Immaterial Texts in Late Medieval England
Making English Literary Manuscripts, 1400–1500

A compelling reassessment of the craft practices, cultural conventions and literary attitudes of late medieval English scribes.

Daniel Wakelin (Author)

9781009100588, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 June 2022

300 pages
23.4 x 15.7 x 1.8 cm, 0.61 kg

'… offers a timely counterpoint to the material turn by investigating how scribes conceptualized and prioritized the immaterial through their work of copying, laying out, dividing, reading, and responding to the parchment of fifteenth-century English manuscripts, with particular attention given to the transmission of medical recipes, included to explore metaphorical resonances between textual subject matter and the material qualities of manuscripts, and the works of Chaucer, Lydgate, and Hoccleve … The book should be widely read by literary scholars and book historians, transcending the study of late medieval English literature.' Heather Blatt, Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies

Daniel Wakelin introduces and reinterprets the misunderstood and overlooked craft practices, cultural conventions and literary attitudes involved in making some of the most important manuscripts in late medieval English literature. In doing so he overturns how we view the role of scribes, showing how they ignored or concealed irregular and damaged parchment; ruled pages from habit and convention more than necessity; decorated the division of the text into pages or worried that it would harm reading; abandoned annotations to poetry, focusing on the poem itself; and copied English poems meticulously, in reverence for an abstract idea of the text. Scribes' interest in immaterial ideas and texts suggests their subtle thinking as craftspeople, in ways that contrast and extend current interpretations of late medieval literary culture, 'material texts' and the power of materials. For students, researchers and librarians, this book offers revelatory perspectives on the activities of late medieval scribes.

1. Prologue: materials, making and manuscripts
2. 'Hele alle maner of schabbis': imagining perfect parchment
3. 'Who by prudence Rule him shal': controlling the layout
4. 'Þe leef torned': turning beyond the page
5. 'Rede . . . and ʒe may se': reading plain text
6. 'This is the copy': reproducing the immaterial
7. Conclusions: more than materials.

Subject Areas: Social & cultural history [HBTB], Medieval history [HBLC1], Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]