E-Book Content
Medieval Texts in Context
This collection of essays by leading experts in manuscript studies sheds new light on ways to approach medieval texts in their manuscript context. Each contribution provides groundbreaking insight into the field of medieval textual culture, demonstrating the various interconnections between medieval material and literary traditions. The contributors’ work aids reconstruction of the period’s writing practices, as contextual factors surrounding the texts provide clues to the ‘manuscript experience’. Topics such as scribal practice and textual providence, glosses, rubrics, page layout, and even page ruling, are addressed in a manner illustrative and suggestive of textual practice of the time, while the volume further considers the interface between the manuscript and early textual communities. Looking at medieval inventories of books no longer extant, and addressing questions such as ownership, reading practices and textual production, Medieval Texts in Context addresses the fundamental interpretative issue of how scribe-editors worked with an eye to their intended audience. An understanding of the world inhabited by the scribal community is made use of to illuminate the rationale behind the manufacture of devotional texts. The combination of approaches to the medieval vernacular manuscript presented in this volume is unique, marking a major, innovative contribution to manuscript studies. Denis Renevey is Professor of Medieval English Language and Literature at the Université de Lausanne. He has published on medieval texts and language and is the author of a number of articles on vernacular theology. Graham D. Caie is Professor of English Language at the University of Glasgow. He is the author of several books and many articles and book chapters on Old and Middle English language and literature, editing and codicology.
Context and Genre in English Literature Series editors: Peter J. Kitson Department of English, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK William Baker Department of English, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, USA
The aim of the Context and Genre in English Literature series is to place bodies of prose, poetry and drama in their historical, literary, intellectual or generic contexts. It seeks to present new work and scholarship in a way that is informed by contemporary debates in literary criticism and current methodological practices. The various contextual approaches reflect the great diversity of the books in the series. Three leading categories of approach may be discerned. The first category, consisting of historical and philological approaches, covers subjects that range from marginal glosses in medieval manuscripts to the interaction between folklore and literature. The second category, of cultural and theoretical approaches, covers subjects as diverse as changing perceptions of childhood as a background to children’s literature on the one hand and queer theory and translation studies on the other. Finally, the third category consists of single-author studies informed by contextual approaches from either one of the first two categories. Context and Genre in English Literature covers a diverse body of writing, ranging over a substantial historical span and featuring widely divergent approaches from current and innovative scholars; it features criticism of writing in English from different cultures; and it covers both canonical literature and emerging and new literatures. Thus, the series aims to make a distinctive and substantial impact on the field of literary studies. Other titles in this series include: Ted Hughes Alternative horizons Edited by Joanny Moulin Henry Miller and Narrative Form Constructing the self, rejecting modernity James M. Decker George Eliot’s English Travels Composite characters and coded communication Kathleen McCormack
Medieval Texts in Context
Edit