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Studies in the Language Of i. STUDIES IN THE LANGUAGE OF SOME MANUSCRIPTS OF GOWER'S CONFESSIO AMANTIS by JEREMY JOHN SMITH -,r VOLUME I SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF PH. D TO THE UNIVERSITY OF GLASGOW DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH LANGUAGE August 1985 k ii. FOR MY PARENTS --r iii. T) T)DV A0 TP The writing of this thesis has depended on the kindness and generosity of many people. First thanks must go to my supervisor, Michael Samuels, for his insightful and meticulous guidance. I am deeply grateful to him, not least for allowing me access, prior to publication, to the materials he has gathered for the Survey of Middle English Dialects. I am especially grateful to Christian Kay, -I, Malcolm Parkes and Ron Waldron. Christian Kay has helped and encouraged me in all sorts of ways. She was generous with her time in reading and commenting on the proofs of the thesis. Malcolm Parkes originally suggested my area of research, and his expressions of interest have been a constant source of strength. Ron Waldron introduced me to medieval studies, and inspired me with his teaching. I am also grateful to the fol-lowing persons (in alphabetical order): Michael Benskin, Norman Blake, John Burrow, Gloria Cigman, Michael Clanchy, Norman Davis, Ian'Doyle, John Farish, David Frier, Pamela Gradon, Hilary and Jeremy Gray, John Griffith, Jeremy Griffiths, Kate Harris, Susan Hockey, Anne Hudson, Caroli. ne Macafee, Angus McIntosh, Mike MacMahon,, Sally Mapstone, Derek Pearsall, Charles Owen, Jane Roberts, iv. Judith Scott, Kathleen Scott, Mary Sillitto, Toshiyuki Takamiya, Freda Thornton. I am grateful to the following persons and institutions for allowing me access to or for making me films of MSS and/or printed books in their care: the Bodleian Library, Oxford; St. John's College, Cambridge; the Cambridge University Library; Princeton University Library; Chetham's Library, Manchester; New College, Oxford; the British Library, London; the Marquess of Bute and Miss C. Armet; the Society ý,- of Antiquaries, London; Glasgow University Library; St. Catharine's College, Cambridge; the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York; Corpus Christi College, Oxford; the College of Arms, London; the Newberry Library, Chicago; Pembroke College, Cambridge; Columbia Univer---. -- sity Library, New York; the Huntington Library, San Marino; Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge; Trinity College, Cambridge; Nottingham University Library; Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, Geneva; Magdalen College, Oxford; Wadham College, Oxford; Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington D. C.; the Rosenbach Collection., Philadelphia; Yale University Library; Gonville and Caius College, Camb.ridge; Trinity College, Oxford; University College, London; the University of London Library. The generosity of these authorities has, enabled me to examine almost all the known MSS of V. Gower's Confessio Amantis. The sole exception is the MS owned by Mr. R. Taylor of Princeton. Mr. Taylor felt unable to grant me permission to have a film made of his MS; and the conditions he set on my access to it were such that I was unable to agree to them. I gratefully acknowledge financial support from: the Department of Education and Science; Jesus College, Oxford; the Meyerstein Fund; Glasgow Univer- sity. --I, In conclusion, I wish to thank my brother, Timothy Smith, and my parents, John and Kathleen Smith. They supported me when to do so was an act of faith; they encouraged me in every discouragement; they patiently suffered from my selfish absorption in the research of which this is the fruit. My father, in particular, helped with much practical advice. can only hope that the dedication of this thesis isý- some small recompense. Jeremy Y. Smith Glasgow, 1985. vio CONTENTS VOLUME I Preface P. iii Contents P. vi Summary P. vii Abbreviations P. viii PART ONE: TEXT Chapter 1: INTRODUCTION P. 1 Chapter 2: THE LANGUAGE OF GOWER p. 27 Chapter 3: THE LANGUAGE OF THE GOWER TRADITION p. 86 Chapter 4: THE LANGUAGE OF SCRIBE D'S MANUSCRIPTS P. 190 Chapter 5: CONCLUSIONS p. 295 Bibliography 327 VOLUME II PART TWO: APPENDICES APPENDIX OF ANALYSES p. 341 APPENDIX OF MAPS p. 687 I vii. Q TTMM ADV This thesis is an investigation into scribal method in the Middle English period, centring upon the copying of MSS of John Gower's Confessio Amantis. Part One contains the text of the thesis. In Chapter 1 give the reasons for the choice of Gower's poem for study, summarise the present state of knowledge of the history of Middle English, and set forth the current theories for analysing scribal practice. Chapter 2 is a reconstruction of the archetypal language of the 'r, Confessio Amantis, and identifies that language with that of the poet. Chapter 3 is a commentary on the language of all accessible texts of the Confessio, working from data presented in the Appendix of Analyses. This enables the choices made by the scribe who is the subject of the next chapter to be foregrounded. Chapter 4 is a special study of a group of MSS copied by one scribe, one of the most prolific of the period. I show in detail how he made his choices of linguistic forms amidst the network of pressures acting upon him. In Chapter 5,1 draw together the textual and linguistic evidence of the Confessio Amantis MSS, and then set this evidence within its fifteenth-century context. Part Two consists of two Appendices: an Appendix of Analyses, presenting the raw data upon which the discussion in Chapters 3,4 and 5 is based; and an App7endix of Maps, based upon material gathered for the Survey of Middle English Dialects. viii. ABBREVIATIONS The following abbreviations are commonly used in this thesis: EME Early Middle English ENE Early New (i. e. Modern) English 10E Late Old English ME Middle English MED Middle English Dictionary MS(S) manuscript(s) NE New (i. e. Modern) English NWM North-West Midland OA Old Anglian -I, ODEE Oxford Dictionary of English Etymolo OE Old English OED Oxford English Dictionary OF Old French OKt Old Kentish ON Old Norse SE South-East SMED Survey oi_*_M_i'd-dle_ English Dialects SW South-West SWM South-West Midlands WGmc West Germanic 4 ix PART ONE: TEXT -P 1. CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION ---r A. 2. I. This thesis is an investigation into the spelling practices of medieval copyists of the Confessio Amantis, the major English work of the late-fourteenth- I century poet, John Gower. Drawing particularly on the identification by palaeographers of single hands copying a number of manuscripts, I seek to explain why such scribes made the choices of spellings they did, and I make special reference to one of the most prolific of these scribes. On the way to this goal, I reconstruct the language of the Gowerian arche- I type, show how far that language survives in all the available copies of the poem, and note the implications of these data for our knowledge of the work's textual transmission. This thesis contains a large corpus of spellings, culled from a tradition containing over fifty MSS, fragments books, and early printed which corpus - can be considered a useful source for the study not only of scribal method but also of the growth and development of standard written English in the fifteenth century. It will have been noticed that the primary aim of this thesis. js an explanatory one; and, since 'explanation' as a goal in linguistic enquiry has recently been the subject of some controversy, it seems appro- priate for me to give some definition of what I mean 3. by it here. By texplanation', I mean the evolution of a theoretical model which will account for the phenomena I observe. Of course, it might be objected that my manner of observation will have a particular theoretical model already inherent in it; as Bynon (1977) points out, "which phenomena are in fact selected for attention by the linguist at any particular period will depend upon prevailing attitudes towards the sub- 3 ject and towards scientific investigation in general". It is true that I have not couched this thesis in the I+ graphemic-phonemic' terms adopted by McLaughlin (1963), --I- for instance, and this means that I am bound to ask diff- erent questions of my data. However, I take it as axiomatic that the asking of different questions can "in lead better turn ... not only to explanations of already known facts but also to the discovery of new r It What I have do in thesis is to ones . tried to this present the facts of variation and suggest some inter- pretations of those facts which seem plausible to me in the light of our current understanding of the Middle English situation. If this thesis can be said to have a theme, it is one that might to some seem obvious - that the spelling system of each Middle English MS presents its own problems. If-history is the essence of in- numerable biographies, the history of the Gower'trad- 4. ition is one of innumerable scribal choices. But, just as historians describe the 'essence' of those biographies, so it is possible to distinguish certain general patterns of scribal behaviour. It is, of course, impossible to predict what any scribe will do at any particular moment of copying; but the work of McIntosh, Samuels, and Benskin and Laing, in par- ticular, has given us a framework within which scribal behaviour can be seen as like other human behaviour - multifarious, but organised around certain governing principles, and not random. These theories about the , behaviour of copyists will be briefly outlined and discussed in 1. III below. As well as a theory of scribal copying, we now have a much more secure basis for the history of Middle English than we have had hitherto.
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