Making and Meaning of a Medieval Manuscript (eBook)

Interpreting MS Bodley 851

Thomas C. Sawyer (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025
248 Seiten
Boydell & Brewer Ltd (Verlag)
978-1-80543-666-9 (ISBN)

Infos

Develops a method for placing book-historical evidence in dialogue with literary meaning through a detailed investigation of a MS Bodley 851.How do you read a medieval book? And what is the relationship between the study of manuscripts as material artifacts and the study of their textual contents? This book develops a method for placing book-historical evidence in dialogue with literary meaning. Medieval manuscripts do not simply witness the texts they contain: through the process of their making, they preserve and generate knowledge about literature itself. Central to the expression of method in this study is a detailed investigation of an immensely complex composite manuscript, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Bodley 851. This manuscript survives as an important representative of textual cultures popular in late-medieval England: it attests the work of at least eight scribal agents and contains an infamous scribal version of Piers Plowman (Z-text), the sole surviving copy of Walter Map's De nugis curialium, and an array of satirical Anglo-Latin poetry, including the Apocalypsis goliae episcopi, the Speculum stultorum, and the Bridlington Prophecy. Close attention to the production of Bodley 851 underpins critical examinations of fragmentary misogamy, the construction of literary sequences, and the extent of pseudonymous authorship in the manuscript record.

Inhalt

List of illustrations
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
A note on transcriptions and translations

Introduction: How to Read a Medieval Book
1. Recomposing Bodley 851
2. Misogamist Fragments
3. Recomposing Walter Map
4. Walter Map's Piers Plowman
Conclusion: Manuscript Meaning

Bibliography
Index

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 3.6.2025
• Zusatzinfo: 14 colour illus.
• Verlagsort: Woodbridge
• Sprache: englisch
• Maße: 160 x 160 mm
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Essays / Feuilleton
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Literaturwissenschaft
• Schlagworte: Anglo-Latin Poetry • Book-Historical Evidence • Late-Medieval England • Literary meaning • manuscript production • medieval manuscripts • MS Bodley 851 • Oxford Bodleian Library • Piers Plowman • Scribal Agents • Textual Cultures • Walter Map
• ISBN-10: 1-80543-666-X / 180543666X
• ISBN-13: 978-1-80543-666-9 / 9781805436669