Odd texts and marginal subjects: Towards a hermeneutics of the book in late Medieval English manuscript culture

387 Pages·2000·16.26 MB·English

by  Martha Dana Rust

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Odd Texts and Marginal Subjects:
Towards a Hermeneutics of the Book in Late Medieval English Manuscript Culture
by
Martha Dana Rust
A.B. (University of California, Berkeley) 1976
B.S. (University of Washington) 1983
M.A. (California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo) 1994
A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the
requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
in
English
in the
GRADUATE DIVISION
of the
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY
Committee in charge:
Professor Carolyn Dinshaw, Chair
Professor Anne Middleton
Professor David Hult
Fall 2000
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UMI Number: 3002246
Copyright 2000 by
Rust, Martha Dana
All rights reserved.
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Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission.
Odd Texts and Marginal Subjects:
Towards a Hermeneutics of the Book in Late Medieval English Manuscript Culture
©2000
by
Martha Dana Rust
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for Leslie
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ii
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments iv
Introduction
Odd Texts, Marginal Subjects, Codicological Hermeneutics 1
Chapter One
Middle English Alphabet Poems:
Middle Letters for People of a Middle Sort 14
Chapter Two
“Le vostre C”: Letters and Love in Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden. B.24 73
Chapter Three
Pulp Fictions and Tom Hearts:
A Hermeneutics of Paper in Middle English Verse Love Epistles 118
Chapter Four
Through the Looking Glass:
Pierpont Morgan Library MS M. 126 and the Pleasures of the Book 162
Afterword
Scribal Habits and Habitats 209
Figures 223
Notes 236
Abbreviations 314
Works Cited 315
Appendices
1. Bibliography of Middle English Alphabet Poems Excluding Chaucer’s 362
2. “The ABC of the Passion” 365
3. “The ABC of Aristotle” 370
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List of Figures
Figure 1: Oxford, Saint John’s College MS 94, f. 2v.
Saint Anne holding infant Mary and hornbook
Figure 2: Oxford, Bodleian Library Bodley MS 638, ff. 203v-204
“The Chaunce of the Dyse” and Chaucer’s “An ABC”
Figure 3: London, British Library, Harley MS 541, f. 228v
Sir Thomas Frowyk’s swans’ mark
Figure 4: London, British Library, Harley MS 541, f. 228
“ABC of Aristotle” and Frowyk’s swans’ mark
Figure 5: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden. B.24, f. 115
Criseyde’s signature
Figure 6: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden. B.24, f. 11 lv
Troilus’s signature
Figure 7: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden. B.24, f. 1
Opening initial
Figure 8: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Arch. Selden. B.24, f. 114v
Criseyde’s letter
Figure 9: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS M.126, f. 9
The Confession
Figure 10: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS M.126, f. 74v
“The Tale of Rosiphelee”
Figure 11: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS M.126, f. 77v
“The Tale of Ulysses and Nauplus”
Figure 12: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS M.126, f. 88
“The Tale of Iphis and Araxarathen”
Figure 13: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, MS M.126, f. 8v
Gower, Venus and the God of Love
Figure 14: Oxford, Saint John’s College MS 94, f. 59
John Lacy’s grapheme-prayer
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iv
Acknowledgments
For their help in bringing this dissertation into being, I have many people to
thank. My gratitude goes, first of all, to my committee members and teachers. David
Hult and Anne Middleton have given me much guidance and many insights that are now
part of the fabric of this project. I am especially grateful to my committee chair, Carolyn
Dinshaw, for her enthusiastic support of this study from its inception, for her steadfast
encouragement over the course of its development-even at a distance of three thousand
miles—but most of all for her questions, questions that have always led me deeper into my
work even as they have let me blaze a trail that is my own. I thank Daniel Kline, Cindy
Vitto, and Marcia Smith Marzec for reading and commenting on drafts of parts of this
work. Many thanks also to Consuelo Dutschke for giving me the opportunity to work as
her research assistant for the Digital Scriptorium project, a position that has afforded me
hundreds of hours of manuscript gazing as well as access to the great wealth of her
expertise in codicology and paleography.
Several grants and fellowships have aided me in my research and writing. A
Humanities Research Grant and a Vice Chancellor for Research Grant sent me to
England twice; the Berkeley Medieval Studies Committee bought me numerous reels of
microfilm. The Columbia-Berkeley exchange scholar program gave me the opportunity
to spend a semester in New York, during which I conducted research at the Columbia
University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library and at the Pierpont Morgan Library. A
Block Grant Fellowship, a Mellon Fellowship, and a Dean’s Dissertation Year
Fellowship gave me five semesters to devote completely to research and writing.
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The community of graduate medievalists at Berkeley has given me a network of
friends and colleagues that have contributed to this project in countless ways; for their
warmth and friendship since the day I set foot in Wheeler Hall as a new graduate student,
I especially thank Katie Vulic and Liz Schirmer. And finally, my unending gratitude
goes to Leslie Myrick, for her willingness to listen to my latest discovery or puzzle, for
her sense of humor, for her love of words and systems, and for being either courageous or
foolish enough to fall in love with someone who was only beginning to write her
dissertation.
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