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Based on new readings of some of the least-read texts by some of the best-known scribes of later medieval England, Scribal Authorship and the Writing of History in Medieval England reconceptualizes medieval scribes as authors, and the texts surviving in medieval manuscripts as authored. Culling evidence from history writing in later medieval England, Matthew Fisher concludes that we must reject the axiomatic division between scribe and author. Using the peculiarities of authority and intertextuality unique to medieval historiography, Fisher exposes the rich ambiguities of what it means for medieval scribes to "write" books. He thus frames the composition, transmission, and reception--indeed, the authorship--of some medieval texts as scribal phenomena. History writing is an inherently intertextual genre: in order to write about the past, texts must draw upon other texts. Scribal Authorship demonstrates that medieval historiography relies upon quotation, translation, and adaptation in such a way that the very idea that there is some line that divides author from scribe is an unsustainable and modern critical imposition. Given the reality that a scribe's work was far more nuanced than the simplistic binary of error and accuracy would suggest, Fisher completely overturns many of our assumptions about the processes through which manuscripts were assembled and texts (both canonical literature and the less obviously literary) were composed.
Susanna Fein’s long and distinguished scholarly career has helped to redefine how we understand the role of scribes and manuscripts from late medieval England. She has carried out groundbreaking research on seminal manuscripts (e.g., Harley 2253, the Thornton Manuscripts, John Audley’s autograph manuscript, and the Auchinleck Manuscript). She has written extensively on the more complex and challenging metrical forms the period produced. And she has edited foundational primary texts and collections of essays. A wide range of scholars have been influenced by Fein’s work, many of whom present original research—much of it following trails first laid down by Fein—in this volume.
This book argues that abbatial authority was fundamental to monastic historical writing in the period c.500-1500. Writing history was a collaborative enterprise integral to the life and identity of medieval monastic communities, but it was not an activity for which time and resources were set aside routinely. Each act of historiographical production constituted an extraordinary event, one for which singular provision had to be made, workers and materials assigned, time carved out from the monastic routine, and licence granted. This allocation of human and material resources was the responsibility and prerogative of the monastic superior. Drawing on a wide and diverse range of primary evidence gathered from across the medieval Latin West, this book is the first to investigate systematically how and why abbots and abbesses exercised their official authority and resources to lay the foundations on which their communities' historiographical traditions were built by themselves and others. It showcases them as prolific authors, patrons, commissioners, project managers, and facilitators of historical narratives who not only regularly put pen to parchment personally, but also, and perhaps more importantly, enabled others inside and outside their communities by granting them the resources and licence to write. Revealing the intrinsic relationship between abbatial authority and the writing of history in the Middle Ages with unprecedented clarity, Benjamin Pohl urges us to revisit and revise our understanding of monastic historiography, its processes, and its protagonists in ways that require some radical rethinking of the medieval historian's craft in communal and institutional contexts.
Robert R. Edward's Invention and Authorship in Medieval England examines the ways in which writers established themselves as authors in medieval England. It offers a critical appraisal of authorship in literary culture and shows how the conventions of authorship are used aesthetically by major writers of the period.
An examination of medieval historican writings through the prism of violence. The concept of medieval historiography as "usable past" is here challenged and reassessed. The contributors' shared claim is that the value of medieval historiographical texts lies not only in the factual information the texts contain but also in the methods and styles they use to represent and interpret the past and make it ideologically productive. Violence is used as the key term that best demonstrates the making of historical meaning in the Middle Ages, through the transformation of acts of physical aggression and destruction into a memorable and usable past. The twelve chapters assembled here explore a wide range of texts emanating from throughout the francophone world. They cover a range of genres (chansons de geste, histories, chronicles, travel writing, and lyric poetry), and range from the late eleventh to the fifteenth century. Through examination of topics as varied as rhetoric, imagery, humor, gender, sexuality, trauma, subversion, and community formation, each chapter strives to demonstrate how knowledge of the medieval past can be enhanced by approaching medieval modes of historical representation and consciousness on their own terms, and by acknowledging - and resisting - the desire to subject them to modern conceptions of historical intelligibility. Noah D. Guynn is Associate Professor of French at the University of California, Davis; Zrinka Stahuljak is Associate Professor of French and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. Contributors: Noah D. Guynn, Zrinka Stahuljak, James Andrew Cowell, Jeff Rider, Leah Shopkow, Matthew Fisher, Karen Sullivan, David Rollo, Deborah McGrady, Rosalind Brown-Grant, Simon Gaunt
An authoritative account of what manuscripts and their corrections reveal about medieval attitudes to books, language and literature.
Medieval Authorship and Cultural Exchange in the Late Fifteenth Century is a multidisciplinary study of late medieval authorship and the military orders, framed as a whodunit that uncovers the anonymous author of the ‘Utrecht Chronicle of the Teutonic Order’. Through a close analysis of the Utrecht Chronicle of the Teutonic Order and its manuscripts, and by exploiting a wide range of scholarly techniques, from traditional philology and extensive codicological examinations to modern digital humanities techniques, the book argues that the recently resurfaced Vienna manuscript is actually an author’s copy, written in direct cooperation with the original author. This important assertion leads to a reinterpretation of the text, its sources and composition, authorship, and the context in which it was conceived. It allows us to associate the text with an upsurge of historiographical activities by various military orders across the continent, seemingly in response to the publication and aggressive dissemination of the account of the Siege of Rhodes by Guillaume Caoursin in 1480. Furthermore, the text can be positioned at the crossroads between different cultural spheres, ranging from the Baltic region to the Low Countries, spanning French, German, Dutch, and Latin linguistic traditions. This book will appeal to scholars and students of medieval history, as well as those interested in cultural history and the military religious orders.
Histories of Britain composed during the "twelfth-century renaissance" display a remarkable amount of literary variety (Latin varietas). Furthermore, British historians writing after the Norman Conquest often draw attention to the differing forms of their texts. But why would historians of this period associate literary variety with the work of history-writing? Drawing on theories of literary variety found in classical and medieval rhetoric, this book traces how British writers came to believe that varietas could help them construct comprehensive, continuous accounts of Britain's past. It shows how Latin prose historians, such as William of Malmesbury, Henry of Huntingdon, and Geoffrey of Monmouth, filled their texts with a diverse array of literary forms, which they carefully selected and ordered in accordance with their broader historiographical aims. The pronounced literary variety of these influential histories inspired some Middle English verse chroniclers, including Laȝamon and Robert Mannyng, to adopt similar principles in their vernacular poetry. By uncovering the rhetorical and historiographical theories beneath their literary variety, this book provides a new framework for interpreting the stylistic and organizational choices of medieval historians.
Fresh examinations of the manuscript which is one of the chief compendiums of literature in the Middle English period.
Portraying Authorship argues that the medieval Castilian writer Juan Manuel fashioned a seemingly modern authorial persona from the accumulation and synthesis of medieval authorial roles. In the manuscript culture of medieval Castile and across Latin Europe, writers typically referred to their work in ways that corresponded to their role in the bookmaking process: scribes took credit for preserving the works of others, compilers for combining disparate texts in productive ways, commentators for explaining obscure works, and authors for writing their own words. Combining literary analysis with book history, Anita Savo reveals how Juan Manuel forged his authorial persona, “Don Juan,” by adopting all four medieval writerly roles, thereby reaping the ethical benefits of each one. Each chapter in Portraying Authorship highlights a different authorial role to show how Don Juan – and others who wrote in his name – assumed responsibility for that role and adapted its rhetoric to his vernacular literary project. The book concludes that Don Juan’s authorial self-portrait not only gave the humanist writers of the fifteenth century a model to imitate, but also persuaded subsequent scribes, editors, and translators to portray him as an individual author. In doing so, Portraying Authorship illuminates how Juan Manuel’s concept of authorship helped to secure him a privileged position in narratives of Spanish literary history.