually exquisite artefacts: they are also cultural productions of a specific place and time, and we situate them in the beleaguered frontier-land that is the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem. That this text written in French had currency in the Latin Kingdom is significant in that French was the common vernacular in the crusader states; and the French they used was particularly mobile and translatable, thus adapted to further diffusion to audiences in Europe. Language and texts—and the vision of past, present, and future they purveyed—were one of the main instruments of the network on which the Latin Kingdom depended for its fragile survival.
Jane Gilbert, Simon Gaunt, and William Burgwinkle
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198832454
- eISBN:
- 9780191888823
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198832454.003.0007
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
This chapter pursues the theme of travel, focusing on how both the representation and, crucially, the non-representation of movements, travels, and networks become key to the retooling of some texts ...
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This chapter pursues the theme of travel, focusing on how both the representation and, crucially, the non-representation of movements, travels, and networks become key to the retooling of some texts in transmission. In the first section of this chapter, we show how the prose Tristan is made to travel, indeed is relocated to the Mediterranean, through a prologue and lengthy prequel; the whole of British culture is thereby glossed as a dislocation of, and exile from, the holy East. The second section takes a well-known and much-studied manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264, and follows a textual (non-)thread via the Paon (Peacock) cycle of Alexander texts, to trace the career of a poet, Jean de le Mote, whose career exemplifies cultural networks that today are often overlooked.Less
This chapter pursues the theme of travel, focusing on how both the representation and, crucially, the non-representation of movements, travels, and networks become key to the retooling of some texts in transmission. In the first section of this chapter, we show how the prose Tristan is made to travel, indeed is relocated to the Mediterranean, through a prologue and lengthy prequel; the whole of British culture is thereby glossed as a dislocation of, and exile from, the holy East. The second section takes a well-known and much-studied manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 264, and follows a textual (non-)thread via the Paon (Peacock) cycle of Alexander texts, to trace the career of a poet, Jean de le Mote, whose career exemplifies cultural networks that today are often overlooked.
Jane Gilbert, Simon Gaunt, and William Burgwinkle
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780198832454
- eISBN:
- 9780191888823
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198832454.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Early and Medieval Literature
The field of medieval francophone literary culture outside France was for many years a minor and peripheral sub-field of medieval French literary studies (or, in the case of Anglo-Norman, of English ...
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The field of medieval francophone literary culture outside France was for many years a minor and peripheral sub-field of medieval French literary studies (or, in the case of Anglo-Norman, of English studies). The past two decades, however, have seen a major reassessment of the use of French in England, in the Low Countries, in Italy, and in the eastern Mediterranean, and this impacts significantly upon the history of literature in French more generally. This book is the first to look at the question overall, rather than just at one region. It also takes a more sustained theorized approach than other studies, drawing particularly on Derrida and on Actor-Network Theory. It discusses a wide range of texts, some of which have hitherto been regarded as marginal to French literary history, and makes the case for this material being more central to the literary history of French than was allowed in more traditional approaches, focused narrowly on ‘France’. Many of the arguments in Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad are grounded in readings of texts in manuscript (rather than in modern critical editions), and sustained attention is paid throughout to manuscripts that were produced or travelled outside the kingdom of France.Less
The field of medieval francophone literary culture outside France was for many years a minor and peripheral sub-field of medieval French literary studies (or, in the case of Anglo-Norman, of English studies). The past two decades, however, have seen a major reassessment of the use of French in England, in the Low Countries, in Italy, and in the eastern Mediterranean, and this impacts significantly upon the history of literature in French more generally. This book is the first to look at the question overall, rather than just at one region. It also takes a more sustained theorized approach than other studies, drawing particularly on Derrida and on Actor-Network Theory. It discusses a wide range of texts, some of which have hitherto been regarded as marginal to French literary history, and makes the case for this material being more central to the literary history of French than was allowed in more traditional approaches, focused narrowly on ‘France’. Many of the arguments in Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad are grounded in readings of texts in manuscript (rather than in modern critical editions), and sustained attention is paid throughout to manuscripts that were produced or travelled outside the kingdom of France.