Scripts and Literature in the Manuscripts of England and France, 1370-1425.
- Author/Editor
- Dwyer, Seamus
- Title
- Scripts and Literature in the Manuscripts of England and France, 1370-1425.
- Published
- Dwyer, Seamus. "Scripts and Literature in the Manuscripts of England and France, 1370-1425." Ph.D. Dissertation. Yale University, 2024. Dissertation Abstracts International A86.01(E). Abstract accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
- Review
- From Dwyer's abstract: "I argue in this dissertation that scripts are media that serve literary interpretation. . . . Chapter 1 finds that scribes heavily relied on artful, creative, and often rhetorically powerful language to communicate about scripts to the broader world. . . . Chapter 2 focuses on one example of the figurative language scribes use to label and think about script: the term 'bastard,' . . . find[ing] that 'bastard scripts' are those which exhibit the careful combination of 'high' calligraphic features with 'low' cursive ones that can be read for particular literary effects. Analyzing the variously rendered 'bastard scripts' of the early manuscripts of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis," Chapter 2 ultimately finds that the different ways scribes 'bastardized' scripts uncover a medieval 'bastard poetics,' aided by the poem's own 'bastard' combination of 'high' Latin verse with 'low' English couplets. . . . Chapter 3 investigates how scripts can portray the affective stances their literary texts assume, more specifically intimacy. Focusing on secretary, a script imported to England from French-speaking territories of Europe, I examine its uses in three case studies: a manuscript of Guillaume de Machaut's multi-form poem "Le livre dou Voir Dit," John Gower's ballade sequence the "Traitié," and several early manuscripts of Christine de Pizan. Chapter 3 finds that secretary, in both French and Anglo-French contexts, when it triangulates with language (French) and form (epistolary lyrics or prose), facilitates what I call 'secretarial reading,' wherein the reader is encouraged by the apparent simplicity of secretary's cursive aspects to recognize and engage with intimacy in the texts at the level of content, genre, or the author's literary persona. . . . Chapter 4 argues for the possibilities of script as a facilitator for reading in a continuous process. It focuses on a single case study, an early fifteenth-century manuscript of "Piers Plowman," copied by an apparently 'amateur' scribe, Thomas Tilot. Tilot's script starts out as a highly formal textualis, but slowly decreases in calligraphic effort until it fully becomes a rapid cursive. This calligraphic diminuendo epitomizes scribal 'amateurishness' through its disinterest in absolute uniformity and consistency, which I argue offers a visual reading of the many moments of upheaval, destabilization, and narrative unraveling in "Piers Plowman" itself. Chapter 4 ultimately offers a method of close reading medieval texts that takes script more fully into account alongside lexis, diction, and meter, concretizing this dissertation's arguments about the interpretive power scripts hold for literature." Chapter 2 is evidently a version of Dwyer's "Bastard Hands: Fifteenth-Century Scripts and the Processes of Medieval Making." Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America 118, no. 3 (2024): 315–47. [eJGN 44.1]
- Date
- 2024
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Confessio Amantis
Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz