A Study of Four Single-Witness English Texts

from the 14th and 15th Centuries in Manuscript, Early Print, and Modern Editions

by

Kathleen J. Ogden

A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

Department of English University of Toronto

© Copyright by Kathleen J. Ogden 2018 A Study of Four Single-Witness English Texts from the 14th and 15th Centuries in Manuscript, Early Print, and Modern Editions Kathleen J. Ogden

Doctor of Philosophy

Department of English University of Toronto

2018

Abstract

This dissertation examines four single-witness manuscripts, written in English, dating from between the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the third quarter of the fifteenth: London,

British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x, which contains the Pearl poems; Cambridge, Cambridge

University Library MS Ll.iv.14, containing the fragmentary poem Richard the Redeless; London,

British Library MS Additional 41666, which holds the fragmentary poem Mum and the

Sothsegger; and London, British Library Additional MS 61823, which contains The Book of

Margery Kempe. Each chapter traces the editorial and scholarly history of a single-witness medieval literary text from its first manuscript inscription through its various later forms, including manuscript marginalia, early printed versions, as well as modern editions from the mid-nineteenth century through to the present day. What unites each of these studies is a central interest in the relationship between the single manuscript version of each text and the various other versions of the text that have emerged since its medieval composition. I interrogate the decisions made by individual agents as they read, transcribed, edited, and critiqued these texts across time, and in the way that these decisions reflect contemporary scholarly, social, and political concerns. I am interested in the intractability of certain kinds of editorial decisions, even

ii long after the assumptions that preceded them have changed or disappeared, and in the way that certain decisions—many of them built on editorial principles of authority and textual stability— become cemented in the editorial tradition of the texts, sometimes against manuscript evidence or to the exclusion of other, equally possible readings. Throughout, I hope to enact a kind of criticism that is mobilized by curiosity: curiosity about why editors and critics made the choices that they did, and curiosity about what else might be possible if we could get out from under the weight of already-inscribed interpretations. I am interested in seeing what happens when the editorial tradition of these texts is cracked open: when texts whose form has seemed to be settled can be unsettled again, even temporarily, in order to generate new ways of seeing them.

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Acknowledgements

I owe an enormous amount to my supervisor, Alexandra Gillespie, who pushed and supported in equal measure, and who has made me better in so many ways; and to my committee members William Robins and Christopher Warley, both of whom were enormously generous throughout this process. I am also so grateful to my external examiner, David Coley, whose work was very influential on my own and who engaged with my project with such generousity while also pushing me to think more deeply about it. Thanks also to Alexandra Bolintineanu, whose enthusiasm, positivity, and insight have been so valuable over the years. I am also grateful to Satoko Tokunaga and Tanaka Matsuda, at Keio University in Tokyo, for taking me in and mentoring me for 6 months; and to Judith Herz and Manish Sharma, my mentors from my years at Concordia.

I have been blessed with an amazingly supportive community which has helped me over the years: thanks especially to my sister Nancy, without whom I could not have done any of this; to my mom, and the memory of my dad and gramma; my three incredible nieces, Adele, Rose, and Laurel; Francis, Trudy and Bill Moul, who have been an incredible source of support and good humour; and. So many friends have helped me through this process, and I’m grateful especially to Laurel Koop, Genne Speers, Jen Raso, Peter Buchanan, Helen Marshall, Emma Gorst, Jessica Lockhart, Margaret Herrick, Sandy Carpenter, Joel Rogers, Abi Dennis, and Jay Rajiva: I’ve learned so much from all of you, and I’m so grateful.

Throughout my work at UofT, I was also very fortunate to have been funded generously: thank you to the Department of English; the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council for funding my work through the Canada Graduate Scholarship and the Michael Smith Foreign Study Grant; and to the Ontario Graduate Scholarship. In addition to research funding, I have been extremely lucky to have had a lot of work opportunities throughout my PhD, and I am grateful to many supportive colleagues and supervisors: Jane Freeman, Rachael Cayley, and Peter Grav at the Graduate Centre for Academic Communication; Megan Burnett, Marie Vander Kloet, Alli Diskin, and Michal Kasprzak at the Centre for Teaching Support and Innovation, as well as the staff of the Teaching Assistant’s Training Program; and my incredible colleagues at the Academic Success Centre.

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Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... IV

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... V

CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION AND A BRIEF HISTORY OF EDITING ...... 2 1.1 SYNOPSIS OF THIS PROJECT ...... 2 1.2 CURIOSITY AS A CRITICAL MODE ...... 5 1.3 EDITORIAL THEORY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: LACHMANN’S STEMMATIC METHOD ...... 11 1.4 TWENTIETH-CENTURY EDITING ...... 12 1.4.1 Best-Text ...... 12 1.4.2 Greg and McKerrow: New Bibliography and the Copy-Text ...... 12 1.4.3 Greg’s Legacy: Bowers and Tanselle ...... 15 1.4.4 Institutional Norms and the MLA ...... 17 1.4.5 Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Reader Response ...... 18 1.4.6 Jerome McGann and the Social Text ...... 21 1.4.7 D.F. McKenzie and the “Sociology of Texts” ...... 22 1.5 MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPT TEXTS ...... 24 1.6 THE DIGITAL TURN ...... 32 1.7 THEORY AND PRAXIS ...... 34 1.8 THE CHAUCERIAN EDITORIAL TRADITION ...... 35 1.9 THE PIERS PLOWMAN TRADITION ...... 40 1.10 IN SUMMARY ...... 44

CHAPTER 2 : THE PEARL MANUSCRIPT ...... 48

TEXTUAL DIVISIONS ...... 49 2.1 STRUCTURAL DIVISIONS: STANZA GROUPS, THEMES, AND FITTS ...... 49 2.2 DIVISIONS IN SGGK ...... 51 2.2.1 The Stanzaic Divisions of Pearl ...... 62 2.3 SGGK’S BOB-LINES ...... 69 2.4 DEFINING SIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT ...... 77 2.4.1 Morgan La Fee in SGGK ...... 80

2.5 CONCLUSION ...... 88

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CHAPTER 3 : RICHARD THE REDELESS AND MUM AND THE SOTHSEGGER ...... 90

PLAN OF CHAPTER ...... 92 3.1 A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE REIGNS OF KING RICHARD II AND KING HENRY IV ...... 94 3.2 EDITORIAL HISTORY OF THE MANUSCRIPTS ...... 98 3.2.1 Richard the Redeless ...... 98 3.2.2 Mum and the Sothsegger ...... 101 3.3 FORM FOLLOWS CONTENT: THE EDITORIAL TRADITION OF THE POEMS ...... 106 3.3.1 Henry VIII’s Literary Investigations ...... 107 3.4 THE POEMS ...... 116 3.4.1 Richard the Redeless ...... 116 3.4.2 Mum and the Sothsegger ...... 122 3.5 DOCUMENTARY INSTABILITY ...... 127 3.6 FROM METAPHOR TO REALITY: DOCUMENTARY CULTURE C. 1400 ...... 129 3.7 EDITING RICHARD THE REDELESS AND MUM AND THE SOTHSEGGER ...... 136

CHAPTER 4 : THE BOOK OF MARGERY KEMPE ...... 140

PRE-MODERN EDITIONS ...... 143 4.1 THE MANUSCRIPT OF THE BOOK OF MARGERY KEMPE ...... 143 4.1.1 Manuscript Marginalia ...... 153 4.2 WYNKYN DE WORDE AND A SHORTE TREATYSE OF CONTEMPLACYON ...... 157 4.3 THE 16TH CENTURY AFTERLIVES OF A SHORTE TREATYSE OF CONTEMPLACYON ...... 168 4.3.1 The Shorte Treatyse in the Moore Sammelband I ...... 169 4.3.2 Henry Pepwell’s 1521 Printed Anthology ...... 180 4.4 TEXTUAL TRADITION OF RECONSTRUCTION ...... 189 4.5 THE BOOK OF MARGERY KEMPE IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY ...... 191 4.6 CONCLUSION ...... 198

CONCLUSION ...... 202

WORKS CITED ...... 207

4.7 MANUSCRIPTS AND EARLY PRINTED WORKS ...... 207 4.8 MODERN CRITICISM ...... 207

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We rise from a conception of form to an understanding of the forces which give rise to it … and in the comparison of kindred forms … we discern the magnitude and the direction of the forces which have sufficed to convert the one form into the other.

--D’Arcy Thompson, On Growth and Form

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Chapter 1 Introduction and a Brief History of Editing

This dissertation focuses on four single-witness manuscripts, written in English, dating from between the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the third quarter of the fifteenth. What unite each of these studies are the central interest in the relationship between the single manuscript and its multiple other versions, and the central question: how did the text in the manuscript become the text(s) that can be found in any other one of that text’s versions, however separated those texts are in time? What decisions were made (and by whom) in the transfer from the manuscript form to other forms—early or modern print, electronic or digital, transcription or facsimile? And how might that information contribute to a reading of the text’s literary meanings? 1.1 Synopsis of this Project Each of the following chapters traces the editorial and scholarly history of an individual medieval literary work from its earliest extant manuscript inscription through its various later forms. I consider the transmission of the text in various modern editions and critical discourse. Some of these discussions focus on modern editorial decisions that can be traced back to earlier editorial decisions but which are not supported by manuscript evidence; in these cases, I turn to manuscript evidence to suggest other possible interpretations, or reasons to reconsider long- stabilized readings. Other discussions focus less on formal editorial issues, and focus more closely on the ramifications of early editorial decisions for modern critical interpretations, discussing for example the intractability of early assumptions about certain characters and identities, even if there is considerable agreement that these assumptions are faulty or unnecessarily limited. In both cases, however, I am more interested in seeing what happens when the editorial tradition of these texts is cracked open; when texts whose form has seemed to be settled can be unsettled again, even temporarily, in order to generate new ways of seeing them. Overall, I am interested in editorial and related work on texts as it involves decisions made by human beings in protracted conversation with documents, their authors and others involved in the production of the texts, and their various readers across time. Any one editor’s decisions are influenced by myriad factors, not least of which is the accretion of decisions left over from earlier readers and editorial hands. By considering these myriad influences, by considering the ways that versions of texts interact with and reflect others, and most importantly by considering

3 with deep curiosity what else we might find if we did not already know what these texts look like, I hope to suggest ways of finding new knowledge within these old and well-read texts.

Throughout the discussion of these manuscript witnesses and the subsequent versions of the texts they transmit, and by way of looking at choices made by printers, editors, and critics, as well as readers, annotators, and antiquarians along the way, I will try to keep returning to the question, “I wonder why they did that?” By so wondering, I hope to flesh out a reading practice, embedded in book history and textual criticism, and driven by curiosity. Against the stability of various versions of “corrected” text, I hope to explore ways of asking the questions: if we didn’t already think the text looked like that, what might we see? And what new understandings, new contexts, and new relationships might that open up? I hope that adopting a perspective based on curiosity will open up discussions of the various manuscripts in sometimes surprising directions, and so while the method of each chapter is the same—tracing a single-witness manuscript through its various print and modern editions—the three chapters’ focus and tone are substantially different from one another.

The first chapter discusses the long and varied editorial history of the texts contained in London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x. This late fourteenth-century, anonymous manuscript contains the single copy of four poems: Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. I discuss the various critical theories of its authorship and date and place of composition based on analyses of its linguistic and paleographical makeup. I then trace the editorial history of each of the manuscript’s four poems. My primary interest in this chapter is to examine the specific physical characteristics of these poems in the manuscript, and to discuss the various ways that these characteristics have been altered in modern editions. The chapter focuses on two types of manuscript features. In Part I, I examine the details of its layout by looking at the various ways that Cotton Nero A.x’s four texts have been divided in modern editions, and the evidence upon which these divisions have been based. I will explore several of the textual divisions that have become editorial commonplaces. My primary focus is on aspects of the manuscript’s physical layout that have not been represented or acknowledged in modern editions. My focus in this discussion is three-fold: 1) the thematic and structural divisions in Cleanness and the fitt divisions in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, both divisions which hinge on the presence of illuminated capital letters in the manuscript; 2) the stanza divisions in Cleanness and Pearl, divisions that are based upon the left-hand marginal sigla; and 3) the

4 placement of the bob-lines in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which are marked by right-hand marginal sigla. In Part II, I take up these same issues on a slightly smaller scale, looking not at the gross physical particulars of the poems on the page, but rather at linguistic details of the poems themselves: the words on the line, the letters in the words, and the punctuation that is used to corral them into a text that is comprehensible to the modern mind and palatable to a modern poetic sensibility. In particular, I discuss three distinct types of changes: textual emendations; glossing and the effect that these glosses can have on readers’ experience of the texts; and the addition of modern punctuation and its influence on interpretation of the poems.

The second chapter examines the editorial and critical history of two fragmentary manuscripts that are widely considered to have been written by the same author, and which have been, at various points in their histories, considered to be fragments of the same poem: Richard the Redeless, which is found in the miscellaneous manuscript Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, MS Ll.iv.3; and Mum and the Sothsegger, which is found in the miscellaneous London, British Library, MS Additional 41666. I discuss analyses that speculate on the location of their composition, and which argue either for or against the theory of shared authorship; and I examine the several critical and pedagogical editions that have been produced of the two poems. In particular, I look at the reason that these two fragments, housed in different manuscripts and dealing with different subject matter, were brought together in the first place by sixteenth- century antiquarians Nicholas Brigham and John Bale. Underlying this discussion, however, is a consideration of the political circumstances that prompted the writing of these poems—the imprisonment and death of King Richard II, and the subsequent claiming of the crown by Henry, as well as the contested textual authority and of strategic textual revision that is a source of anxiety for both poems. The continued attempts to unite these two fragments recreate a commitment to lineage and definable succession that both poems critique.

My final chapter examines The Book of Margery of Kempe, which survives in the mid- fifteenth century manuscript London, British Library, MS Additional 61823. I will discuss the text’s own account of the various circumstances of its composition and inscription, and the evidence, written into the manuscript, of various producers and early readers, who organized and commented on the text in its margins. I will then examine the early sixteenth-century edition of this text, A Shorte Treatyse of Contemplacyon, a radically compressed and rearranged version of the text found in the Book, composed entirely of extracts and printed by Wynkyn de Worde in

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1501. I will look at the way that the Book was used as raw material to create a text which is distinct from the text in the manuscript; and the effect of this recontextualization on the character of Margery. I will also discuss the use, in the 1520s, of the Treatyse in two compilations, both of which place the Treatyse among orthodox works of contemplation. I will discuss, in particular, the way that this placement among other texts recontextualizes the Treatyse and the character of Margery—both remediating aspects of her character that were excised from the Book in the process of extraction and creating new aspects of her character as well. The last part of the chapter examines the rediscovery, in 1934, of the manuscript; and the attempts made to reconcile the very different characterizations of Margery Kempe—the familiar version of her character, known due to a 1910 re-issue of Pepwell’s collection, and the newly introduced and very different woman in a very different relationship with Christ and worldly authorities. Throughout, I discuss trends in literary critical discussions about Margery—primarily those that focus on issues of authorship and literacy—locating the impulse of many of these discussions in the editorial history of the text, and discussing possible ways of understanding the multiplicity of narrative voices that were already present in the manuscript at the moment of its inscription. 1.2 Curiosity as a Critical Mode The motivation behind this study is, as I note above, curiosity: about my own and other scholars’ preconceptions about these texts, and about the way such preconceptions colour reading—even retrospectively. The difficulty of seeing past these preconceptions has led me to ask: what happens if these texts can be revisited by paying attention to their earliest forms and by taking note of the ways that the texts have been treated at various times? The project as a whole and each of its individual investigations have begun with questions of editorial practice, and with the intractability of certain kinds of editorial decisions, even long after the assumptions that preceded them have changed or disappeared. I hope to enact a kind of criticism that is mobilized by a curiosity both of why editors and critics made the choices that they did, when they did, and also a curiosity of what else might be possible if we can get out from under the weight of those already-inscribed interpreted histories. The principle of curiosity can be justified as particularly relevant to texts of this period: in a recent project, Patricia Clare Ingham has investigated the relationship between the medieval preoccupation with tradition and authority and the medieval commitment to innovation and creation. Throughout her discussion, Ingham examines medieval conceptions of novelty and invention, noting that modern critical discussions of the medieval

6 have fixated on conceptions of auctoritas rather than seeing “authority” as one concept within a broader cultural discussion of many others, including novelty, progress, and innovation. She notes that scholars have overlooked portions of medieval cultural history in order to establish a coherent narrative, even though there is considerable ambivalence in the historical record. Rather than grappling with seeming contradiction of an intellectual tradition equally committed to tradition and invention, modern scholars have “instead read the cautions against the newfangled in the medieval record as a defense of tradition, wrongly assuming that a period committed to old auctoritas could not also be complexly preoccupied with the benefits and liabilities of novelty— or vice versa.”1

Ingham suggests, though, the need to reconsider the medieval with respect to authority and novelty, and suggests that, because of critical and philosophical advancement in the past fifty years—we are uniquely positioned to do so.2 At the root of this discussion is the concept of curiositas, a category of intellectual passion with an ambivalent history. Ingham argues that curiosity was an extremely fluid concept in the medieval period, and that “the very mobility of [the] category suggests an abiding, even obsessive, preoccupation with a wide range of ethical questions related to human knowing.”3 The root of curiosity is the mode of curiositas, a term first coined by Cicero from the adjective curiosus which in turn derives from cura: “to care.” These links between “curiosity” and “caring” were regularly made by Christian moralists, and this link was fundamental to ethical debates starting in the twelfth century.4 Ingham argues that “[c]are extends from things therapeutic to things philosophical, from attachment and ministration to attentiveness and responsibility.”5 As such, debates on curiosity “underwrote centuries of

1 Patricia Clare Ingham, The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015), 6. 2 Ingham notes: “Developments in critical and cultural theory can help us here. We now know, thanks to Gilles Deleuze, that repetition, a practice crucial to a medieval artistic culture of copying, plays a dynamic role in the production of new things and ideas; we recognize, thanks to Jacques Lacan, on the one hand, and Nicholas Taleb, on the other, that the outlines of the new emerge mainly in retrospect; and the writings of Bruno Latour, Craig Calhoun, and Davide Edgerton have helped us better understand the dynamics of technological networks of change where tradition and repetition can serve as a means to promote rather than stymie new things and ideas. A broad reconsideration of the medieval newfangled is now not only desirable, but also possible in a way it has not been before” (6). 3 Ibid., 11. 4 Ibid., 9. 5 Ibid.

7 debate concerning the relation of the pursuit of knowledge to questions of value: what kinds of things, and what kinds of intellectual pursuits, are deserving of our care and our careful attention?”6 The role of human desire for knowledge in human happiness was a priority for many, including Augustine, Abelard, and Aquinas, and the Augustinian and scholastic traditions warn of the dangers of unbridled curiosity, under the category of vitium curiositatis, or the vice of curiosity. Thomas Aquinas, for example, taught that the proper object of curiosity was the proper object of reason; vitium curiositatis was a fixation on the wrong concerns, or as Ingham puts it “‘care’ for superfluous matters.”7 As noted by Christian Zacher, curiositas “diverts ... spiritual sight from otherworldly goals, distracting ... with the spectacle of worldly landscapes.”8

Within these broad discussions, curiosity is bound up in broad questions of appetite and desire, connected with risks of over-reaching that might always accompany the pursuit of knowledge. Because of this, approaches to questions of the ethics of curiosity were notably ambivalent. Newhauser notes, regarding this ambivalence, that “[w]hat was important was not a question of knowing, but of misplaced cura, of excessive care”;9 and that what made the care “excessive” was not its quantity but its object. As such, in the long and ambivalent history of curiositas, the relationship between curiosity and care is thus deeply entwined with concepts of authority, as the definition of righteous curiosity is based on “right caring,” which depends, in some way, on authoritative identification of the proper direction of care.

This current interest in the history of curiosity and its therapeutic value would suggest that there are myriad reasons to consider ways of building critical practice on a foundation of curiosity.10 The long medieval history of curiositas, and its relationship with auctoritas is, in

6 Ibid. 7 Ingham, 10. 8 Cited Ingham, 9; from Christian Zacher, Curiosity and Pilgrimage: The Literature of Discovery in Fourteenth- Century England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), 23. 9 Newhauser, “History of Human Curiosity,” 563; cited and discussed in Ingham, 11. Ingham notes that the definition of “excessive care” is “what were understood to be self-serving or inconsequential matters” and notes that this continues to the present day: “Debates about which disciplines or topics deserve our care remain crucial to the functioning of knowledge systems to this day” (11). 10 For other discussions on curiosity as a critical praxis, see Richard Newhauser, “Towards a History of Human Curiosity: A Prolegomenon to its Medieval Phase,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 56 (1982): 559–75; Hans Blumenberg, Legitimacy of the Modern Age, trans. Robert M. Wallace (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983).

8 itself, a reason to try to build a project like this one around the principle of curiosity. As such, adopting a perspective of active curiosity toward these manuscripts and the texts that they contain potentially has some historical relevance, and—perhaps—authors and readers contemporary with the construction of these manuscripts might have adopted an attitude of curiosity toward these texts. But even if curiosity did not have such an important place in medieval cultural history, I believe that this is an important time to attempt to build a critical praxis on the capacity to interrogate the root of truths that we hold dear, and to question the structure of knowledge that has been long taken for granted: in other words, to establish a critical praxis that begins and ends with curiosity. I believe that curiosity is simply a good perspective to practice as much as possible: real curiosity is at the root of a compassionate, flexible, responsive scholarship, scholarship not simply with the capacity to criticize different perspectives but capable too of questioning its own fundamental assumptions. The specific object of this project, though, is editorial practice, a scholarly practice that is still committed to principles of “authority” and “correctness” that are no longer accepted in most other critical discourse. As such, perhaps curiosity could establish new modes of editorial praxis, not by attempting to replace the pursuit of stability, authority, and correctness—all of which have practical use in editing, even though they present significant critical difficulties—but rather by using curiosity as ballast against the weight of these principles.

Throughout this dissertation, I will be both establishing and practicing such a methodology: I believe that re-examining well-worn texts whose foundations have already been firmly laid, and who have weighty critical and editorial histories, seems to be a good place to practice, and that is the substance of the chapters that follow. This rest of this introduction will lay the groundwork for the overall project of this dissertation by examining the dominant approaches to textual editing, and particularly editing medieval texts, of the past two centuries. Tracing the history of editorial theory is not strictly necessary to lay the groundwork for this dissertation––or rather, the history of editorial practice is only one of several ways this project could be introduced. However, this project began with questions of editorial decisions and the stickiness of “authoritative forms,” once established, on editorial decisions that follow. Even when my analysis has veered far away from discussion of specifically editorial concerns about any one of the texts that I interrogate, I have not yet been able to shake the belief that those questions, still, are what this project is about primarily. The reason for this, I realize, is that while

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I would like to believe that this project has been about unrooting the invisible allegiances to staid conceptions of authority and correctness in modern editions of medieval texts, and of suggesting ways forward that do not depend on these problematic principles, I have not been able to shake these same principles from the root of my own practice.

The impulse for this project began, long ago, with me noticing a few things in a modern edition of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight that jarred with manuscript evidence; and then finding that these aspects had been introduced into the text’s modern life when it was first transcribed the text from the manuscript for modern editorial treatment, and that later editors had followed suit, sometimes without making note of these aspects or noting their differences from the manuscript form. In other words, this project began with me noticing things that seemed clearly and consistently “incorrect,” and whose errors I found I could trace back, at least theoretically, to what seemed like “faulty” perspectives. I began with a sense of someone else’s error, and with a sense that I knew how to correct the error, that I could see the text more clearly, more rightly––and that I could not only put it right, but I could also expose the faulty foundations on which the error was built: error upon error, exposed and cleansed by my perspective that saw more clearly than those who came before me. Ironically, the foundation of those errors that I identified was that these early practitioners’ commitment to principles like textual stability and authority had blinded them to any physical particulars of the manuscript that they hadn’t already acknowledged. I truly believed that, in identifying points of contention between these editions and the manuscript evidence, my perspective was unfettered by the same kind of limitations as those I was correcting.

I’ve moved past (I hope) the kind of scorn that used to feel necessary toward decisions that, to me, were so clearly wrong, and I fully believe my rhetoric of curiosity, and of opening texts up to new readings rather than trying to find “right” readings. But if I’m painfully honest with myself about the process of that curiosity, I have to admit that my curiosity is still piqued and mobilized by a feeling that something is “wrong,” that someone else has committed an error that I can see, that I can diagnose and rationalize, and that I can correct. It is with a considerable amount of sheepishness that I admit that, every time, I have had to remind myself that I don’t, in fact, believe in the idea of a stable, correct text, and have had to patiently walk myself back to my perspective of open curiosity. And so the practice of my curiosity—every time—has had to go through stages of philosophical intervention that roughly map onto the lineage of editorial

10 theory that I’m about to trace: nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century commitment to objective truth and stable authority; mid-century philosophical challenge to the foundations of that tradition, manifest as post-structuralist decentering of the author; late-twentieth-century focus on the social embeddedness and fundamental context-dependence of texts as cultural products, manifest in the theories of Jerome McGann and D.F. McKenzie; as well as the concommitant focus, in medieval literary studies, on textual multiplicity and fluidity and on the return to physical textual artefacts, in the New Philology and New Formalism; and the simultaneous digital revolution that has altered the form and process of reading and editing texts, and that provides ways of seeing textual multiplicity, and of using manuscript evidence in ways that have been largely impossible before now.

Throughout the three chapters, I am not employing one school of editorial thought over another. Some discussions are explicitly focused on editorial decisions—emendations and structural changes brought into texts—and in these discussions, I will explore the relationship of these editorial decisions with respect to manuscript evidence. Other discussions, however, are only obliquely related to editorial practice. In these discussions, my focus will be on the manner in which a range of cultural beliefs and assumptions—including dominant perspectives on historical events, hegemonic beliefs about social norms—can accrete onto texts. Some of these accretions might take the form of cultural norms that find parallels in editorial principles and thus influence the ways that texts are treated both critically and editorially. In other words, I will discuss the ways that cultural assumptions can determine, sometimes in virtually invisible ways, the horizon of editorial practice on a text. My mode of reading these texts across centuries of versions—from their manuscript codices through modern editions through to digital versions— mobilizes the impulses, if not the motivating philosophies, of best-text criticism no less than the scepticism towards authority and stabilizable intention of the post-structuralists and a commitment to the social text. This editorial history, then, as it has led to my own practice, can be seen not as a lineage—one theory supplanted by another in a line of progressively changing perspectives—but as a dynamic stream of influence, with spiralling eddies that send objects caught in their draughts unexpectedly back up-stream. I believe that it is not with one, but with all of these competing methodologies, used in fits and starts and with joyful acceptance of their internal inconsistencies, that we might be able to crack open the critical history of texts so that we can really see them again through fresh eyes.

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It is necessary to discuss some of the history of modern editorial practice of these texts, in order to lay the groundwork for some of the interpretations that I produce throughout. For the sake of space, this history will be brief and broad, but I hope that it will lay down the broad strokes of the major principles that have governed the practice of editing texts, ever since works in Middle English started to be edited in earnest. 1.3 Editorial theory in the Nineteenth Century: Lachmann’s Stemmatic Method One of the editorial principles that dominated editorial practice of the late nineteenth century is the “genealogical” method, or method of “stemmatic” editing practiced by Karl Lachmann. Stemmatics was known as “the method of common error” and “undertakes to solve textual problems by trying to establish a family tree (or genealogy or stemma) of a group of versions of the same text,”11 using their shared errors as the basis for these conclusions.12 The rationale of the techniques is that errors are introduced into a text each time it is copied from one witness to another. These errors are introduced by scribes or printers, and while many are trivial, some inevitably introduce new potential readings, some of which may introduce substantial changes in the text. If the same recognizable error occurs in many manuscripts, all of these are assumed to be descended from a single ancestor. Witnesses with the least unjustifiable readings are assumed to be closest to the author’s holograph, even if they are not actually originary. The rationale of this method draws from practices in early textual editing, particularly recensio and emendatio.13 However, while in the early practice the decisions which governed these two types of intervention were based on aesthetic and otherwise personal preference, “the genealogical

11 James Thorpe, Principles of Textual Criticism (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1972), 113. 12 See Karl Lachmann, Novum Testamentum Graece et Latine (Berlin: G. Reimer, 1842); and Paul Maas, Textual Criticism, trans. Barbara Flowers (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958). 13 For a discussion of early editorial practices, see especially: Brian Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); and Sean Alexander Gurd, Iphegenias at Aulis: Textual Multiplicity, Radical Philology (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005). For a discussion of the legacy of classical editing in medieval textual editorial practice, see for example Derek Pearsall, “The Theory and Practice in Middle English Editing,” Text 7 (1994): 107– 126; David Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction (New York: Garland Publishing, 1992), 323–30; and Tim William Machan, Textual Criticism and Middle English Texts (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 1994).

12 method transformed textual editing into a rigorous, critical practice”14 that cast a long shadow on the editing of literary texts throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 1.4 Twentieth-century Editing Two major editorial movements emerged, somewhat in parallel, from a frustration with the limits of Lachmannian stemmatics: the Best-Text method, and the Copy-Text method.

1.4.1 Best-Text The “best text” method was a common approach throughout the nineteenth century but was first articulated as an editorial method, in 1913, by Joseph Bédier. This practice emerged from a general dissatisfaction with the genealogical method, and advocates finding the best extant text on the basis of “such criteria as coherence of sense, regularity of spelling, and form of grammar.”15 Bédier, reacting against the genealogical methods advocated by Lachmann and his followers, proposed that the editor should choose, without attempting a stemma, the ‘best’ text available and then perform on it a simple “toilette de texte,” a “‘cleansing’ of the obvious scribal errors.”16 The emphasis on rigour and avoidance of overtly aesthetic and personal interpretation in the genealogical approach, and the focus on cleansing a single text in Bédier’s approach, were responses to the kind of editorial decisions that had dominated textual criticism in the past, and that still very much held sway: the principles of eclectic editing, an editorial principle that draws from any of a text’s multiple exemplars to build an ideal, purportedly more authorial version of the text than that which is witnessed in any extant manuscript.

1.4.2 Greg and McKerrow: New Bibliography and the Copy-Text In the early twentieth century, William Walter Greg and Ronald Brunles McKerrow developed the rationale for the “New Bibliography,” a movement that “forever changed the way literary scholars look at texts.”17 Greg and McKerrow established “the importance of discovering all that can be known or inferred about what happened to the manuscript in the printing-house.”

14 William Robins, “Editing and Evolution,” Literature Compass 4.1 (2007): 89–120, at 91. 15 Thorpe, 114. See Joseph Bédier, Le Lai de l’Ombre par Jean Renart, SATF (Paris, 1913), and “Le tradition manuscrite du Lai de l’Ombre : réflexions sur l’art d’éditer les anciens textes,” Romania 54 (1933) : 161–96, and 321–56. See also Hans Aarsleff, “Scholarship and Ideology: Joseph Bédier’s Critique of Romantic Medievalism,” in Historical Studies and Literary Criticism, ed. Jerome J. McGann (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 93–113. 16 Moorman, 100. 17 Joseph Rosenblum, Sir Walter Wilson Greg: A Collection of his Writings (Lanham: Scarecrow Press, 1999), ix.

13

Greg argued, generally, that the old guard of bibliography were too greatly influenced by the work of their predecessors, men who believed that “worst-better-best” was a concrete and useful evaluation, and who were likewise overconfident in their abilities to establish correctness in variant manuscripts.18 Greg was aiming for a scientificity of practice: he notes that bibliography had been treated as a science before, but one which had been too flexible and treated too subjectively by its chief proponents.19 He articulates the rationale of the New Bibliography by saying that “[b]efore we can describe or classify any book we must be able to find out about it.”20 Greg cites this basic principle as “the foundation of [his] bibliographic creed”: that “[b]ooks are the material means by which literature is transmitted; therefore bibliography, the study of books, is essentially the science of the transmission of literary documents.”21 It was on the basis of this foundation that Greg objected to the more traditional schools of textual criticism, the methods of Lachmann and Bédier.22 While he admits that typography, paleography, layout and illustration are important aspects of bibliography, he maintains that these are important in their formal aspects and not for the manner in which they add to the meaning of the text. He asserts, rather, that “bibliography has nothing to do with the subject matter of books, but only with their formal aspect.”23 While, in the late nineteenth century and before, the approach to textual interpretation and literary criticism had been based on aesthetics, preference and personal affect, the advent of “New Bibliography” introduced an entirely new paradigm of investigation: the physical particulars of the manuscript in which the text was found, including the details of its layout, paleography, typography and other bibliographical facts.

18 Discussing the errors in Pollard’s dating of ten Shakespearean folios, Greg states that: “Nothing, I think, but the hypnotic influence that traditionally accepted facts exercise even over the most critical mind can have prevented Mr. Pollard from suspecting that the ten quartos in question were not merely collected and published in one composite volume in 1619, but that, whatever the dates that appear on the title-pages, the whole set was actually printed by one printer at that one date” (“On Certain False Dates in Shakespearian Quartos,” The Library 2, no. 36 [1908], 386). 19 Greg wonders, for instance, whether some of the problems attending the scientificity of bibliography is in the name, saying that “I am inclined to think that it suffers from its name, and I half regret that ‘bibliology’ is past praying for. When ‘bibliography’ does not mean the writing of books, it must mean the description of books. This limitation of sense seems to be unfortunate, for though the description of books may form an important branch of bibliography it is certainly not synonymous with it” (“What is Bibliography?” The Library [1913], 46). 20 Ibid., 88. 21 Greg, “Bibliography—An Apologia,” The Library 4, no. 2 (1932), 113–143, at 137. 22 Ibid., 136. 23 Ibid., 136.

14

Greg notes that New Bibliography is fundamentally a practice of “correction”; however, within the system, no one method of correction is necessarily better than another, but certain methods might be considered more suitable than others in a given circumstance.24 At the foundation of New Bibliography, though, is the choice of a copy-text, McKerrow’s term for the version of the text deemed most authoritative by the editor and which is the central text used as the basis for the edition. It is important to note that, at its root, the principle of copy-text editing is very similar to the basic principles at the root of Bédier’s best-text methodology. The difference between these two methodologies, however, emerges in how editorial changes are introduced into the text. Even though Greg and McKerrow were both committed to a copy-text methodology, their perspectives differed on the definition of the copy-text, as well as on the role of the editor in the establishment of the edition once the most authoritative text had been chosen. Greg felt that the greater the breadth of an editor’s perspective, the better the final text that would be established: he urged that editors choose a single text as the basis for an edition, but that all other available texts be consulted in order to find the best reading for any one passage. McKerrow, for his part, had a far more restrictive view of the editor’s rights. McKerrow was organizing his system strategically to avoid the pitfalls of unbridled subjectivity and aestheticism: McKerrow thus restricts editors to two texts, from which decisions for emendations can be drawn, in addition to the text identified as “copy-text.” Greg was not insensitive to the risks of overly-interpretive editorial intervention that McKerrow was guarding against; he acknowledged that sanctioning and even encouraging broader analysis of extant manuscripts would provide editors with more opportunities to provide idiosyncratic and interpretive readings, and perhaps to skew texts toward a less authorial and more personal interpretation. This approach was grounded in the belief that editors’ role was to identify and reveal the text’s correctness. However, Greg also identified more potential sources of error than simply idiosyncratic interpretation, noting that correctness could easily be jeopardized by gradual acceptance of popular interpretation: he states that

[u]niformity of result at the hands of different editors is worth little if it means only uniformity in error; and it may not be too optimistic a belief that the judgement of an editor,

24 Greg, “What is Bibliography?” 45–46.

15

fallible as it must necessarily be, is likely to bring us closer to what the author wrote than the enforcement of an arbitrary rule.25

He also observes that, in the presence of many versions of a text, the risk of idiosyncratic interpretation must be taken, stating that “I think that the results, if less uniform, will be on the whole preferable to those achieved through following any mechanical rule.”26 The result of Greg’s copy-text practice is an eclectic edition that does not rely primarily on a single witness, but rather that brings the editor’s choice of features from all available witnesses into a single text. This practice was adopted by several highly influential scholars, who shaped Greg’s treatment of the copy-text into a practice that came to dominate Anglo-American editing throughout the twentieth century.

1.4.3 Greg’s Legacy: Bowers and Tanselle Fredson Bowers most closely carried forward the legacy of Greg’s New Bibliography, and its commitment to a practice of correction and identification of authorial intention. He asserts that it was the editor’s responsibility to identify corruption in texts and to eliminate it in any way possible. He states that “[t]he recovery of the initial purity of an author’s text ... and the preservation of this purity . . . is the aim of textual criticism.”27 Bowers notes that: “[o]nly a practising textual critic and bibliographer knows the remorseless corrupting influence that eats away at a text during the course of its transmission” and that “the most important concern of the textual bibliographer is to guard the purity of the important basic documents of our literature and culture.28 Bowers states that the “dominant authority” of critical editing is authorial intention. His method of critical editing has two practical aims: the first of these is “to discover the variant readings of a text and to adopt those that represent the author’s final intention”; the second is “to detect erroneous (i.e. non-authorial) readings and to correct them by proposing readings that more accurately represent what the author intended to write.” The methodology for accomplishing these aims is the selection of “one state of the text that is determined to be most

25 Greg, “The Rationale of Copy-Text,” Studies in Bibliography 3 (1950): 19–36, at 28. 26 Ibid. 27 Fredson Bowers, “Textual Criticism,” in The Aims and Methods of Scholarship in Modern Languages and Literature, ed. James Thorpe (New York: Modern Language Association, 1963), 23–42. See also G. Thomas Tanselle, A Rationale of Textual Criticism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989). 28 Bowers, Textual and Literary Criticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), 8.

16 authoritative”—known as the “copy-text.” That text is then emended according to the content, form, and various other particulars found in other available textual versions,29 and the result of this practice is a “critical edition.”30 Bowers thus maintained a commitment to eclecticism, in the production of his critical “authorial” editions, stating that “[c]ritical editing . . . does not reproduce the text of a particular document but produces an eclectic text based on several texts and on editorial emendations.”31

In an 1964 essay, “Some Principles for Scholarly Editions of Nineteenth-Century American Authors,” Bowers said that “the theory of copy-text proposed by Sir Walter Greg rules supreme,”32 and argued that editions that were based on Greg's methodology needed to "represent the nearest approximation in every respect of the author's final intentions.”33 G. Thomas Tanselle, likewise, argues that “Textual criticism . . . has generally been undertaken with a view to reconstructing, as accurately as possible, the text finally intended by the author.”34 In a significant departure from Greg, both Bowers and Tanselle argue for rejecting textual variants that an author inserted at the suggestion of others. Tanselle refers to the role that the editor needs to play in the recognition and identification of “unconstrained authorial intention” or “an author's uninfluenced intentions.”35 It is on this point that Tanselle’s methods diverge from Greg’s most markedly, as Greg’s position was that the editor needed to inquire whether a later reading “is one that the author can reasonably be supposed to have substituted for the former,”36 but needn’t speculate as to the author’s reasons for doing so. Tanselle’s methodology also acknowledges the importance of physical and material form in the editing historical materials: in “The Editing of Historical Documents,” he argues that the editors of historical documents, including medieval

29 William Proctor Williams and Craig S. Abbott, An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies (New York: MLA, 1985), 58; cited in Jerome McGann, Textual Condition (Princeton University Press, 1991), 49. 30 Williams and Abbott, 57; cited McGann, Textual Condition, 49. 31 Williams and Abbott, 56; cited McGann, Textual Condition, 49. 32 Bowers, “Some Principles for Scholarly Editions of Nineteenth-Century American Authors,” Studies in Bibliography 17 (1964): 223–228, 224. 33 Ibid., 227. 34 Tanselle, “The Varieties of Scholarly Editing,” in Scholarly Editing: A Guide to Research, edited by D.C. Greetham (New York: Modern Language Association, 1995), pp. 9–32, at 16. 35 Tanselle, “The Editing of Historical Documents,” Studies in Bibliography 39 (1986): 1–46, at 19. 36 Greg, “The Rationale of Copy-Text,” Studies in Bibliography 3 (1950–51): 19–36, at 32.

17 manuscripts, had been “apt to neglect the physical form in which the evidence on which they subsist has been preserved.”37 Furthermore, he argues that editors of these texts, were prone to intervening too aggressively into the documents that they were editing, by changing the text in ways that could not be justified according to the available intentions of the author, purely in the interest of making texts more palatable or comprehensible to their contemporary audience.

Another of Bowers’ revisions to Greg’s methodology was his decision to change how and where editorial alterations should be noted within an edited text. Bowers argued that eclectic editions should be made as readable as possible, and that the apparatus that identifies the sources for individual readings should be kept away from the reading text. As such, rather than having an apparatus in footnotes on the page along with the text, Bowers moved his editorial apparatus into appended material, leaving the edited text free of signs of editorial intervention. Tanselle adopted Bowers’ practice for editorial apparatus, and justified the practice by arguing that “Relegating all editorial matter to an appendix and allowing the text to stand by itself serves to emphasize the primacy of the text and permits the reader to confront the literary work without the distraction of editorial comment and to read the work with ease.”38 Tanselle’s further justification is directed at scholarly work, as “it is easier to quote from or to reprint” from a clear edition, and “when it is necessary to quote from a text which has not been kept clear of apparatus, the burden of producing a clear text of the passage is placed on the quoter.”39 The result of Bowers’ and Tanselle’s alterations to Greg’s copy-text methodology is the “scholarly edition,” editions that have been compiled on the authority of expert editors who have employed their best judgement regarding the originary intentions of the text.

1.4.4 Institutional Norms and the MLA Greg’s legacy, carried forward by Bowers and Tanselle, became the dominant editorial practice, primarily due to the drive of the practice toward eclectic originary intentions. The promise of the identification of authorial intentions drawn from all available witnesses, the methodology drawn from Greg and polished by Bowers and Tanselle, has established the

37 Tanselle, “The Editing of Historical Documents,” 5. 38 Aims and Services of the Committee on Scholarly Editions (Indianapolis: The Committee on Scholarly Editions, 1972), 45. 39 Ibid., 46.

18 possibility of “definitive” editions that, at least in theory, never need to be edited again. The rationale of the definitive edition, based on the best judgements of authoritative editors working to compile the most authoritative readings, has been attractive to academic institutions.40 In 1963, the Greg-Bowers-Tanselle version of copy-text editing was adopted by the Modern Language Association of America (MLA). This methodology was used in their Statement of Editorial Principles and Procedures which was first published in 1967, and it was on the basis of this editorial methodology that editions could granted the status of “Approved” critical editions and only those meeting the requirements would receive a seal denoting "An Approved Text."

1.4.5 Post-Structuralism, Deconstruction, and Reader Response In the mid-twentieth century, the centrality of some of these principles was shaken in several ways: first, by continental theorists and theories such as deconstruction and poststructuralism, which ushered in changes to editorial theory and praxis going forward; and then by Jerome McGann and D.F. McKenzie, who introduced the social embeddedness of the composition, distribution, and consumption of texts into the question of literary editing. While there were many theorists who participated in discussions which shook the centrality of the author, two are of fundamental importance to conceptions of authorship and textual stability going forward: Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault. In his seminal essay “The Death of the Author” Barthes asserts that the “author figure” is not an inevitable aspect of a literary work, but is culturally determined, a “modern figure who emerged from the Middle Ages with English empiricism, French rationalism and the personal faith of the Reformation” and is, thus, the “epitome and culmination of capitalist ideology,”41 which places privilege on assertions of individuality and grants prestige to acts of assertive sovereignty. Although such a categorization has its uses, Barthes claims that it is primarily a limiting perspective on literary study, as “the

40 See David Greetham, “Politics and Ideology in current Anglo-American Textual Scholarship.” On the institutional adoption of Greg-Bowers-Tanselle’s copy-text methodology, Greetham argues: “One of the corollaries of the ideology of the definitive edition … [as recommended by MLA] was that if a definitive edition was possible, then presumably the work itself, of which the edition was a representation, was similarly to be regarded as a finished product, susceptible to a teleological paradigm. This was, of course, an editorial fulfilment of the Aristotelian definition of the work of art as being of a certain length, with a beginning, middle, and end. Completion and internal structure could be determined, and even if the work were imperfect in fact (through the author’s death or disinclination to complete), this imperfection could be recognised, certified, and demonstrated in the eclectic edition” (“Politics and Ideology in current Anglo-American Textual Scholarship,” in Textual Transgressions, 329) 41 Roland Barthes, “Death of the Author,” in The Rustle of Language, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1986), 49–55, at 50.

19 explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it, as if it were always in the end … the voice of a single person, the author ‘confiding’ in us.”42 Such a focus serves to “furnish it [the text] with a final signified, to close the writing,”43 which is only attractive to those who want to “find” the author and, by so finding, “explain” the text. A writing loosed from the hermeneutic tyranny of the “Author” relies on a “scriptor” who “traces a field without origin—or which, at least, has no other origin than language itself, language which ceaselessly calls into question all origins.”44 Barthes asserts that this writing “designates exactly what linguists … call a performative, a rare verbal form … in which the enunciation has no other content … than the act by which it is uttered”; it is no longer “a line of words releasing a single ‘theological’ meaning (the ‘message’ of the Author-God) but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of this original, blend and clash.”45

Michel Foucault, in “What is an Author?” takes issue with Barthes’ argument that the author is “dead,” arguing that while Barthes’ argument is correct regarding the ideological assumptions which place privilege on the category of authorship in the modern age, the terms in which he disputes this privilege do not even unsettle it, let alone put it to rest. Foucault’s corrective is the conception of the “author function” which is tied to “the legal and institutional systems that circumscribe, determine, and articulate the realm of discourses,” and which “is not defined by the spontaneous attribution of a text to its creator, but through a series of precise and complex procedures.”46 Foucault’s “author function” claims to reinscribe the questions that Barthes claims to be asking within a discursive context, in a way that the question is no longer about the author, but about the space between “author function” and “textual product” and the events by which that relationship is formed. A crucial concept that Foucault identified as emerging from this space is the realization that texts are always bound within intertextual systems of meaning. Essentially, for Foucault, text is intertext: every text is “caught up in a system of references to other books, other texts, other sentences” and thus every text “is a node

42 Ibid., 50. 43 Ibid., 54. 44 Ibid., 55. 45 Ibid. 46 Michel Foucault, “What is An Author?” in Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980), 130–45, at 132.

20 within a network” that depends upon every other networked text for its meaning while simultaneously working to determine the meanings of other texts within the network.47 The deep embeddedness of texts within intertextual networks also implies a similar relationship between texts and non-textual contexts, and thus Foucault’s conception of texts as “nodes within a network” necessarily opens onto a system of multi-modal influence, including norms of textual creation and interpretation as well as the material and social circumstances of textual creation and interpretation, as well as textual production, dissemination, and consumption.

In a similar, later theoretical development, Wolfgang Iser’s “Reader Response Theory” focuses entirely on the way in which texts are actively constructed by individual readers. Iser asserts that there are two “textual” poles of literary work: the “artistic” is the author’s “text,” and the “aesthetic” is that “text” “actualized” by the reader. The “work”—the abstractly objective meaning—“cannot be identical with the text or with its actualization but must be situated somewhere between the two.”48 For Iser, the position of the work between the reader and the author, and thus the relationship between text and reader in the construction of the meaningful “work,” is essential, and posits a measurable success of that communication which is dependent on “the reader’s activity … be[ing] controlled in some way by the text.”49 This control “cannot be understood as a tangible entity occurring independently of the process of communication” but must be understood to be generated by that process: the power to control the reader “[a]lthough exercised by the text … is not in the text.”50 Iser locates the place “where text and reader converge” in the “blanks and negations [which] leave open the connection between textual perspectives, and so spur the reader into coordinating these perspectives and patterns” which provide “a tacit invitation to find the missing link,” by which discovery the “aesthetic object begins to emerge.”51

While there are considerable differences between the theories of Barthes, Foucault, and Iser, all were responding in similar ways to the theoretical tradition that preceded them, and they

47 Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A. M. Sheridan Smith (London: Tavistock Publications, 1972), 23. 48 Wolfgang Iser, “Interaction between Text and Reader” in The Norton Anthology of Theory & Criticism, Peter Simon, ed. (New York: Norton & Company, Inc., 2010), 1524–32, at 1524. 49 Ibid. 50 Ibid., 1526. 51 Ibid., 1532.

21 share in common several fundamental differences from the theories they responded to. Most vitally, all reject the notion that identifying a single, unitary textual state is the only natural goal of those who hope to understand a text or other cultural object, and all reject the belief that texts have an originary and authoritative pure state that can or should be isolated.

1.4.6 Jerome McGann and the Social Text The belief that texts are corrupt and that it is the responsibility of editorial scholars to correct them is the foundation of the argument challenged by Jerome McGann, first in The Textual Condition. He takes up the arguments of Bowers, Tanselle and Parker but questions the stability of any part of the creative, critical, and editorial process. McGann argues that any editorial model that ends in an eclectic edition is necessarily based on the assumption of a single authorial agent and privileges a single truth about the text. Contrary to a model of centralized authority, McGann defines the text not as the construction of an individual designed to be read and decoded by another individual, but rather as a social construct that links author, reader and text, and thus McGann takes emphasis off of the text as a definitive locus of textual authority. McGann’s conception places emphasis on the physicality of the documents in which texts are found. He does not privilege the integrity of the “historical” documents from which texts are drawn, but rather sees every consequent physical manifestation of a text as a new articulation of that text’s position in a social network. McGann argues, against the Greg-Bowers-Tanselle assertion that authorial intentions are what the editorial process must work to expose, that non- authorial interventions are important too. McGann stresses the social nature of text at its most fundamental level, and emphasizes the need for editorial practice both to recognize this social embeddedness and to perceive that editorial practice is a participant within the social network that extends from every text, in any age. The process of editing texts thus becomes a different kind of task. Notions of absolute authorial representation, or of “errors” that need “correction” are not appropriate goals of editorial practice, first of all because these principles must be recognized as impossible, but also because the state of a text in any physical form situates it specifically within a social construct that extends well beyond the author. McGann argues against the author as the sole source of authority for a work, and asserts that works of literature are the product of collaborative social exchange and intellectual/creative transfer. His answer to editorial practices’ commitment to these principles is the recognition that textual boundaries are projections of social and political identities of observers of texts, which McGann calls “mental

22 conceptualizations of historical spaces.” He thus argues that there is no text without a context, and that the combination of historical evidence and readers’ interpretations of that evidence determines the boundaries of that context.

1.4.7 D.F. McKenzie and the “Sociology of Texts” At roughly the same time that McGann was first articulating his vision of the socially realized text, and articulating, too, the principles of a bibliographic and editorial practice that would recognize this reality, D. F. McKenzie was articulating a similar point. McKenzie identified the emergence of a new field of history and sociology: bibliography as an ‘histoire du livre’ and as a “Sociology of Texts,”52 which McKenzie defines as a study that “enables the discovery of any possible relationship there might be between any one text and any other text— whenever, wherever, and in whatever form” and thus that “is the means by which we establish the uniqueness of any single text as well as the means by which we are able to uncover all its inter-textual dimensions.”53 Third, McKenzie asserts that his approach to bibliography “impartially accepts the construction of new texts and their forms” including “[t]he conflation of versions, or the writing of new books out of old ones … [and] the construction of systems, such as archives, libraries, and data-banks.”54 Finally, bibliography “is of its nature … concerned specifically with texts as social products,” and the study of “[t]he human and institutional dynamics of their production and consumption, here and now, as well as in the past.”55

In place of a central and autonomous author whose intentions can be known and should be isolated, both McGann and McKenzie focus on identifying and understanding the social networks in which texts were produced, disseminated, and consumed. Both McGann and McKenzie brought attention to the fact that “final intentions” are not the only way of conceiving of the practice of editing texts. This perspective has opened myriad new ways of thinking about texts and the cultures in which they were created, produced and consumed. In particular, the social approach to texts identifies change in texts not as error to be corrected or impurity to be cleaned, but as the reality of objects that were created and exist in time and were influenced by

52 D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 53 Ibid., 61. 54 Ibid., 61–62. 55 Ibid.

23 the circumstances of their creation, transmission, and consumption. In other words, a text’s tendency to shift is a result of dynamism rather than of corruption, and both McGann and McKenzie emphasize that this is a fact that the editorial process should not attempt to hide. McKenzie’s bibliography thus makes necessary two very different conceptions of “text.” The first is text “as authorially sanctioned, contained, and historically definable”: this is the text that is useful to canonical historical scholarship, which “seeks, as objectively as possible, to recover, from the physical evidence of a text, its significance for all those who first made it.” The second definition is “the text as always incomplete, and therefore open, unstable, subject to a perpetual re-making by its readers, performers, or audience” and thus is “in some degree independent of the documents which, at any particular moment, give it form.”56 McKenzie claims that recognizing the utility of this second definition makes possible the capacity “to recognize too that no text of any complexity yields a definitive meaning.”57 This second definition of text as dynamic, incomplete, and unstable is the most significant difference between McKenzie’s philosophy and Greg’s New Bibliography. McKenzie argues that by strictly defining the boundaries around “textual” activities, by maintaining faith in notions of “truth” and “purity,” and by citing as the primary goal the recovery of authorial intention and originary textual authority, Greg’s bibliography “sidestepped all these problems of the indeterminacy of texts.”58 McKenzie urges that the unity and purity that drove bibliography through the twentieth century were an illusion: “The ostensible unity of any one ‘contained’ text—be it in the shape of a manuscript, book, map, film, or computer-stored file—is an illusion. As a language, its forms and meaning derive from other texts; and as we listen to, look at, or read it, at the very same time we re-write it.”59 As such, McKenzie comes back to issues of authorship, but only after he turns that notion inside-out. He states that the real “argument … runs full circle from a defense of authorial meaning, on the grounds that it is in some measure recoverable, to a recognition that,

56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., 60. Earlier in the essay, McKenzie also notes: “Every society rewrites its past, every reader rewrites its texts, and, if they have any continuing life at all, at some point every printer redesigns them” (25), a belief that is central to my project as a whole. Recognition of this principle as fact—that the only constant is change itself—requires methods of acknowledging changes coming from innumerable sources, without necessarily abandoning or disavowing older forms. I think that curiosity is a powerful tool in building such a methodology. 58 Ibid., 36. 59 Ibid., 60.

24 for better or worse, readers inevitably make their own meanings.”60 The extension of bibliography to the study an infinite array of aspects extends, likewise, to any of an infinite number of readings, each of which can only ever be partially ascertained.

By unsettling their central tenets, McKenzie asserts the need for a radically changed view of bibliography and of editorial practice at large. He notes that “[w]hile the processes of composition, correction, and printing were universal, the relationships between them on any one day were constantly changing.”61 McKenzie argues that interrogating the conditions by which texts are made and thinking through the multiple meanings that these conditions in turn create requires that new forms of inquiry be imagined,62 including imagining new ways of recognizing “other forms of visual evidence in the books themselves as determinants of meaning.”63 For McKenzie, the real work of a responsible scholar—the difficult work, the work that will never be finished—is the impossible work of imagining what those experiences might have been by careful, humble, and curious investigation of whatever forms have been left available for inquiry. Where scholars who prioritize “correctness” strive to establish authoritative facts about the past, McKenzie’s conception of the primary work of the bibliographic scholar is to wonder about which possible perspectives have not yet been noticed, and to question whether possible lines of reasoning are blocked by too-stable pre-conceptions of truth, or by allegiance to past authorities.

The curiosity that seems to be at the heart of McKenzie’s call to action, and that is certainly the driving force behind my own work, suggests the importance of looking closely at the practices which have established the foundation of our fields of inquiry, not in the hope of uncovering practices that can be excoriated but with the great hope of finding new ways of reading old documents, and thus of finding texts we have not yet read and finding ways of understanding that we have not yet imagined. 1.5 Medieval manuscript texts While the previous discussion has traced the major trends in editorial theory of literary texts quite broadly, this next discussion will focus on the debates that have emerged specifically

60 Ibid., 19. 61 Ibid. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid.

25 from editorial work on medieval texts. Many medieval texts were first transcribed and edited for scholarly use in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and these editions were primarily constructed on the principles of best-text and eclectic editing, as critical editions, and overall with the intention of identifying a stable, authoritative text. Over the past several decades, many editorial theorists have noted a problematic relationship between the principles that have governed editorial practice, and the medieval vernacular texts to which these principles are applied. The methods and practice of producing literary texts in medieval manuscript culture are strikingly different from those of later periods, not simply with respect to technologies of production and scale of dissemination, but also regarding more abstract notions of textual meaning, authorial responsibility, and audience participation. There is widespread critical acceptance that medieval texts cannot be considered according to a modern sense of authorial intention or narrative stability; there is consensus regarding the notion of the inherent multiplicity and ambivalence of the medieval text; and it has recently been noted that the transition from the medieval understanding of literary production as collaborative and kinetic, to the early modern understanding that texts are created, and thereby authorized, by an individual, took place quite rapidly during the fifteenth-century transition from manuscript to print culture.64

Many theorists have acknowledged the need for editors to recognize the fundamental multiplicity of medieval texts, and the necessity of establishing editorial praxes that can accommodate that multiplicity rather than using editorial language that strives ultimately to uncover a stable and authorial text that exists beneath or within the variants. Tim William Machan, for example, has argued that medieval texts do not follow from the conception of authorial intention in any kind of linear way, but rather emerge from a complex of social and material circumstances. Thus, Machan has argued the need “to develop editorial theory and practice in relation to the Middle English culture’s view of authority in general and then, by extension, of textual authority in particular.”65 Intellectual and critical perspectives have evolved

64 See, for example, Elizabeth Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), and Divine Art, Infernal Machine: The Reception of Printing in the West (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); William Kuskin, Caxton’s Trace: Studies in the History of English Printing (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006); Daniel Wakelin, Humanism, Reading, and English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007); and Alexandra Gillespie, Print Culture and the Medieval Author (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 65 Tim William Machan, “Middle English Text Production and Modern Textual Criticism,” in Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism, eds. A.J. Minnis and Charlotte Brewer (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1992), 1–18, at 13.

26 to acknowledge this reality; editorial practice, however, has not evolved to acknowledge these realities. Elizabeth Bryan notes that the standard model of textuality within both literary and editorial practices assumes “that we can talk about all manuscript versions as a single ‘standardized’ text by a single author.”66 Likewise, John Dagenais discusses manuscriptum to more accurately articulate the hand-made quality of medieval manuscripts, and the uniqueness of the texts that they contain, arguing that the manuscript is not an inert vehicle for the message of the ideal text, but a site of exchange between the text and its readers.67

Stephen G. Nichols, in 1990, presented a definition of a “new philology” as a kind of rapprochement between medievalist literary criticism and abstract literary theory, by articulating a reading of post-structuralist theory that resonates particularly well with texts of the medieval period.68 Nichols’ conception of the “manuscript matrix” offers a new vision of manuscripts as a system comprised of numerous methods of representation, any number of which may intermingle—what he called “a post-modern return to the origins of medieval studies.” In 1991, these theories were articulated with the assertion of the New Philology, a movement that drew energy from the postmodernist boom of the 80s, and drew strength also from the more radical methodologies proposed by the likes of McGann and McKenzie: Paul Zumthor’s theory of mouvance asserts that for the study and editing of medieval works, “the [medieval literary] work floats, offering not a fixed shape of firm boundaries but a constantly shifting nimbus.”69 He notes that the

66 Elizabeth Bryan, Collaborative Meaning in Medieval Scribal Culture: The Otho Laȝman (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 47. 67 John Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Libro de Buen Amor (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), esp. 28–29. See also D. C. Greetham, “Glossynge is a Glorious Thyng, Certayn,” in A Guide to Editing Middle English (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998); Ralph Hanna III, “Producing Manuscripts and Editions,” in Crux and Controversy in Middle English Textual Criticism, 109–30; Derek Pearsall, “Authorial Revision and Some Late-Medieval English Texts,” in Crux and Controversy, 39–60, and “Theory and Practice in Middle English Editing,” Text (1994): ; Seth Lerer, Chaucer and His Reader: Imaging the Author in Late Medieval England (Princeton, 1993); Robert Sturges, “Textual Scholarship: Ideologies of Literary Production,” Exemplaria 3.1 (1991): 109–31; Andrew Taylor, Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002); Mary Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Charlotte Brewer, “Authorial vs. Scribal Writing in Piers Plowman,” in Medieval Literature: Texts and Interpretation, ed. Tim William Machan (Binghamton: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991), 59–89. 68 Stephen Nichols, “Introduction: Philology in a Manuscript Culture,” Speculum 65 (1990): 1–10. 69 Paul Zumthor, Toward a Medieval Poetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1992), 46.

27

term work cannot … be understood in its modern sense. It refers, however, to something that undoubtedly had real existence, as a complex but easily recognizable entity, made up of the sum of material witnesses to current versions. These were the synthesis of signs used by successive ‘authors’ (singers, reciters, scribes) and of the text’s own existence in the letter. The form-meaning nexus thus generated is thereby constantly called in question. The work is fundamentally unstable.70

The work is not only unstable in a temporary sense, though: Zumthor asserts that “Properly speaking [the work] has no end; it merely accepts to come to an end, at a given point, for whatever reasons.”71 The reason he gives for this is that reading within the system of mouvance requires the active involvement of the reader.72 Likewise, in Éloge de la Variant, Bernard Cerquiglini describes a process of resituating the manuscript at the centre of literary and editorial practice.73 For Cerquiglini, mouvance is not merely a form of medieval textuality; it is the nature of textuality itself. He notes that “[m]edieval writing does not produce variants, it is variance” and that it is the principle “to which editing should give primary recognition.”74

In a similar vein, other scholars have argued for the centrality of the manuscript. For example, Randy McLeod believes, in the presence of manuscript evidence, texts should be “un- edited” rather than edited further. He claims that editorial work of any kind is unnecessary for readers who can access the manuscript, and that photographic facsimiles are far superior to any

70 Ibid., 47. 71 Ibid., 47. 72 For a discussion on Zumthor’s mouvance in the reading of The Canterbury Tales, see Andrew Higl’s dissertation, in which he asks the question: “how do we deal with a dynamic, unstable, and polyvocal textual condition in a meaningful way? For the most part, the additions and continuations to the Canterbury story canon have been consigned to the margins of modern critical editions and readership as a kind of fan culture at best or as corruptions of Chaucer at worst. They undermine our romantic ideals of authors as autonomous creators and present instead a model of socialized, game-like production in which the discernable acts of authors and readers converge to reveal a continuously shifting and growing story canon beginning in the fifteenth century. I contend that one needs to approach the textuality of the Tales with a dual focus on the literary meaning added and the model of interactive readership in play for many early readers as evinced by the manuscript and early printed texts” (Joining the “Canterbury Tales”: The Story Telling Game and the Interactive Work [Unpublished dissertation, Loyola University Chicago, 2009] 18). 73 Bernard Cerquiglini, Éloge de la Variant (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1989), ix. 74 Cerquiglini, trans. Suzanne Fleischman, “Philology, Linguistics, and the Discourse of the Medieval Text,” Speculum 65 (1990): 19–37, at 27.

28 edited version thereof.75 Several of these scholars are identified with a school of criticism known as New Philology. In a 2010 article surveying the New Philology, M. J. Driscoll articulates the central claims of this theory, including the belief that literary works are dependent on the material in which they are found. For Driscoll, since the physicality of any text is vital to an understanding of its meaning, relationships between features of that physical text—including paper and binding, marginalia and page-layout, illustrations and marginalia, among many other possible features—must be considered integral to the study of texts. Driscoll notes that, like any other physical object, texts come into being in time and through a long and complex set of processes involving human agents, and which attest to innumerable institutional, cultural, economic, and political realities.76 The New Philology is similar in purpose to a “sociology of texts” but both extends and sharpens the focus to speak specifically of the products of the oral and manuscript cultures of the medieval period. Indeed, one of the most frequent criticisms of the “new philology” at its inception and since, is that it is not new at all—not only is it similar in shape and purpose to other editorial and bibliographic theories, but it would seem to recapitulate the arguments of many centuries’ inquiry into the nature of medieval texts. In her discussion of the history of philology in her doctoral dissertation, Christine Schott notes, however, that “new or material philology differs from ‘traditional’ philology in that it seeks to study the facts of textual production not in order to edit a text but in order to engage in more historically informed literary criticism.”77 And, while the practical concerns of editing, and the myriad questions that it raises are taken seriously within literary criticism, the theoretical, abstract and somewhat abstruse issues of the theory from which “new philology” is drawn can be seen enacted

75 See for example, Randall McLeod, “THE UNEDITOR: Randall McLeod in conversation with Mark Owens, July 2008,” in Dot Dot Dot 18, 24 August 2009, 40–57; “Unemending Shakespeare’s Sonnet 111” (1981), in Shakespeare’s Poems, eds. Stephen Orgel and Sean Keilan (New York: Garland, 1999), 89-110; and Randall McLeod, “UN Editing Shak-speare,” Sub-stance 33:4 (1982): 28–55. 76 M.J. Driscoll, "The Words on the Page: Thoughts on Philology, Old and New," in Creating the Medieval Saga: Versions, Variability, and Editorial Interpretations of Old Norse Saga Literature, Judy Quinn and Emily Lethbridge, eds. (Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag, 2010), 85–102. 77 Christina Marie Schott, “Intimate Reading: Marginalia in Medieval Manuscripts,” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (University of Virginia, 2012), 3.

29 concretely in discussions of medieval texts. As Elizabeth Bryan notes, “[m]ultiple meanings abound in manuscripts on several levels … : gaps and margins and erasures are literal.”78

Recent editorial theory in medieval studies has grown to accommodate the breadth and complexity offered up by all of these theoretical changes, and other theoretical movements have emerged. For example, the New Formalism takes as its central and defining argument the relatedness of “form” and “meaning,” arguing overall that “forms effect meaning” and examining the way in which this plays out in the physical texts. In many ways, New Formalism developed as a resistance movement to historical, political, and cultural criticism within literary analysis, asserting the need to focus on the form of texts rather than on their social aspects of textual analysis, even as it acknowledges the social embeddedness of texts.79 More recently, Martha Rust has proposed a “recursive” reading style, arguing that this type of reading was typical of medieval reading modes. In “Revertere! Penitence, Marginal Commentary, and the Recursive Path of Right Reading,” Rust argues that medieval texts direct readers to explore texts on multiple levels, and that these directives are embedded with manuscript form as well as in other textual features.80 This argument is expanded in Imaginary Worlds in Medieval Books: Exploring the Manuscript Matrix, where Rust explores the medieval book as an “instrument for thinking through and past the world,” which she terms the “manuscript matrix.”81 Rust’s “matrix” is a description of the phenomenal realm of the text, and in this is linked with Nichols’ conception of the “matrix”; but Rust’s “matrix” is differentiated by also offering a model for a range of interactive processes that characterize that space. She states that the “the manuscript

78 Elizabeth Bryan, Collaborative Meaning in Medieval Scribal Culture: the Otho Laȝamon (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 52, cited in Schott, “Intimate Reading,” 3. See also Sarah Kay, “Analytical Survey 3: The New Philology,” New Medieval Literatures 3 (1999): 295–326. 79 Armstrong, 195. 80 Rust, “Revertere! Penitence, Marginal Commentary, and the Recursive Path of Right Reading,” in Reading and Literacy: In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Ian Frederick Moulton (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004). See also Sarah Noonan, “Bodies of Parchment: Representing the Passion and Reading Manuscripts in Late Medieval England,” Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation (Washington University in St. Louis, 2010); “‘Bycause the redyng shold not turne hem to enoye’: Reading, Selectivity, and Pietatis Affectum in Late Medieval England,” New Medieval Literatures 15 (2013): 225–254; and “Private Reading and the Rolls of the Symbols of the Passion,” The Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History 15 (2012): 289–301. See also Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge University Press, 2002); The Book of Memory (Cambridge University Press, 1992), esp. p. 224; and “The Art of Memory and the Art of Page Layout in the Middle Ages,” Diogenes 49.4 (2002): 20–30. 81 Rust, Imaginary Worlds in Medieval Books: Exploring the Manuscript Matrix (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 7.

30 matrix is an imagined, virtual dimension in which physical form and linguistic content function in dialectical reciprocity: a space in which words and pages, ‘colours’ of rhetoric and colours of ink, fictional characters and alphabetical characters, covers of books and veils of allegory function together in one overarching, category-crossing metasystem of systems of signs.”82 In this, Rust’s model is linked also to W. J. T. Mitchell’s notion of an “infinitely differentiated continuum”—a non-binary conception that replaces the binaries of “the quality of the thing” vs. the “quality of the model.”83 She thus adds a liminal dimension to Nichols’ physical matrix, a dimension that is “associated with books but constituted by a reader’s cognitive realization of the interplay among diverse semiotic systems that is only in potentia on the physical page.”84 The interactivity that Rust identifies in the medieval manuscript text “is enabled by three aspects of late-medieval manuscript culture: the practice of ‘involved reading,’ a preoccupation with books and the technology of writing.”85 The text is not a static object to be consumed in a single way, but rather the reader of the medieval manuscript must actively engage the text on multiple imaginative layers, thus making it the platform for a highly involved and individualized reading experience.86

In her recent article “Blood and Tears as Ink: Writing the Pictorial Sense of the Text,” Rust has expanded upon this theory of medieval reading practice, and urges that scholars of medieval manuscripts reconsider the way they treat texts’ physical, “decorative,” or “pictorial” features. She notes a tendency, in Middle English scholarship, toward an either/or appreciation of image and text. This tendency, she argues, has resulted in a compartmentalized “understanding of the relationship of writing and pictures in the medieval literary or scriptural text, in which the pictorial is either auxiliary to or completely separate from the written, which is therefore

82 Rust, 9. 83 Rust, 8; see also W. J. T. Mitchell, “Spatial Form in Literature: Toward a General Theory,” Critical Inquiry 6.3 (1980): 539–567. 84 Rust, 9. 85 Ibid. 86 Andrew Higl engages Rust’s model of involved reading in his PhD dissertation, on interactivity in The Canterbury Tales. He defines her notion of the ‘manuscript matrix’ as “the triangulating network of the page’s lexical signs, visual signs, and reader who occupies an imaginative space” (Higl, 19), and “extend[s] Rust’s model of the matrix to account for extreme forms of ‘involved reading’ that stretch beyond just the imagination and are recorded in the traces of the transmission of the work” (Higl, 20).

31 conceived of as purely lexical.”87 Rust examines texts “in which writing functions both verbally and pictorially” and constructs “a model of the relationship between visual and verbal domains in Middle English texts that supplants the antagonistic and hierarchical metaphors of territories and boundaries with the dynamic equilibrium and osmotic flow implied by metaphors of liquids.”88 Rust’s “liquid model” acknowledges that language is only one of many systems of signs, and acknowledges likewise “medieval readers’ fluid capacity to attend to a book as a matter of both reading and seeing, of engaging the written text’s linguistic content together with its visual appearance, including such details as its style of script, color of ink, and layout on the page.”89 Adopting this perspective allows the possibility for a new “sense” to emerge, a “pictorial sense” which is “derived from the picture it makes, or was designed to make, in its written form” and which “has the unique function of lending immediacy to the verbal senses of the book even as it frames the reader’s act of interacting with a book (or other written object) as a responsiveness that is crucial in bringing that immediacy into being.”90

Other critics have theorized the relationship between medieval reading practices and manuscript form, considering the mutual influences that might have existed from one to the other. In “Reading the Forms of Sir Thopas,” Jessica Brantley discusses the ways that manuscript forms both create meaning and stymie its creation in Middle English texts. Brantley argues that “[a]lthough reading practices are shaped by generic expectations, generic categories are equally shaped by readers’ habits, and both are indebted to the physical forms of texts in manuscript books.”91 She notes that the physical forms of texts can be understood to represent “the performative mode in which [the text] is used and understood,” and thus suggests that unconventional physical display in manuscript form might be considered “to imply a mode of understanding rather than a static form.”92 Brantley takes “The Tale of Sir Thopas” as a case in point, focusing on the tail-rhymes that are marked out in some of the manuscript versions: she

87 Rust, “Blood and Tears as Ink: Writing the Pictorial Sense of the Text,” The Chaucer Review 47.4 (2013): 390– 415, at 391. 88 Ibid. 89 Ibid., 392. 90 Ibid. 91 Brantley, “Reading the Forms of Sir Thopas,” Chaucer Review 47.4 (2013): 426–438, at 417. 92 Ibid., 434.

32 notes that in Sir Thopas’ tail-rhymes, there is a physicality that can be likened to aspects of the poetic form: analogues can be found between the poem, its plot, and the manner in which it is displayed on the manuscript page, but these “alignments between form and genre are neither obvious nor absolute.”93 In her discussion of the physical notation of the tail-rhyme in Sir Thopas, Brantley notes that a “survey of displayed tail-rhyme in the manuscripts does not provide an external observer with a clear-cut sense of theoretical principles that medieval scribes or authors used to generate the layout,” but suggest that “such a survey reveals a habitus, a way of making meaning through practice, that points to a mode of reception.”94 Brantley suggests, then, that manuscript form can be seen to suggest modes of habitual reading while also gesturing at the way that these habitual modes were mobilized to suggest other, more disruptive, reading modes.

The theories put forth by Rust and Brantley of Middle English reading modes participate in a field of growing interest about the kinds of evidence that can be drawn out of texts in their manuscript forms. This work, along with the theoretical perspectives of the New Formalists and other editorial and literary critics, is acknowledging, more and more, the importance of reconsidering the physical artefacts of texts in constructing arguments about them. 1.6 The Digital Turn These shifts in emphasis in medieval editorial scholarship––toward a focus on the physical manuscript and also on the need to acknowledge textual fluidity and multiple textual forms–– follow quite clearly from the influence of McGann and McKenzie in the late 1980s, and expand the conversations about textual dynamism and social embeddedness of textual artefacts in logical and fascinating ways. These shifts, very broadly, also correspond with other changes in the tools of literary scholars and editors: most notably, the availability of computer-facilitated editing and the explosion of digital tools for mapping textual variances, for conceiving of multiplicity by way of hypertext and other non-linear textual systems. Peter Shillingsburg, in 1993, urged that electronic texts should be “the medium of choice for new scholarly editions” and that editors must “embrace the potentials and possibilities of the electronic medium with

93 Ibid., 435. 94 Ibid., 434–35.

33 imagination” while “also striv[ing] for truth to the originals.”95 In order to continuously “strive for truth” Shillingsburg urges especially the recognition, by scholars and students alike, that the electronic edition is not a compilation of other editions: “in electronic form it is possible to make a work of art accessible in all of its versions (except that, of course, the electronic version of all the versions is itself a new version, rather than a collection of the old versions it attempts to represent).”96 Matthew Kirschenbaum notes that the digital humanities is “more akin to a common methodological outlook than an investment in any one specific set of texts or even technologies,” but he observes that the “digital humanities is also a social undertaking.”97 Kirschenbaum calls the digital humanities a movement that constitutes a “pitch-perfect convergence between the intense conversations around editorial theory and method in the 1980s and the widespread means to implement electronic archives and editions very soon after,” particularly the work by McGann; and the deeply social nature of the conversations, which merge with the “openness of English departments to cultural studies, where computers and other objects of digital material culture become the centerpiece of analysis.”98 Fundamentally, as Kirschenbaum notes,

Whatever else it might be … the digital humanities today is about a scholarship (and a pedagogy) that is publicly visible in ways to which we are generally unaccustomed, a scholarship and pedagogy that are bound up with infrastructure in ways that are deeper and more explicit than we are generally accustomed to, a scholarship and pedagogy that are collaborative and depend on networks of people.99

95 Peter Shillingsburg, “Polymorphic, Polysemic, Protean, Reliable, Electronic Texts,” in Palimpsest: Editorial Theory in the Humanities, ed. George Bornstein and Ralph G. Williams (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993), 29–43, at 40. 96 Ibid., 35. Although I agree with Shillingsburg’s greater argument, I do not agree with a unitary sense of “truth,” or for that matter his unproblematic notion of “the original” upon which his argument is poised. 97 Matthew Kirschenbaum, “What is Digital Humanities and What’s it Doing in English Departments?” ADE Bulletin 150 (2010): 55–61, at 56. 98 Ibid., 60. 99 Ibid.

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Ray Siemens notes that digital methodologies require new ways of conceiving of textual history, but also open up new ways of thinking about these lineages.100 Siemens suggests the need to consider the

imaginings of the codex form alongside its human producers and consumers, imaginings that imbue the book and manuscript with a reflected humanity and personality that is [sic], realistically, denied by its physical limitations but are suggestive of the relationship between physical form and intellectual content, between present and meaning in both the physical book form and its electronic counterparts.101

The possibilities afforded by digital technologies have presented new conditions for critical and editorial scholarship, and some problems that were intractable in an earlier scholarly age, now no longer seem problematic. In this view, electronic editing of manuscript texts was a way of fulfilling the hopes of scholars like Rust and MacLeod, while gesturing toward the philosophical needs of the New Philologists, McGann, and McKenzie. The imaging potential of electronic and digital texts allows for focus to be trained on the physicality and originality of manuscripts, while the capacity of such electronic texts to contain multiple—and seemingly endless—versions of texts and other artefacts would allow readers to explore texts’ dynamism as well as their social and historical embeddedness. Furthermore, these new electronic compilations, with all of their additional materials can be considered new versions, and allow readers to play the role of producer and compilator as well, adding another dimension of sociality and dynamism to texts that, in analog form, had been purely static. Indeed, the revolution of this “digital turn” has manifest itself less as a particular kind of textual product, and more as a process. 1.7 Theory and praxis The belief in text-as-process, and of textual inquiry as an ongoing process of investigation and recreation is at the heart of my project. This dissertation examines the editorial histories of texts that survive in single-witness manuscripts, and investigates the way that the texts found in those single manuscripts were transformed as they made their way into early

100 Ray Siemens, “Foreword: Imagining the Manuscript and Printed Book in a Digital Age,” in Text Comparison and Digital Creativity: the Production of Presence and Meaning in Digital Text Scholarship, eds. Wido Van Peursen, Ernst D. Thoutenhoofd, and Adriaan van der Weel (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill, 2010), ix–xvii, at x. 101 Ibid., x.

35 modern and modern print versions. In order to lay the groundwork for this discussion, I think it is necessary to explore the two major traditions in Middle English editorial practice: the editorial traditions of Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales and of William Langland’s Piers Plowman. Both of these traditions, even at their simplest, are complex and would take volumes to discuss in detail; as such, I will give only a very brief summation of some of the conversations in the field. In many ways, a discussion of these works, both of which exist in many, many manuscript witnesses, would seem inappropriate as introduction to my project, which focuses entirely on texts which exist in single-witness manuscripts, since the editorial treatment of single-witness manuscripts would inevitably—or one would expect!—follow a single-text, rather than a best- text or other eclectic methodology. However, these traditions are important to my project for two reasons. First, Chaucer and Langland loom so large over late medieval English literary criticism that editorial practice of Middle English works has tended to be drawn from the methods established by editors within these traditions. I would argue that some of the early editorial decisions on these texts which I reconsider throughout this project were made based on principles determined by the editing of these highly canonical texts, even though the texts that I examine here require very different methodologies because of the scope of available witnesses. Second, major editorial scholars of the works of both Chaucer and Langland have identified the long shadow of early editorial decisions on the modern editorial tradition of their major works, and have suggested that editors and scholars need to reconsider the allegiance they have to early decisions in their work, even those that cannot be justified. I am making a similar argument throughout this project, and so tracing the way that recent editors and theorists of Piers Plowman and the Canterbury Tales make this argument lays the groundwork for my own exploration. 1.8 The Chaucerian Editorial Tradition The editorial tradition of the works of Chaucer has been dominated by the rationale of best-text criticism, and also by the idiosyncratic and often aesthetic judgments of its editors. The difficulty of editing complex texts from multiple witnesses cannot be understated, and so controversy is entirely expected. However, some recent editorial scholars have begun questioning the degree to which many decisions throughout the process have been made based on the authority of earlier editors and on aesthetic preferences while claiming to be made in deference to incontrovertible manuscript evidence. Allegiance to old principles of bibliography undoubtedly affects the structure and form of the textual editions that are produced, as has been

36 noted by many textual theorists and editors alike. In the introduction to his recent doctoral dissertation on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, Andrew Higl discusses the effect that the reliance on edited versions of The Canterbury Tales has had on scholarship in the field, arguing that “[t]he real problem is the ripple effect this has on how we read Chaucer.” Higl notes that “literary critics make arguments based on the texts that these editors produce,” and as a result “literary critics lose sight of the historically mismatched concepts of author, work, and text that underpin the edition on which they base their interpretations.”102

The history of editing the works of Chaucer—from the mid-nineteenth century through to the present day—is significantly dominated by a best-text methodology, even those editions that were produced before this methodology was so named. In his recent survey of a century of Chaucer editing, Charles Moorman asserts that

every major edition of the Canterbury Tales in our time is filled to the brim with emendations based on its editors’ self-professed knowledge of such imponderables as fourteenth-century pronunciation, metrical reading practices, spelling conventions, individual and shop scribal copying habits, on and on, matters about which we in reality know very little, and probably never shall know much.103

Moorman contends that these editorial trends aren’t just determined by the idiosyncrasies of the individual editors who have produced editions of Chaucer’s work, but rather that “the ghost of Housman’s haughty eclecticism dominates the last one hundred years of Chaucer textual scholarship.”104 Moorman concedes that “a number of the twentieth-century editors of Chaucer have succeeded in producing increasingly more sophisticated and more tasteful editions of the Canterbury Tales” but further notes that the “twentieth-century editing practices … are stuck in the mire of a point of view that rejects in the name of anti-technological and anti-scientific humanism any kind of methodology dependent upon purely objective criteria.”105

102 Higl, “Joining the Canterbury Tales: The Storytelling Game and the Interactive Network” (Unpublished Diss., Loyola University: Chicago, 2009), 9. 103 Moorman, “One Hundred Years of Editing the Canterbury Tales,” Chaucer Review 24.2 (1989): 99–114, at 107. 104 Ibid., 111. 105 Ibid., 106.

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While not all of the editions produced from the middle of the nineteenth century and surveyed by Moorman are best-text editions—in their self-evaluations and introductory claims, or actual methodologies—they all attend to a single manuscript. Moorman notes that “[t]he result is that while the editors do indeed exert from time to time their prerogatives in deviating from the text at hand, their editions are at least grounded in manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales that are early, reliable, and still extant.”106 The first of these is Thomas Wright’s The Canterbury Tales of Geoffrey Chaucer, published in three volumes between 1847 and 1851 for the Percy Society. Wright chose to work with London, British Library MS Harleian 7334, and as such was the first editor to use the “best-text” method, long before it was defined by it was named by Bédier in 1913.107 Likewise, for the edition of the B-text first published in 1869, W.W. Skeat acknowledged that he worked directly from the Ellesmere manuscript (currently San Marino, Huntington Library, EL 26 C 9) using the Furnivall transcription. He was the first editor other than Wright in the 400 years following Caxton to claim to work directly from a single manuscript text (in this case the Furnivall Six-Text transcription of El, which he faithfully copied)108 rather than from the editions of his predecessors Thomas Tyrwhitt and Wright. Skeat lists the errors of the editions that precede his, particularly those of Tyrwhitt109 and Wright, and notes multiple times that his edition has used El as the “basis of the text,” and that the manuscript readings “ha[ve] only been corrected in cases where careful collation suggests a desirable improvement.”110 Moorman, however, shows that “Skeat … in fact emends El some forty-three times in the General Prologue in ways that affect either the diction or the syntax of the original, not counting those almost innumerable instances in which he alters final e’s.”111 A. S. G.

106 Ibid., 100. 107 Discussed in Moorman, 100. Eleanor Hammond, in Chaucer: A Bibliographical Manual (New York: Macmillan, 1908), notes that G. W. Prothero’s Memoir of Henry Bradshaw (London: K. Paul, 1888), on the authority of Aldis Wright, states that Bradshaw refrained from editing the Canterbury Tales due to his “inability to account for the wide divergences which distinguish the Harleian manuscript” (178); this suggests that Wright’s choice of that manuscript as the base-text of his edition was deliberate, rather than out of the convenience or simplicity of that manuscript. 108 Frederick J. Furnivall, ed., A Six-Text Print of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales in Parallel Columns, 9 vols. (London: Chaucer Society, 1870–1902). 109 Thomas Tyrwhitt, ed. The Canterbury Tales of Chaucer, published in five volumes in 1775 (5 vols., London, 1775). 110 W.W. Skeat, The Complete Works of Geoffrey Chaucer: The Canterbury Tales, Text (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1896), vol. 4, xviii; cited Moorman, 101. 111 Moorman, 101.

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Edwards notes, furthermore, that Skeat “was much more than willing than he indicates to tinker with his text when there was manuscript support—any manuscript support.”112 Moorman argues that “while professing to be a conservative editor presenting a best-text edition, Skeat is in fact a conjecturalist manqué, intruding his own judgments whenever and in whatever direction the spirit moves him.”113

More recently, Robert Meyer-Lee claims that “modern editions of Chaucer obscure the actual uncertainties pertaining to the surviving texts and misrepresent how those texts would have been received by Chaucer’s contemporary audience.”114 In an article discussing the fragments of the Canterbury Tales, and particularly the divisions between Fragments IV and V: Meyers-Lee focuses on the connection between Fragments IV–V, the Merchant’s Endlink and Squire’s Headlink, arguing that the fragment break between 22 lines of MerE and the 8 lines of SqH is only attested in 2 inconsequential manuscripts. He argues, however, that,

[f]or most Chaucer critics today, these fragments are a basic given of the interpretive landscape of the Tales: they mark off that which we can be virtually certain Chaucer intended (the order of the tales within fragments) from that for which we have varying and contested degrees of uncertainty (the order of the fragments).115

For example, Larry Benson states in the introduction to the tales in The Riverside Chaucer that the Canterbury Tales “survives in ten fragments, labelled with Roman numerals in this edition (the alphabetical designations added in parentheses are those of the Chaucer Society, adopted by Skeat in his edition)” and states that “[t]hese fragments are editorial units determined by the existence of internal signs of linkage—bits of conversation or narrative that explicitly refer to a tale just told or to one that immediately follows.”116 Other critical editions of the text follow suit in stating that these divisions are part of the texts’ structures, rather than being the result of editorial decisions.

112 A. S. G. Edwards, “Walter W. Skeat,” in Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition, ed. Paul Ruggier (Norman: Pilgrim Books, 1984), 183. 113 Moorman, 103. 114 Robert Meyer-Lee, “Fragments IV and V of the Canterbury Tales Do Not Exist,” The Chaucer Review 45.1 (2010): 1–31, at 1. 115 Meyer-Lee, “Fragments IV and V,” 1–2. 116 Riverside Chaucer, ed. Derek Brewer (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), 5.

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However, Meyer-Lee argues that the fragment break was never founded on manuscript evidence but only on “nineteenth century … artistic assumption,” and thus that “the fragment break dividing MerE and SqH, as it occurs in the Riverside and most other modern editions, is not, in any legitimate way, for whatever manuscript tradition, a defensible editorial decision.” He counters, however, that

[t]o state that the “work survives in ten fragments” is not to assert that it survives physically thus, as a reader new to Chaucer studies might suppose, but rather to explain in shorthand that Chaucer editors have identified, through internal evidence, ten (relatively) stable sequences of tales in the existing manuscript collections. 117

He asserts instead that the ten fragments “do not in fact possess surviving codicological reality” and argues, indeed that “[a]s an editorial construct rather than a physical reality … the constitution of the fragments themselves, in addition to their order, is a product of interpretation and hence subject to debate.”118 He states, then, that the description of these textual divisions as “fragments” speaks of “a covert editorial imposition of assumptions about intention” which masquerades as “a marker of uncertainty about Chaucer’s intention.”119 He thus argues that “a properly critical attitude toward the modern Canterbury Tales edition—or, more specifically, its inherited editorial tradition—demands the elimination of fragments in this instance (or, less plausibly, a multiplication of them) rather than their recognition.”120 He observes, for example, that certain fragment breaks are maintained even if they were “initiated for reasons few if anyone would now defend.”121 He thus argues that these divisions “largely derive from now bankrupt literary interpretive assumptions” that have been inherited and adopted uncritically by editors, in spite of their incompatibility both with the nature of contemporary understanding of medieval manuscript culture and with the critical position of the editors themselves.122

117 Meyer-Lee, “Fragments IV and V,” 2. 118 Ibid. 119 Ibid., 3. 120 Ibid., 3. 121 Ibid., 28. 122 Ibid., 26.

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1.9 The Piers Plowman Tradition This same trend of sometimes unwitting commitment to past editors’ decisions has been identified in the editorial tradition of another major and complex work of the medieval period, William Langland’s Piers Plowman. Even more so than with the Chaucer tradition, it is not possible to discuss the editorial tradition of Piers Plowman in detail, due to space constraints and the necessary complexity of the subject matter, nor even to lay out the complex history of textual witnesses of the poem or outline the many editions of its various versions. Such analysis is the entire purpose of Charlotte Brewer’s 1993 Editing Piers Plowman, which discusses each edition and its editorial mission in great detail, and advances an argument about the philosophical biases that inhere in the editorial tradition of the text.123 Similar to Moorman and Meyer-Lee’s findings about continued allegiances in the Chaucerian tradition to early editorial decisions that are no longer supported by philosophical or scholarly belief, Brewer traces long-held assumptions about Piers Plowman to decisions made by Skeat and suggests the need to reconsider these foundations in order to explore otherwise unconsidered forms for the poem. Following Brewer, I will focus briefly on Skeat’s 1886 edition of the text, and the way that his decisions can still be found in current treatments of the poem. Brewer discusses Skeat’s deep influence on the modern editorial form of the poem, which I will trace in order to recapitulate Brewer’s argument that this long allegiance needs to be reconsidered and interrupted, an argument that matches my own argument throughout this dissertation.

Although he was not the first to edit Piers Plowman in the modern era, W. W. Skeat established the norms of editorial treatment of the poem. Skeat argued that among the many manuscript versions there may be ten forms of the poem, only three of which can be considered authoritative, which he named the A, B, and C-texts. Each of these versions represents distinct manuscript traditions that can be traced back to different stages of authorial revision: the A-text was the earliest (c. 1367–70); the B-text was the next, which revises and adds new material to A, and is significantly longer (c. 1377–79); and the C-text was last, which revises B (c. 1380s).124 Skeat argued that the A-text was incomplete, and that the C-text was corrupt; he therefore

123 Charlotte Brewer, Editing Piers Plowman: the Evolution of the Text (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 124 W. W. Skeat, ed., The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1886).

41 justified basing his first edition of the poem on a B-text manuscript that he believed to be an authorial holograph: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Laud Misc. 581. His perspective on the poem and its many versions was that there were three authorial texts that were no longer in existence in their original form, but that could be reconstructed by identifying corruption, error, and incorrect scribal interference in the extant manuscripts, and cleansing the text of those influences. Skeat finally produced editions of both A and C as well: in editing the C-text, he came upon another version, in Oxford, Bodleian MS 851, after he had all but finished his editorial work on the poem: he named this version the Z-text, and dismissed it as a scribal construction.

Skeat’s editorial attitudes, and particularly the dedication to root out corruption in order to identify the stable, authoritative texts, can still be seen in the work of George Kane, especially in the editions by Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, and Kane and George Russell, published by the Athlone Press. In the introductory material of Kane’s 1960 Athlone edition of Piers Plowman A, Kane notes clearly that editors’ personal preferences could find their way into editions under the guise of critical interpretations: he stated that editors “very often found mistakes in their exemplar where, so far as can now be discerned, none actually existed” and that such cases often occurred when “the wording of the exemplar seemed less good than they themselves could make it.”125 Kane’s edition thus acknowledges that it is sometimes necessary to allow the copy-text to stand as is, rather than revising it, but also asserts that the editing of Piers Plowman A presented few circumstances where this was an issue. The editing of the longer B version, by Kane and Donaldson fifteen years later, however, required a far more active editorial hand, and there were far fewer points where the copy-text could stand uncontested. The manner in which the passages in B were contested was by parallel comparison with the earlier-edited A and C—Kane and Donaldson claimed to be recognizing “correct” readings, restoring readings from the older text and introducing readings from the newer as a way of altering the content and style of the B text, including replacing many garbled readings found in extant B manuscripts and removing apparent scribal voice. The choice to alter the B readings based on these readings produces several problems, given that many of the readings present in the critical edition of the A text were chosen

125 George Kane, ed. Piers Plowman: the Three Versions (London: Athlone Press, 1960), 130; cited in Robert Adams, “The Kane-Donaldson Edition of Piers Plowman: Eclecticism’s Ultima Thule,” Text 16 (2006): 131–41, at 131.

42 somewhat at random, based largely on the arbitrary choice of copy-text. They supported Skeat’s belief that the three known versions of Piers Plowman shared authorship. However, they could not reconcile the less-effective-but-later B readings with the A: why would the author change the text, and then change it back in the C version? They thus attributed these changes to scribal corruption, thus assuming that those scribes were “uniquely incompetent in comparison with the scribes who produced the archetypes of the other two Piers Plowman versions.” Brewer argues that editions of Piers Plowman, even those committed to different editorial principles, remain deeply committed to older practice simply because editors early in the tradition made decisions whose rationale has never been queried and thus whose rationale has never been interrogated.

New information about the text that comes from a reconsideration of the Z-MSS, especially, exposes how problematic this is, as many readings found in Z are also found in some of the B-MSS, which brings into question the fact that Z was rejected, since “the ‘contaminated’ quality of Z is one of the reasons Kane rejects this version as scribally corrupt.”126 Not just Kane, though, but all editors of the poem have made decisions based on this kind of inherited reasoning: indeed, trickle-down rationale is the mainstay of scholarship founded on the authority of past scholars, and thus the editorial tradition of all texts is dominated by decisions made in this way. In the case of the troubling effect of reconsideration of Z-MSS of Piers Plowman, Brewer articulates that if editors approach the task, as all past editors have,

that editing any one version of the poem entails consulting the other versions, and only coming to a conclusion in the light of consideration of all the manuscripts of all the versions, then the discovery of Z means that all the editing of the poem carried out in ignorance of this version must be done again. For if Z is an authentic witness to a fourth authorial version of the poem, then it too must be consulted for its equivalent test when editing each of the other three versions.127

The possibility of the need for yet more editions is not a surprise, but the source of this reality, in this case, opens up myriad questions about the nature of the “definitive” edition, as well as the questions: once we admit that the foundation is shaky, how do we define the authority of a text at all, and who, if anyone, gets to make that call?

126 Ibid. 127 Ibid., 423.

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The advent of electronic editing, and of the possibility of hypertext and eventually digital editions promised to deliver both editorial scholars and readers from these difficulties. The first of these projects relating specifically to Piers Plowman was a visionary project by Hoyt Duggan, who claims that the new medium circumvents all of the problems of the physical book-form and thus offers up radical new ways of presenting such a complex text as Piers Plowman: he notes that “[r]eal methodological issues divide eclecticists”; however, “[a]n electronic edition can accommodate scholars who prefer a ‘best text’ documentary tradition as well as those who want the best possible modern editorial reconstruction.”128 Indeed, since “[e]ditors of electronic texts, unlike earlier editors of printed editions, need not suppress or conceal editorial agreement nor impose spurious notions of authority,” editors can “instead, exploit editorial agreement and embrace the provisional nature of scholarly editing.”129 Duggan claims that “[i]n the world enabled by electronic texts, theoretical differences formerly thought to be irreconcilable need no longer prevent dissemination of textual evidence.”130 Charlotte Brewer likewise notes that the reality of Piers Plowman editing and criticism at the tail end of the 20th century is the recognition of more work to do, that even after the completion of the massive editorial undertaking of the Athlone edition and indeed because of it, we need simply start over to move forward. Brewer articulates a recognizable let-down: the feeling, after supposedly completing a massive undertaking, that the reward for completion is the need to start over again, to do it again, from the beginning, once more with feeling. This is, indeed, what editors of “definitive editions” have promised to prevent, and so the kinds of interrogation that lead to a recognition of the need to re-do centuries of work may seem like a move in the wrong direction. Indeed, on the terms of value of the “definitive edition,” these interrogations are moving in the wrong direction: away from conceptions of recoverable intention, of narrative unity.131

128 Duggan, The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive (1994), http://piers.chass.ncsu.edu/; cited Charlotte Brewer, 427. 129 Duggan, The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive; cited Brewer, 426. 130 Duggan, cited Brewer, 427. In addition to Duggan’s long-standing Electronic Archive, there have been some other recent advancements in some of these theoretical directions: see, for example, Angela Bennet Segler’s dissertation, Digital Piers Plowman, as well as discussions of digital materiality on her personal website, at http://www.angelabennettsegler.net/dissertation. See also Timothy Stinson and James Knowles, “Special Report: The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive on the Web: An Introduction,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 28 (2014): 225–38. 131 Since Brewer’s influential study, there has been an outpouring of work on the Piers Plowman editorial tradition that echo her calls to action. See, for example, Robert Adams, “Editing Piers Plowman B: The Imperative of an Intermittently Critical Edition,” Studies in Bibliography 45 (1992): 31–68; John M. Bowers, "Piers Plowman's

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Investigating the “inheritance” and uncritical adoption of past editors’ decisions is precisely the motivation behind this study, as is the drive to supplant desire for definitive editions of canonical Middle English texts with a desire to engage in curious exploration of the texts—in all of their various forms—as process. For each of the manuscripts that I examine, I will be looking at specific editorial decisions in order to identify the reason why the decision was made initially. This, first of all, will help to rationalize decisions that may seem, to me, unreasonable; but, like Meyer-Lee, I hope also to show where the decision is kept in the work of later editors even once the initial rationale has fallen away, or—more insidiously—when the initial rationale would not be thought tenable. Throughout each of the following chapters, and for very different reasons with regards each of the different texts, I hope to show the deep influence left by first impressions of texts and the difficulty of shifting readers’ commitment that these impressions establish. 1.10 In Summary A large part of this project is the process of questioning the way that the study of Middle English texts has been so often divorced from study of the texts’ existence in their manuscript form. Some of this divorce is inevitable: medieval texts are generally encountered, at least initially, in a modern critical and modern editorial form; and often, even specialists will study these texts primarily in highly edited forms, simply due to the logistics of manuscript study. When manuscript form is introduced back into discussions, differences can become evident that cannot be rationalized, some of which can be traced back to points at which the manuscript was first transcribed and transformed into modern, and especially into scholarly editions. In spite of many advances in editorial theory specifically of medieval texts, old principles are still influential on editorial practice.

William Langland: Editing the Text, Writing the Author's Life,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 9 (1995): 65– 102; Andrew Galloway, “Uncharacterizable Entities: The Poetics of Middle English Scribal Culture and the Definitive Piers Plowman” Studies in Bibliography 52 (1999): 59–87; and The Penn Commentary on Piers Plowman, Volume 1: C Prologue-Passus 4; B Prologue-Passus 4; A Prologue-Passus 4. Vol. 1 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); Lawrence Warner, The Lost History of Piers Plowman: The Earliest Transmission of Langland's Work (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011); and "The Ur-B Piers Plowman and the earliest production of C and B,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 16 (2002): 3–39; Noelle Phillips, “Families, Fictions, and Seeing Through Things: Re-reading Langland, Chaucer, and the Pearl-Poet” (Unpublished PhD diss., University of British Columbia, 2011); and George Kane, Piers Plowman: the Evidence for Authorship (New York: A&C Black, 2014).

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In the introduction to Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty- First Century, Vincent Gillespie and Anne Hudson note that

those who have been involved in the production of both editorial and interpretative or historical studies will usually agree that it is the first that is the more demanding. Whereas the critic can, if the evidence is too elusive, confused, or incomprehensible, redirect his track to circumvent the problem, there is no escape from the demand to make the edited text comprehensible and transparent—the text sets the problem which cannot be avoided.132

I do not want to imply that the application of theoretical advances to editorial practice is easy: in fact, I am not even suggesting that it is possible. Practice lags behind theory in every field for very good reason: editing—like politics and architecture—is a practice of material possibility. But I believe that, sometimes, the reason that ostensibly-possible advancement stalls can be found not at the field’s leading edge, but at its foundations. The fundamental structures upon which systems are built might seem to be so basic and so familiar that the considering other possible structures can seem irrelevant; or, even, those foundations might be so familiar that they are, essentially, invisible and so beyond reconsideration entirely. In editorial practice, I would argue that inherited choices are examples of these invisible-and-therefore-irreproachable foundations. As much as this project has been about critiquing the material manifestations of practical editorial decisions, my critique is actually less about editorial practice than it is about interrogating the foundations of editorial practice that seem immutable in the hope that, perhaps, the horizon of possibility might eventually be pushed back.

This project engages questions rather than answers throughout, offering not solutions but hopefully active ways forward. It could be argued that this is the motivating impulse of every kind of scholarship from every age: to read texts anew and to expose in them something that has not yet been seen. However, it seems that we are at a moment of enormous potential for scholarship that is grounded in curiosity and driven by a willingness to try to open up what is, ostensibly, closed, just to see what comes out when we do. It is easier now than ever before to

132 Probable Truth: Editing Medieval Texts from Britain in the Twenty-First Century, eds. Vincent Gillespie and Anne Hudson (Brepols: 2013), 1.

46 access literary texts, criticism, and scholarship from every era, and digital technology makes it possible to peruse even very rare editions with relative ease. Furthermore, these editions can be examined in conjunction with visual manuscript evidence, as digital images of medieval manuscripts are easily accessible, as are many early printed books. The digital turn has made possible kinds of editorial practice that have never been possible before. This includes, of course, making visible the dynamism of medieval manuscript variants without having to choose the “correct” reading or obliterate the “corrupt”; and bringing together seamlessly texts that are physically apart but which, theoretically, might fit together. But the radical power of these tools includes also the possibility of taking texts that have been made smooth by editorial processes that eliminate irregularities or irreconcilabilities and breaking them apart again, laying their parts bare, and figuring out what to do with the pieces. In a discussion of the digital humanities, Mark Sample argues, for example, that the goal should no longer be to put those broken texts back together again––that theories like deformance do not go far enough in disrupting modes of criticism, and that “creative analysis” is an antidote to “critical thinking” which he calls “a hazardous term with an all but meaningless definition.” In order to do that, he looks to create “systems that break other systems,” naming digital technology as the tool that can allow scholars “to make and remake texts” and “to produce meaning after meaning.” He states:

I don’t want to put Humpty Dumpty back together. Let him lie there, a cracked shell oozing yolk. He is broken. And he is beautiful. The smell, the colours, the flow, the texture, the mess. All of it, it is unavailable until we break things.133

He states that “In [his] vision of the deformed humanities, there is little need to go back to the original. We work ... not to go back to the original text with a revitalized perspective but to make an entirely new text or artifact.”134 While I have been emboldened by Sample’s work, and believe that the principles of creative destruction are very useful for reconsidering well-worn texts, I hope that my own exploration does not delight so much in breaking down what has come before and rejoicing in its destruction; rather, I hope that new possibilities might co-exist alongside the old.

133 Mark Sample’s blog, SampleReality, entry for May 2nd, 2012. http://www.samplereality.com/ 134 Ibid.

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In Textual Transgressions, David Greetham argues that “genuine” textual criticism, like that practiced by Lachmann, Skeat, Greg, and others, involves “the training of the mind not just to accept a reading because it exists in a ‘good’ manuscript or early edition, but to question a text and respond to it using all the technical, scholarly, linguistic, (and yes, aesthetic) judgement that one has acquired in one’s education.”135 I would argue that we need to apply Greetham’s definition of textual criticism, and apply it not just to manuscripts but to editions themselves. Readers and students of Middle English texts primarily encounter these texts through editions, and through scholarship determined—again primarily—by edited texts. It could be argued that editors, no matter what theoretical principles determine their practice, prefigure the possible range of encounters that readers have with those texts; as Ralph Hanna III has noted, “[t]he community is only as in touch with its text as its last editor was.”136 The possible range of these encounters can be expanded, but only by deciding to become committed to a kind of curious interrogation of everything we have come to trust about the texts in our literary canon. Greetham notes, “[o]nly by...active subversions can we test and measure the value we unconsciously ascribe to the comfortable and familiar.”137 Throughout the following three chapters of this dissertation, this is precisely what I try to do.

135 David Greetham, Textual Transgressions: Essays Toward the Construction of a Biobibliography (New Haven: Routledge, 1993), 53. 136 Hanna, Ralph III, “Annotation as Social Practice,” in Annotation and Its Texts, ed. Stephen A. Barney (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 178–84, at 179. 137 Greetham, Textual Transgressions, 539.

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Chapter 2 : The Pearl Manuscript

Pearl, Cleanness, Patience, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight are four Middle English poems currently contained in London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x. This manuscript contains the only extant copy of each of these poems. In this chapter, I will trace the history of this manuscript, looking at ways in which the editors of the poems in the manuscript have treated issues of textual layout, orthography, and the types of interpretive intervention that are brought into modern versions of the texts, particularly emendations and modern syntactical punctuation. This chapter looks at some representative editorial decisions that have been made in the 150 years of Cotton Nero A.x.’s editorial history. In this discussion, I will focus my attention on three different levels of the four texts: 1) on the level of the individual texts and their layout; 2) on the level of punctuation and syntax; and 3) on the level of words, and the glosses and emendations that have been added for clarification of meaning. In all of this, I will show that the manuscript is structured, essentially, to draw attention to the poems and that their manuscript housings trouble the idea that there is a single, normalized way to read. They do this by suggesting that front-to-back reading is always slightly novel, or at least that it should not be taken for granted, and thus by suggesting that other ways of reading are always possible. Essentially, I will argue that the texts in the manuscript demand a kind of “recursive” reading style that Martha Rust has argued is typical of medieval reading, discussed briefly in the introduction.1 The poems themselves draw attention to their linear, forward-moving plots while also suggesting to readers the need for re-reading, for revisiting, for retreading the ground of the plot; the physical form operates according to these same principles of recursive reading, and lays the groundwork for such reading throughout the manuscript. By discussing particular editorial choices, I will explore ways of reconsidering the texts, and discuss what we might be able to see

1 For a discussion of this medieval “recursive” reading style, see Martha Rust, “Revertere! Penitence, Marginal Commentary, and the Recursive Path of Right Reading,” in Reading and Literacy: In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Ian Frederick Moulton (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004). See also Sarah Noonan, “Bodies of Parchment: Representing the Passion and Reading Manuscripts in Late Medieval England,” Unpublished dissertation, (Washington University in St. Louis, 2010); “‘Bycause the redyng shold not turne hem to enoye’: Reading, Selectivity, and Pietatis Affectum in Late Medieval England,” New Medieval Literatures 15 (2013): 225–254; and “Private Reading and the Rolls of the Symbols of the Passion,” The Journal of the Early Book Society for the Study of Manuscripts and Printing History 15 (2012): 289–301. See also Mary Carruthers, The Craft of Thought: Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200 (Cambridge University Press, 2002); The Book of Memory (Cambridge University Press, 1992), esp. p. 224; and “The Art of Memory and the Art of Page Layout in the Middle Ages,” Diogenes 49.4 (2002): 20–30.

49 in them if we do not already think we know what they contain. By exploring the possible roots of some of the “authoritative” decisions made in these texts’ forms, and wondering what else might be, I will explore how a curiousity-driven practice might produce perspectives, not that replace discussions of authority or correctness, but that mobilize them in new and productive ways. Textual Divisions In this first section, I will explore the physical layout of Cotton Nero A.x., and discuss the ways that this layout has been interpreted in modern editions and literary criticism. My focus in this discussion is three-fold: I will look at 1) the structural divisions in Pearl, Cleanness, and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight; 2) the stanza divisions in Cleanness and Pearl; and 3) the placement of the bob-lines in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. 2.1 Structural divisions: Stanza Groups, Themes, and Fitts The divisions that have been made visible in modern editions of all of Cotton Nero A.x’s poems are based on the presence of illuminated capital letters throughout the manuscript. There are 48 such illuminated capital letters of various sizes in the manuscript, all of which are drawn in blue with red flourishes. In his study of the illuminated capitals in the manuscritpt, Paul Reichardt notes that the “capitals are clearly meant to signal the beginning of each of the four poems and to distinguish among units of narrative within the poems.”2 In the manuscript’s first poem, Pearl, there are twenty-one such capital letters: the first is eighteen lines high, and elaborately decorated; nineteen of the remaining twenty occur every sixty lines, the twenty-first having been, it seems, misplaced at line 961.3 Reichardt remarks that “the use of capitals in Pearl to mark the opening of each new stanza group suggests that they have been placed with due attention to the content of the texts.”4 Reichardt sees these markers as denoting shifts in the story, as markers of forward movement within the poem’s plot. While Reichardt’s argument is compelling, his claim that the capitals are markers of content does not adequately recognize the

2 Paul Reichardt, “Paginal Eyes, Faces among the Ornamented Capitals of MS Cotton Nero A.x, Art. 3,” Manuscripta 36 (1992): 22–36, at 22. 3 Reichardt remarks: “one ornamented capital in Pearl seems ‘misplaced’, since the sixteenth stanza-group is accorded two capitals, one at its beginning on f. 51v and another on f. 52r, just one stanza prior to the opening of the seventeenth stanza group. If indeed the second of these capitals is erroneously placed, it would be a most uncharacteristic feature of the decoration of Pearl since all other capitals in the poems correspond precisely to textual junctures and transitions to new link-words at the beginning of each stanza-group” (30n2). 4 Ibid., 22.

50 structural role of the capitals throughout the poem: the capitals in Pearl occur at points of structural importance, of formal shift, and serve to draw attention to the poems’ other structural and formal features. The capitals serve to unite the regular alliterative rhyme-scheme of the poem with another of the poems unifying rhyme schemes, namely the concatenation words: each capital marks the point where the rhyming concatenation word shifts—the feature of the poem that turns the six-by-twelve line alliterative sets from a plot-driven linear story to a cyclical, iterative set of twenty linked rings.5

Cleanness has been similarly divided. The poem is 1812 lines long and is demarcated, in sections of apparently irregular length, by 13 large decorated initials. The largest of these capital letters is the poem’s opening “C,” and extends eight lines high; the next largest extends well past four lines in height, extending above the lineated text into blank space (line 1157); one other (line 557) is four lines high; and the other ten capital letters are of three lines each. These capital letters have been widely interpreted, by editors and critics alike, as establishing a thematic structure in the poem, and these capitals are used as division markers by many editors. Cleanness was first edited by Richard Morris in 1864, who divides the poem into the thirteen sections indicated by the manuscript’s thirteen decorated initials. In 1920, Robert J. Menner makes thirteen divisions to the text, as well as subdividing the manuscript’s final three sections. Israel Gollancz’s edition of 1921 acknowledges that the capital letters served a structural purpose, but his edition divides the poem into only three main sections: these divisions correspond to the three largest of the capital letters, and occur at the first, the seventh and the twelfth of the illuminated capitals. This structure is taken up by J. J. Anderson’s 1977 edition as well, which also notes the placement of the smaller capitals throughout.6 In their 1978 edition, Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron argue that “[w]hile these [capitals] often occur at important transitions in the poems, they are located unevenly and sometimes arbitrarily, apparently by scribal rather than

5 For discussion of the structure of Pearl, see for example Clark S. Northup, “A study of the metrical structure of the Middle English poem The Pearl,” Publications of the Modern Language Association of America (1897): 326–340; Margaret P. Medary, “Stanza-Linking in Middle English Verse,” Romanic Review 7 (1916): 243; Ian Bishop, Pearl in its setting: A critical study of the structure and meaning of the Middle English poem (Blackwell, 1968); Osgar D. Macrae-Gibson, “Pearl: The link-words and the thematic structure,” Neophilologus 52.1 (1968): 54–64; and Susanna Greer Fein, “Twelve-Line Stanza Forms in Middle English and the Date of Pearl,” Speculum 72.2 (1997): 367–398. 6 Richard Morris, ed. Early English Alliterative Poems (EETS OS 1, 1864); Purity, Robert J. Menner ed. (New Haven, 1920). Cleanness, Israel Gollancz, ed. (London, Part I, 1921, Part II, 1933). Patience, J. J. Anderson, ed. (New York, 1977).

51 authorial choice.”7 Several critics of Cleanness have taken up the issue of the capitals as structural markers: for example, in “The Architechtonics of Cleanness,” Donna Crawford argues “that the capital letters do indicate important divisions in the poem” as “the structure created by the sectional divisions provided a frame within which the verbal artifice of the poem could be constructed.”8 R.J. Spendal’s 1976 study of the function of the capitals in the poem argues that, “when viewed as thematic rather than narrative guides, the capitals … point to a network of parallel passages in the text” which “epitomize the central moral concerns of the poem.”9

Indeed, most editions and criticism of both Pearl and Cleanness are based on the rationale that the capitals throughout both poems have structural and primarily divisive functions. The regularity of the illuminated capitals in Pearl and Cleanness has led to assumptions that the function of capitals throughout the rest of the manuscript is to establish structural divisions. As a result, capitals that do not seem to serve an obvious purpose have been left without comment, and have largely been ommitted from editions of the poems. Most of the capitals throughout the manuscript do serve to signal structural shifts and mark changes between different sections of the text, either by marking the mid-point (as in Patience) or by marking thematic shifts (as in Cleanness). However, there are other capital letters throughout the manuscript that do not exclusively or obviously serve the purpose of noting divisions in the text, and the application of the logic of exclusively divisional significance of the capitals might inadvertently obfuscate the other functions these letters might serve. 2.2 Divisions in SGGK The divisions in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in particular, are based on the logic of this understanding that the manuscript’s illuminated capitals signal structural divisions. This text was first edited in 1839 by Sir Fredrick Madden, who describes the manuscript as follows: “There are no titles or rubrics, but the divisions are marked by large initial letters of blue, flourished with red.”10 He then goes on to briefly discuss the manuscript as a whole. Madden divides his edition of the text into four fitts, which he notes in square bracketed capital letter

7 Andrew and Waldron, eds. The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript (University of California Press, 1978), 25. 8 Donna Crawford, “Architechtonics of Cleanness,” Studies in Philology 90.1 (1993): 29–45; at 32. 9 “The Manuscript Capitals in Cleanness,” Notes & Queries 221 (1976): 340–341; at 340. 10 Sir Frederick Madden, xlvii.

52 titles centered above the text—“fytte the first,” “fytte the second,” and so on. Since Madden had noted the large initials that marked divisions in the text, and his text had four “fyttes,” an attentive reader would likely assume that there were four initials marking the beginnings of the four “fyttes” in the text.

A second edition of the poem was prepared in 1864 by Richard Morris for the Early English Text Society. In the preface, Morris states: “In re-editing the present romance-poem I have been saved all labour of transcription by using the very accurate text contained in Sir Frederick Madden’s ‘Syr Gawayne’.”11 After this initial deferral to Sir Madden, Morris claims: “I have not only read his copy with the manuscript, but also the proof-sheets as they came to hand, hoping by this means to give the reader a text free from any errors of transcription.” The final words of his preface direct the reader seeking specific information about the manuscript in which the poem is contained to refer to the first volume of the Early English Text Society’s text, entitled Early English Alliterative Poems, published in 1863, which contains Morris’ own transcriptions of the other three poems from the Cotton Nero manuscript. The section to which Morris refers is, in fact, quoted from Madden’s Introduction to his 1839 edition, quoted above. It is understandable that Morris would rely on the transcription of this never-before-edited manuscript, but it is also interesting to note the differences in their perspectives that are revealed by his acknowledgement. Madden acknowledged the importance to the largest of the capital letters, and used them to establish structure to the poem; however, he clearly did not find the smaller capitals throughout to have a structural role in the poem. On the other hand, Morris, in his earlier transcription of the other three poems, took account of all the illuminated capitals of all sizes. However, his final transcription follows Madden’s structure in dividing the text into four parts according to the priniciple that the large illuminated capitals mark divisions.

Sir Israel Gollancz’s 1924 edition was a photographic facsimile of the entire Cotton Nero A.x manuscript, complete with introduction, glossary, and chart of editorial apparatus, which constituted the emendations of his predecessors, as well as his own critical treatment of the manuscript and the critical editions that preceded him.12 While Madden and Morris’s editions

11 Morris, ed., Sir Gawayne and the Green Knight (London, EETS OS 4, 1864), iv. 12 For a lengthy discussion of Gollancz’s involvement with the text of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, see Paul Reichardt’s “Sir Israel Gollancz and the editorial history of the Pearl Manuscript,” Papers on Literature and Language 31:2 (1995): 145–63. This article not only gives a thorough background to the manuscript’s nineteenth-

53 were entirely transcriptions, Gollancz’s facsimile edition provided a view of the manuscript unavailable to most readers of the texts, a view that exposed that although the text had been divided into four fitts, there are actually nine illuminated capitals throughout the text. The first critical attention to the presence and details of the illuminated initials is paid by Tolkien and Gordon, who note two important points that had not been mentioned before regarding the divisions and the capital letters that mark them. The first is that at the points where Madden divided the text (between line 490 and 491, 1125 and 1126, and 1997 and 1998) there is a line, the equivalent height of a single line of text, that does not contain any text but contains pen-work flourishes. For example, the middle of folio 117/121v looks like this:

The capital “N” is large at six-lines high. However, there is also a blank line that separates line 1998 from line 1999: in other words, there is a physical space and, because of the extended rubrications, a decorative line between the end of fitt 3 and the beginning of fitt 4.

The other two large capitals which occur at these points of internal fitt divisions have similar long red flourishes that extend horizontally across the page, which can be seen clearly as a result of the blank line. Of the use of this space in the manuscript, Tolkien and Gordon support the fitt divisions that Madden introduced, noting that “[he] was clearly right in accepting them as structural divisions … having the authority of the author.”13 But while Madden claims to divide the poem based on the capital letters at these points, Tolkien and Gordon place the authority on the dividing lines that accompany the capital letters. Seeing the divisions between the fitts in this

century editorial trajectory, but it also suggests that Gollancz himself was aware of the potential harm inherent in the editorial process and that he worked tirelessly avoid misediting the text, even going so far as to correct his own earlier emendations in subsequent publications. 13 J.R.R. Tolkien and Eric Gordon, ed. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Oxford University Press, 1936), xii.

54 way—representing divisions in the layout of the text on the manuscript page rather than the capital letters as markers of structural division—then the significance of the four larger initials is no longer obvious, and neither is the relative insignificance of the smaller five. On the smaller capitals, Tolkien and Gordon state that while they “may be held to mark a distinct stage in the story, there are equally important stages which are not so marked; and these lesser capitals can hardly have been so systematically planned … as the major ones were.”14 Most scholars since Tolkien and Gordon have agreed with their assessment. In 1970, A.C. Spearing notes that the placement of the capitals was done by a scribe who used the initials “somewhat freely and without making a very close study of the parts into which the poem falls.”15 In their 1978 edition of the poem, Malcolm Andrew and Ronald Waldron note that the capitals are largely arbitrarily placed, according to scribal rather than authorial fiat: thus they interpreted the capitals “as marking distinct divisions in the text only in the case of the four extra large and prominent initials at G 1, 491, 1126, and 1998, which have traditionally been accepted by editors as marking the beginnings of four narrative fitts.”16 Indeed, with the exception of a very few, all editions of SGGK follow the four-fitt structure, a structure that has affected literary criticsm of the poem as much as it has the poem’s modern editorial form.

It is important to note, though, the variance in the size of capitals throughout Cotton Nero A.x, and the different importance granted to capital letters of the same size in different parts of the manuscript. Recall the discussion above about the illuminated capitals that mark the divisions between the six-stanza groups in Pearl: while the first capital in the poem is an enormous fifteen lines, and the next capital in the poem—the “F” at line 61—is four-lines high, the remainder of the capitals are three lines high. The first capital letter in SGGK is approximately eleven lines high17, two of the capitals that are used as structural markers are six lines high, and the other is four lines high;18 the remainder of the capitals throughout SGGK are three-lines high. In other

14 Ibid. 15 A.C. Spearing, The Gawain-Poet (Cambridge University Press, 1970), 43. 16 Andrew and Waldron, eds, The Poems of the Pearl Manuscript, 52. 17 The capital “S” that begins the poem descends the length of eight lines of text; however, it extends upwards into the upper margin the equivalent of approximately three lines, so it’s size is equivalent to an eleven-line-high capital, rather than an eight-line-high capital. 18 The four and six line capitals follow a blank line into which the rubrication extends.

55 words, most of the capital letters interpreted as structural markers in Pearl are the same size as those universally assessed as insignificant structural markers in SGGK.

The five three-line capitals in SGGK do not appear to establish the kind of formal organization as do the three-line capitals in Pearl, which mark the crossing point of two of the poem’s major rhyme schemes. However, it is possible that these five capitals serve a different kind of function, one that is more formal than structural, and that does not work by dividing, but by marking out points of emphasis in conjunction with the divisions doubly-marked by the larger capitals and the line-breaks. Or, perhaps, all nine initials—relatively large and relatively small, with divisions and without—establish other formal patterns that the fitt divisions make difficult to see. One possibility that I would like to explore here is that, while these capitals may not have a single function as a set, they serve a purpose by being visual markers in the poem’s form. That is to say, these illuminated capital letters’ function is to catch a reader’s attention, interrupt the visual field, and to do so in a manner that invites consideration of content, of structure, of form, without altering it in specific ways. An interesting case-in-point is the capital “T” that is found at line 619. It is 3-lines high, extends upward into the lines above, and extends slightly into the line

below: . Far from being only a local interruption, there is a significant ripple-effect of presence of even this very small initial, which disrupts the normalcy of the entire page. In terms of plot, this capital “T” comes at the opening of Gawain’s first arming scene, and thus marks out the stanza which begins the lengthy explication of the pentangle:

Then þay schewed hym þe schelde, þat was of schyr goulez

Wyth þe pentangel depaynt of pure golde hwez;

He braydez hit by þe bauderyk, aboute þe hals kestes.

þat bisemed þe segge semlyly fayre

And quy þe pentangel apendez to þat prynce noble

I am in tent yow to telle, þof tary hy me schulde ... (619–624) and so on. The importance of this passage has been discussed at length by many critics, and the discussion of the five-fold meaning of the pentangle is widely treated as fundamental to the

56 figural meaning of the poem as a whole.19 This passage has been used by critics to generate a characterization of Gawain as “the pentangle knight,”20 and the features described in the passage are given a great deal of weight in analysis of Gawain’s behaviour throughout the poem, particularly by attributing to him the perfection of the pentangle. Several critics have discussed the significance of this passage based on its register of sincerity. David Aers states of the pentangle passage:

There is no hint of irony here. Nor is there any in these lines being introduced by an account of how “alle his afyaunce” was in the five wounds that Christ received on his horrid cross, wounds representing an act of non-violence as the solution to human problems. And given the behaviour of English Christian knights … why should there be any irony here for one identified with that class?21

Among other virtues that Aers draws from Gawain’s characterization within this passage, Gawain’s capacity for truth, loyalty and deep “afyaunce” with Christ are central. They are likewise central to the reader’s ability to believe that Gawain is behaving according to the various codes to which he is bound, as the plot unfolds and his motivations are hidden from us.

In light of the interpretation of Gawain drawn out of this passage, the letter that begins this important section is worth considering more closely, in spite of its relative smallness. While it is not more rubricated or decorated than the other initials in the manuscript, it contains a tiny human face which seems to be looking directly at the text and which has a distinct downturned

19 See for example: Gerald Morgan, “Significance of the Pentangle,” The Modern Language Review 74.4 (1979): 769–790; Robert W. Ackerman, “Gawain’s Shield: Penitential Doctrine in Gawain and the Green Knight,” Anglia- Zeitschrift fur englische Philologie 76 (1958): 254–265; Roger Lass, “‘Man’s Heaven’: The Symbolism of Gawain’s Shield,” Mediaeval Studies 28 (1966): 354–360; Laura F. Hodges, “‘Syngne’, ‘Conysaunce’, ‘Deuys’ : Three Pentangles in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Arthuriana (1995) : 22–31; and A.V.C. Schmidt, “‘Latent Content’ and ‘The Testimony in the Text: Symbolic Meaning in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Review of English Studies 38, no. 150 (1987): 145–168. 20 For discussions of Gawain as “pentangle”-knight, see for example: Stephanie J. Hollis, “‘The Pentangle Knight’: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Chaucer Review 15.3 (1981) : 267–281; Conor McCarthy, “Luf-Talking in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Neophilologus 92 no. 1 (2008): 155–162; and Theodore Silverstein, “Sir Gawain in a Dilemma, or Keeping Faith with Marus Tullius Cicero,” Modern Philology 75 no. 1 (1977): 1–17. Several critics have taken issue with the sincerity of Gawain’s affiliation with the pentangle: see for example Catherine Batt, “Gawain’s Antifeminist Rant, the Pentangle, and Narrative Space,” Yearbook of English Studies 22 (1992): 117– 139; Geraldine Heng, “Feminine Knots and the Other in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” PMLA (1991): 500– 514; and Ralph Hanna III, “Unlocking What's Locked: Gawain’s Green Girdle,” Viator 14 (1983): 289–302. 21 David Aers, Community, Gender, and Individual Identity: English Writing, 1360–1430 (Taylor and Francis, 1988), 161.

57 mouth.22 The presence of a face here brings to mind the possibility of an outward perspective on the text and the events that the text recounts. Viewers of the face are invited to consider their own perspective on the text and on Gawain. This expression draws attention to skepticism in the language of the passage. To my eye, the little face looks skeptical: frowning and giving me significant side-eye, this little man looks like he has doubts about what he is hearing and witnessing. That a face is reading this passage, in particular, with a look even hinting at doubt suggests a possible irony at play in the description of the pentangle, or perhaps, the inappropriateness of the attribution of these characteristics to Gawain. For this reading, the “for soþe” of line 656 is particularly notable, which the narrator uses to qualify Gawain’s status as the pentangle knight. On the level of the language of this passage, “for soþe” might be unremarkable. However, when I read this expression within a passage about Gawain’s

perfection, while looking at this face— —“for soþe” has a slight ring of protest, insinuating a hint of irony on the characterization of Gawain and so casting a shadow over Gawain’s role in the events that follow. Seeing the expression on the face of the letter “T” does not make this ironic reading a necessity; it does not take away the possibility of regarding Gawain as the “pentangle knight,” neither in his own eyes, nor in the eyes of the court, nor even, “for soþe,” in our understanding of his behaviour. However, the capital ‘T’s subtle expression and the mere possibility of irony that it brings to the passage take away any moral absolutism the passage might otherwise have. Removing this absolutism from Gawain’s association with the pentangle introduces a nuance to the moral codes to which he is bound; the “T”s scepticism does not need to be directed toward Gawain’s particular association with that pentangle at all, but more generally regarding the propriety of such a symbol for any human being, however great their capacity for “trothe.” The possibility of irony thus ripples outward, making possible and even encouraging a nuanced interpretation of the kind of moral system that would cite a symbol of

22 While pinpointing an exact description is difficult, this figure’s mouth is markedly different from several other faces found throughout the manuscript, whose faces show a range of emotions, including neutrality. Reichardt sees the faces as a sequence of readers of the text, the first looking away from the text, and the last (the inhabitant of this ‘T’ in SGGK) showing a “level of implied emotional response that is the perfect antithesis of the insouciance displayed in the initial ornamented capital face found some fifty-nine folios earlier” (“Paginal Eyes,” 24–25). Reichardt notes that “the drawings of human faces in this codex illustrate the capacity of even unassuming visual details to evoke a narrative impulse which is to a degree independent of (though compatible with) the main lines of verbal narrative copied out in its pages” (29), a point which I will discuss below.

58 rigid, unmoving devotion as an appropriate exemplar for human behaviour. Each of the effects that I’m suggesting this small, unobtrusive capital “T” has on the passage in which it is found are extremely subtle. In this particular passage, the relationship between the illuminated capital and the text is progressive and local: the capital provides a visual second register of interpretation for the words that follow it.23

This is, of course, only one of the five unaccounted-for initials in SGGK; none of the others contain faces, but they each potentially suggest the need for renewed attention to the details of the text. I hope to show not what purpose these smaller initials do fulfill—in the way that the “function” of the larger capitals of SGGK has been interpreted as divisions and stabilized into the fitt division structure—but rather to suggest that their purpose lies in being seen and interpreted by readers as they work their way through the text. In a sense, the face functions as a nota bene, a kind of reading speed-bump: forcing a reader to double-take, and look again, slow down and take note. The presence of this face also, I think, alerts us to the possibility of faces lurking in the letters—Are there others? Did we miss them, or are they just not there? Are they just as annoyed as this one, or do they show a range of emotions according to what scene they are currently viewing?

There are, in fact, others, though not in SGGK. Line 121 of Pearl begins with an illuminated capital “T,” three lines high, to start the phrase “Tis dubbement dere...” The red flouriation extends nine lines above the top of the letter, and extend four lines below it. This bottom extension looks on first glance to be a slightly more ornate version of the standard

bubbles,24 leaves and flowers, like this , this , or this .

23 On reading capitals in medieval manuscripts, see Martha Rust, “Blood and Tears as Ink: Writing the Pictorial Sense of the Text,” Chaucer Review 47 no. 4 (2013): 390–415. 24 I am using the untechnical term “bubbles” to denote the little circles that are found throughout the illuminations serving many different functions, a term employed—if memory serves correctly—by Joel Fredell in his talk at the conference of the Early Book Society in York, July 2011, when he also used such technical terms as “happy crew-cut lions” of other manuscript illuminations. Kathleen Scott, in her description of the Pearl MS, does not anatomize the particulars of the illuminations, and so does not provide a more technical term for the use of little circles in this particular manuscript (Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390–1490, vol. 1, 66–69). I not found a technical term for them specifically in other glossaries and guides to manuscript illuminations: see also Michelle Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A guide to technical terms, esp. 81 and 97.

59

For the capital at 121, however, these lower decorations are in fact part of the head-covering of a

face which is looking conspicuously away from the text: . Line 661 of Pearl begins with an illuminated capital “G,” three lines high: this illuminated letter is blue, and is surrounded by a rubricated double square, with floral decorations emitting from that square and descending six lines below the bottom of the square and extending four lines above the top of it. While these decorations surround and frame the letter, however, there is a serious looking face peering out from inside of it:25

.

The capital “T” that begins line 841 of Pearl is, like most throughout the text, three lines high, although the thickness of the crossbar of the “T” bleeds into the line above it, slightly obscuring part of the first word of the last line of the preceding section. The blue letter is rubricated with bubbles, flowers and leafy bunches, the flourishes extending seven lines above line 841 and

extend down all the way to line 856. This “T” is also occupied with a face: Like the face in line 491 of SGGK, discussed above, my perspective on this face reverberates onto my interpretation of the passage. As in that “T” this face appears to be an older male and has a

25 It should be noted that the expression on the faces within historiated capitals are almost uniformly serious, and so the conspicuous frown on the face of this little guy is perhaps not conspicuous at all. Helen Barr, in her introduction to The Piers Plowman Tradition, notes that all of the Piers-tradition poems “bear witness to the emergent voice of those literate members of society who may have been excluded from key positions of sacred or secular authority, but who were keen in this time of flux and unrest that their voices be heard” (7).

60 slightly disgruntled look on his tiny face. Also like that face, this face seems to be looking directly at the text, observing the point in the poem where the concatenation rhyme “innoȝhe” gives way to “grace.”

Recall the discussion in the introductory chapter of Marth Rust’s “liquid model” and the medieval readers’ capacity to both read and see texts, and of engaging with texts’ language as well as its formal and visual elements. Rust expands her argument by examining several faces that can be found in a manuscript of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. She notes that the faces could be considered to be unconnected to the narrative, or that they could simply be seen as points of emphasis in the text. Rust says:

But I think these letters may also be seen as instances of the pictorial aspect of writing qua writing, and it is in this respect that they also portray the ‘sory chere’ that Chaucer attributes to the poem in its second stanza. In this way, they function as the text’s pictorial sense, for they picture in written form an entailment of the poem’s ink-as-tears metaphor by way, once again, of fluid relation between verbal and pictorial domains: verses written in tears conjured in the text’s verbal domain flow as real ink inscribing sad faces on the page.26

Rust’s suggestion of the importance of these faces is thus similar to mine here: noticing the faces and considering that they might have a bearing on the poem requires that a reader consider the possibility of the text’s self-reflexivity. Rust notes that “even with the texts I have analyzed here, their self-reflexivity has not always been immediately apparent, and recognition of one form of self-reflexivity begets the noticing of others.”27 Any one reading attributed to the faces, or any one rationale for noticing them, is perhaps less important than the act of taking note that they are there, wondering why, considering that they might be significant, and playing with the new possibilities that they might bring into the text. In the case of the faces in Pearl, this means recognizing that they are there by attending to the manuscript whenever possible when constructing arguments about the poem, even arguments that do not seem to be about the physical attributes of the poem in its manuscript form. In the case of SGGK, this means first

26 Ibid., 407. 27 Ibid., 415.

61 recognizing the presence of the smaller capital letters that do not denote fitt divisions, in order to notice the face in the first place.

The practice of dividing SGGK into four fitts based on the larger of that poem’s illuminated capitals has generated a great deal of useful and interesting criticism, as is evident from the fact that many studies base their arguments on SGGK’s fitt divisions. These structural decisions primarily follow the structural logic of the capital letters in Pearl and Cleanness: the capitals divide one formal section from another; and, since the smaller of SGGK’s capitals have not appeared to do so, they do not seem to have a purpose. But the fitt structure has gone virtually unchallenged, and it is possible to note that there are other structures, neither more nor less evident in the manuscript, that could yield equally important, insightful, and ingenious perspectives. With this in mind, I suggest that there are several points that deserve reconsideration. The first is that, as we saw above, the majority of the capital letters that mark the stanza-group divisions in Pearl are three-lines high, with a few exceptional four-line capitals; furthermore, apart from those capital letters that appear at the top of a folio, there is no additional space left between the lines—in other words, the pages with no capital letters contain the same number of written lines as the pages with a capital letter. The second point derives from the first: whether these three-line capitals are used to mark either shifts in content (as Reichardt claims) or structural and formal shifts, such shifts are recognized as a major part of the poem’s function, and are noted in modern editions as dividing separate stanza groups from one another. Likewise, literary critics of the poem recognize these capitals as denoting some kind of division between one part of the poem and another.

Of SGGK’s five small capitals, at least one is part of a group of initials with little human faces, whose purpose might to be to urge readers to take note. The encouragement to go back and start again, looking for something new, is reminiscent of SGGK’s overall structure—its last stanza mirroring its first, the pentangle ending at its beginning. This pattern no less structures the other texts in the manuscript, both the linked form and plot of Pearl, as well as the virtually identical first and last lines of Patience. The three-line capitals in Pearl mark stanza groups, but they do so by marking where the concatenation word from the previous group is brought over that dividing line into the following group: perhaps, as much as the capitals serve to divide the text into discrete sections, these capitals might also serve to unify the poem overall, by encouraging readers to find points of crossover and linkage between the sections that are being

62 divided. The poems themselves draw attention to the structures that move their readers linearly through their plots, while also suggesting that readers keep vigilant for signs of continuity between their different parts, continuously hinting at the benefits of re-reading and reconsidering. It is with this in mind that I turn my attention, here, to the stanzaic divisions of the first poem in the Cotton Nero A.x. manuscript, Pearl.

2.2.1 The Stanzaic Divisions of Pearl The manuscript of Pearl presents a very orderly, uniform poem in an uncluttered and uncomplicated textual field. The poem’s lines are all of roughly equal lengths, covering between one half to two thirds the breadth of the page, and the text in its manuscript form has no lines or marks in the margins that demand assimilation. As such, while the poem does not appear cramped or claustrophobic on the page, Pearl presents as an uninterrupted block of text, and its 1211 lines of the poem take up precisely and fully 1211 of the manuscript’s ruled lines. Modern editions consistently present the poem in twelve-line stanzas, with clear divisions between them, and A. S. G. Edwards remarks: “the twelve-line stanza form of Pearl has posed no interpretive problems in representing the metrical form as presented in the manuscript.”28 There are many reasons to see this system of organization in the text. For one thing, there is a long tradition of twelve-line stanzas in vernacular literature of the time.29 Beyond this literary association, on a thematic level, there is also a clear importance placed on the number twelve throughout the poem—there are 1212 lines in the poem in total, and twelve is the number upon which heavenly Jerusalem is constructed, to name just two of myriad examples—and there can be no doubt that the twelve-line stanza is a primary structure on which Pearl is organized. However, while this twelve-line structure is clearly an organizing structure, it is worth considering that it is not the only organizing principle in the poem.

Pearl is organized according to three major rhyme-schemes. There is a small-scale tail- rhyme scheme, which can be stated according to the formula ababababbcbc; it is on this small

28 A. S. G. Edwards, “The Manuscript: British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x,” in A Companion to the Gawain-Poet, eds. Derek Brewer and Jonathan Gibson (Cambridge: Brewer, 1997), 197–219, at 201. In Anglicizing Romance: Tail-Rhyme and Genre in Medieval English Literature (D.S. Brewer, 2008), Rhiannon Purdie notes that there are several other manuscripts in which twelve-line tail-rhymed stanzas are entirely unmarked in manuscripts, and that often twelve-line stanzas are marked off in six-line sets (esp. 85–90). 29 Susanna Fein has written a thorough study of other Middle English poems that are written in 12-line units; see “Twelve-line Stanza Forms in Middle English and the Date of Pearl,” Speculum 72 no. 2 (1997): 367–98.

63 scale order that the poem has so decisively and uniformly been physically divided into stanzas in modern editions.30 There is, at a slightly larger scale of the poem’s organization, the order imposed by the concatenation rhyme, which provides a thematic consistency to sets of sixty lines. The first stanza of each group contains the concatenation word of the preceding group in its first line, while establishing the concatenation word for the current group. Each group is thus connected to both the group that precedes and follows it, and so the whole poem is constructed like a series of linked rings, the last connecting finally to the first. This system plays out in the poem as a whole: the concatenation word of the final section of the poem—“paye”—is actually found in the poem’s first line, and so not only is the concatenation slightly stuttered, but the poem is structured as a twenty-section ring-cycle.

There is also an alliterative rhyme-scheme operating in the poem, although it is secondary to the three major rhyme-schemes, and appears to operate with very little order. Andrew and Waldron note that in Pearl

[a]lliteration is...used less systematically than in the long lines of the other three poems [in the codex], stylistically rather than structurally. While there may be four, three, or two alliterating words in the line, about one line in four, on average, has no alliteration at all.31

Likewise, Fein states that approximately three quarters of the poem’s lines alliterate in some way; she agrees with Andrew and Waldron’s assertion that alliteration is “not a structural element” in the poem.32 It is indeed difficult to find regularity within it, and it is tempting to dismiss Pearl’s alliteration as an occasional stylistic feature: the poem is made up of a combination of lines which alliterate obviously; lines which are only partially alliterative, but which still hint at being part of an alliterative poem; and lines which are not alliterative at all. However, while the alliteration is not as regular as some of the other formal features, there is a logic to its distribution throughout the poem. A brief reading of a few examples will suffice to show these patterns.

30 For a discussion of the historical use of this rhyme-scheme and its rhetorical function, see Fein, “Twelve-line Stanza Forms,” 369–70. 31 Andrew and Waldron, The Poems, 49–50. 32 Fein, “Twelve-line Stanza Forms,” 371–72.

64

Throughout the Pearl-maiden’s lessons, the Dreamer has proven bizarrely stubborn in accepting teachings which are utterly orthodox and unsurprising. His arguments often appear inept and stupid, as we know that he knows—or at least, should know—the terms of her advice as well as she does. He seems unwilling to be able to accept the logic of heaven, essentially arguing that it is unreasonable on earthly standards. This, of course, is the Pearl-maiden’s point: heaven has its own reason, and after failed attempts to teach the Dreamer, she arranges that he might be shown the consummate unreason of heaven so as to understand it through vision rather than through language and discourse. The Pearl-maiden arranges that the dreamer should see the heavenly city:

… þat God wyl schylde;

þou may not enter within Hys tor;

Bot of þe Lombe I haue þe aquylde

For of a syȝt þerof þurȝ gret fauor.

Vtwyth to se þat clene cloystor

þou may, bot inwyth not a for… (965–70)

What the dreamer sees is precisely that attested by “þe apostle John” in the Book of Revelation, and the scriptural authority upon which the dreamer’s witness is founded is underlined throughout the next sixty lines by the concatenation on that phrase. This section is ostensibly straight-forward: the dreamer names that which he sees in the New Jerusalem, and at the end of each new nomination defers to the words of John. Although the dreamer refers consistently to his own experience of seeing the city—using words such as “syȝt” and “asspyed”—his “syȝt” is mediated by the words of John’s account which the dreamer has read. The dreamer is simultaneously reading the city by way of John’s witness and reading John through his own witness:

… I asspyed

And blusched on þe burghe, as I forth dreued,

Byȝonde þe brok, from me warde keued,

Þat schyrrer þen sunne with schaftez schon.

65

In þe Apokalypce is þe fasoun preued,

As deuysed hit þe apostel John. (979–84)

Although the dreamer is seeing the city, he is able to describe it using the words of John:

As John þe apostel hit syȝ with syȝt,

I syȝe þat cyty of gret renoun ......

As derely deuysez þis ilk toun

In Apocalyppez þe apostel John. (985–86, 995–96)

The degree to which the dreamer is relying on John’s words is made clear when he starts to name the city’s foundation stones: “As John þise stonez in writ con nemme, / I knew þe name after his tale. / Jaspere hyȝt tþe fyrst gemme...” (997ff).

Gradually, though, as he moves through the city naming as did John, he gains a certain degree of independence. This move away from scripture must not be interpreted as an undermining of orthodoxy, but rather serves to underline the Pearl-maiden’s intention in having the dreamer witness the city—the city which he knows already from John’s scriptural account, just as he knows the lessons that she has been teaching. It is by both reading and seeing the city that the dreamer is able to gain a personal understanding of the words of scripture. It is only once he has found the order himself, when he is at once quoting John’s reading of the heavenly Jerusalem and reading the city for himself, that he is loosed from the authority of scriptural citation and finds himself capable of seeing and describing the city in his own terms: “As John hym wrytez ȝet more I syȝe” (1033, emphasis mine). In his personal observation of the procession that follows, the dreamer shows an understanding of the Maiden’s lessons that simply being told could not provide. Certainly, his understanding is imperfect and he proves as much by charging the river in spite of the Maiden’s earlier admonitions against doing so. But, once expelled from his vision, the dreamer does reveal a deepened understanding of his condition. He resolves that “Now al be to Pryncez paye” (1176); he feels the pain of loss of both his Pearl and the vision of heaven, and he begins to express it: “A longeyng heuy me strok in swone, / And rewfully þenne I con to reme” (1180–81). The verb that the dreamer uses here is striking: Andrew and Waldron gloss “reme” as “cry out, lament” and the Oxford English Dictionary

66 provides the Old English “hreman” or “hryman” as antecedent.33 However, the close association of “hryman” with the antecedent for the Old English “hriman”—the root of the Middle English “rime”—suggests that “reme” here serves also to evoke a particularly poetic type of cry; this is further strengthened by the fact that this line alliterates on “r” only faintly and thus another word that means “lament” less ambiguously might have been chosen that would not have simultaneously called attention to the rhyme at precisely this moment: “crie,” for example, would have maintained the alliteration on “c.”

I think that it is worth exploring the manner in which the rhyme operates within the dreamer’s attestation to his witness of the New Jerusalem. As I outlined above, there are two distinct levels of clear rhyme in the poem: the first on the level of twelve-line stanzas, and the second, a concatenation of a single word which is stuttered throughout five-stanza sections, and which joins the final stanza group to the first line of the poem. In this, the third stanza-group of the final section of the poem, the dreamer admits to a type of understanding which provides not consolation, but acceptance of his human condition:

“O Perle,” quoþ I, “of rych renoun,

So watz hit me dere þat þou con deme

In þys veray avysyoun!

If hit be ueray and soth sermoun

Þat þou so strykez in galande gay

So wel is me in þys doel-doungoun....” (1182–87)

The primary rhyme of this stanza is on “oun,” a phoneme that rhymes with several previous scenes where the dreamer gains the understanding necessary to be able to witness the heavenly city. Furthermore, the repetition throughout this stanza of “oun” recalls several end-rhyme and concatenation words from his witness of the heavenly city. The first of these word is the concatenation word of section XVII—“John”—recalling his literal vision of the city according to John’s relation of it. To be sure, “oun” and “John” is a not-quite-right-rhyme; indeed, a layering an imperfect and a light rhyme, or a half-rhymed terminal syllable—but in any pronunciation,

33 “Reme,” Oxford English Dictionary Online edition; accessed June 15, 2011 via University of Toronto Libraries.

67 there is a similarity in tone of “John” and the various “-oun” words. Furthermore, a diverse range of “-oun” words—includig renoun, avysyoun, sermoun, doungoun—are unified by a subtle link between the dreamer’s new-found recognition that an alleviation of his suffering is possible, and the apostle whose vision made this transformation possible. The final line of each stanza, and thus the concatenation word, also end-rhymes with the third-last line, which also connects these "-oun” words and words such as “schon” (982, 1018), “ston” (994, 1006), and “fon” (1030), all words that speak of the physical and spiritual perfection of the foundation of the city. The second symmetry is with the second stanza-group of that same section, whose “b” and “c” rhymes are “- oun.” The effect of this is to force the entire stanza to chime—again, in an imperfect but very similar rhyme—with the terminal line’s “John,” and also with all of the stanzas in the concatenation group. What makes this internal chiming all the more powerful, however, is that this stanza’s “a” rhyme is “-yȝt” and connects such words as “syȝt” and “bryȝt.” This phoneme introduces the idea of “lyȝt,” a term which is conspicuously absent from a passage discussing the dreamer’s first sight of the brilliant splendour of heaven. This group, however, rhymes ahead to the first mention of “lyȝt” in the city, at line 1046 in section XVIII: “Of sunne ne mone had þay no nede / Þe Self God watz her lombe-lyȝt.” In this passage, the dreamer is commenting on his own vision using language that is independent from John’s description in Revelation. This is the first of several such self-reflections from the dreamer, and reveals the way that the dreamer is interpreting what he sees. The dreamer’s interpretation initially concerns the recognition that the only light-source in heaven is God. The concatenation word is “mone,” which provides a second level to the symmetry of the rhyme on “oun” that carries throughout the final section. The dreamer’s realization of earthly consolation rhymes back to his initial vision of the city, and his opportunity to read the city personally through John’s words of it; this also rhymes with the point of his witness when he is able to read the city independently of John’s mediation. It thus rhymes as well as with the earthly light source which is unnecessary in heaven—the “mone”—and thus the secondary rhyme, on “lyȝt,” is likewise connected to the recognition of God as the only necessary source of illumination and warmth. There is thus a complex triangle of rhyme which unites the dreamer’s understanding with the object of his comprehension—the ways of God— and also with the means by which he came to understand.

These complex patterns might never be seen by a reader who is not actively looking for them, might never be found even by an attentive reader who is seeking alternate sources of order

68 in the poem. And yet the unlikelihood of seeing these patterns at first glance does not mean that they are not operating. Compared to the three major organizing systems in the poem—the twelve-line cycles of end rhyme, the sixty-line cycles of concatenation, and the poem’s overall circularity—the system of remote rhymes that I am suggesting is different in degree of obscurity, but not necessarily different in kind. It is possible to consider that Pearl thus has many rhyme schemes which might operate both dependently and independently of one another, including an alliterative pattern which is clearly present and yet defies orderly classification. It is furthermore likely that––in a poem that is so conscious of its poetic form and which contains such an ornate and mongrel system of rhyme––the impossibility of determining its alliterative status might be a deliberate move on the part of the poet, a move not intended to obfuscate its form, but, perhaps, to enrich the form by drawing attention to the relationship between order and disorder in the poem. Readers are expected to recognize the multiple ordering principles which govern the poem’s form, and to recognize also that these are staggered unpredictably throughout the poem. In its manuscript form, the poem is written with no line breaks and only small illuminated capitals at each new section; when encountered in this form, an independent and attentive reader is left with the impression that there may be ordering patterns which have not yet been recognized, organizing structures so remote that they have not yet been found but which nonetheless operate to provide the poem with multiple levels of complexity and meaning. Indeed, in the manuscript, where the poem is found as a monolithic block of text, close- reading—and particularly, close re-reading—is required to find even the most obvious patterns that order the poem. For those of us first exposed to Pearl in an edition with divided twelve-line stanzas and six-stanza concatenation groups, it is difficult to imagine not being able to see the ordering principles that establish those structures; however, I think that finding even the most evident of these structures—concatenation rhyme, if not explicitly marked out for a reader— would require careful attention, a good memory for particular word repetition, and a willingness to wait for complex ordering principles to reveal themselves across the long-game of the poem. The recognition of the other ordering principles within this block of text requires that a reader remain even more vigilant to details of form, nuances of meaning, and the relationship between them. Considered in this way, the poem makes the same demands on its readers as are placed on the dreamer: a careful attention to detail, and a willingness to hold in mind the possibility of order where none is apparent.

69

I would not want to suggest that the twelve-line sets in Pearl determined by the end- rhyme scheme ababababbcbc are not there: the poem contains twelve-line units, and this rhyme functions as a principle of organization in the poem. Furthermore, the larger organizing units of the major sections, too, are marked off in the manuscript by small illuminated capitals, indicating that the some of the poem’s organizing principles are transparent even in the manuscript. What I am suggesting, however, is the organizing principles that are marked out in modern editions are not the only possible structures, and that marking them implies that they are: the multiple rhyme- schemes that provide the poem with its ornate structure are sufficiently complex in their multiplicity that the labour involved in identifying them and tracing them throughout the poem both invites the reader to engage with the text in a manner akin to the way the dreamer engages with the words of “þe apostel John,” and trains the reader to do so. It is the labour of seeking couched systems of organization, and the struggle to find symmetries and cycles, that constitutes a large part of the poems’ meaning. The process of finding deeper lines of power in the poem— the marginalized cruxes, distal rhymes, symmetries, and surprising dissymmetries—requires an open mind and a willingness to engage with systems of organization which are neither self- evident nor strictly reasonable. Pearl’s status as the first poem in the manuscript leaves open the possibility that its diversity of poetic forms is laying the groundwork for the various forms which the other poems will take. But even viewed with respect to its own local poetic function, I think that the work of gradually recognizing these subtle organizational principles which govern the text’s form mirrors the interpretative work that the dreamer must do in order to understand his place in divine order. 2.3 SGGK’s Bob-Lines The final discussion of this section takes up one such subtle detail of the layout of SGGK, a detail that has been silently edited out of virtually every modern edition of the poem and which has only rarely even been mentioned in criticism of the poem: the placement of the “bob-lines.”34

34 I first wrote up this work on the bob-lines in SGGK in May of 2008, and presented a version of this argument in November 2009 at the University of Toronto conference on editorial issues, as well as at the Conference of the Early Book Society in York, in July of 2011. Since these earlier versions of this argument, these issues have been taken up by several scholars in more permanent, published form: the most recent of these is Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, who makes these same points in the chapter entitled “Major Poets and Manuscript Studies, 1300–1450” in Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts: Literary and Visual Approaches (Cornell University Press, 2012); Kerby-Fulton briefly discusses bob-lines in general, and uses the “floating bobs” in SGGK as a case-study, making much the same argument as I do here; see in particular pp. 59–64.

70

In the manuscript of SGGK the bob-lines are found in the right-hand margin; all modern editions have placed them after the last alliterating line and before the four wheel lines, in what has been accepted as their proper reading order. The bob-and-wheel structure has a notable precedent in late medieval manuscripts. E.G. Stanley lists ninety-four poems which use the device, and states that the bob is generally used to indicate that the stanza is almost at its close and to indicate the beginning of a new system of meter and rhyme.35 The whole stanza body in such poems is generally thirteen lines long: thus the stanza is eight lines long, with a regular rhyme-scheme of abababab, and the bob and wheel five lines with a rhyme-scheme either of cdddc, or cbbbc or caaac.

SGGK fits into this bob-and-wheel tradition in many ways, and early critics and editors of the poem identified it as such: Tolkien and Gordon, for example mention them by name stating that “the short ‘bob’ lines, which metrically follow each group of long lines, are written to the right of the long lines, sometimes opposite the last of these but often two or three lines up.”36 However, in addition to its unusual marginal bob-placement, SGGK’s use of the bob is unique in several ways. Its admixture of purely alliterative and tail-rhymes is unprecedented: while most bob-and-wheel poems are tail-rhyming in their entirety, in SGGK the stanza body is composed of alliterating lines while the bob-and-wheel are tail-rhyming. In other poems, the bob signals the structural change to come, but many also mark the rhymes and rhythms which characterize that change: as such, in these poems, the bob is only one of several indicators of a new formal order. In the SGGK manuscript, however, the end-rhyme that the bob lines usher in is not made conspicuous by bracketing the three a and two b rhymes of the bob-and-wheel together; rather the bob is in fact distanced further from its wheel. Finally, while the other bob-and-wheel poems have regular stanza length, SGGK’s regular stanza bodies range in length from fifteen to twenty- five lines, and thus do not have the regularity which would allow a reader or listener to anticipate the bob, wherever the bob-line might be placed in the text’s visual field.

35 For an analysis of the history of the bob-line’s use in Middle English poetry, see esp. E.G. Stanley, “The Use of Bob-lines in Sir Thopas,” Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 73 (1972): 417–26; and Hugh Kirkpatrick, “The Bob- Wheel and Allied Stanza Forms in Middle English and Middle Scots Poetry,” Unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, (North Texas State Univ., 1976). For an analysis of the bob-lines in SGGK, see Howell Chickering, “Stanzaic Closure and Linkage in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Chaucer Review 32 no. 1 (1997): 1–31. 36 Tolkein and Gordon, xi. Andrew and Waldron do not mention the placement of the bobs at all.

71

Many editors and critics of SGGK assert that the bob’s placement in the manuscript is strictly a matter of economy. The poem on the whole, though, is not written in a cramped way: the long alliterative lines generally take up most of the folio breadth, but the wheel stanza lines, which are very short, are each allowed a line to themselves, leaving a great deal of blank space on each folio; in general the suggestion that the two-syllable bob lines are put outside of the regular textual field and into the right-hand margin as a means of economizing space is a possible explanation, but is certainly not the only possible explanation for their curious placement. Of the one hundred and one bob lines in the manuscript, only twenty-three are found in the marginal space directly beside the final alliterative line of the stanza. By far the majority (sixty-seven) are placed beside the line directly above that; another seven in the margin of the line above that; a single one on the fourth-last line (three lines above the editorially-normalized position for the bob-line in printed editions); and another three have been placed below their position in that sequence, in the marginal space at the end of the first end-rhyming line of the wheel. The consistent placement of the bob-lines outside of their reading order implies that there is more at stake than simply the need to conserve valuable physical space: in all but three stanzas the line directly above the ‘wheel’ is short enough to easily accommodate the bob and yet in each of these cases it is written elsewhere. This suggests that, whatever the bob is, it is not only a continuation of the last line of the alliterating stanza, nor is it the first line of the wheel, even if it is meant to finally be read at this position. Furthermore, it is important to note that the bobs match the tail-rhyme of the second and fourth lines of the wheel, and thus the bob-and-wheel together forms a five-line tail-rhyming stanza which rhymes ababa. That each of the one hundred and one bobs rhymes in this way with the wheel is a compelling reason to consider its proper place to be between the long alliterating stanza and the wheel. However, there are two things about this rhyme-scheme that must be noted: 1) the bob is the first line in a set of alternating rhyming lines, its first rhyme being the second line of the wheel, and thus it rhymes ahead; and 2) the long alliterative stanza, in terms of tail-rhyme, does not rhyme at all. Thus, a reader encountering the bob-line in the right margin of the first stanza, and in line with the third- last long line of that stanza which rhymes only alliteratively, would have no reason to be looking ahead (or anywhere, for that matter) for the tail-rhyme with which this rogue and fragmentary line would match. Tail-rhyme is not even present in the poem until the third line of the wheel has been read, at which point a reader will have encountered a single pair of end-rhyming lines; and

72 it cannot be said to be an organizing principle of the poem until the fourth line of the wheel has been read, at which point the reader will have read two end-rhyming pairs. Once the bob-line is read and it is recognized as being out of place, it could only be after reading to the end of the wheel and recognizing the end-rhyming couplets, that the reader might see that the line in the margin above might precede the short-line stanza, making the second couplet into a triad. It should also be noted that the bob-and-wheel set, in addition to tail-rhyming in an ababa pattern, also maintains the alliterative rhyme of the long lines, a fact which further obscures the presence of a new ordering pattern and make it even more difficult to recognize the only clue to the bob lines’ placement in the textual order.37

This recognition might happen after the first stanza, and then its principle could be applied to the rest of the poem. One thing that complicates the probability of their reading position being easily found, however, is the fact that, for the most part, SGGK’s bob lines are syntactically very flexible and many could follow almost any of the alliterative long-lines without disrupting the grammar or syntax. Moreover, many of the bob-lines provide very little information. Larry Benson notes that the bob is “often meaningless in itself” and, as such, a reader could pass the bobs by entirely and still manage to make sense of the text both as a poem and as a story.38 This is especially true at the beginning of the poem, when a reader would need to ascertain the logic of the bob’s placement in order to find the ababa rhyme scheme of the bob- and-wheel. It is possible that a reader might find the proper place for the bob-lines on a first read-through of the codex—especially a reader accustomed to the form from other manuscripts, and who anticipated the bob-line once they encountered the short wheel. However, even a very attentive reader may not fit the bob-lines into the reading order or even notice them at all, either because they were not familiar with the bob-and-wheel tradition, or because none of the poem’s large-scale formal features link it to the bob-and-wheel tradition. It would take a careful and very

37 See Purdie’s Anglicizing Romance, for a discussion of the use of tail-rhyme in the development of a particularly English Romance genre, especially 1–13 and 66–88. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight falls outside of the realm of her discussion, but it would be worth considering, in a future analysis, the presence of tail-rhyme in these small portions of each stanza: is this a way of nodding toward the established generic conventions of the English Romance (which the poem appears to be in many of its aspects) while complicating the poem as a full representative of that genre, and maintaining the ambivalence of its genre? 38 Larry Benson, Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Rutgers University Press, 1956), 116. W. Bryant Bachman assesses the bobs as “a very inconsequential addition to the underlying format of stanza plus wheel,” in “Lineation of the Bobs in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” ELN 18 (1980): 86–88, at 87. See also Chickering, esp. 3–15.

73 curious reader to identify the presence of an unfamiliar organizing principle and reconcile it with the logic of organization and order of the end-rhyme, and thus to finally fit the bob lines into their place within the five-line structure of the rhyming bob-and-wheel.

The first stanza is a case in point: the final alliterative long lines read

And fer ouer þe French flod, Felix Brutus

On mony bonkkes ful brode Bretayn he settez

Wyth wynne,

where were and wrake and wonder

Bi syþez hatz wont þerinne…39

In the manuscript the bob-line, ‘Wyth wynne’ is found two lines above its editorial reading order, in the margin beside ‘Felix Brutus.’ Syntactically, there is nothing that binds ‘Wyth wynne’ to its placement in all modern editions: it might be read equally well after ‘Felix Brutus’—‘And far over the French flood, Felix Brutus, with joy on many broad banks set Britain.’ It’s placement after ‘he settez’ and before ‘where were and wrake and wonder’ is, in fact, more difficult to reconcile, as ‘wynne’ is linked through proximity, through syntax and through alliteration to ‘were and wrake.’ Indeed, given its placement here “wyth wynne” might be read after each and every line of the stanza with results as meaningful as when it is understood to be a bob-line and is moved to be read between the long and short lines.

Another case in point:

If ȝe wyl listen þis laye bot on littel quile,

I shal telle hit astit, as I in toun herde

With tonge.

As hit is stad and stoken

In stori stif and stronge,

With lel letteres loken,

39Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, lines 13–17, in Andrew and Waldron.

74

In londe so hatz ben longe. (30–34)

Again, as in the first stanza, the bob-line here is not necessary for the meaning of the clause that it completes, nor is it particularly appropriate to that clause: ‘tonge’ is implicitly linked to ‘herde’, and so it can be understood to mean ‘aloud’ when linked to ‘I shal telle hit astit’. This reading makes sense; however, other readings produce as much sense: “If ȝe wyl listen þis laye bot on little quile, I shal tell hit astit, as I in toun herde.’ It could be argued, then that “with tonge” is not necessary to the meaning of the phrase, and that the bob-line, which is found one line above its editorial reading order, could go unnoticed.

The importance of the bob-lines to syntactical meaning increases as the poem goes on, as Chickering argues in his 1997 essay, “Stanzaic Closure and Linkage in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.” He shows that, in the early parts of the poem, the bob-lines contain very little content but, as the poem goes on, they become increasingly important to a reader’s ability to sort out the poem’s syntax which, likewise, becomes more complex and ambivalent as the text progresses. Chickering’s reading of the increasing syntactical importance of the bob-lines is compelling: while it does not address the difficulty of finding the bob-lines in the margins, it certainly points out the importance of eventually finding them. The difficulty of finding the marginal bob-lines is complex, because even if the words in the margins have been noticed, and even when the bob-line is essential to the syntax of the line, there is no reason to assume that the words in the margins would be recognized as the solution to the syntactical problem presented by an incomplete thought further down the page. The syntax of the poem, and the broad vocabulary that the poet draws upon in order to make his alliterative project work, makes certain that many passages require a creative shuffling-around of words, or at least a careful reconsideration of emphasis and of implied grammatical relationships in order to draw meaning from the words. It is the logic of the wheel’s rhyme-scheme which leads to the placement of the bob-lines after the long alliterative line and before the wheel: as the poem advances, the bobs become more important to the syntax, and for following the poem’s increasingly complicated plot. As such, as the poem progresses, readers need to be able to find the bobs and to place them before the wheel in order to follow the story.

How would a reader to find that proper position for the bob, if given only the clues provided by the manuscript? Is the work of finding this position part of the work of reading the

75 poem? Indeed, this kind of readerly work mirrors a lot of the quandaries of the poem: the placement of the bob-lines forces an attentive reader to be even more so. The steps which must be taken to identify the new poetic order, the end-rhyme which governs the placement of these lines, require a keen eye for textual detail, a keen ear for aural rhyme, and a flexibility of perspective that allows the possibility that, even in a familiar and orderly environment—whether in the spaces of the plot or in the physical space of the page—things may not be as they immediately appear. There is no neat and tidy way of mapping the reading practice that the marginal bob-lines demand onto the text, but perhaps this, too, is part of the logic of their placement: the difficulty that the bob-lines present is that of seeing unfamiliar codes and of learning to interpret them. Furthermore, as I argued above, it is possible that reading Pearl in its manuscript form trains readers in precisely the kind of curiosity and openmindedness that is necessary in that poem and in SGGK: it could be argued that reading across the manuscript, from the first poem to the last, and learning what the textual form has to teach about reading, brings into being the kind of reading practice that the texts require.

In making this argument—that the manuscript enacts what the poem narrates—I am treading dangerously close to suggesting that the manuscript is simply a physical metaphor for the concerns of the text. There is a possible argument to be made out of such a claim, but it is slightly too neat, and perhaps too gimmicky for this poet. Furthermore, the metaphorization of the manuscript form in service of this one argument risks stating as absolute something that I want to show as shifting and mutable even when we have it in concrete, physical form.

In the introductory discussion of critical arguments about medieval reading habits, I discussed Jessica Brantley’s suggestion that manuscript forms suggest modes of habitual reading as well as more disruptive reading modes: habitus mobilized to expose the possibility of déshabille. I would like to mobilize Brantley’s suggestion here in my own reading of the shifting placement of the bob-lines throughout SGGK. While I would not suggest that the manuscript layout operates as a metaphor for the concerns of the text, this is simply because I do not believe that the text operates separately from its manuscript housing, in this or in other respects. Rather than working as a physical metaphor for the text, and as a metaphor for the necessary work of the reader to decipher the text, I would argue that the manuscript simply operates within the same culture of reading as its texts, and that it was constructed according to the same principles of reading and of interpretation as were its poems. In constructing both the manuscript and the

76 poem in this way, the scribe and author alike were operating within a culture of reading that trusts that its readers are familiar with reading codes, while simultaneously encouraging the reconsideration of those codes.

The reading and defamiliarization of social codes is of great concern to the plot of the poem, and is a challenge that is present throughout SGGK: as Robert Hanning notes, “the difficulty, perhaps impossibility, of interpretation becomes not only a hallmark but a main theme of the poem.”40 Gawain’s ability to correctly read social and cultural markers is constantly being called into question. The principles of order which he feels he understands and which he believes himself capable of interpreting are unsettled from the moment of the Green Knight’s entry to Camelot, an entrance which brings the problem of reading and correct interpretation directly to the fore. The Green Knight outright refuses to read the standard symbols on display in Arthur’s court: he asks who is in charge, rather than reading Arthur’s kingship from his crown and position on the dais; he dares the knights to step up and perform their reputation; his own physical presence—being both monstrous and finely shaped, hideous and elegant, bearing symbols of both war and peace—stymies any simple interpretation and suggests that, since there is not only a single way to read even the most entrenched cultural symbol, then there might be many other currently invisible modes of reading. As certainties are shattered, then, possibilities of interpretation proliferate throughout the poem. The discovery of the bob-line pattern operates according to a similar principle of proliferation. Just as Gawain encounters rules which jar with his conception of order, and which he needs to learn to read before their importance becomes evident, the reader’s need to familiarize an unfamiliar pattern, to make order where there appears to be disorder—however subtle the disorder may be—makes evident the possibility of myriad other potential patterns within an ostensibly simple and recognizable system.

The bobs are difficult to see for those who do not expect them; moreover, the relationship between their placement and their function is difficult to rationalize for those who do expect them but expect to find them elsewhere. The text and story manifest a system of shifting codes which need to be seen and constantly evaluated in order to be recognized for what they are. Things which are immediately recognized as central and given privileged attention for that

40 Robert Hanning, “Sir Gawain and the Red Herring: The Perils of Interpretation,” in Acts of Interpretation, eds. Mary J. Carruthers and Elizabeth Kirk (Norman: Pilgrim Books, 1982), 5–23, at 16.

77 centrality are usurped by forces which, though ostensibly marginal, are found to be the ordering forces in the poem. 2.4 Defining Sir Gawain and the Green Knight So far, I have discussed some of the physical features of the manuscript that have proven difficult to represent in modern editions but which open up possibilities for reconsidering the poems that it contains, particularly reconsidering the way that these features reinforce themes that the poems explore. This following section will explore the question of multiple reading possibilities once again, but on a slightly smaller scale, looking not at the physical layout of the poem on the manuscript page, but rather at the textual minutiae of the poems themselves: the words on the line, the letters in the words, and the punctuation that joins them together into comprehensible syntax. In this section I will discuss an issue of textual emendation in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.

In her article “Textual Studies, Feminism, and Performance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Sharon Rowley takes up the broad issues of editorial emendations in SGGK, and shows how these emendations have been driven by gendered assumptions about the characters and their behaviour; and how the editorial decisions that were based upon such assumptions have inscribed these biases into the poem itself, resulting in a critical tradition that continues to support readings of the poem which are editorial in origin.41 She focuses on several passages, primarily lines 1283–1287, a passage that describes the scene of the Lady and Gawain in his chamber. The passage first describes how the Lady acts as though she likes Gawain; it then implies that Gawain rejects her advances. Finally, the passage gives voice to the Lady’s inner thoughts: she thinks to herself that ‘even if she were the most beautiful woman she knows that Gawain could not love her because his mind is fixated on the ordeal that awaits him.’ In the manuscript this passage reads (from several lines before until the end of the stanza):

Þay meled of muchquat til mydmorn paste

And ay þe lady let lyk a hym loued mych

Þe freke ferde with defence and feted ful fayre

41 Sharon Rowley, “Textual Studies, Feminism, and Performance in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Chaucer Review 38 (2003): 158–177.

78

Þaȝ I were burde bryȝtest þe burde in mynde hade

Þe lasse luf in his lode for lur þat he soȝt

Boute hone

Þe dunte þat schulde hym deue

And nedez hit most be done

Þe lady þenn spek of leue

He granted hir ful sone (1280–1289).

As Rowley puts it, the manuscript reading

works together with the narrator’s questioning of the Lady’s purpose (1550), his equivocal statement about her ‘luf’ (1733), and Bertilak’s final explanations. These moments create tensions in the text that demand a continual assessment and reassessment of the action, and that emphasize the opacity of the Lady’s motivations and desires. Consequently, the Lady’s performances of her gendered courtly identity can neither be read as unquestionably grounded in her body and her own ... desire, nor be reduced to the command of her husband.42

However, in this passage, line 1283 has been emended to read as follows: “Þaȝ ho were burde bryȝtest þe burne in mynde hade.” Morris and Gollancz assert that the emendations are “required” in order to maintain “sense” in the passage; and both Davis and Silverstein assess that as a good decision. Andrew and Waldron cite the repetition of “burde” as a rationale for the changes: they interpret the line to mean “though she may have been the loveliest lady the warrior had ever known ... he had brought with him so much the less love because of the penalty he was going to meet forthwith” and state that the emendation avoids “the difficulty of the repeated burde as well as the momentary inconsistency of narrative point of view” and claim that this “error could have arisen through misunderstanding of in mynde hade.”43 Rowley summarizes the editorial treatment of this particular passage of the poems, arguing that: “Most of the justifications for emending the text are vague, subjective, or do not hold up in light of other

42 Rowley, 159. 43 Andrew and Waldron, 255n1283–6.

79 examples in the poem itself,”44 and argues that this type of emendation and the perspectives that rationalize it affect critics and readers of the poem, in addition to maintaining perspectives on the past that are reflective of nineteenth-century British priorities.

Rowley’s approach to the disparity revealed by these emendations is to question the rationale of the decisions. She asks: “Does the repetition of burde justify changing two clear grammatical manuscript readings,” as Andrew and Waldron assert? In reply, she notes that: “While repetition can be a sign of scribal error, not one editor offers this explanation, perhaps because of the I, or because of other examples of such repetition. Why change just one instance of a shifting point of view when there are several?”45 While Rowley’s questions about this particular emendation are rhetorical, this rhetoric builds to the more fundamental questions that drive her study: the perspective of those who made the decisions. She quotes the line notes from editions that make this emendation, and asks

what determines the “sense” that Morris and Gollancz claim “requires” their emendations? And, more importantly, what makes this sense seem “good” to Davis and Silverstein? Does the fact that the passage is usually emended make that emendation viable, or does it reflect how deeply embedded in the editorial process certain assumptions about seductive ladies may be?

What Rowley identifies as fundamental to a reading of the text, then, is a kind of critical vigilance that gestures toward outright rejection of the editorial decisions of the past, and that can lead to interpretations that replace these decisions with “better” readings based upon a different worldview.

I appreciate Rowley’s vigilance and I agree with the questions that drive her study. However, while Rowley identifies a widespread problem in the editorial tradition of SGGK, and in scholarship more broadly, her approach to addressing these problems is fundamentally the same as the approach that caused the problem initially and that allows it to continue. By insisting on the correctness of her own readings, Rowley closes down a lot of other possibilities that the perspective of her argument would actually open up, and thus forecloses the possibility of reopening the poem to unforseen ambiguity and proliferation of meaning. So while Rowley’s

44 Rowley, 163. 45 Ibid., 163.

80 questions are fundamentally similar to those I have been asking about the placement of the bob- lines, the illuminated capitals, and the stanza and thematic divisions throughout the manuscript, her work strives to “uncorrect” previous emendations in order to reveal the right reading evinced by the manuscript. But there are ways of recognizing where the correction of seeming “errors”— or aspects of the text that are unsatisfying—further compounds the feeling that there is a problem. I hope to be able to outline a kind of interrogation that is driven by curiosity, rather than by an urge to correct or “uncorrect.” Perhaps allowing the multiple ways that the text can exist to coexist—highlighting the problems and awkwardness of the text, rather than smoothing them out—can reveal things about the text, its characters, and its plot, that no fixed version can.

To show what this kind of curious reading might look like, I would like to briefly look at one last passage in SGGK: the introduction of Morgan La Fee as the mastermind behind the machinery of the plot, in the scene of the Green Knight’s revelation of his own identity.

2.4.1 Morgan La Fee in SGGK When we meet Morgan in the poem, she is unnamed and her description is pinned onto the description of the lady, placing her always in relief to that which is the focus of both the narrator’s and Gawain’s attention. After this initial meeting at court, she is not seen again, but appears by being revealed as the crux and origin of the entire plot. The realization that Morgan is the ultimate mover of the plot is discomfiting because it reveals to us all, Gawain and the first- time reader alike, that we have misapprehended all along. Critics have long objected to the suddenness with which Morgan La Fee is offered as the solution to all of the story’s mysteries, implying that the plot could and should have been resolved without recourse to such a minor character. J. R. Hulbert argued in 1915 that such an ending is “one element of feebleness and inconsistency” which “not only fails to explain adequately the significance of Gawain’s trial, but this abrupt ‘disruption’ mars the exquisite structure and form consistently brought to bear on the meaning of the poem.”46 Larry Benson believes that “[t]he reader cannot avoid the feeling that the last-minute revelation of Morgan’s scheme is too weak a foundation for [the] poem,” and John Speirs agrees, arguing that Morgan is not an adequate plot device, but rather is “no more

46 See J.R. Hulbert, “Syr Gawayn and the Grene Kny3t,” Modern Philology 13 (1915–16): 433–462, at 454.

81 that a bone for the rationalizing mind to play with, and to be kept quiet with.”47 More recent critics, however, have found significance in Morgan’s seeming marginility, contending that what has seemed “weak” or “artless” about this ending has been critics’ limited capacity to interpret, to read, to judge. As Angela Carson points out, “[n]ot only does she motivate the beheading game, but from the point of view of structure, she is the link between Arthur’s court and Bertilak’s castle, and from the point of view of the plot, she acts upon everyone in the poem.”48

It is worth looking carefully at the way that the Green Knight reveals Morgan’s identity to Gawain at the Green Chapel; and it is worth paying special attention to the many ways in which this passage can be punctuated and emended, with strikingly different resulting meanings. Morgan is first named in the passage from 2440–2457. Gawain asks for information about the Green Knight and asks for his “ryȝt nome,” and one way that the lines are punctuated is as follows:

Syn ȝe be lorde of þe ȝonder londe, þer I haf lent inne

Wyth yow— wyth worschyp þe wyȝe hit yow ȝelde

Þat vphaldez þe heuen and on hyȝ sittez––

How norne ȝe yowre ryȝt nome, and þenne no more? (2440–2443)

The Green Knight responds “Þat schal I telle þe trwly,” speaks his name—“Bertilak de Hautdesert I hat” (2445). In spite of Gawain’s specific edict to say his “ryȝt nome and þenne no more” (2443), he then goes on to discuss Morgan’s “myȝt” and the origins of this power:

Bertilak de Hautdesert I hat in þis londe

Þurȝ myȝt of Morgne la Faye þat in my hous lenges

And koyntyse of clergye bi craftes wel lerned,

Þe maystres of Merlyn mony ho taken

47Larry Benson, Art and Tradition in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (Rutgers University Press, 1965), 34; John Speirs, Medieval English Poetry: The Non-Chaucerian Tradition (Faber & Faber, 1957), 218. See also G. L. Kittredge, A Study of ‘Gawain and the Green Knight’ (Harvard University Press, 1916), 136; and Albert B. Friedman, “Morgan le Fay in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Speculum 35 no. 2 (1960): 260–74, at 274. 48 Angela Carson, “Morgain La Fée as the Principle of Unity in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” Modern Language Quarterly 23 (1962): 3–16, at 3.

82

For ho hatz dalt drwry ful dere sumtyme

With þat conable klerk þat knowes alle your knyȝtez

at hame

Morgne þe goddes

Þerfore hit is hir name

Weldez non so hyȝe hawtesse

Þat ho ne con make ful tame

Ho wayned me vpon þis wyse to your wyne halle

For to assay þe surquidre ȝif hit soth were (2445–2457)

Given the vexed nature of “truth” and “right telling” in the poem overall, and especially coming directly after Gawain is informed of the elaborate ruse at Hautdesert, it is interesting that the act of naming oneself would be qualified, by both men, with the terms “right” and “truly.” But as it turns out, for the Green Knight to tell his “ryȝt nome” is no simple affair of superficial truth. The passage continues: “Bertilak de Hautdesert I hat in þis londe” (2444). Most editions of the poem put a full stop after ‘londe’, making the whole sentence read as “In this lande, I am Bertilak of Hautedesert,” and then treat the next phrase an entirely separate clause, as follows:

Bertilak de Hautdesert I hat in þis londe.

Þurȝ myȝt of Morgne la Faye þat in my hous lenges

And koyntyse of clergye, bi craftes wel lerned,

Þe maystres of Merlyn mony ho taken—

For ho hatz dalt drwry ful dere sumtyme

With þat conable klerk, þat knowes alle your knyȝtez

at hame;

Morgne þe goddes

Þerfore hit is hir name:

Weldez non so hyȝe hawtesse

83

Þat ho ne con make ful tame—

Ho wayned me vpon þis wyse to your wyne halle

For to assay þe surquidre ȝif hit soth were (2445–2457).

This editorial decision has been justified in different ways: Andrew and Waldron describe the results of this punctuation “a loose conversational structure” where the Green Knight interrupts his own description of Morgan La Fee’s power with further details. The translation that they offer reads as follows:

Through the might of Morgan la Fay (sic), who dwells in my house, and (her) skill in learning, (she who is) well-instructed in magic arts––she has acquired many of the miraculous powers of Merlin, for she has formerly had very intimate love- dealings with that excellent scholar, as all of your knights at home know.49

This produces an interesting reading, and one which grants great power to Morgan la Fee while also implying that her “learning” and “instruction” came by way of her love-dealings with the miraculous Merlin, and likewise implies that perhaps it is not her power and learning that is known to the knights, but simply her dalliances with Merlin. This interpretation is productive, though the fact that words have to be added in order to connect lines 2446–47 makes this reading less obvious than other possibilities. As Michael Twomey has noted, the dash of 2448 is required “to provide the illusion of hypotaxis that would connect the subordinate clause created out of 2447 and 2448 with a main clause beginning in 2449”; however, due to the insertion of this dash, and the subsequent linking of two (artificially separate clauses), the initial clause—þurȝ the myȝt of Morgne la Faye— “is left dangling, modifying nothing.”50 Furthermore, even if the reader a-syntactically links Morgan’s dangling power with the rest of the clauses, the implication remains that Bertilak’s name and land and Morgan’s power are separate entities: she sent him to Arthur’s court through her great power, but all else is his own. Sheila Fisher interprets the passage, when punctuated this way, as evidence for Morgan’s limited power, and of the Green Knight’s active undercutting of her power even when he must acknowledge her

49 Andrew and Waldron, 297n2446ff, and n2447–51. 50 Michael W. Twomey, “Morgain La Fée in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: From Troy to Camelot” in Text and Intertext in Medieval Arthurian Literature, ed. Norris J. Lacy (New York: Garland, 1996), 91–115, at 109.

84 presence in the plot. In Fisher’s analysis, it takes the Green Knight ten full lines of rambling description to finally reach a verb. Furthermore, when he finally reaches that verb (“wayned”), he is its object: this preamble, and syntactical focus on the Green Knight himself, diffuses Morgan’s power. Her power is further undercut because it is defined as deriving directly from Merlin, and is thus the power is not really her own.51 This reading renders Morgan powerless by stripping the statement of her “myȝt” of a subject, and transforming her contextual power into a syntactically impotent dangling modifier.

It can certainly be argued that these are simply residual problems to an acceptable reading, or simply the reality of translation: no translation will ever capture every possible reading. However, there are ways of reading this passage which simultaneously avoid the problems of Andrew and Waldron’s interpretation and which circumvent the necessity that Morgan is only granted power in order for it to be inevitably taken from her. By removing the full stop which separates the Green Knight’s self-naming from his description of Morgan’s power (2444) the problem of Morgan’s un-referring “myȝt” is resolved, as “þurȝ” governs two objects (“myȝt” of 2445; and “koyntyse” of 2446). The next clause (“bi craftes wel lernes”) acts as secondary modifier to it, and “þe maystres of Merlyn” serves as an appositive restatement of “koyntyse of clergie.” Thus, 2445–2448a can be taken as a single clause, wherein Bertilak admits that his name is due to the power and learning of Morgan La Fee. The remainder of the passage, following a full-stop at the caesura of 2448, is a description of the means by which Morgan learned Merlin’s magic. This statement begins with the indecipherable “Mony ho taken” (2448b), which was emended to “mony ho hatz” by Madden, a reading that has been accepted by most editors since.52 However, I believe that there is another, simpler emendation which better preserves the sense of Morgan as active agent, if “ho” is left intact, and the line is read as “she took many” or “many of which she took.” This does not produce a perfect grammatical reading but it is as functional as any other offered, and it offers several interpretive possibilities for this phrase: if it refers to “maystres of Merlyn,” then there is an implicit weakening of Morgan’s power with respect to Merlin’s, given that Morgan acquired many and therefore not all of his

51 Sheila Fisher, “Taken Men and Token Women in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” in Seeking the Woman in Late Medieval and Renaissance Writings, eds. Sheila Fisher and Janet Halley (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989), 77–79. 52 For example, Tolkien and Gordon, and Andrew and Waldron both accept this.

85 arts. “Mony” could, however, refer to the number of men that Morgan has taken into her service, through her power and learning; this opens the possibility that Bertilak is mitigating his own shame in being used as Morgan’s tool, by saying he is just one of many men—including Merlin—who have been so used, just as Gawain has justified his actions by citing the exalted company of Adam and Solomon.

Likewise, it is possible to punctuate the passage with a full-stop at the caesura of 2447, before “bi craftes wel lerned,” thus placing emphasis on the skills by which Morgan has been able to control many men do to her bidding. With this punctuation, all components are accounted for, and there is no need, in a translation, to add extra words for explanation. The result also reveals something striking about the relationship between the Green Knight/Bertilak and Morgan La Fee. Gawain asked for his “ryȝt nome, and þenne no more” and was told the story of Morgan’s power and learning. By removing the full-stop at line 2444, and giving Morgan’s “myȝt” two points of modification, Bertilak is also explicitly named through that same power: “Bertilak de Hautdesert I hat in þis londe / þurȝ myȝt of Morgne la Faye, þat in my hous lenges....”; thus, Morgan’s power is not only the source of Bertilak’s name, but is also an integral part of the way in which he identifies himself. Additionally, treating the entire description of Morgan’s magical education as a couched clause results in 2446b–2450a being bracketed off from the rest of the passage, which deepens Bertilak’s syntactical relationship with Morgan, by hinting at his dependence on Morgan for his identity:

Bertilak de Hautdesert I hat in þis londe,

Þurȝ myȝt of Morgne la Faye (þat in my hous lenges,

And koyntyse of clergye; bi craftes wel lerned,

Þe maystres of Merlyn mony ho taken,

For ho hatz dalt drwry ful dere sumtyme

With þat conable klerk). (2445–2450a)

As above, the power of naming is attributed to Morgan, and the embedded clause includes all of her dealings with Merlin. The next phrase, however, being separated from this passage, can read as:

Þat knowes alle your knyȝtes

86

at hame:

Morgne þe goddes.

Þerfore hit is hir name. (2450b–2453)

With this punctuation, “þat” of 2450b must be understood to mean “she who,” an unusual construction, but one which has precedence in some editions of the poem.53 If “þat” is understood in this way, the new phrasing reads: “She who knows all of your knights at home: Morgan the Goddess.” Thus, the “hit” of line 2453 refers retrospectively back to line 2445, or even to the “ryȝt nome” of 2443 and the “þat” of 2444: “What is your right name?.”.. “That I shall tell you: Bertilak of Hautdesert is my name, through the power of Morgan .... Therefore it is her name.” This is particularly interesting as regards the Green Knight’s speech which precedes this act of naming: when the Green Knight explains to Gawain the source of his knowledge of his behaviour, he says:

For hit is my wede þat þou werez, þat ilke wouen girdel

Myn owen wyf hit þe weued I wot wel forsoþe

Now know I wel þy cosses and þe costes als,

And þe wowyng of my wyf I wroȝt hit myseluen

I sende hir to assay þe (2358–2362)

The repetition of personal possessive pronouns is striking, as is the Green Knight’s overt claim of responsibility for the events at the castle. At this point in the narrative we, as Gawain, have no cause to doubt the truth of the Green Knight’s claim to have orchestrated the challenge, but the new information provided by the re-punctuation of lines 2444 and following changes things. The ownership of the exchange of winnings game is predicated on our sense of his ownership of self ––the “trawþe” or integrity of his own act of naming himself “I” or calling things “myn”: the confusion of this own self-ownership is made abundantly clear by the pronomial slippage in line 2461–62, where the Green Knight-as-Bertilak refers to himself in the third person: “þat ilke gome þat goslych speked / With his hede in his honde….” Once he informs us, however, of

53 Tolkien and Gordon, for example, gloss line 969 (“þat gay, þat graciously loked”) as “she who looked [upon him] graciously” (221).

87

Morgan’s ownership over this self, doubt is shed into the entire sequence at the castle: she is not explicitly involved in its orchestration, but as she is the prime mover of Bertilak himself, it is impossible to gauge what role she does or does not have.

The presence of Morgan in the poem, then, reverberates backwards from Bertilak’s naming of himself and of Morgan, as we now know that any time he refers to himself, he is referring implicitly to Morgan. On first glance, recognizing the omnipresence of Morgan in the poem should lend stability and consistency to what seemed unstable and flawed, but the identification of Morgan at the end of SGGK serves to destabilize the text further, forcing the reader to recognize her potential presence at every point throughout the poem. Far from being only a local presence, the introduction of Morgan at the end of the poem suggests that she has been present at the beginning of the poem, and perhaps even before. The result of being able to see Morgan everywhere in the poem, however, is not to make her less marginal but to make her marginality more prominent: she is a figure whose exact whereabouts in the poem cannot be stated for certain; whose exact role in the unravelling of the narrative cannot be stated for certain; whose intentions, even within that dubious role, cannot be stated for certain; whose history, although partly known, cannot fully be known for certain.

The syntax of these lines is difficult—there are several ways that they could be read, and it takes some rearrangement and creative emphasis in order to draw a coherent meaning from them. The reading of these lines has been directed throughout a lot of the poem’s editorial history by an emendation which works according to a certain kind of logic: it was necessary for early editors to find ways of reading these lines in order to make these lines articulate a particular reading of the poem’s overall plot—namely, that the Green Knight/Bertilak maintained a measure of control over the story. The alternate readings that I have suggested perform precisely the same kind of fixation: it fixes into syntax these words, and makes them tell a different story—namely, that all power in Bertilak’s kingdom stems from Morgan La Fee. But while the punctuation may fix the syntax, neither of these readings need to be permanent: the addition of punctuation to the lines can fix a particular reading, but this fixation is always only temporary, and other reading possibilities still exist.

The figure of Morgan La Fee, and the way that knowledge of her involvement and understanding of her identity are parcelled out through the poem, functions in a similar way to

88 issues of the poem’s physical form and layout, discussed above. The layout of the bob-lines makes a similar demand upon the reader as does the paradoxical figure of the Green Knight; as does the late-game introduction of Morgan as the story’s central role and agent; as does the recognition, by both reader and Gawain, that the activities he thought were private were in fact visible to the court; and as does the shift of moral privilege from the pentangle onto the girdle. The poem’s narrative and form assumes rereading: just as the poem returns to its beginning through its final stanza, so too will the reader return to the beginning, and see the poem again with a restored sense of order. Readers who do return to the beginning are rewarded for having done so with a slightly easier reading passage and with the opportunity to see what Gawain does not yet see, to judge the rigid and coarse centre-focused reading of Camelot, and to triumph in having learned to read the subtler signs which are constitute Hautdesert’s primary narrative. This sense of restored order and familiarity, however, is short-lived if not utterly deceptive. Although rereaders have a slightly easier reading passage, the poem’s uncanniness remains: regardless of familiarity with the plot, the introduction of Morgan into the story continues to be surprising, Gawain’s reaction to the news continues to be disturbing, the Green Knight’s relationship to Morgan, and his role in the plot, continues to be mysterious. Just as the recognition of the bob- line’s pattern reveals the possibility of the presence of other, not-yet-noticed patterns, the unsettledness of the poem’s plot implies the presence of as-yet-unsolved twists. 2.5 Conclusion Because these poems exist in a single-witness manuscript that has become fragile, the form and layout have not been given a great deal of consideration in scholarship of the texts or in editorial decisions. Similarly, many editorial emendations and alterations that were made early on have gone unconsidered because they have largely become invisible. A great deal of interesting, productive scholarship has come from the text as it exists in its many edited versions, and I do not wish to imply that any of these readings or arguments should be discounted. But there are possibilities of reading that can emerge when we consider aspects of the texts that have been ignored. In order to make these arguments, it is necessary to—if only temporarily—side- step some ideas about the texts’ forms that have become very deeply embedded in discourse about them, from the four-fitt structure of SGGK to the stanza form of Pearl. This does not have to mean that seminal arguments that depend on these structures have to be thrown out, or that future reading cannot still be built upon them. Rather, wondering what else we might see in these

89 texts if we dare to look can multiply possible readings. Looking closely at the manuscript does not make this happen, but being mindful of the manuscript when looking at scholarship that departs from it, and being curious about scholarship that imagines changes into the structure of its poems can potentially achieve a new way of thinking about editions, and about literary criticism as well.

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Chapter 3 : Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger

This chapter examines two fragmentary poems, both of which exist in a single-witness manuscript: Richard the Redeless, currently Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Ll.iv.14, fols. 107v–109v; and Mum and the Sothsegger, now London, British Library, MS British Library Additional 41666. Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger are two anonymous poem fragments which address the issues of the deposition of Richard II and Henry IV’s usurpation of the throne, and which particularly articulate anxieties about the deterioration of documentary authority that these events set in motion. Both poems place great emphasis on writing poetry as a deeply political act, and on poetry itself as a kind of document that rivals and even exceeds the capacity of official political record in its capacity to speak important truths. The two poems exist in separate manuscripts, and do not explicitly deal with the same content or subject matter. Richard was first transcribed and edited in the mid-nineteenth century. However, ever since Mum was discovered in the 1920s, the fragments have largely been treated as two parts of the same poem. The reason for this is a short comment within an unpublished sixteenth century notebook of famed antiquarian John Bale who, citing the authority of the well-known antiquarian Nicholas Brigham, quotes the first line of Richard the Redeless but gives it the title “Mum, Sothsegger”—characters that appear nowhere in Richard and were unknown until the discovery of the manuscript containing Mum and the Sothsegger in the 1920s. Ever since then, the two fragments have largely been edited together: in the absence of much concrete information about either anonymous text, their mention together in the work of an important antiquary is a valuable piece of their history. Brigham cited aspects of the poems together, and Bale cited Brigham citing aspects of the poems together; as a result, for almost a century, many scholars have been driven to unite the poems in some way.

In the previous chapter, I argued for a reconsideration of manuscript evidence in editorial and critical analyses of the poems in the Cotton Nero A.x manuscript. I argued that early decisions regarding editorial treatment of the texts resulted in aspects of the texts’ physical form being ignored: while these early decisions have established productive readings, I suggested the stickiness of decisions made by early editors of these texts, and their status as “authoritative” and “correct,” have limited other things that could be said about the texts. This chapter makes a similar argument about editorial treatment of Richard and Mum, but rather than detailing the way

91 that the texts themselves have been edited, I will focus on a single point that has been a consistent part of editorial considerations for the past century: many editorial and critical decisions about these poems have been built on Bale’s note about the poems, and I am interested in exploring the context in which that detail is embedded. Bale’s and Brigham’s notes are important pieces of the poems’ histories, both separate and shared, and yet the historical context of each of these notes provide useful perspective as well. As in the last chapter and the dissertation as a whole, my investigation is driven by the question “I wonder why…”: in the case of these two manuscript fragments, I explore this question by tracing the circumstances that brought them together.

Reconsidering the influence of Brigham and Bale’s notes opens up the possibility of considering how political belief and perspectives on medieval history have influenced understanding of the poems more broadly. There have been several shifts in how the events surrounding Richard’s deposition and Henry’s ascent to the throne have been understood. Opinion on the nature of these events depended on the purposes for which such a history was being used, and was determined in large part by which documents were considered in the construction of new accounts. When Richard the Redeless was first edited in the nineteenth century, scholarly opinion about Richard II and about the justifiability of his deposition was undergoing a significant change: scholars were reconsidering the circumstances of the deposition, the nature of Richard’s reign, the validity of Henry’s charges against him, and thus the Lancastrian succession quite broadly. The vehicles for this reconsideration were the chronicles written contemporaneously with Richard’s period of rule, and those from later periods that recapitulated the events of the period. The emancipation of Catholic worshippers in nineteenth-century England had catalyzed new perspectives on national narratives: because of a growing realization that medieval Catholic materials—many lost or deemed treacherous leading up to the dissolution—relayed events much differently from long-standing hegemonic positions, many historians of the period were turning to real-time accounts, claiming that those contemporary accounts offered more objective, “truthful” accounts of the circumstances.1

1 See, for example, Margaret Aston, “English Ruins and English history: the Dissolution and the sense of the past,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 36 (1973): 231–55; [reprinted in Lollards and Reformers: Images and Literacy in Late Medieval Religion (London, 1984), 313–337]; and H. G. Richardson’ and G.O. Sayles’ The Governance of Medieval England form the Conquest to Magna Carta (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1963), 1–21.

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There is an attractive logic to the idea of using political documents composed contemporaneously with the poems as a way of validating them, and of assessing their allegiances as well as attempting to suss out generalizable points about the literary response to political events. However, both of these poems make as their central point the fallibility of documents. Indeed, both poems push this point to its limit, and put in doubt the very possibility of speaking truthfully, in light of the malleability and falsifiability of even the most authoritative documents. As such, validating the poems’ narratives using chronicle histories and other official documents in order to establish the factual foundation on which they are built misses the point that the poems themselves are making: “Don’t trust the documents. Ever. (Not this one, either.)”

The poems’ warnings are apt: as I will discuss in what follows, there is considerable evidence that those chronicles had been programmatically altered on Henry’s orders to reflect precisely that bias. Even before Henry IV took the throne, he was carefully sending out requests under Richard’s signet to examine the chronicles of the realm, and then having them altered to reflect narratives favourable to him, not just with respect to the circumstances of Richard’s deposition and death but also, and most vitally, with respect to Richard’s methods of rule and general popularity and support. Acknowledging the history of the ostensibly objective documents that were used to justify the natural demise of Richard’s right to rule and thus the natural succession of Henry might unsettle ideas of the way that these two poems fit together. The poems’ distrust of documents is relevant to a reconsideration of the editorial practice of uniting the poems, too, given that editors have treated Bale’s note as a reason at least to consider their relationship. If the message of the poems, supported by the evidence of the culture in which they were produced and revised, is “Don’t trust the documents,” then that may offer us a different way to think about the relationship of the two poems: they are, after all, united first in a document that was built on the principle of strategic mining of the holdings of the realm for the purpose of a strategic narrative reconstruction of history. Plan of Chapter The rest of this chapter has four main parts: I will first summarize the political circumstances from the beginning of Richard II’s reign through to his deposition and death, and the subsequent ascension to the throne of Henry IV. After laying this historical foundation, I will discuss the two single-witness manuscripts containing the poems Richard the Redeless and Mum

93 and the Sothsegger. In this second section I will first discuss the manuscript in which Richard is found, and early theories concerning Richard’s authorship. I will then discuss the twentieth- century discovery of a manuscript that contains the only extant witness to the poem Mum and the Sothsegger, and subsequent theories of authorship that have linked these two poems together. In my third section I will then discuss how they have been edited, by whom, and on what principles, as well as the major debates that have preoccupied the scholarship that both unites and separates them. I will go on to discuss in some detail the work of antiquarians such as Bale that link the poems together, and discuss how these identifications relate to the political agenda of monarchs from Henry VIII through to Elizabeth I, and also to Bale’s own totalizing project of literary succession and lineage. I will look also at the degree to which modern editorial activity has been influenced by antiquaries like Bale. In my last section I will then look closely at the poems themselves, and show how they articulate these same anxieties about lineage and succession, and especially anxiety concerning the role that documentary authority plays in establishing historical truths. Throughout this discussion, I will point to recent evidence that the end of Ricardian rule and the beginning of the Lancastrian age was marked by an explicit culture of revision and strategic documentary fraudulence. The thrust of my argument throughout is the possibility that editorial decisions affect the horizon of possibility of treatment of the poems: in this case, I argue that Bale’s linkage of the two fragments has led modern editors and thus modern readers to think about them as a unity (if only because they seek to dismantle that unity). My suggestion is that this editorial preoccupation with unity has a tendency to smooth over the jagged relationship between the two fragments, and that this sort of flattening of historical evidence is one that the poems themselves reflect upon over time. They were produced in the context of efforts by Richard II to settle discrepancies in the public account of his reign by tampering with chronicle narratives; and with similar efforts by Henry IV to establish different accounts in those same chronicles both leading up to Richard’s deposition and following his death. The poems were “rediscovered” in the context of Henry VIII’s concern, some 150 years later, that the history of the realm be used to preface and justify radical political change and religious reform; and John Bale’s similar interest in establishing a clear lineage from which a particular vision of England’s past could be gleaned. My final point is that, ironically, even as these two poems are implicated in attempts at establishing a coherent, non-fragmentary or uncontested historical narrative, they

94 buck against it. They continue to represent—in content and form—history as inevitably impossible to smooth out. 3.1 A Brief History of the Reigns of King Richard II and King Henry IV In order to understand these poems and the approach that I am taking to them, it is necessary to establish some historical background of the period in which, and about which, the poems were written. The political environment of the time is complex, and is muddied further by time and various accounts. What follows is a simplified summary of the reign of King Richard II and the succession—or usurpation—of King Henry IV.

King Richard II took the throne in 1377, when he was only nine years old; his government was largely under the advisement of a series of councils, a situation that was preferred by the aristocracy to the regency under the control of Richard’s uncle, John of Gaunt. After the Peasant’s Revolt of 1381, during which Richard won many supporters, many in the realm turned against him due to his clear dependence on a small number of courtiers and a consequent favouring of these courtiers’ and his own priorities over the broader needs of the realm, an issue that worsened over the next several years. This general discontent at Richard’s abuse of power came to a head in the Crisis of 1386: many of those who benefitted most from Richard’s favour in the 1380s were non-aristocrats2 who received the king’s favour in the form of titles, power, and grants, all of which offended the barons who believed that their noble status should have had more influence over the king. In response to these tensions, in 1387, a group of aristocrats named the Lords Appellant wrested control of the government from Richard, on the grounds of Richard’s biased treatment of members of the aristocracy. The Appellants were joined by John of Gaunt’s son Henry Bolingbroke:3 the ensuing conflict caused Richard to flee to the Tower, where he was presented with accusations about his own misconduct and that of members of his council. In February of the next year, in what is known as the “Merciless Parliament,” the Appellants brought up five of Richard’s closest allies on accusations of treason.

2 For details of the favours offered to de la Pole, see G.A. Holmes, The Estates of the Higher Nobility in Fourteenth- Century England (Cambridge, 1957), 42. For details of the largesse offered to Burley see Henry Knighton, Chronicon Henrici Kniton, ed. J.R. Lumby (Rolls Series, 92, 1895), II: 205. 3 For details of this event, see Nigel Saul, Richard II (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 185–96.

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Richard accepted the Appellants’ control and they maintained control for the next year, after which there was a period of relative peace and stable governance by Richard.

This détente ended in 1397, when Richard began to take his revenge on the Appellants who had overthrown his power ten years earlier, exiling many—including Thomas of Woodstock, Duke of Gloucester—and executing the others. On 17 September, 1397, Richard II gathered the parliament at Westminster, surrounded by his personal troop of 300 archers, and presided over the “Revenge Parliament,” which sought to exact revenge against those who had worked and spoken against him and his power a decade earlier, in the “Merciless Parliament” of 1388: he sought, in particular, to void the proceedings of and to revoke the pardons that had been granted at the earlier parliament. Several of the central characters of 1388 were accused and tried for treason, including the Duke of Gloucester who, already imprisoned in Calais, was accused of treason and eventually executed on Richard’s orders. At the next parliament, in 1398, in Shrewesbury, Richard declared that the acts of the Merciless Parliament would no longer be considered law, thus voiding the restraints that had been placed on his power almost a decade previously: rather than requiring the power of parliament, Richard granted power to a small committee of his choosing, consisting of twelve lords and six commoners. In so dismantling parliament, Richard built for himself a system of absolute rule. Given this newly established system of power, after 1399 Richard is said to have become increasingly autocratic in his style of rule and in his sense of entitlement to the wealth of the realm: eventually, Richard demanded “blank orders” from his lords—essentially blank cheques that would grant him title to their lands and wealth. One of these orders claimed the duchy of Lancaster as his own: when John of Gaunt died in 1399, rather than allowing Bolingbroke to succeed his father’s estate after his ten year exile was ended, Richard instead commuted his sentence to life, and thus Bolingbroke was stripped of his inheritance and placed in permanent exile. News of Richard’s action against Henry Bolingbroke’s lands led to the recognition by other lords that their lands and titles could be stripped, as Bolingbroke’s had, by royal decree, making the aristocracy nervous of the king’s approach to power. In 1399, Richard went to Ireland and, in his absence, Henry Bolingbroke returned from exile. On August 19, Richard was finally trapped and imprisoned in the Tower of London on September 1, 1399.

Once Richard was imprisoned, Henry needed to establish clear grounds for Richard’s arrest in order to secure the throne for himself, as well as grounds which would justify why

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Henry—who was not the heir to the throne—should ascend if Richard were deemed unfit to rule. In order to solve these issues, Henry laid claim to the throne through the male line, which would grant him priority in the lineage. Henry declared that Richard’s actions in the Shrewesbury Parliament made him unfit to rule, charging Richard further with other acts of tyranny and allegations of severe mental instability. One of the charges against Richard’s fitness was dishonesty in his rule and the particular claim that he had forged official documents. Meanwhile, documents that narrate the events claim that Richard gave himself up voluntarily, that he gave over the crown to Henry, and that he sanctioned the transfer of regal power. In the Rolls of Parliament, Henry’s accession was backdated to September 30, 1399, the date of the parliament at which Richard supposedly voluntarily abdicated the throne. The precise date of Richard’s death is not known, although it is likely that he died of starvation at Pontefract Castle, in February of 1400. The suspicious circumstances of Richard’s death, and Henry’s clear motives to have him out of the way, contributed to rumours that Richard was murdered. The circumstances of Richard’s death while imprisoned in the Tower on Henry’s orders and under his control, were suspicious. Richard’s supporters loudly claimed that their king had been murdered; even some of Henry’s supporters believed that this was most likely the case. These suspicions of murder clouded Henry’s already-cloudy claim to the throne: no matter how sound Henry’s claim was on grounds of his ancestry and on grounds of Richard being unfit to lead, the murder of the sitting king would negate his own fitness to rule.4

Of paramount importance to the debate of the rightness of this transfer of power is the representation of Richard, by those in Henry’s party, as a madman and a tyrant: Henry’s justification for the necessity of Richard’s deposition began with claims that Richard was unfit to rule based on his instability of personal character and his tyrannical use of the power of his position. Henry and his allies cited, as evidence of Richard’s madness, parliamentary records and chronicle histories that narrate the many occasions of Richard’s tyranny and instability and the general discontent of the people. As I will discuss in what follows, in order to gather this

4 In England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), Paul Strohm notes that “The belief that Henry IV’s murder of Richard had effectively negated his right to the throne surfaces, among other places, in the words of the intransigent Leicester friar who boldly told Henry that ‘If he is dead, he is dead by your hand. And if he is dead through you, you have lost your title, and every right to the throne’ (‘Si mortuus est, per vos mortuus est. Et si per vos mortuus est, perdidistis titulum, et omne jus quod habere potestis ad regnum’ — Continuatio Eulogii, p. 392)” (243n16).

97 evidence, Henry IV conducted investigations of the chronicle histories of the realm in 1399. The official party line on this investigation was to gather from the chronicle reports a consistent and unbiased perspective on Richard’s rule, in order to ensure that the deposition of Richard was warranted. However, it is clear that the investigation was primarily—or at least, also—motivated by a desire to homogenize documentary histories, to eliminate dissent within the extant narratives of national and regal history, and thus to ensure that the story left for following generations was one of irreproachable Lancastrian domination.

To the public, Richard’s death was explained as a suicide by starvation: he had given up the will to live imprisoned, and had died at his own hand. After Richard’s death, Henry had Richard’s body displayed to the public in the interest of placating Richard’s supporters, and quickly clearing the way for his own rule. The body was brought to London from Pontefract and, after the office of the dead was performed at St. Paul’s, Richard’s body was paraded through the streets. In Adam of Usk’s account, Richard’s face was not covered, and Jean Froissart’s chronicle recounted that 20,000 people saw the body as it was publicly paraded through London. After Richard had been displayed and buried, Henry began to establish himself as monarch, but an anxiety about the rightful transfer of divine authority lingered. This anxiety was manifest in ceremonies performed by Henry: Henry enacted “elaborate ceremonies of deposition and election” that emphasized Richard’s voluntary resignation, including claims that Richard took the “initiative in placing his signet on Henry’s finger, and a coronation ritual considerably expanded to emphasize Henry’s own anointment and sacred unction.”5 All of these ceremonies and events enacted by Henry—the parade of the body, the burial—were narrated in various chronicle histories as well as in official parliamentary documents, in which these events are guaranteed by various legal witnesses.

In spite of the elaborate nature of the ceremonies and the documents that guaranteed them, these attempts to craft ceremonies of legitimation did not function fully: indeed, while Richard was still living in Henry’s care, Richard’s and his supporters hired a Richard look-alike to appear around the country to maintain the allegiance, hope, and trust of his supporters. Indeed,

5 For a detailed discussion of these ceremonies of legitimation, see Strohm, England’s Empty Throne: Usurpation and the Language of Legitimation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) esp. 101–127; and “Saving the Appearances,” in Hochon’s Arrow: The Social Imagination of Fourteenth Century Texts (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 75–94.

98 just as rumours circulated that Richard had been murdered by Henry, so too did rumours that he was not actually dead. Even after his body was paraded around, rumours that Richard was still living continued, so much so that, in 1402, the circulation of such rumours was explicitly made illegal by being identified as seditious activity.6 The rhetoric of speaking of Richard as if he were still living, speaks to a tradition of what Paul Strohm calls Richard’s “hypothetical” status, and what Philip Morgan identifies as the tradition of the “loyalist rebellion” where a living Richard works to establish a “legitimizing framework for redress or grievance”: the function of this framework may have been to herald “a programme of religious or political change” by using the memory of Richard—and especially the memory of his illegal deposition—to rally movement among Henry’s critics.7 This discourse continued to actively question the legitimacy of Henry IV, especially as discontent began to mount against him on similar grounds to those that were used to bring down Richard—the abuse of power in granting favours and misusing the proper procedures of law and governance. This questioning of Lancastrian legitimacy might seem to focus on an interrogation of the divine right of Henry's occupation of the throne, focusing particularly on the “rightness” of a ruler who nominated himself to a divine office, and expressing a skepticism about the possibility, then, of any reliable measure of “truth” once a system of divine ordination has been so hollowed out. The interrogation thus extends outward from interrogation of the rulers, to include the documents that describe the process by which they acceded. 3.2 Editorial History of the Manuscripts 3.2.1 Richard the Redeless The poem fragment known as Richard the Redeless speaks to the troubled historical circumstances of the deposition of Richard II and the subsequent accession of Henry IV, related briefly above. The title, given to the poem in the late nineteenth-century by Walter Skeat, can be understood to mean “Richard the un-counselled,” and encapsulates the poem’s tone of critique of Richard as a king either lacking proper counsel or incapable of accepting the counsel that he had. The poem speaks—in both general and specific terms—about the events of the summer of 1399,

6 See Strohm, England’s Empty Throne, 100–110; and Peter McNiven, “Rebellion, Sedition, and the Legend of Richard II’s Survival in the reigns of Henry IV and Henry V,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 76 (1994): 93– 117; at 117. 7 Philip Morgan, “Henry IV and the Shadow of Richard II,” in Crown, Government and People in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Rowena E. Archer (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1995), 1–31; at 11.

99 when Richard was imprisoned and deposed by Henry Bolingbroke, who took over as King Henry IV. The only extant copy of Richard the Redeless is a fragment that exists in a single manuscript which is currently Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Ll.iv.14, fols. 107v–119v. It is a paper manuscript with 26 quires, the pages measuring 280 mm by 216 mm; each folio contains 35 long lines to the page. It is collated in gatherings of fourteen: after the text breaks off, on fol. 119 v, there is a single blank folio, and the remaining leaves of the gathering are missing from the manuscript so the final gathering has sixteen folios. Richard the Redeless is one item in a manuscript that also contains a broad array of other materials: fols. 1–107r contain a B-text of Piers Plowman, followed by Richard, on fols. 107v–119v; fol. 120r and v are blank; fols. 121r– 142v are A Treatise on ‘The Art of Nounbring’ in English Prose; fols. 143r–146r are The Wise Book of Philosophie and Astronomye; fols 146v–149v are The Tretise of The Book of Physionomy; fols. 150r–152v are Tabula Psalmorum; fols. 153r–156v are Sententiae Doctorum; fol. 158 is A Glossary of Piers Plowman; and fols. 159r–160v are A Doctrine of Ffishyng and Fouling, by Piers of Fulham.8 Richard is bound directly following a B-text of Piers Plowman, and the design and hand are consistent in both texts, although the last four items in the manuscript are in a different and later hand.9 Helen Barr dates the manuscript as a whole to the second quarter of the fifteenth century on the evidence of paleography, binding, and paper stock. There are quotations written in the margins of the manuscript throughout, which are written in the same hand as Richard.

Richard the Redeless was first edited by Thomas Wright: it was published 1838 by the Camden Society under the title Poem on the Deposition of Richard II, and again in 1859 as part of the Rolls Series, in the collection Political Poems and Songs. In his introductory discussion, Wright does not attempt to identify the poem’s author; he does, however, speculate on the appropriate date for the poem, suggesting that it was written while “King Richard was a captive, but the intention to depose him appears not yet to have been made public.”10

8 Manuscript contents listed in A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, Vol. IV (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1861), 66–67. 9 Ibid., 66. 10 Thomas Wright, Alliterative Poem on the Deposition of King Richard II (London: J. B. Nichols and Son, 1838), xcvii.

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The poem was edited for the second time by Walter Skeat, who also gave it the name by which it is now known, Richard the Redeless, so named for the opening lines of Passus I of the poem: “Now Richard Þe redeles / reweth on ȝouself.” The poem was published under this title as a companion to Skeat’s edition of the C-Text of Piers Plowman for the Early English Text Society in 1873. Skeat published Richard again, in 1886, alongside his parallel text edition of the three versions of Piers Plowman. In both of these editions, Skeat agrees with the date that Wright had established.11 Skeat attributes authorship of the poem to Langland on stylistic and thematic grounds, and based on the fact that Richard follows Piers so directly in the manuscript, with minimal spacing or obvious markers identifying the movement from one text to another, such that Richard appears to be an extension of the ending of that version of Piers.12

This theory of Langlandian authorship was largely accepted. One scholar who did question Skeat’s theory, however, was Professor Henry Bradley (1845–1923), a British lexicographer and philologist who was the editor of the Oxford English Dictionary from the late nineteenth century until his death in 1923. In a side-note to a discussion rejecting Skeat’s notion of Langlandian authorship of Richard the Redeless, published in 1906, Bradley notes:

An interesting fact, hitherto, so far as I know, unnoticed, is that Bale (Index, ed. Poole, p. 479) mentions the latter poem, under the title “Mum, Soth-segger!” (i.e. “Hush, truth- teller”). There can be no doubt of the identity of the piece referred to, for Bale gives a Latin translation of the first two lines.13

The record of a poem entitled “Mum, Soth Segger” to which Bradley refers is found in the sixteenth-century Index Britanniae Scriptorum, written by John Bale. The note in Bale’s Index reads: “Mum, soth segger id est Taciturnitas, verorum dictrix. Liber est Anglicus, qui incipit ‘Dum orans ambularem presbyteris altari astantibus, Bristollensi in vrbe’, etc. Ex venatione

11 For discussion of the marginalia throughout the Richard MS, see Skeat, ed. The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman in Three Parallel Texts, together with Richard the Redeless, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1886), vol. 2, lxxxiii–cviii; see also Barr, “The Relationship of Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger: Some New Evidence,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 4.1 (1990): 105–133, at 116 and 116–17n36. 12 Skeat, Langland’s Vision of Piers the Plowman, Text C, together with Richard the Redeless and the Crowned King, EETS o.s. 54. (London: Kegan, Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., 1873), lxxxiv. 13 Henry Bradley, “Note,” Athenaeum (1906): 481–82, at 481; cited in Mabel Day and Robert Steele, eds., Mum and the sothsegger, Edited from the Manuscripts Camb. Univ. Ll. IV. 14 and Brit. Mus. Add. 41666 (London: Early English Text Society, 1936), ixn.3.

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Nicolai Brigan.”14 The Latin lines cited correspond to the first two lines of the Middle English Richard: “And as I passid in my preiere / þer prestis were at messe, / In a blessid borugh / þat Bristow is named.” At the time of Bradley’s note, it was granted little significance: even though Richard deals broadly with issues of speaking out, there are no characters or discourse in the poem that deal—either explicitly or implicitly—with the concepts of “sothsegging” or “keeping mum.”

3.2.2 Mum and the Sothsegger Bradley’s remarks gained new valence in 1928, when a manuscript was discovered that contains a poem that is occupied throughout with characters named “Mum” and “Sothsegger.” Furthering the relationship with Richard, this newly-found manuscript contains the following comment written by a later hand on the back cover: “The lyff of kyng Rychard the ij,”15 an odd notation since though the poem in that manuscript does not deal with the life of King Richard II at all. Bradley’s 1906 citation of Bale’s record of the Latin translation of Richard’s first line under the title “Mum, Soth segger” led scholars working on the newly discovered manuscript to consider this previously unknown poem about characters named “Mum” and “Sothsegger” to be a companion piece, and perhaps even an extension of the earlier-known Richard the Redeless: thus the two fragments were quickly linked together by twentieth-century scholars and editors.

Mum and the Sothsegger is the only text in a manuscript now housed in London, British Library MS Additional 41666. The manuscript is separate from its original cover, in which it was found and which is kept alongside the book. There is considerable damage to the leaves: it appears that the manuscript, at some point, may have gotten damp, which destroyed some of the paper contents of the manuscript and cockled the parchment cover.16 The manuscript comprises nineteen leaves in the following configuration: four loose leaves, one gathering of eight leaves and a second gathering of six leaves, and a single leaf. There is clear evidence of missing leaves within the gatherings: the second gathering (of six) is missing two leaves (four and five of that

14 This passage is cited by Mabel Day and Robert Steele in the introduction to Mum and the sothsegger, Edited from the Manuscripts Camb. Univ. Ll. IV. 14 and Brit. Mus. Add. 41666 (London: Early English Text Society, 1936), in footnote 1 of page x; the original citation, however, is from John Bale’s Index Britanniae Scriptorum, ed. R.L. Poole and Mary Bateson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), p. 479. 15 Day and Steele note “On the last cover an inscription, ‘The lyff off kyng Rychard the ij’, in a fifteenth-century hand, was added by an early owner” (ix), although how they can be certain that the inscription was written by an owner rather, perhaps than then binder, scribe, etc. of the MS, is unclear. 16 This theory was suggested by Alexandra Gillespie in a personal correspondence, June 22, 2017.

102 gathering; in between fol. 15 and 16 of the manuscript). The manuscript has been dated to the mid-fifteenth century based on paleographical evidence. In its current fragmentary state, the poem is 1751 lines long.

Mum and the Sothsegger was first edited in 1936 by Mabel Day and Robert Steele, for the Early English Text Society.17 Based on Bale’s and Brigham’s association of lines from Richard with a poem called “Mum, Sothsegger,” Day and Steele chose to edit the two poems together, treating them as different fragments of a single unit. They note:

The identity of language and form between this fragment [Richard the Redeless, in MS CUL Ll.iv.14] and the newly discovered poem [Mum and the Sothsegger, in BL MS Add. 41666] seems to indicate that the two fragments form part of one larger composition, and we have therefore printed the whole under one title “Mum and the Sothsegger.”18

Steele and Day conclude that the Richard could function in concert with Mum if it is treated “as a treatise on the Government of Princes with illustrative examples written for the benefit of Henry” which would allow the space between the two extant fragments to be filled in “with a short conclusion dealing with the freedom of parliament and the beginning of an excursus on the choice of the great officers of State and the royal household (M206).”19

In spite of the several arguments that they present in favour of unification, Day and Steele have clear reservations about publishing the two poetic fragments under a single title: they are forthright in the problems that inhere in this decision and the many objections that must reasonably be accounted for, such as the division into passus of the one poem and not the other.

For Day and Steele, the unified origin of the poems was a speculative theory that could not be “rejected prima facie” but which was, nonetheless, speculative.20 However, their editorial experiment became the text encountered by readers, who treated the fragments less equivocally as a whole, single poem. After Day and Steele’s 1936 Mum and the Sothsegger was published, scholars tended to accept that the poems had been rightly rejoined, and many provided further rationale for the poems’ unity beyond what Day and Steele had imagined in their introductory

17 Day and Steele, Mum and the Sothsegger, ix. 18 Ibid., x–xviii. 19 Day and Steele, xix. 20 Ibid., xviii.

103 remarks. J.P. Oakden, for example, writes in Alliterative Poetry in Middle English, that Mum and the Sothsegger “is in all probability some sort of continuation of Richard the Redeless” (vol. II, 61), and goes on to treat the two fragments as a poetic unit without exploring the doubts that make it a “probability.” Ruth Mohl, in her 1944 paper “Theories of Monarchy in Mum and the Sothsegger”, discusses the poet’s conceptions of kinship and natural rule, arguing that he was a nationalist “whose faith is fixed in monarchy limited by a sovereignty of the people, evolved according to Natural law and maintained by representation and by due process of law.”21 Mohl’s argument is thorough and nuanced, and is built on an assumption of the two fragments’ unity which she described in terms of their formal and thematic relatedness; she notes that Richard was “a part of the newly discovered manuscript” and asserts that they “were known as one poem” in earlier times, in order to explain why they should, again, be thought of that way.22 Albert Baugh, too, identifies a relationship between the poems when discussing the discovery of Mum and the Sothsegger:23 he describes the newly discovered poem as “made up throughout of a dialogue between Mum and Sothsegger” and quotes Day’ and Steele’s claim that Richard and Mum together constitute “a treatise[s] on the Government of Princes with illustrative examples written for the benefit of Henry.”24 Such scholarly analyses argue convincingly for the unity of the poems; they begin these arguments with the evidence in John Bale’s bibliographic entry that brings them obliquely together, and draw on Day and Steele’s commendation of that unification.

A more recent wave of scholars, while treating the texts together, treat them as separate poetic works. In 1970, D.J. Williams observes that the connection that appears to be so explicit in Bale’s Index was exaggerated by the earliest critics who noticed the citation, and notes that “it is difficult to see how the connexion between the two [poems] was made, if it ever was.”25 Dan Embree argues, in his very influential 1975 article “Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger: A Case of Mistaken Identity,” that this argument is also based consistently “on an

21 Ruth Mohl, “Theories of Monarchy in Mum and the Sothsegger,” PMLA 59, no. 1 (1944): 26–45, at 28. 22 Ibid., 26. See also Arthur B. Ferguson, “The Problem of Counsel in Mum and the Sothsegger,” Studies in the Renaissance 2.67 (1955): 67–83. 23 Albert C. Baugh, A Literary History of England (London: Routledge and Kegan, 1948), 247. 24 Ibid. 25 D.J. Williams, “Alliterative Poetry in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in History of Literature in the English Language: Vol. I. The Middle Ages, ed. W.G. Bolton (London: Sphere Books, 1986): 119–167, at 154.

104 error of fact.”26 He notes that the dialogue between Mum and Sothsegger takes up “less than a tenth of M[um] and that occurs entirely in the first half of the fragment,”27 a point that Embree uses to weaken part of Baugh’s claim of the relationship between the poems. Furthermore, Embree contends that it is problematic to claim that the poems belong together on grounds of “advising the King,” since the two poems speak of different kings, and do so in a seemingly exclusionary way.28 Wilfred Richert argues that “the stylistic variations between the two versions make it impossible to assert with any certainty that both were the product of the same author” but also claims that, since “the later [meaning Mum and the Sothsegger] forms a reasonable dialogue-introduction for the earlier version” it is justifiable to treat “the two poems as one.”29 However, Richard the Redeless makes no mention of either name, nor is the debate between “keeping mum” and “truth-telling” taken up in any substantial way; and the assumption Richert makes about their order—that Mum necessarily precedes Richard—reverses the order that Day and Steele suggested for the fragments, and the order that all other scholars had accepted regarding their natural combination. Embree observes that Richert’s assumption serves to undo the principle that earlier scholars had used to argue for the unification of the two poems, stating that “such a scheme would, of course, deny the one good piece of evidence for unity—Bale’s note—by burying the opening lines quoted by Bale somewhere in the middle of the poem.”30

In a 1989 article, Diane Facinelli also argues against the unified-poem theory, stating that accepting the fragments as a single poem is only made possible by ignoring glaring differences in their subject matter, their tone, and the vastly different attitudes toward Henry that each fragment evinces. Moreover, the two fragments position themselves very differently with respect to their subjects: Richard discusses people and events in very specific terms, whereas Mum provides a far more general form of criticism. Facinelli argues, however, that the fragments are “separate compositions written by the same poet” and that “the author has become a more

26 Embree, 7. 27 Ibid. 28 On this point, Embree notes: “The most obvious objection to the unity of the two fragments is that, while both discuss the conduct of the king and his advisers, they refer to different kings. Although imprisoned, Richard is referred to as king throughout R, but M mentions only Henry and does so without hesitation, as if he were the only king under consideration” (7). 29 Wilfred G. Richert, “Anonymous Vernacular Verse Protest of the Middle Ages: 1216–1485,” Unpublished Dissertation (University of Colorado, 1966), 77–78; cited Embree, 6. 30 Embree, 7.

105 polished artist in Mum than he was in Richard, possibly because Henry IV’s strength required a subtlety of expression that Richard’s dire predicament in the earlier book of poetic advice rendered unnecessary.”31 Helen Barr has taken up this argument against the unification of Mum and the Sothsegger and Richard the Redeless as a single poem; she argues that the two fragments are the work of a single author who was writing in London.

Since Day and Steele’s 1936 edition, there have been two other editions of the poems: Helen Barr’s The Piers Plowman Tradition, edited in 1993 for Everyman, and James Dean’s Mum and the Sothsegger and Richard the Redeless, edited in 2000 for TEAMS. Both of these editions accept the critical consensus that the two fragments are not a single poem, and do not edit the fragments under a single title as Day and Steele chose to do. However, even though both Barr and Dean reject the single-poem theory, both of these editions bring the poems together. Helen Barr edits both as part of a larger collection of works in The Piers Plowman Tradition.32 In the introduction to his 2000 TEAMS edition, James Dean discusses the poems’ many formal and thematic similarities, touching on the differences and concludes: “It seems best to hold open the possibility that there may be a connection between them, but there may not be.”33 Both the Barr and Dean editions treat the two poems as two poetic fragments that fit together in indeterminate ways. In “The Relationship of Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger: Some New Evidence,” Barr employs computer analysis in order to make various comparisons between the poems, concluding that while there are important divergences between Richard and Mum “the two fragments were written by a single author.”34 Simon Horobin adds to Barr’s findings on one issue of the shared authorship, performing a dialectical analysis which has identified both the

31 Diane A. Facinelli, "Treasonous Criticisms of Henry IV: The Loyal Poet of Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger," Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and Renaissance Association 10 (1989): 51–62, at 9 and 51. 32 Barr, See also Helen Barr, The Piers Plowman Tradition: A Critical Edition of Pierce the Ploughman's Crede, Richard the Redeless, Mum and the Sothsegger, and The Crowned King (London: J.M. Dent, 1993), 6. Pierce the Ploughman’s Crede survives in three manuscript copies: London, British Library MS Harley 78 fol. 3r (lines 172– 207); London, British Library MS Bibl. Reg.18.B.XVII, and Cambridge, Trinity College MS R.3.15; one sixteenth century print copy: Reyner Wolfe (London 1553); STC 19904. The text was first edited by Thomas Wright in 1832, and next by Skeat in 1867. The only copy of The Crowned King is found in Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 95. The text was first edited by Skeat in The Vision of William Concerning Piers the Plowman, EETS 54 in 1873. 33 Dean, ed. Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger, online edition at http://d.lib.rochester.edu/teams/text/dean-richard-the-redeless-and-mum-and-the-sothsegger-mum-and-the- sothsegger-introduction (Kalamazoo, TEAMS: 2000), no pagination. 34 Barr, “The Relationship of Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger: Some New Evidence,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 4.1 (1990): 105–133, at 129–30.

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Richard-poet and the Mum-poet as natives of Bristol, which he suggests strengthens the case for single authorship.35

The trend of treating the poems together—both editorially and in scholarship— began with the belief that Bale’s note provided a vital clue to the histories of these two texts. Scholars have simply made use of what little was known about these fragments in order to piece together a history of the poems. Throughout the remainder of this chapter, I will examine the contexts that led to Bale’s note, and that thus underly this practice of treating the poems together. I do not want to suggest that the editorial and critical tradition that either unifies them, or ascribes them to a single author, or at least considers them side-by-side is wrongheaded in any way, and nor do I wish to suggest that Bale’s note provided a faulty classification of either or both poems. I do, however, want to suggest that the reasons why Bale’s note was written are important, as are other pieces of documentary history that might insinuate themselves into these texts’ histories. In what follows, I will examine these various overlapping histories in an attempt to flesh out what can be known about Richard and Mum. 3.3 Form Follows Content: The Editorial Tradition of the Poems Bale was a notable figure in sixteenth-century letters: he helped to preserve England’s manuscript history through his prodigious collecting and cataloguing, and—once Elizabeth had succeeded the throne—by influencing the Archbishop of Canterbury and great book collector and literary patron, Matthew Parker. Leslie P. Fairfield argues that through his bibliographic and literary activities, Bale worked to construct a new mythology for post-reformation England, providing the nation with a new interpretation of the past that prefigured the Reformation, and that reconfigured the nature of authority and legitimacy in the governance of the realm.36 Even such a brief biography hints that while early editors and scholars of Richard and Mum had cause to recognize Bale’s words as valuable—especially given his citation of Brigham in the note—his work could not in any way be considered politically neutral. Far from a simple statement of objective fact, or a description of the state of narrative affairs of the realm, Bale’s mention of

35 Simon Horobin, “The Dialect and Authorship of Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger,” The Yearbook of Langland Studies 18.1 (2004): 133–152, at 134. 36 Leslie P. Fairfield, John Bale: Myth Maker for the English Reformation (West Lafayette, IN: Wipf & Stock, 1976).

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Richard and Mum in the Index might very likely have been bound up within a polemical project with a particular agenda.

Bale spent his youth as a Carmelite monk at Norwich House, after which he entered studies at various important institutions: Cambridge, Louvain and Toulouse.37 In 1529, Bale was awarded his B.Th. at Cambridge, and was awarded his D.Th. in 1531. Bale became prior of the white friars' convent in the port town of Maldon in 1530, was promoted to the Carmelite convent at Ipswich in 1533, and was promoted to prior at Doncaster in 1534. Bale was loyal to Catholicism until the early 1530s, but converted to Protestantism soon after Henry VIII instituted a rift with Catholic orthodoxy; thus, his work throughout the 1530s was in service of the new religious doctrine of the crown, and was supported by Thomas Cromwell, who had long been a patron of Bale. After his conversion, and as the nation vacillated between reform and its reversal, Bale’s career was split between England, Ireland, and various parts of the continent, and his movement between these nations maps onto the shifts in regnal power and, more particularly, the popularity and legality of his protestant writings at home in England. He was involved in a highly political totalizing project that extended across a long period of religious and political reform and the transfer of power across four monarchs, and that was motivated by anxieties of authority and succession very similar to those which both Richard and Mum explore and satirize.

3.3.1 Henry VIII’s Literary Investigations In 1539, just a few years after the initial English break with Rome, Henry VIII’s Parliament passed the Act of Six Articles. This reversed the king’s commitment to the boldest of Thomas Cromwell’s reforms and re-established principles of conservative religion, including a reinstitution of a ban on Protestant literature. This marked Thomas Cromwell’s fall from power, and led to his execution in 1540, and it made polemical writers like Bale, who was a very prolific and well-known producer of Protestant tracts, vulnerable to accusations of treason. Bale exiled himself to the continent, where he could continue to write anti-Roman Catholic tracts.38

37 For details of Bale’s life, see for example the entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography; W.T. Davies, “A Bibliography of John Bale,” Oxford Bibliographical Society, Proceedings and Papers 5 (1940): 203–279; Jesse W. Harris, John Bale: A Study in the Minor Literature of the Reformation (Folcroft, Pa. : Folcroft Library Editions, 1973); and Fairfield. 38 The Dictionary of National Bibliography entry on Bale notes, of the work completed by Bale while in exile, These works ... generally denounce the papacy, the ritualism of the Roman liturgy, belief in transubstantiation and the mass, the veneration of saints, and the cult of the Virgin Mary. In their place Bale

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Even before the 1534 Act of Supremacy, Henry had aimed to increase the power held by the English king over the nation at the expense of Rome; and reform in its many guises strengthened this resolve. It was as part of this effort that antiquarian John Leland was charged with the task of making “a search after England’s antiquities, and to peruse the libraries of all cathedrals, abbeys, priories, colleges,” and “all places wherein records, writings and secrets of antiquity were reposed.”39 James Simpson notes that while Henry’s commission to Leland was ostensibly motivated by a love of learning, correspondence between Henry and Cromwell indicates that the commission was also part of the process whereby Henry suppressed England’s monasteries, first taking inventories of their holdings in order to assess their value.40 Leland’s commission also came just ahead of and was incorporated into a widespread effort to identify “auncient customes of the Realm” in the interest of suppressing all “superstition and Errors” which, “by devision and phatasinge vayne opynions of Purgatorye and Masses satisfactorye to be done for them which be departed.”41 The religious and political revolution enacted by Henry VIII was an overhaul of belief that also tried to deny the past by strategically rewriting and reframing it, in the interest of moving the nation into a very different future. Leland’s assessment of the nation’s literary history through its documentary remains was part of that project.

advocates protestant practices designed to nurture individual faith: gospel preaching, lay education in the vernacular Bible, and a service of holy communion that commemorates Christ's sacrifice rather than re- enacting it (Dictionary of National Bibliography, “Bale”). From his position outside of England, Bale needed to arrange for publication of these texts in Antwerp; later, after restrictions on the publication of protestant documents were further tightened even on the continent, in Wesel. The texts he composed in exile included: A Brief Chronicle Concerning the Examination and Death of Sir John Oldcastle (1544); The Examination of William Thorpe, and The Examinations of Anne Askew (1547); a text exposing monastic corruption entitled Acts of English Votaries (1546); a denunciation of Stephen Gardiner’s persecution of Protestants, entitled Yet another Course at the Romish Foxes (1543); a complete English commentary of the Book of Revelation, entitled The Image of both Churches (1545), which views Christian history as “a continuing struggle between the ‘true’ church, based on Jesus's teachings in the gospels, and the ‘false’ Church of Rome, whose leadership by the pope results from its subversion by Antichrist and the misinterpretation of scriptural texts” (DNB, “Bale”); and a reissued version of an anticlerical satire attributed to Walter Map and reissued by Bale as Rhythmi vetustissimi de corrupto ecclesiae statu (1546); and a reissued version of Princess Elizabeth's translation of a devotional text by Marguerite de Navarre entitled Godly Meditations of the Christian Soul (1548). These texts he smuggled into England, and they were sold under several false names: James Harrison and Henry Stalbridge. For a discussion of the extant manuscripts of these texts, see Fairfield, 157–64. 39 Cited James Simpson, “Ageism: Leland, Bale, and the Laborious Start of English Literary History, 1350–1550,” New Medieval Literatures 1 (1997): 213–35, at 213–214. There are no extant official records of Henry’s request to Leland, but Anthony Wood, a seventeenth century antiquarian, left reports of literary activity of the time in Athenae Oxonienses [ed. P. Bliss, 3 vols. (1813), i, col. 198]. 40 Ibid., 215. 41 Cited Simpson, 216.

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Leland took his commission very seriously, and wrote to the king about his plans––plans which, at several points over the following decade, threatened to topple him with their magnitude. He set out to produce several volumes on the topic of Britain and of literary history: a description of Britain to be called Liber de topographia britanniae primae; a book of history called De antiquitate Britannica or Ciuilis historia; and a book on the islands around Britain called De nobilitate britannica, that would outline the noble families of Britain “so that all noble men shal clerely perceyue theyr lyneal parentele.”42 The major project, however, was to be the literary history, which would include the names, lives, and works of the great writers of England; he states that he intended to model this project on writers of ecclesiastical catalogues like St. Jerome, and traveled around England and Wales seeking out books.43 In 1547, Leland’s work still not done, Henry died, and his nine-year old son Edward took the throne; Leland’s notes were taken up by his contemporary, John Bale.

Edward's accession and the shift in internal power enabled Bale to return to England, and in 1548 he was living in London. However, this period also saw the rise of radical Protestantism, which led to renewed efforts to destroy the remnants of the medieval church Catholic in England, and Bale expressed concern for the threat that the revolution held toward the nation’s books and history. He notes that many supporters of the new Protestant power had “purchased those superstycyouse mansyons” and were destroying the libraries without consideration of the national history contained therein. One forum for Bale to express and act upon these concerns, in fact, was Leland’s abandoned project: between 1548 and 1552, Bale made an epitome of Leland’s De viris illustribus,44 and worked to complete it by surrounding it with editorial

42 John Bale, ed. The Labouryouse Journey & Serche of Johan Leylande, for Englandes Antiquitees, by John Leland, Short Title Catalogue 15445 (London, 1549), A3[r]); for more detailed discussion, see Daniel Breen, “Making the Past: History Historians, and Literature in England, 1485–1600” unpublished dissertation (Duke University, 2006), especially 15–20.; cited Simpson, 220. 43 Simpson, 220–21. Simpson notes, too that “It is for Henry as king that Leland envisions his antiquarian scholarship, and it is for the greater glory of Henry Tudor that Leland is, in part, provoked to plan such an ambitious cultural mapping. But it is also, of course, Henry who stands ultimately behind the massive destruction of the years 1536–40” (Simpson, 220). 44 Leland’s copy of this text is now Cambridge, Trinity College, MS. R.7.15 [753]. There are several accounts that attest to Bale’s labours with Leland’s text: for example, John Foxe notes his knowledge of “The history of Leland ‘De Catalogo virorum illustrium’; which book, being borrowed of Master Cheke, I myself did see in the hands of the aforesaid John Bale, what time we were both together, dwelling in the house of the noble lady the Duchess of Richmond” (Foxe, III.705); cited Caroline Brett and James Carley, “Preface,” in Index Britanniae scriptorum: John Bale's index of British and other writers, eds. Reginal Lane Poole and Mary Bateson (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1990), xivn14. Bale also had access to another copy of De viris illustribus, which was presumably “compiled during

110 commentary. Leland’s own account of his unfinished work to Henry VIII only survives as Bale printed it: as The Laboryouse Journey and Serche of Johan Leylande for Englandes Antiquitees, 1549.45 Although Leland’s original text is there, including his dedication of the narrative to Henry, these words are surrounded and editorialized by Bale’s own dedication, most particularly his dedication to the newly acceded boy-king Edward VI. Leland’s text is thus in the service of a somewhat different project than that for which he was commissioned.46 Bale’s version rededicates Leland’s essay to Edward “as a just possession to the ryght inherytour” and tells him that “fyrste was it geven of the Author, to youre most noble father of famouse memory … now do I restore it to youre worthy hyghnesse, his natural sonne and only true successour in kingely dygnyte, as youre owne propre good,” and does so “with all submission decent.”47

Bale’s revision and expansion of Leland’s work resulted in several collections, including his Illustrium maioris Britanniae scriptorum, hoc est, Angliae, Cambriae, ac Scotiae Summarium, which was published in 1548–49 at Ipswich and Wesel for John Overton, and which was a catalogue of five centuries of British writers. The period of time from the publication of the Summarium until 1552 is vital to Bale’s project of cataloguing England’s literary production of the past as a way of justifying the legitimacy of the reformation, and in doing so, of reasserting the legitimacy of institutions from England’s past that the reformation was reaffirming, such as the fundamental importance of direct lineage in the assertion of the divine right of monarchs. During this time––the reign of Edward VI––Protestantism was growing in England, and Bale could conduct his examinations of manuscripts around the country. It was at this time, after he returned to England in 1547, and before his second exile at the accession of Mary, that Bale likely compiled the document in which the opening lines of Richard are associated with the title “Mum, Sothsegger”: the Index Britanniae scriptorum. Bale refers to several libraries, including monastic and other ecclesiastical centres; college and

the period of his ‘Marian’ exile” and “which survives as Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS. B.39” (Brett and Carley, xivn14). 45 Short Title Catalogue number 15445. 46 Simpson sees in the work done by both Leland and Bale “a heroic yet doomed attempt to seal off the ‘medieval past’” (“Ageism: Leland, Bale, and the Laborious Start of English Literary History, 1350–1550,” 213). 47 John Bale, ed. The Labouryouse Journey & Serche of Johan Leylande, for Englandes Antiquitees, by John Leland (London, 1549), A3[r]); for more detailed discussion, see Breen, especially 15–20.

111 institutional libraries; and royal libraries; and mentions catalogues of these institutions’ texts throughout the Index.48

In 1552, Edward VI promised Bale the Irish bishopric of Ossory, a position that he took up in 1553. However, Edward died that year, and the staunchly Catholic Mary took the throne: Bale’s position and safety were threatened. When he departed Ireland, Bale was forced to leave behind a huge number of manuscripts that he had been collecting over decades.49 By the end of that year, Bale was living in Basel, and began work on a revision of the Summarium. This was an enormous bibliographic undertaking that once again took up the goal of providing an overarching view of English literary history, divided into centuries, and of establishing the continuity of proto-Protestantism in the writings of early English writers. This project resulted in the Scriptorum illustrium Maioris Brytannie, published in two volumes: the first in 1557, and the second in 1559.

In many ways, the publication of these two volumes represents the completion of the project commissioned from Leland by Henry VIII, and subsequently taken up and redirected by Bale. The publication of the second volume corresponded with the accession of Queen Elizabeth I to the throne, and thus the rise of a monarch both willing and capable of carrying England into the Protestant future that Bale’s history anticipates. In 1559, Queen Elizabeth identified Bale’s historical work as fundamental to the establishment of a national identity for England under her authority and under the new religious order, just as Henry VIII had: members of the household of the lord deputy of Ireland were ordered to return the books and manuscripts that Bale had been

48 The Index does not appear to have been written with the intention of distribution, but constitutes more of a private journal that attempted to document the title and relevant information about every available book composed by a British author. Bale’s notes are Bodl. Oxf., MS Selden supra 64. These notebooks were reorganized and published under the title Index Britanniae Scriptorum by Reginald Lane Poole and Mary Bateson in 1902. The title on the binding is De Scriptoribus Angliae; Poole and Bateson entitled the text Index Britanniae Scriptorum, in order to distinguish it clearly from the two catalogues (Poole and Bateson, “Preface,” viiii); this is the title that I use for this work here as well. 49 There is evidence that Bale had begun collecting manuscripts before he left England for the continental Europe in 1540: for example, after the dissolution of the house of the Norwich Carmelites in 1538, he had acquired the Carmelite collection of Wycliffite documents known as the Fasciculi Zizaniorum. See Brett and Carley, xi; for further discussion of this house, and Bale’s acquisition of this text, see also J.F. Crompton, “Fasciculi Zizaniorum,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 12 (1961): 35–45 and 155–166. By 1553, when Bale fled Ireland, he had collected over 150 documents, all of which he had to leave behind when he fled Ireland for the continent; In a letter to Matthew Parker, dated to 1561, Bale commented that he “had great plenty of them [manuscripts], which I obtayned in tyme of the lamentable spoyle of the lybraryes of Englande” (cited Brett and Carley, xi), which suggests that most of his collection was acquired between the dissolution of the monasteries and his exile in 1540.

112 forced to leave behind when he had fled Ireland in 1553.50 The order, initiated by Matthew Parker by way of William Cecil and written by Elizabeth, was built on the claim that the manuscripts were necessary to the antiquarian’s continued efforts in documenting the history of the nation “for the illustration and settyng forth of the storye of this our realme, by him, the said Bale.”51 Bale’s manuscripts were never returned to him, but when he returned to Elizabeth’s England, his historical and bibliographic work had been recognized by the reigning monarch, who had asserted the need that he continue the kind of nationalizing project that Henry VIII had begun.52

Bale was dedicated to an apocalyptic principle of history as the realization of prophecy— the revelation of God’s plan in the unfolding of time. However committed he was to the conviction that God’s plan would come to fruition in the future, he was likewise committed to constructing and presenting a “useable past, a past which—whether historically accurate or not— helped men grapple with the problems of the present.”53 As Fairfield has noted, “By re- establishing continuity with the past, a particularly English ecclesiastical past, Bale gave his Protestant countrymen a sense of where they were going in the future, and a list of the tasks left to be done in order to restore that ‘good old past’.”54 Bale did this throughout his texts by identifying interpretations in the past that have been untrue, and correcting the interpretation.

Bale left autobiographical accounts of his own participation in English literary history, both in his Vocacyon and in the compendium of English writers, the Catalogus of 1557 and 1559. In both of these works, many have argued, Bale exaggerates his own activities, or has biased his presentation of historical fact in order to emphasize the point that he is aiming to make. For example, Matt Phillpott argues that Bale’s Vocacyon was written as a “polemical account of his escape from Ireland as a parallel to St. Paul” and that his Catalogus was written in

50 The lord deputy of Ireland was Sir Anthony St Leger, and the order of the Queen was served to his son Warham and his brother Robert St Leger. Dictionary of National Bibliography, “John Bale.” 51 May McKisack, The Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1959), 18; cited in the Dictionary of National Biography entry on “John Bale.” 52 It is, perhaps, significant that the only texts he produced after this point was a letter, written to Henry Parker, that evince an interest and anxiety about both English and European chronicles of the medieval period, asking Parker for advice at where he could find their manuscripts (Brett and Carley, xiv). 53 Ibid, 119. 54 Ibid.

113 order for Bale to “present himself as one link in a chain of English writers preserving the true faith against the heresies of antichrist.”55 As such, although the accounts speak to historical facts of the time, they speak equally of Bale’s interpretation of the time, and are thus turned to his own purposes.56 It is interesting to note, though, that Bale recognized the semi-fictional product that comes of that “restoration”: he states, “in all ages haue there bene some godly writers in Englande, which haue both smelled out, and also by theyr writynges detected the blasphemouse fraudes of thys Antichrist.”57 Fairfield notes that, while Bale was scrupulous in his attempts at relaying bibliographical information accurately,58 he was highly suspicious of the records of events left in medieval chronicles:

If their authors had been monks or priests, as was naturally true of most of them, Bale naturally assumed that they had lied about most events, but at the same time felt free to spoil these histories of whatever salacious clerical gossip he could use. If, as in the case of the more recent chronicles, the bias was sympathetic to his cause, Bale still took only what he needed.59

It is within this project—one that recognizes that history may be a mix of truth and falsehoods, facts and lies—that Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger were first associated with one another. Bale was working at the edge of a cultural moment where the future of authority was constructed in part by reaching back in time and reassessing the stories which particular understandings of the past could tell: in commissioning Leland to write a summary of the literatures of England right at the moment that many physical traces of that literature were being systematically erased, Henry VIII was attempting to strategically reframe history in order to lay the foundation for his new national narrative. Likewise, under the patronage of Edward and Elizabeth, Bale was—very consciously—cataloguing and itemizing history in order to highlight

55 Matt Phillpott, review of The many lives of John Bale, (review no. 1175); retrieved from http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1175 . 56 Peter Happé, for example, argues that Bale’s autobiographical Vocacyon “reads like a piece of fiction” (John Bale, [New York, NY: Twayne, 1996]), 19. 57 Cited Simpson, 227. 58 She notes that Bale’s assiduousness was noted in his day by continental historians and antiquarians, including Matthias Flacius Illyricus (Fairfield, 118). The letters containing this praise are collected in Honor McCusker, John Bale: Dramatist and Antiquary (Freeport: Books for Libraries Press, 1971), 68–71. 59 Fairfield, 118.

114 the apocalyptic line and prophetic truth of Protestantism. Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger were brought together within projects determined to construct a narrative in which language has the power to establish truths about the past, and to use that narrative to determine the narrative of the future.

Bale’s association of lines from Richard with the title “Mum, Sothsegger” has a stated source: Bale writes that it was first noted by Brigham: the text of the note is

Mum. Soth Segger id est taciturnitas, verorum diclrix, liber est Anglicus, qui incipit 'Dum orans ambularem presbyteris altari astantibus, Bristollensi in vrbe etc. Ex venatione Nicolai Brigan [Mum. Soth Segger. That is, Silence and the Truth Teller. The book is in English; the incipit is ‘And as I passid in my preiere ther prestis were at messe, / In a blessid borugh that Bristow is named. From the collection of Nicholas Brigham].60

In his description, John Bale calls Brigham “homo Latine doctus, & Anglicarum antiquitatum amator maximus” and lists works that Brigham was rumoured to have written, and also noted the collecting and cataloguing that Brigham had done. Brigham was an antiquary, still known for having established a tomb for Geoffrey Chaucer, for translating his remains, and for writing the inscription on the tomb. Thomas Prendergast, in Chaucer’s Dead Body, notes that “Nicholas Brigham, Exchequer official and antiquarian, apparently translated Chaucer’s body from his original grave to the familiar purbeck altar tomb in Westminster Abbey in 1556.” 61 In fact, “[t]he earliest reference to Brigham’s relationship with the tomb may be some manuscript notes of John Bale that were supposedly made in 1562 and printed by Thomas Hearne in 1709,” where he notes that “‘Nicolaus Brigam’ made four verses which were put on the tomb.”62 Bale seems to have been one of only two antiquaries who copied the inscription directly from the tomb.63 Derek Pearsall argues that Brigham’s decision to rebury Chaucer and build both a literary and a

60 Bale, Index Britanniae Scriptorum; lines of the incipit cited from Poole and Bateson, 479. 61 Thomas Prendergast notes that Brigham “apperently wrote the historical treatise ‘De Venationibus Rerum Memoribilium,’ as well as some Latin poetry and a twelve volume work entitled ‘Memoirs by Way of a Diary,’ but all of these works have been lost” (Chaucer’s Dead Body: From Corpse to Corpus [New York: Routledge, 2004], 47–48). See also James Alsop, “Nicholas Brigham (d. 1558), Scholar, Antiquary, and Crown Servant,” Sixteenth Century Journal 12.1 (1981): 49–67. 62 Prendergast, 41. 63 See Joseph Dane and Alexandra Gillespie, “Back at Chaucer’s Tomb—Inscriptions in Two Early Copies of Chaucer’s ‘Workes’,” Studies in Bibliography 52 (1999): 89–96, at 96.

115 physical monument to him was potentially politically and religiously motivated: Pearsall and Prendergast argue that Chaucer had been co-opted as a proto-Protestant author during the Henrician and Edwardian reformations,64 and suggest that Brigham’s translation and the verses that he wrote for the tomb were motivated by a desire to reclaim Chaucer for the Catholic turn in England, and mobilize him in the Catholic “counter-reformation.”65

When he borrowed from Brigham’s work, Bale was co-opting Brigham’s project for a Catholic realm, in service of his establishment of a proto-Protestant lineage in English literary history. It is also interesting to consider how Bale’s ideas of lineage and succession are constructed as he refers to Richard and Mum. He dredges up memories of the uneasy fit of the crown on Henry’s usurping head and of the claim that Lancastrian rule was the completion of prophesy. His work suggests that each of those “end-points,” too, were stepping stones in the prophetic long-game, and thus legitimized the new Protestant, Tudor England. Just as the reformation created a new kind of royal authority, and called it into question, so did the deposition of Richard II late in 1399. Bale’s literary project was part of the work done to paper over problems and anxieties produced by history. By being part of the list of texts assessed, acknowledged, named and classified, Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger are part of that important work. Given his political leanings, these poems might seem a strange fit for the overarching goal of Bale’s project (though not stranger than those of e.g. Chaucer); they are anti- fraternal but do not question the Church, and both question the authority of a ruler over the demands of his constituency. Their inclusion in such a project is also complicated, given the poems’ attitude to speech and documents being used as reliable witnesses of truth or as authenticators of history: over and over again, both Richard and Mum reinforce a general distrust of language as a tool of the dissemination of truth, as well as a general anxiety about the mutability of even seemingly stable narratives within authoritative chains of documentation. The deposition of Richard II and Henry’s usurpation shook the nature of trustable authority; political procedures were no longer authenticated by a certain guarantor of truth—a king by divine right.

64 Chaucer’s works were among those forbidden by the Act for the Advancement for True Religion of 1542–3. See also Thomas J. Heffernan who notes that William Thynne’s 1542 edition was dedicated to Henry VIII, and constructed an image of Chaucer who was an early proponent of ecclesiastical reform (“Aspects of the Chaucerian Apocrypha: Animadversions on William Thynne’s Edition of the Plowman’s Tale,” in Chaucer Traditions, eds. Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990], 155–67). 65 Prendergast, 40–41; see also Derek Pearsall, “Chaucer’s Tomb: The Politics of Reburial,” Medium Aevum 64 (1995): 64–80.

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Both Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger reflect this anxiety, which filters into the poems’ attitude to documentary authority. Both poems treat documents as the source of ureliable narratives, narratives invented—rather like Bale and his contemporaries’ were—to bolster a particular agenda.66 Bale’s inclusion of these poems in his own project is, I would suggest, ironic. He unites fragments as he builds a coherent account of national unity; he implicates them in an argument about natural succession that both poems explicitly fight. It is the poems’ explicit rejection of the invention of a coherent and authoritative past, built from documentary and literary sources, to which I will now turn. 3.4 The Poems 3.4.1 Richard the Redeless Richard the Redeless takes as its primary issue the failure of speaking and of public petition to enact real, useful change against corrupt uses of power and gross mismanagement of political, social, and dynastic affairs.67 The poem addresses Richard’s tendency to surround himself with supporters who would pay him with flattery: the explicit complaint of the poem, however, stresses the ramifications of a political system built on such a foundation. A system in which all those in power have attained their status in order to advance their own interests and by explicitly denying the injustices sanctioned by the ruler, is a system in which no-one outside of the coterie of power can speak: not because speaking is forbidden, but because language has been so disrupted by selfish intention that it is impossible to hear complaints, or to distinguish these from any other kind of speech.

The poem speaks directly to Richard, advising him: “Richard the redeles, reweth on you- self, / That lawelesse leddyn youre lyf and youre peple bothe.”68 The narrator notes that the poem, however, is also directed to “every Cristen kyng,” and is offered “So he were lerned on

66 On this notion, see Barr, who notes that the “founding tenet” of both Richard and Mum is that “writing corrective poetry is a legal activity, and one that is analogous to prosecuting a suit at law and passing judgment on those found guilty of the charges against them” (Signes and Sothe: Language in the Piers Plowman Tradition [Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994], 164). 67 On this point, Matthew Giancarlo states that, “[M]ore than voice a formal record or propagandistic restatement of the accusations against the king, the narrative voice of Richard seems almost personally offended by the king’s ignorant mismanagement” (Parliament and Literature in Late Medieval England, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007], 231). 68 Richard the Redeless, Prol. 88–89. All citations are from James M. Dean’s 2000 edition Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger, (Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 2000), and hereafter citations will be noted parenthetically in the text, in the form of (Passus, line-line).

117 the langage, my lyff durst I wedde, / Yif he waite well the wordis and so werche therafter” (Prol. 42–5). Emphasis is particularly placed on the form of both the advice and the language by which it is offered: the narrator proposes that if Richard—or whichever king—“fynde fables” in the poem, he should offer it to his councilors, or anyone with “wyser wittis,” who can correct it so that it meets the “laweffull and lusty” requirements of procedural language (Prol. 57, 62, 63). One aspect of this advice is rhetorical, as the narrator’s prefatory apology acknowledges the possibility that his words have caused offense. This recognition is also a current political necessity, as the poem goes on to discuss: the Prologue’s pre-emptive apology is reflected in the discussion in Passus I of the silence that has settled over the realm and throughout. There is, of course, an implication that some people are silent for fear of retribution: “For non of youre peple durste pleyne of her wrongis, / for drede of youre dukys and of here double harmes”(I.139–44);69 but more clearly, the peoples’ silence is because, “for wo, they ne wuste to whom for to pleyene” (I.151). The narrator recognizes this very early on, noting that there is always the possibility that he has written words that “wroth make might” his “souereyne that suget I shulde to be” (I.79). However, his recognition of this possibility does not constitute a reason not to use words or forms, but rather gives him cause to reiterate his intentions in various ways. By stating this recognition, the narrator does not pretend to grant himself carte blanche to say whatever he wants clumsily, but rather signposts his acknowledgement that words can cause harm even when that was not their intent. Similarly, this acknowledgement signals that he is going to reiterate his intentions variously throughout, in order to ensure that—by coming at his points from several directions and using various kinds of language—he can represent “the entent of my trouthe that thoughte non ylle” (I.79). Likewise, the narrator’s recognition of the possibility of words unintentionally causing offence forces him to cycle back on his desire to provide a “trouthe” that speaks for itself rather than requiring glosses or “side tales.” This recognition and his imagined solutions—that offended readers check themselves and understand better, or that he provide explanation that clarifies his intention—are both forms of glossing, and in both cases raise questions of meaning and require consideration of multiple possible readings.70

69 Barr notes that the use of “dukys” at I.144 is an attack on Richard’s liberal granting of honours to men which were thought, by his critics, to be unworthy (Sothe and Signes, 70–71n76). 70 For a discussion of this passage, see Barr, Signes and Sothe, 69.

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Further to this, Richard has been surrounded for too long by councilors who misuse language. The narrator tells the king that

Whane ye were sette in youre se as a sir aughte,

Ther carpinge comynliche of conceill arisith,

the chevyteyns cheef that ye chesse evere,

Weren all to yonge of yeris to yeme swyche a rewme. (I.86–9)

The councilors are young, but they also deliberately manipulate language for their own purposes.71 Richard is not a subtle enough reader of the texts of the realm or the advice he receives from his councilors to be capable of distinguishing between spoken truth and language manipulated by those who advise him.

Throughout the poem, the type of manipulation of language enacted by councilors and kings is associated with the language of interpretation: as we saw in the Prologue, ideas that are found offensive or unwanted are named “fables”—stories. The narrator recognizes that interpretation is open to abuse, namely through the possibility of forcing upon signs and symbols meanings that they do not have. He notes that “was it foly in feith, as me thynketh, / To sette siluer in signes that of nought serued” (II.41–5). For example, he discusses Richard’s decisions in the distribution of liveries: the retainers are eager to “schewe their signs” (II.34), signs which the narrator insinuates were granted on such a sloppy metric that the signs themselves have lost all meaning. The value of the livery as means of communication of power has been degraded in two ways. First, heraldic signs accord power and imply a degree of nobility in those who do not deserve it through either birth or virtue. The second degradation of the value of the livery is perhaps the more literal: Richard has distributed too many liveries, and the distribution of so “many signes / That ye and youre seruauntis aboughte so thikke sowid” (II.101–2) means that the value of the sign is radically reduced.72 Throughout the passus there is a discussion of broader systems of value that rely upon excessive and idiosyncratic assignation of signs of value. The degradation of signs of general value in the realm affects everyone because of the relational

71 See Barr, Signes and Sothe, 69–70; and Stephen Yeager, From Lawmen to Plowmen: Anglo-Saxon Legal Tradition and the School of Langland (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2014), 177. 72 On abuses of the livery and the poem’s language here, see also Barr, Signes and Sothe, 72; and Stephen Yeager, 179.

119 value of signs––in signs of power and of currency, for example73––but here the focus of the narrator is on the structural injustices that the manipulation of value might institute.

However, there is a shift in Passus Three to a recognition that the problems of the realm have penetrated its very foundations. The blame in the first part of the poem was implicitly on the details of Richard’s management of the commonwealth, for example his distribution of liveries, and on the ramifications of giving power to those who did not deserve it and who could not properly manage it. These are superficial issues, because they critique Richard’s particularly poor choices in enacting the system of power, rather than explicitly critiquing the system itself. Passus Three, however, deepens to a critique of the very structure of Richard’s parliament that leaves it so open to his mismanagement and to the kind of corruption that now dominates. The language by which procedure is carried out gradually becomes indistinguishable from the noise and clamour which denotes a realm in conflict. One key example of the dissolution of clear, useful speech as a tool for debate and the advancement of reason and order comes in Passus Three, when the figure of Witt shows up at a parliamentary assembly. Witt is, initially, unknown to the courtiers. This in itself is telling of the quality of minds and integrity gathered to represent the realm, if wisdom is unrecognizable to them. The things that Witt says, too, are unrecognizable except as unwelcome and dangerous additions to the discussion, and once his name is learned he is expelled under threat of death:

But als sone as they wiste that Witt was his name, And that the kyng knewe him not, ne non of his knyghtis, He was halowid and yhuntid and yhotte trusse, And his dwellinge ydemed a bowe-drawte from hem, And ich man ycharchid to schoppe at his croune; Yif he nyhed hem ony nere, than they had him nempned. The portir with his pikis tho put him uttere, And warned him the wickett while the wacche durid; "Lete sle him!" quod the sleves that slode uppon the erthe,

73 For a fascinating discussion of fraudulence, coin shaving, bill printing and other counterfeiting and the relationship between such practices and rumours of a Richard counterfeit/lookalike, see Strohm, England’s Empty Throne, 128–152.

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And alle the berdles burnes bayed on him evere, And schorned him, for his slaveyn was of the olde schappe. (III.226–236)

Crucially, the point at which Witt is removed from parliamentary discussions is also the point at which political language cannot be differentiated from noise: the knights’ demand is described with the verb “bayed,” evoking the sounds of animals—and specifically the noise of animals on the hunt and eager to kill.74 Later, the narrator calls the whole of parliament itself a “piepoudre,” thus associating it with low-brow proceedings held at markets and fairs, faux-courts that contain very little proper legal procedure or legal value at all.75 Those who are still committed to proper procedure are eventually forced out, with preference given to those who “cared for no coyffes that men of court usyn / But meved many materes than man never thoughte / And feyned falshed” (III.320–322). The legal substance of these procedures has been hollowed out and thus the “quarellis” to valid complaint are “constrewed” in such a way that they only knock down those who would dare bring a plaint to the court.

While the procedures look virtually identical, the new hollowed-out procedure performs none of the work of the old. The language-based tools of procedure—the tools that allow for the articulation of complaints and pleas, the discussion of their merit and the deliberation of their truth-claims, the announcement of the judgment in each case and, most likely, the inscription of these decisions in official writs—are replaced by tools of force: pleas and complaints are met with pole-axes and with sword points, rather than with points of argument. In the logic of Richard’s parliament, the pole axes and sword points are indeed a means to the same end, in that the employment of those tools causes the complaints to stop.

Passus Four finds this corruption seeping throughout the kingdom at different levels of depth. Corruption can be seen at the most superficial level—what things look like and who is wearing what—to middle levels of administrative control—what things feel like as the superficial trappings of power are wielded through official parliamentary procedure—all the way down to the deepest corruption of the foundations that govern how parliamentary procedures can be carried out and by whom: the official documents that detail the happenings of parliament, the decisions that are made and the rationale on which they are based, and the way that these truths

74 On this point, see Barr, Signes and Sothe, 69–70.

121 are communicated throughout the realm. The elections of representatives to parliament are rigged, and the documents that attest to the results of the sham elections are forged and entered into parliamentary record in order to maintain a semblance of legitimate procedure. The election was held in a “prevy parlement,” at which Richard appointed particular advisors instead of conducting an open election, serving to advance the private interests of the king rather than those of the realm (IV.22–30). The written documents that speak the nation’s “truths” are thus used as tools of the new order. The corruption of official documents is insidious because the tools employed to construct the documents are the same on one side of the substitution as on the other: document for document, writ for writ, commission for commission. As such, the only difference between the former procedure and the latter is the way in which the documents have been guaranteed, and since the procedures that might guarantee the documents have been voided out of their very capacity to do so, these differences are invisible.

The documents by which abstract powers—of election, of judgment, of forgiveness—are enacted are themselves corrupted in the processes of their composition, corrupt in the processes by which they are published and disseminated as “official” and representative of “truth.” They are also corrupt because the procedures that are ordered by these deeply corrupt documents are themselves corrupted in their enactment, as the parliament can simply choose to ignore or otherwise avoid carrying out the king’s demands. Eventually in the poem, language—ostensibly the tool of power in the mouths of men of authority—becomes a flurry of sound and nonsense:

Than satte summe as a siphre doth in awgrym,

That noteth a place and no thing availith;

And some had ysoupid with Symond ouere euen,

And schewed fo the shire and here schew lost;

And somme were tituleris and to the kyng wente,

And formed him of foos that food frendis weren …

And somme slombrid and slepte and said but a lite;

And somme mafflid with the mouth and nyst what they ment;

And somme had hire and helde ther-with euere… (IV.53–8, 62–4).

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The “redelessness” of the poem’s title comes through in this portrait of a parliament dissolving into noise. Richard is not precisely lacking in counsel, and he is not precisely incapable of hearing and accepting counsel; rather, the tool of counsel—language wielded precisely as a tool for recognizing and addressing injustice—has become indistinguishable from reactionary sound.76

3.4.2 Mum and the Sothsegger The relationship between speaking and truth is taken up in Mum and the Sothsegger as well, and in remarkably similar terms. At least initially, Mum places a premium on the speaking of “truth” in poetry by appealing to the good intentions of the speaker. The narrator notes that there is a danger of being misunderstood, and that misunderstanding can lead to accusations of slander, but he seems to place faith in good intentions to protect against such accusations, pointing to the possibility that intention and language can operate independently of one another: “for though thy talke be trewe thyn tente might be noyous.”77 While the narrator’s quest seems to be organized around the principle of “truthseeking,” the relationship of the character Sothsegger to the “truthtelling” that the poem seems to seek, is complex. It is not that it is hard to find Sothsegger, but that it is hard to find Sothsegger doing what his name would suggest he does. The search for Sothsegger is not a search for the allegorical figure, “Sothsegger” or “teller of truth,” but rather a search for the role that he would play: what is a “truthteller” for? When we see the “sothsegger” in lines 1–53, he is begging for work. The reason for his lack of employment is because of the nature of the words that he uses: his words make their audience uncomfortable, even those who have specifically requested these words, because he always “hitteth on the heed of the nayle-is ende, / That the pure poynt pricketh on the sothe / Til the foule flessh vomy for attre” (51–3). This is a reversal of the substitution made in Richard the Redeless: there, the points were sword-points that were used in place of language-based powers to push legislation through and to enact changes in the realm. Here, it is the language of the

76 See Barr, Signes and Sothe, who argues that these councilors “stymie the computation for which the system of mathematics has been designed. Their individual and collective value remains ‘nought’. While they ought to enable the system to work in a mutually valuable fashion, they fail to bring value to the system by concentrating solely on their own empty significance” (Barr, Signes and Sothe, 72). 77 Mum and the Sothsegger, 74. All citations are from James M. Dean’s 2000 edition Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger, and hereafter citations will be noted parenthetically in the text, in the form of (line-line).

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Sothsegger that enacts such violence on the truth, pricking at its flesh until all foulness therein is forcibly expelled.78

In contrast to Sothsegger, Mum is described as using “colorable words” (286). Mum is not silent at all—he is voluble, persuasive, loquacious. But the language he uses is a kind of silence, because he uses it in a fraudulent way: under his influence, words are exploited for their capacity to mean in multiple ways rather than to communicate specific intentions. Mum’s silence is a breakdown of communication. The question throughout the poem, then, is about who has mastery—Mum or Sothsegger?—and the answer is made clear by Mum’s popularity. His tour throughout the schools, brotherhoods, and other communities based around pursuit of truth, justice and knowledge, reveals what was probably obvious to everyone from the outset: Mum manages all of these institutions. At first then, the contrast in this poem is clear. The side of right is that of Sothsegger, but the truths he utters are uncomfortable and he is marginalized by society. Mum reigns, but as he does so, his flexible use of language opens up the possibility of the collapse of its meaning. The result, I would suggest, is that neither Mum nor Sothsegger is a solution to the quandary of the political need for truthtellers. As I will argue below, Sothsegger seems to represent a kind of stable authority, the text without any gloss: truth, plain and simple. And yet his voice goes unheard, because this drive for stability leads to the possibility—even the probability—that voices will be silenced, hearings will be falsified, narratives will be revised, and documents will be altered in order to maintain a homogeneity between narratives from different sources. From this perspective, Sothsegger’s commitment to his ideal of “truth” leads to the glorification of systems that silently and invisibly obliterate any possibility of disruption, or those that terrorize those who are loyal in order to ensure continued loyalty. But Mum is clearly not the answer. His approach encourages a deferral of opinion until, in terms of human experience and temporal needs, it is too late. Mum and Sothsegger are—at best—different parts of the same destructive and self-defeating cycle, and—at worst—they are indistinguishable from one another.

78 We see him in a similar situation later in on, when we catch glimpse of him once again, “sitte in a shoppe and salwyn his wounded” (847), still unable to find employment and so maundering throughout the realm like a vagabond.

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This reading is supported by closer examination of the passage in which the Sothsegger’s role is described. The description of Sothsegger casts him as rude and rash, speaking his mind in ways that tend to offend people, hurt them, or otherwise rub them the wrong way:

the lord and the lady been loeth of his wordes,

And the meyny and he mowe not accorde,

But al to-teereth his toppe for his trewe tales (46–48)

This behaviour results in him being regularly ousted whenever he says things others don’t want to hear—“But for his rathe reasons is rebukid ofte, / And yf he fable to ferre, the foote he goeth undre” (40–41). Once he is out of the way, he is “yfulled undre foote while falsenes goeth aboute / With cautelle and with coigne forto caste deceiptz / Hough trouthe might be traverssid and tournid of the weye” (55–57). Sothsegger’s rashness is described as childlike, unconstrained by the training that provides a sense of propriety and thus that places limits on the articulation, possibly, of “truths” that fly in the face of social convention: his speech is described as “babbling,” and right after we are told that he will not speak in “termes” we are told that instead he “bablith fourth bustusely as barn un-ylerid” (50). The meaning of this is slippery—the Sothsegger, like an unlearned child, cannot converse in “termes”; but unlike the colourful Mum, his speech is unmediated, unadulterated by worldly corruption.

The word “babble” is used again in a passage describing the troubles that befall the realm when the role of the Sothsegger is not filled, or is not functional. We are told that

…yf the king might knowe that the comune talketh

Hough grotz been ygadrid and no grief amendid

And hough the lawe is ylad whenne poure men pleyne,

I bilieve loyally oure liege lord wolde

Have pitie on his peuple for his owen profit

And amende that were amysse into more ease. (133–38)

Formerly, in the realm, people were free to speak:

But whenne oure comely king came furst to londe,

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Tho was eche burne bolde to bable what hym aylid

And to fable ferther of fautz and of wrongz,

And romansid of the missereule that in the royaulme groved (143–46).

Just as above, where “babble” carries a breadth of meaning implying senseless and undirected speech as well as rapid speech that has an independent agenda, the word here—within its own line—might be defined simply to mean “spoke of” or “described.” A few lines later this same meaning is employed, in the situation in the current state of affairs of the realm, when

… yf a burne bolde hy to bable the sothe

And mynde hym of mischief that missereule asketh,

He may lose his life and laugh here no more,

Or yputte into prisone or ypyned to deeth

Or yblent or yshent or sum sorowe have,

That fro scorne other scathe scape shal he nevre. (165–70)

“Babble” does not seem to denote anything, in these passages, about the content of speech, nor of the quality of the language used or the intelligence, but rather seems to imply a lack of constraint on its articulation; “babble,” in these two usages, takes up the word’s meaning from the description of Sothsegger’s use of language—a use of language that is unconstrained either by past convention or by future retribution.

The meaning of “babble” is complicated within the passage as a whole, however, by the association of this verb with others, including “fable” and “romansid”: both of these are explicitly literary, and might imply a kind of speech that amounts to the construction of fiction unconstrained by reality or practical concerns. The person who tells truths is also called a “fabuler.” The Sothsegger’s truths have so little to do with what works in the real world, that they might as well be lies. The poem’s meanings for the word babble expand further in a passage discussing Mum’s questions within the “disputacion bitwyne Mum and the Sothsigger.”79 Mum breaks in, interrupting in order to criticize the narrator’s “momeling” (233), asking

79 This description is inscribed in the right-hand margin of the manuscript alongside lines 206–8.

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Saides not thou thyself, and sothe as me thoughte,

That thees sothesiggers serven noon thankes?

And thou knowes this by clergie, how cans thou thee excuse

That thou ne art nycier than a nunne nyne-folde tyme,

Forto wite that thy wil thy witte shal passe? (234–38)

The narrator then notes that he “blussid for his bablyng and abode stille, / And knytte there a knotte and construed no ferther” (239–40). Babbling here is thus related to a few confounding issues. The narrator now perceives his own words as babbling and ashamed—or perhaps annoyed—he stops. He “knytte there a knotte.” Day and Steele gloss this as meaning that the narrator “broke off what [he] intended to do”; Barr explains it as a statement of conclusion, that he “came to a decision,” and Dean glosses it as indicating he has been forced to pause “for the length of time it takes to compose a knot.” However, it is the narrator-as-Sothsegger who has been interrupted, and the interruption makes him pause not to undo a knot—as in solving a puzzle—but to create one, and the knot that is knit here is in fact the paradox that has already been building throughout the poem. He has reached the poem’s impossible tangle: “true” speech about the realm can contradict the “truths” of the system. This is the paradox Mum points to: widespread free speech and the right to voice complaints in the realm are what will establish good order, and yet in this realm, good order is understood as a lack of complaints and complacent silence.

The paradoxical logic of this perspective also focuses Mum’s particular critique of the narrator’s former words: people openly complained about Sothsegger and the result of these complaints was that his services were rarely, if ever, used. The narrator-Sothsegger “construes no ferther,” perhaps because there is no answer to this observation. After Mum leaves, however, he thinks further:

[C]leerly Caton construeth the same,

…

That of ‘bable’ cometh blame and of ‘be stille’ never —

Nam nulli tacuisse nocet, nocet esse locutum. (289–92)

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Again “bable” is associated with truth—specifically with the “soeth that sitteth in [a man’s] herte”—rather than with nonsense or noise, but it is also explicitly related to the danger of “misserewle[d]” speaking; and the equations that narrator-sothsegger notes in both Cato and Mum’s words—“bable” give rise to blame and stillness to safety—are identified as “wise worldly worde[s]” (293). Crucially, however, he also notes that the logic of these words causes him to become confused—“hevy and highly awawyd,” “troublid,” and “dul as an asse”—because of the paradox—the “double doute” that they make evident, reinforcing the “knotte” that he began to “knytte” when he first began speaking with Mum.

It is fitting that a word like “bable” would show up in complex and paradoxical ways in a poem about speaking and its cognates—speaking truths, speaking lies, keeping silent, speaking lies by keeping silent, speaking truths by keeping silent—and that this one word can bear many of these possibilities. Throughout the poem, the word is used to mean “speaking incoherently”/“making noise,” “speaking coherently,” reading, writing, studying, and “speaking coherently but offensively.” It is also associated with speaking honestly, but in a system so structured, power will always prevail over truths, so that truth will often sound like nonsense. Bundled up in this discussion of “babbling” is, of course, the image of the Tower of Babel: an emblem of human systems that try to rise above their place within the divine plan. The image of the Tower of Babel reinforces the paradox that the multiple uses of babble establish throughout the poem, by reinforcing an image of language as the tool both of homogeneous and dissolute governance. 3.5 Documentary instability One of the ways that both Richard and Mum explore the problems of languages of governance is through a focus on documents that are involved in official procedures: those documents which communicate expectations (in forms including religious doctrine, law, and various other social edicts that direct behaviour); that have the power to determine action (including legal summons, papal bulls, signed confessions); and that describe official events (including transcripts of legal hearings, and chronicle histories). The breadth of the poems’ concerns takes in less official documents as well, including the poems themselves. Both Mum and Richard bundle anxieties about speaking—about voicing truths and about political advice and complaints—into anxieties about the stability of a documentary culture. In other words, the

128 anxieties around speaking out, or keeping silent, finally come to rest on the documents in which speech and the acts that follow speaking become official instruments and official records.

The most compelling representation of these anxieties occurs when the narrator of Mum and the Sothsegger—after emerging from his dream-vision—finds a cache of books which both mobilize and disrupt the poem’s ongoing discussion of the possibility of finding truth in any kind of communication. The narrator searches through this bag of books, and finds documents that provide details of the abuses of the clergy (1353–56), documents filled with “pryue poyse” (1344), tales of vice and virtue (1346), official financial receipts and promissory notes (1348– 50), “a volume of visitacion” (1353), documents that attest to bribery (1355), editorial accounts of the duties of the Church toward the poor (1361–65), political pamphlets (1370), a list of mistresses (1379),80 and other inflammatory texts whose “tales been so trouble that tournen men thoughtz; / The more that men musen on thaym, the madder they been after” (1392–3). The list goes on to include “a raggeman rolle that Ragenelle hymself / Hath made of mayntennance and motyng of the peuple” (1565).81 Within the bag, there is a “copie of couetise” (1683–96), which criticizes the practice of the sort of wealthy citizen who is miserly with his wealth without thought of the poor:

He maketh maisons deu therewith whenne he may live no lenger; But while he had power of the penyes, the poure had but lite. (1683–88) There is also a “poynt of prophecie” (1723), a satirical document relating mocking versions of the prophecies of Merlin (1723–24). Finally, there is “a cedule soutelly indited” that argues “that the clergie and knighthoode togedre / Been not knytte in conscience as Crist dide thaym stable,” which the narrator relates to “chronicle of clercz and kingz lygnees / How prelatz of provinces pride moste hatid / For the theme that they taughte was tachid on thaire hertz (1734, 1738–39, 1745–47).

80 Giancarlo, on the timing of the opening of the bag: “The subject matter, context, and timing of the documents (these complaints are gathered in a bag ‘that was not y-openyd this other half wintre’ [1347], that is, bi-annually at wintertime) suggest that the narrator is now adopting the functional identity of a parliamentarian presenting petitions in one of the (roughly) twice-yearly sessions of the assembly.” He notes that the bag of books directly replaces the “bag of boicches” earlier in the poem, reflecting the “petitionary efforts characteristic of the Commons in the early Lancastrian years. The dream’s ‘bag full of boicches’ has been supplanted by this bag full of books, but in context they are the same thing: a collection of sore complaints to be brought forth by a representative who carries the voice of the community to the king’s court for redress” (Parliament and Literature, 247). 81 For a discussion of the contents of the bag, see also Alexandra Gillespie, "Books," in Middle English, ed. Paul Strohm (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 86–106.

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At times, the physicality of these objects is emphasized;82 in this sense, the poem is interested in the mutability of physical documents, which open always to the possibility of erasure, alteration, misinterpretation, or destruction. The trouble is not only the books themselves, however, but also the nature of the authority that backs them up. For what good is a bag of books, even those containing texts by the doctors and most revered scholars, if the mechanism that grants the authority itself is shifting? And if “truth” keeps on changing on political whim, what chance does even the most upright person have in speaking it?

There are suggestions throughout Mum that the logic of self-interested, “coloured” use and interpretation of language and the manipulation of meaning have expanded to include manipulation of official records and the documents of historical memory. Richard Firth Green argues that Mum’s “bag of books” represents "the disruptive potential of literacy itself.”83 Both Frank Grady and Green suggest that Mum fails to deliver what it promises because it does not provide a solution to the instability of the documents. However, if solving the problem of documentary instability is the point of the poem, it is not a very good one, in that it is a goal which is shown at every point to be an impossibility—not because of corruption, or ill-intent, or lack of transparency, or a failure of procedure, but just because of reality. If the attribute, “authoritative,” means bearing a stable and absolute relationship to that reality, documents can never be authoritative. Indeed, the poem seems, in its very structure, to be troubling every part of the notion of “authoritative” anything—documents, ceremonies, figures, truths, narratives. Its point seems to be to find a strategy for recognizing instability as a constant, unavoidable reality without becoming mired in doubt. 3.6 From Metaphor to Reality: Documentary Culture c. 1400 Both Richard and Mum seem to explore the ways that language can become hollowed out and thus how the procedures that depend on language for their structure can lose their integrity.

82 Emily Steiner notes that the materiality of these documents “leads us back to the question of the status of material form within the literate practices of the law” (Documentary Culture and the Making of Medieval English Literature [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003], 186). In A Crisis of Truth: Literature and Law in Ricardian England, Richard Firth Green notes, in the same vein, that "The material solidity of his actual documents ... supplies an ironic counterpoint to this depiction of universal faithlessness" [(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002), 281]. See also Frank Grady, “Generation of 1399,” (in The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England. Emily Steiner and Candace Barrington, eds. [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002], 202–229). 83 Firth Green, 280–81.

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Both poems also seem to mobilize various images of this hollowing-out—both of language as a vehicle for power, and of the procedures that are built with it—as complex metaphors for power run amok. Eventually, these concerns come to encompass the written record, as well as speech, complaint, and political action (or inaction). Events contemporary to the composition of both poems give this concern about documents particular resonance. They also take me back to the points that are central to this chapter. Namely, the deployment of these poems by Bale as he attempts to write the break with Rome into some sort of coherence is ironic, given the poems’ profound distrust of all such official narratives. This irony underpins an editorial tradition which seeks to unite or at least connect the two poems, which—whether they are by the same poet or not—do not need editorial tidying, inherited from Bale’s national and reformist project, to speak about their distrust of all such bookish labours.

The contemporary context for the composition of Mum and Richard that interests me here is evidence of a long-standing and widespread culture of documentary revision—and even falsification––in which both Richard and Henry participated. This included the composition or reworking of chronicle histories to reflect less favourably upon overthrown powers, and the reworking of legal procedures of hearings and documentation.

As noted above, one of the most damning charges against Richard was his manipulation of court documents; however, the use of chronicles and their authors as tools of propaganda was not restricted to a single individual, nor to the bidding of a single reigning power, but rather was a tool regularly used to promote the interests of any who could marshall the power of documentary history. Henry IV, too, manipulated documents: establishing an impression of historical continuity, political stability, and legitimate succession was paramount for Henry. He and his supporters achieved this through a subtle manipulation of the written record of the events before, during, and after Henry’s usurpation. Chris Given-Wilson has shown that there was a thorough campaign to recall chronicles from all of the abbeys and churches in the kingdom, whereby Henry demanded that the chronicles be sent to court for examination. The campaign was launched ostensibly for transparency in the deposition. The court claimed that they needed to identify clear evidence of the legality of Henry’s claim to the throne, and thus needed to examine all national accounts of the events, as well as to interview “certain persons who were

131 knowledgeable about chronicles,” who were asked to accompany the chronicles.84 The letters requesting the manuscripts did not contain Henry’s name or his royal seal: instead, the chronicles were sent for “in that name of King Richard, and under his privy seal.”85 As such, this inquisition appeared to be carried out on behalf of Richard’s supporters and in the interest of investigating the legality of the usurpation. In the latter days of Richard II’s reign, the chronicles “became a vehicle of propaganda that was purposively devised and disseminated in order to denigrate the King and to put Henry of Lancaster’s usurpation of the throne in a favorable light.”86

This culture of documentary manipulation left marks on the historical record. “The English chronicles ... bear nervous witness to the sort of intimidation that Henry and his censors must have brought to bear” and “[a]fter the usurpation some manuscripts became full of erasures and corrections.”87 For example, during Richard II’s reign, the scribe of the Chronicle of Dieulacres Abbey had described Richard as an “innocent king”; this scribe also referred to Henry and to those who supported him as “rebels.”88 Immediately after Henry’s assumption, however, a new scribe took over the writing of the Dieulacres Chronicle, whose tone and politics were markedly changed from those of his predecessor: not only did the new scribe justify Richard’s deposition and write favourably of Henry, but he also wrote critically of the former scribe’s work. The new scribe wrote of his predecessor that

this writer (iste commentator) has in numerous places condemned what ought to be commended, and commended what ought to be condemned, and this is a great vice in writing, especially when, in dealing with powerful persons (strenuis personis), someone writes grossly untrue things (enormia) about them based on other people’s gossip rather than true knowledge, such as the many untrue things written [here]; and this I know for sure, because there were many occasions when I was present, and as a result I knew the truth. Yet there are many people who, whether out of sycophancy, envy, or malice,

84 Chris Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, 1397–1400: the Reign of Richard II (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), 124. For further discussion of this request, see for example V.H. Galbraith, The Abbey of St. Albans from 1300 to the Dissolution of the Monasteries (Oxford, 1911), 25–26. 85 Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, 125. 86 Ibid. 87 Terry Jones, “Was Richard II a Tyrant?: Richard’s Use of the Books of the Rules for Princes,” Fourteenth Century England 5 (2008), 130–60, at 155. 88 Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, 96

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denounce the deeds of others, either because they have no idea whether or not they deserve to be condemned, or simply because they have been misinformed by other people who might well have been hostile to those people.89

Once this scribe took over the reins of the Chronicle, the perspective on both the past and present kings changed: Richard is presented as a very passive but petulant king, who knew that his rule was being rightly ended and who, thus, laid his crown at Henry’s feet; Henry, on the other hand, is described as a saviour for a mistreated populace.90

Another chronicle probably from St Albans, known as the Scandalous Chronicle, contains explicit criticisms of John of Gaunt; this chronicle’s account of the events of 1376–82 was

so bitter in its invective against John of Gaunt that, once his son had become Henry IV, the decision was taken at the abbey to suppress the original version, systematically eliminate the offensive passages, and revise it in a form acceptable to the new regime.91

Massive political shifts like that of 1399 effected shifts in tone and allegiance in chronicles. Given-Wilson notes that changes in tone comparable to those evident in accounts of the Scandalous Chronicle are evident in other chronicles that “straddle the year of Henry’s usurpation, such as the Kirkstall and Evesham chronicles” which show evidence of shifting allegiances.92 These and many of the major chronicles are influenced by accounts in the “Record and Process,” which were official versions of the deposition written and sanctioned by Henry’s court and entered into the rolls of parliament, and which provided to chroniclers of the realm the

89 Cited by Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London: Hambledon and London, 2004), 6; from the Dieulacres Chronicle, printed in M.V. Clarke and V.H. Galbraith, “The Deposition of Richard II,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 14 (1930), 125–81. 90 The changes effected in the English chronicles are especially obvious and notable when other national chronicles are examined. Jean Creton’s Metrical History, found in MS Harley MS 1319 ff. 1r–78v, provides especially informative differences; see Translation of a Metrical History of the Deposition of King Richard the Second, ed. John Webb (London: George Bell and Sons, 1899), 239. 91 Given-Wilson, Chronicles: The Writing of History in Medieval England (London: Hambledon and London, 2004), 208. The text of the “Scandalous Chronicle” is printed in Chronicon Angliae, pp. 68–354. See G.B. Stow, “Richard II in Thomas Walsingham’s Chronicles, Speculum 59 (1984): 68–102. The revision enacted on this chronicle are discussed in Historical Writing I, xx–xxiv, and Historical Writing II, 142–43. For broader discussions of chronicle histories at St Albans, see for example John Taylor, English Historical Literature in the Fourteenth Century (Oxford, 1987; repr. 2000), 68 and 74–6. 92 Given-Wilson, Chronicles of the Revolution, 9; Historia Vitae et Regni Ricardi Secundi, ed. G.B. Stow (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977), 2–3. See also The Kirkstall Chronicle, ed. John Taylor (Leeds: Leeds University Press, 195); and M.V. Clarke and V.H. Galbraith eds., The Dieulacres Chronicle, in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 14 (1930): 164–81.

133 basic structure and content for what could acceptably be discussed regarding the reign, deposition, and death of Richard II. M.V. Clarke and V.H. Galbraith are among many historians who describe “Record and Process” as explicitly propagandistic, composed with the intent of swaying opinion toward the Lancastrian perspective of the events of the deposition.93

Perhaps the clearest evidence of the effect of Lancastrian interference on the chronicle histories can be seen by tracing the work of Thomas Walsingham. Walsingham was long- respected as the most important documentarian of his age. Because of Walsingham’s centrality to the construction of many other major chronicles and histories, the accounts of history composed by Walsingham set the terms of “what actually happened” long after he stopped writing. The works of Walsingham,94 however, are seen by many as “consistently hostile to the royal court, especially to Richard II”;95 other historians have noted the tendency, in chronicles attributed to Walsingham as well as other writers of the day, to rely on “generalities and invective” rather than particular details of events.96 While the differences between earlier and later accounts of the events that precede the Lancastrian revolution are at times “more subtle than radical,” the differences found in the accounts after the deposition of Richard are striking: “Instead of substituting a phrase or a sentence here and there, Walsingham boldly and sharply limns Richard’s portrait after 1399, replacing subtle innuendo with the strongest and most vociferous denunciations,”97 showing Walsingham’s tendency to write history in conformity to the political climate of the day.”98 Stow states that “[a]fter the Lancastrian revolution, Walsingham found it politically expedient, if not opportunistic, to follow the line laid down by the new ruling house”

93 See for example Galbraith, “Thomas Walsingham and the St. Albans Chronicle, 1272–1422” English Historical Review, 47.185 (1932): 12–30; and M.V. Clarke and V.H. Galbraith, “The Deposition of Richard II,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, 14 (1930): 125–81. 94 For specific discussion of the attribution of certain chronicles, including the Historia Anglicana, the Chronicon Angliae, and the Annales Ricardi, to Walsingham, and the details of his work, see Stow, “Richard II in Thomas Walsingham’s Chronicles.” 95 Anthony Steel, Richard II, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1941), 291. 96 For example, Louisa D. Duls lists Walsingham and his works under the heading “Lancastrian Detractors of Richard” (Richard II in the Early Chronicles [The Hague, 1975]), 205. See also R.H. Jones, The Royal Policy of Richard II: Absolutism in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford, 1968), 121; Harold F. Hutchison, The Hollow Crown: A Life of Richard II (New York: J. Day, 1961), 241; Gransden, “Propaganda”; and Sayles, “The Deposition of Richard II.” 97 The three later manuscripts are: MS CCCC VII (2), which is printed as Annales Ricardi Secundi; MS CCCC 240, which is printed as Ypodigma Neustriae; and MS Arundel VII, which is printed as Historia Anglicana. 98 Stow, “Richard II,” 88–89.

134 since “Henry IV fully intended that his forceful seizure of power be invested with the patina of legality, and his censorship of monastic histories forced chroniclers other than Walsingham to change their tune as well.”99 Stow’s analysis concludes that the “obvious textual alterations in successive manuscripts reflect bias” and that these alterations “substantiate charges of scandalmongering” on Walsingham’s part; Stow shows especially that these alterations were deliberate, suggesting that Walsingham was complicit in establishing the Lancastrian narrative of historical events.100

The process of revising history that we see in Walsingham amounts to a kind of soft fraudulence, less outright falsehood than the profound muddling of truths and fables, complaints and silences described in the poems Richard and Mum. This was simply the way history writing in the period worked: the commission and writing of new chronicles as political tides shifted was the norm and the process of revision and rewriting was built into the practice of chronicle writing. This is not to suggest that the manipulation of written documents and histories was insignificant: one of the articles of deposition brought against Richard was the charge that he had fraudulently rewritten the rolls of the 1397 parliament. If this charge was not an invention of his enemies, it suggests Richard’s understanding that controlling documents was a way to control historical narrative and thus political power.101 There is in fact considerable evidence that Richard did control the way that certain events were spoken and written about. Matthew Giancarlo argues that the multiple accounts of events found in various versions of official documents that emerged from the 1397 commission show “Richard’s uncanny awareness of the fungibility of legal forms and authority in the person who bears those forms and authority and who gives them voice,” and the awareness that “he could control not only men’s lives but also

99 Ibid., 101. 100 Stow, “Richard II,” 100. 101 Rotuli Parliamentorum, 418. J.G. Edwards discusses the available evidence of this charge in “The Parliamentary Committee of 1398,” English Historical Review 40 (1925): 321–33. Regarding the charges of forgery, Frank Grady notes “If the charges made against him in 1399 are true, and Richard was ultimately responsible for rewriting the parliament rolls, then we must credit the king with a keen appreciation of the power of such documents to shape public and institutional opinion, an appreciation more often reserved for his successor. True or not, the appearance of the accusations in the “Record and Process” testifies once again to the acute importance of the control of such texts to the Lancastrian hegemony” (“Generation of 1399,” in The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England. Emily Steiner and Candace Barrington, eds. [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002], 202–229, at 225).

135 their voices.”102 There is evidence, however, of a more insidious practice even than the alteration of documents: the practice of interfering with the way that formal procedures were carried out. These manipulated procedures simultaneously capitalized on official guarantors of truth, such as justices, and explicitly kept these guarantors out of the construction of the truths that they were supposedly authenticating.103

In both Richard and Mum, we see a rehearsal of anxieties about precisely this sort of documentary culture and what it says about the power of words, and the workings of power. Both poems explore the disruption of the underlying mechanisms of medieval legal systems which depended on the voicing of complaint and requests. At Richard’s end, parliamentary discourse collapses, ostensibly under the pressure of forged parliamentary documents, into a cacophony, a sound made up of formalized human speech but indistinguishable from the baying of dogs. Mum trails off listing the contents of the bag of books, and the promise of that discourse and those documents might seem hollow, potentially leaving readers with a similar feeling of despair. Neither poem suggests discourse nor documents are worthless. The problem is instead that truths and falsehoods are compounded when speaking and writing subject to whims and the political climate.

Both poems make a good case for an attitude of complete distrust of any official record. However, not trusting the documents does not equate to refusing to engage with them or blaming writing or language for human systems in which these technologies become tools of subjugation. While both poems are harsh in their tone toward the systems they critique—both explicitly and implicitly—both poems seem hopeful that speaking and writing, including the writing of poetry will continue. Texts, the poems suggest, have a purpose beyond the hope of stability of their contents, a purpose which exists in spite of their inevitable instability and the unknowability of their relationship with the events that they purport to relate—perhaps even because of it. The poems do not advocate for the pruning of cultural memory to produce a more stable version of “what actually happened” and why. Indeed, they seem to conclude that the most apt advice would be not to aim for singular truth. It is not achievable; so do not even try. And yet, in neither Richard nor Mum does this manifest as an apathy toward the political role of writing, and

102 Matthew Giancarlo, “Murder, Lies, and Storytelling: the Manipulation of Justice(s) in the Parliaments of 1397 and 1399,” Speculum 77 (2002): 76–112, at 92. 103 Ibid.

136 particularly the role played by poetry within the political sphere. In this, Mum is particularly clear: the narrator is urged to go write, to contribute his own piece to the bag of books, an act which may not change the order of reality but which at least can boldly recognize the world to which it contributes for what it is.

At the moment that Richard and Mum were composed it was a matter of official record that documents were manipulated. This served to advance a crucial point of these poems. All documents, no matter what they are or how pristine their material vehicle, indeed all spoken words, have always already been shaped to meet the demands of their environment. Indeed, it is implicitly because of the lack of stability and of reliable authority in language that more words, and more written works, need constantly to be added. This is not because these new documents will be less susceptible to corruption. Rather, a writer should acknowledge the inevitable change that will already have settled on his text even while he is composing it but not try to fight it, not try to go back and correct and alter the text to reflect new perspectives or truths that emerge from new circumstances. He should just simply write his story, and then—because the world has already corrupted its truths—let it go and try to write again. 3.7 Editing Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger Thinking and writing about these poems suggests to me a framework for approaching them that differs from that first adopted by Bale, and—I have suggested—picked up from Bale and carried into modern editorial and critical treatments of these poems. Much of the work done on these poems since the English reformers (and counter-reformers) brought them into a dim sort of light has been focused on getting them right. In Brigham’s case this meant rescuing them from a past for a present day purpose. Bale had much the same aim, even if his purpose was quite different: he not only searched out these texts, he found a way to turn what must have been fragments—notes of Brigham’s, a confusingly titled book—into a small part of a grand, Protestantized and providential narrative about the way that England’s past was always already its future. Modern scholarship has had different aims and different procedures. But the treatment of Richard and Mum still begins in the modern era with the work of nineteenth-and early twentieth-century editors to produce a tidily edited, vernacular English canon suitable for scholarly research and university teaching. Right up to the present, this means that we tend to consider Richard and Mum as Bale considered them, together.

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One of the points I have been leading to in this chapter is that this tradition of making something coherent out a complexity of written records to suit a particular, present purpose can be traced back further than Bale. It is a central concern of the poems Richard and Mum themselves, and one given shape by culture that produced them. My point is not, however, that this makes the story of these texts special. Rather, the poems frame and anticipate the way that they have been treated over time because they are interested in how all utterances are imperfect representations of intentions that will be further transformed by time and political and social circumstances. In a discussion of documentary culture at the turn of the fifteenth century, Frank Grady argues that for Lancastrian poets “the apparent fixity and unalterable archival persistence of legal documents, chronicles, and statutes would have had an undeniable appeal.”104 However, what these chronicles and competing witnesses within the parliamentary rolls show is that there is no documentary form that actually possesses that fixity, nor would fixity be unalterable even if it could be achieved.105 Fixity was recognized as an impossible goal, and so the greater the desire for it, the greater must have been the motivation to construct and polish the appearance of fixity, purity, and impermeability in documentary materials. Both Richard and Mum point to a knowledge that this is what is going on, and the manifestation of this knowledge oscillates between anxiety, resignation, and hope throughout both poems.

The modern editorial tradition too has been built on the premise of stability, or at least on a desire for fixity and wholeness. There are editors and critics who have disputed the theory that Richard and Mum are a single poem, and have advanced an array of arguments about how the two fragments should be treated, including the argument that they are separate poems written by a single author, as Barr and Horobin suggest. This certainly begins to open up discussions of the poems to new perspectives. However, it is striking that even in these cases, one impulse towards unity has been replaced with another. Barr and Horobin look not to Bale’s notes or codicology for coherence, but to a missing author, who serves as a still point around which evidence of form, language, style, and content can be assembled and then codified, made satisfyingly complete.

As I hope I make clear throughout this thesis, I do not want to argue that any of the editorial and critical traditions that I discuss are particularly wrongheaded. I am not suggesting

104 Grady, “Generation,” 222–23. 105 This is certainly what the material evidence of the Mum manuscript itself witnesses, with its heavy network of over-writing, erasure, addition, and correction.

138 that Bale was wrong in his classification, or that too much was made of his citation of Brigham’s comment in the Index. I do not think the association of Richard’s first line and a variant of Mum’s title should be disregarded; nor should the arguments of astute commentators such a Barr and Horobin. Scholars who have followed Bale and united these texts have obviously generated interesting and productive insights into—and editions of—both poems. My argument is simply that this scholarly and editorial tradition does not and should not silence other possibilities when approaching these texts. There is still room in the bag of books, as it were—space that has been overlooked by those focused on the question Bale first introduced, by putting the poems together.

The trend for twentieth century editors to consider the poems together started from the fact that Bale’s note was a vital piece of the two fragments’ known histories, and scholars have simply made use of what little was known about these fragments to piece together a history of the poems. However, the context in which that note was written is important too; as I have argued, Bale’s mention of the poems in the Index is charged by his own religious and political purpose. Bale’s note citing the first line of Richard the Redeless and associating it with the title of Mum and the Sothsegger forms part of a catalogue of manuscripts that are meant to exemplify the nation’s history.

My own approach is intended to be not so much revisionist as “reconsiderist” and, I hope, generative. I think we should be attuned to the biases implicit in all accounts of the past, both those of our own era, and those we have inherited. Richard and Mum argue this much themselves. I also think it is useful to be curious about what about what we might be able to see if we did not already think we knew what we were looking at. If Henry Bradley had not remembered Bale’s Index, or if the discoverers of the Mum manuscript had not remembered Bradley’s note, what might have been said about or done with these texts? What new stories can they tell, if we dislodge them from editorial and critical tradition? This chapter is arranged less to answer this question, than to show that it is a key question posed by the poems themselves and the history of their reception. Richard suggests that, sometimes, people fail to hear what matters through all the noise. Mum encourages its readers to learn through silence and even error rather than to seek for impossible truths. The kind of approach to these texts I am advocating is not one that seeks to correct other approaches. I assume that correctness is beyond any single scholar, editor, or even truth-telling author’s grasp. The solution is to treat this less as a problem than an opportunity: a reason to stay curious, to question assumptions, including the assumptions

139 encoded in modern editions, to keep researching, and to reread and rethink these fascinating poems.

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Chapter 4 : The Book of Margery Kempe

Like the previous two, this chapter focuses on a single-witness manuscript, and discusses the text that it contains from its earliest manuscript instantiation through to present-day editorial treatment and criticism. The Book of Margery Kempe is found in a single manuscript, now housed in the British Library, BL Additional MS 61823. The text that is contained within this manuscript is composed of a total of eighty-nine capitula spread over two books. The Book of Margery Kempe relates the life of Margery of Lynn, and recounts her battles with various kinds of suffering in the worship of God, her pilgrimages and acts of penitential self-sacrifice, and the conversations that she has throughout her life with Christ, regarding proper piety and the right way of living to ensure grace. The prefatory material is written in the voice of one of two amanuenses to whom the Book was dictated by Margery. After this amanuensis dies, Margery struggles to find another who will take up the work: when she does, this amanuensis struggles to understand the work that had already been written, and written badly in “neithyr good Englysch ne Dewch.” The text claims, in various ways, to have been “written” by Margery, but even on the simplest level what such “authorial” activity might mean is unclear: the historical figure of Margery may have narrated the text of the Book to a scribe in the precise configuration as exists now in the pages of the manuscript; she may have told the stories to a scribe who extemporized on the best order of their combination; she may have been the ‘subject’ of an entirely other author’s composition; or many other possibilities.

Even on the most superficial narrative level, the text of the Book is complicated: it does not follow a chronological order, nor does it give clear indications of the relative timing of events. Margery is cast in many roles. Some of these are easy to define, and map onto widely acknowledged cultural and theological categories, both of her time and of present-day conceptions about that time: wife, daughter, mother, neighbour, pilgrim. Other roles are less clearly definable, but still accord with general categories of cultural priorities: mystic, contemplative, devotee, disciple, martyr, philosopher, confessor. Likewise, she plays many roles in the visions that she describes: midwife and nurse to Christ, as well as His sometime- daughter/lover/wife; maiden; virgin. Some of these categories seem to be mutually exclusive and defy simultaneous understanding or description, and so even when the categories are recognizable and definable, Margery’s claim to be a suitable example of them tests the limits of

141 these definitions and of her readers’ capacity to understand her. Furthermore, Margery’s personality is diverse, and the various relationships that she has—with Christ, with her husband, with her neighbours and travelling companions, with various political and religious figures—can be difficult to understand. We see her in near-constant conflict with her fellow pilgrims and with a wide-range of political and religious leaders that she encounters, and her often hyper-emotional reactions and behaviour toward her critics and supporters alike characterize her as a difficult and unstable individual. However, we also see her giving and receiving tremendous kindness, compassion, and respect, often responding to harsh critics with remarkable good sense and insight and calling out lackadaisical clerics for their superficial commitment to theological principles with staggering courage.

Not just Margery’s character, but also the Book’s narrative voices are multiple: the proem of Book I is written in the voice of the scribe, and there are sufficient numbers of scribal interludes to shed doubt on the authenticity of the personal narrative; and even that personal narrative, ostensibly narrated by Margery, is told in the third person, her own identity referred to only as “þis creatur,” a narrative move that underlines her abjection to God and the nature of her devotion, but one that also complicates the stability of the text’s narrative voice. There is the manuscript, which contains the Book, a narrative which lays claim to at least four authoring agents—Margery, her confessor, and her two scribes. In the manuscript, there are also several sets of marginalia, each of which draw attention to different aspects of the Book and of Margery. The many ostensibly contradictory aspects of the Book become even more difficult to reconcile when its early editorial history is laid bare. Apart from the Book, there is also a sixteenth century printed pamphlet version, entitled A Shorte Treatyse of Devotion and printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 15011 which offers a radically compressed and restructured version of Margery. This Margery has been much easier to reconcile with expectations of female piety, but she adds another layer of irreconcilability in relation to the Book because, although these aspects of Margery technically exist in the Book, they do not seem to constitute important parts of the character of Margery legible there. Furthermore, this shortened version was—that we know of— used within one printed and one Sammelband compilation, both of which recontextualize and

1 The de Worde edition is Short Title Catalogue number 14924, and is currently housed in Cambridge University Library Sel.5.27.

142 add complexity to an already complex combination of texts.2 It is these versions of Margery that were known to nineteenth and early-twentieth century scholars, since the manuscript of the Book was unknown until its rediscovery in 1934. There are, also, twentieth-century editions of the Book, beginning with an edition prepared for a non-specialist audience in 1936 by Colonel Butler-Bowdon; and the 1940 critical edition, prepared for the Early English Text Society by Hope Emily Allen and Sanford Meech.

In many ways, it could be argued that pre-modern editors identified within the text one of several planes, either by highlighting a single continuous narrative within the Book, or by drawing out evidence of that narrative and constructing texts from it. There have been editors and critics who have fixated on identifying an “authoritative” version of the Book, and have worked to justify the correctness of these aspects. In fact, two of the Book’s first three editors, and many of the Book’s earliest critics worked to do precisely that, and Margery scholarship was established in the same spirit as was the scholarship on MS Cotton Nero A.x, and Richard the Redeless and Mum and the Sothsegger: early critical efforts strive to identify authoritative origins of the text, and thus to eliminate the errors from the manuscript text that disrupt that authority. However, the effect of this early criticism on the Book has been remarkably un-sticky, at least compared to the long legacy of early editorial decisions of the other texts discussed in the previous chapters. As I will discuss throughout the rest of this chapter, an acceptance and engagement with the multiplicity of Margery’s character and the Book’s narrative voices is not incommensurate with critical discussions of authority, and many critics grapple with the text’s seeming contradictions. This chapter considers a canonical medieval text that is extant in a single manuscript, and the processes by which that single text was transformed as it made its way across the boundaries of print and into modern scholarship by way of editorial and literary critical practice. As with the dissertation as a whole, my starting point for the analysis of this manuscript has been the question: “how did that text become these texts?”

The chapter has two main parts: Part I—Pre-modern versions will begin with a discussion of the Book in its only extant manuscript form, including theories about the identity of the Book’s

2 The Moore Sammelband I is currently housed in Cambridge University Library Sel.5.25–35 and Inc.5.J.1.2 (3541); the Treatyse is Sel.5.27. The Pepwell version of the Shorte Treatyse is Short Title Catalogue number 20972, and is currently held in the British Library under the title Here foloweth a veray deuoute treatyse (named Benyamyn) of the mights and virtues of a mans soul and attributed to Richard of St. Victor.

143 scribes and its authorship, and also attending to the marginal commentary written into the manuscript by its early monastic readers. I will then discuss the first printed version of the Book: Wynkyn de Worde’s 1501 pamphlet of extracts of the text entitled A Shorte treatyse of contemplacyon. Finally, after these discussions of this textual “raw material” of Margery’s text, I will discuss the two extant afterlives of de Worde’s Shorte Treatyse: Henry Pepwell’s 1521 untitled collection in which the Shorte Treatyse was one of seven texts included in a collection of devotional materials; and a de Worde collection compiled at some point in the 1520s, now known as the Moore Sammelband I, in which the Shorte Treatyse is bound together with other nine other works of exemplary devotion. I will focus on the way that the text is extracted, the texts that accompany these excerpts, and the manner in which the characterizations of Margery are contextualized by the texts that accompany them. Part II—20th century recreations—begins where this discussion leaves off, with Pepwell’s 1521 collection as it was reissued, in 1910, by Edmund Gardner under the title Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Treatises Printed by Henry Pepwell. After this brief introductory discussion, however, I will focus primarily on the renewed interest in the Shorte Treatyse several decades later, after the rediscovery of the manuscript of The Book of Margery Kempe in 1934. I will briefly discuss the great anticipation of editions of the Book, as well as the reception of the various early editions of the text that were produced.

As a whole, this chapter will explore the ways that Margery and her text have been critiqued at different periods: I will discuss the manner in which discussions of literacy and authorship are bound up in the difficulties that attend the editorial and critical process. I am particularly interested in the way that the anxieties about authority, authenticity, and Margery’s voice emerge from the application of the demands of modern editorial practice to the Book, and I will try to show that acknowledging Margery’s multivocality and allowing the Book’s multiplicity to stand unstabilized, unauthorized, and irreconcilable might constitute the most authentic exploration of Margery that we could hope for. Pre-Modern Editions 4.1 The Manuscript of The Book of Margery Kempe The Book of Margery Kempe is found in a single manuscript, now housed in the British Library, BL Additional MS 61823. The text is composed of 124 leaves in eleven gatherings of

144 various sizes: the first eight gatherings consist of twelve leaves each; the ninth and tenth gatherings both consist of ten leaves; and the eleventh gathering has eight leaves. The leaves are approximately eight inches in height by six inches in width, and each of these leaves contains between thirty-two and thirty-five lines of text. The leaves are made of paper of two separate stocks containing two watermarks. At the time of its discovery, the manuscript’s paper could not be dated based on its watermark.3 The manuscript’s last three gatherings, however, are watermarked with “an animal head of the bovine appearance”4 which has been dated to 1444; and, since the texture and make of the paper in the first eight gatherings is similar to that of the final three, the paper throughout the manuscript was likewise dated to 1440–1450.5 Three leaves have been bound in before the first folio; and a letter granting to the vicar of Soham, Cambridgeshire, a Bachelor of Theology,6 bringing the total leaves in the manuscript up to 128. The text of the Book is written without ornamentation or illustration, apart from a few simple additions: the simple rubric capitals that mark the beginning of the Proem, the explanatory paragraph and each of the chapter beginnings, and a closing prayer; there are also variously coloured marginal annotations. The Book is written in a single hand which has been dated to the middle of the fifteenth century. The scribe was named Salthows, indicated in the manuscript itself by the inscription, at the bottom of f. 123: Ihesu mercy quod Salthows. Meech and Allen noted that “[t]he scribe’s family, no doubt, derived its name from the village of Salthouse on the north central coast of Norfolk” and thus that “it is likely … although by no means certain, that he was a Norfolk man,”7 but apart from speculating on the existence of Salthouse families in Lynn, did not attempt to identify the scribe beyond his signature.

The necessity of identifying the scribe in order to identify the authorial voice of the Book has long been a focus of editorial and literary scholars. Beyond the identity of the scribe responsible for the manuscript, the Book narrates the difficulty of its own composition, describing that three or more individuals attempted to write and copy the text before it came to

3 The watermark was described by C.T. Lamarcraft; cited in Meech and Allen, xxxiv. 4 Cited in Meech and Allen, xxxiv. 5 Ibid. 6 Although the letter is not dated, documents attest to the proving of a vicar of Soham in 1440, which gives further proof of the date of the manuscript’s binding. See Hilton Kelliher, “The Rediscovery of Margery Kempe: A Footnote” The British Library Journal, 23:2 (1997): 259–63. 7 Meech and Allen, xxxiii.

145 be copied by the amanuensis. Nicholas Watson has noted that the first scribe’s work was written “in an unfamiliar spelling system, in a merchant’s script that to the priest who became her second scribe” was an “unorthodox production” that made it illegible.8 As such, the second scribe whom Margery approached would not, at first, copy it, because it was not readable. Finally, however, Margery found an amanuensis who was able to write it down. Critics have interpreted this as in equal parts miraculous and technical. Sarah Beckwith notes that “the second scribe who attempts to transcribe the foreign, badly written text of the first scribe is suddenly granted clarity of understanding.”9 Kate Parker notes that, while for the scribe the first time around the letters were “oddly shaped and formed, … the initial difficulties … disappeared the second time he tried, when perhaps he had simply ‘got his eye in,’ as palaeographers would say.”10 Hilton Kelliher suggests that the Salthouse in the manuscript was possibly the same Ricardus Salthowus who signed a manuscript of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of England, which was owned by the Benedictine cathedral priory of Holy Trinity at Norwich. Kelliher noted that the two signatures were similar. Recently, Anthony Bale has provided solid evidence that the Book’s scribe was, indeed, Richard Salthouse, a monk at Norwich’s priory. Bale notes that Salthouse “was part of a community of about fifty Benedictine monks, although three times that number of people probably lived within the precinct, as servants, pensioners and various officers.”11 Among the residents at Norwich were two other clerics associated with Margery, the Book, and its composition: Richard Caistor, who became Margery’s patron and some-time confessor; and, more importantly, Richard Springolde, Margery’s confessor and amanuensis.

Very early on, the second amanuensis was thought to be Margery’s son. Miss Joan Wake first suggested to Hope Emily Allen that this amanuensis might have been the son, mentioned in Book II, who was married in Germany and had a child, and who later returned to England with his wife and child and lived there with Margery. Since this son died shortly after arriving back in

8 Nicholas Watson, “The Making of The Book of Margery Kempe,” in Voices in Dialogue, eds. Kathryn Kerby- Fulton and Linda Olson, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 398. 9 Sarah Beckwith, “Problems of Authority in Late Medieval English Mysticism: Agency and Authority in The Book of Margery Kempe,” Exemplaria 4 (1992): 171–200, at 190. 10 Kate Parker, “Lynn and the Making of a Mystic,” in A Companion to The Book of Margery Kempe, eds. John Arnold and Katherine Lewis (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004), 55–74, at 65. 11 Anthony Bale, “Woman in White,” Times Literary Supplement, (December 19 and 26, 2017), 16–17, at 17; and “Richard Salthouse of Norwich and the Scribe of The Book of Margery Kempe,” The Chaucer Review 52 (2017): 173–187.

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England, this assumption was long ridiculed as giving an impossibly short period of time in which the text could have been dictated and transcribed, although Meech suggests that the text could have been written during an earlier trip.12 In a ground-breaking new study, Sebastian Sobecki presents new evidence relating to Margery Kempe’s son: a letter prepared for Margery’s son in Danzig in 1431 which names the son as “John” and presents reasons for his journey to Lynn. Sobecki notes that the description in the Gdansk letter of John’s travels matches the description given of the son in Book 2: the circumstances of John’s visit to Lynn in 1431 are identical, in that in both they are accompanied only by their wives, in both they stayed with Margery, and in both they died shortly after. Sobecki claims that “this information … sheds new light on the account of The Book’s production as given in the proem” and thus “the discovery of the letter corroborates the theory that the son was Kempe’s first scribe.”13 Sobecki’s study also deepens ties between Richard Spryngolde and Margery, shedding light on a document that shows that in 1430 Richard Spryngolde was named as an executor of the will of Robert Brunham, likely Margery’s older brother, indicating close ties between Spryngolde and Margery’s family. Spryngolde is also known to have been associated with the priory at Norwich, where Richard Salthouse, one of the Book’s scribes, was enclosed—which suggests that the Spryngolde could also have been involved in some way in the Book’s composition.

New evidence for the identities of the various scribes and amanuenses in the Book give new life to debates that have long been circulating about the nature of the narrative voice in the Book, especially who should be considered the “author” of the text. Most scholarly discussion on the Book has been focused on the second scribe. John Hirsh argues that the second scribe should be considered the co-author of the book, since he provided the Book with its shape, and thus established the structure of the narrative. Hirsch recognizes references to the literary tradition, but attributes the knowledge of the conventions of genres such as hagiographic vitae not to Margery but to her scribe. Hirsh argues “that the second scribe did more than transcribe the earlier text” which “probably consisted of an epitome of Margery’s activities, which the second scribe expanded without hesitation,” and thus concludes that “it may be confidently stated that the second scribe, no less than Margery, should be regarded as the author of The Book of

12 Meech and Allen, viii. 13 Sebastien Sobecki, “‘The writyng of this tretys’: Margery Kempe’s Son and the Authorship of Her Book,” Studies in the Age of Chaucer 37 (2015): 257–283, at 258.

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Margery Kempe.”14 Similarly, Samuel Fanous ascribes the “authorial engineering” to the second amanuensis and states that “while Margery’s voice rings clearly from the text, it is evident that the narrative has been shaped in a highly sophisticated way by a clerical mind familiar with and competent in hagiographic modes of discourse.”15 Sarah Rees Jones agrees with Hirsch’s and Fanous’ fundamental point, but expands upon it, asserting that Margery is not the Book’s author at all, and may not, in fact, even be a real person. Rees Jones contends that the Book’s author is a cleric who wrote the story of a woman’s life, and that it is “a book written by clergy, for clergy, and about clergy.”16 Other scholars, such as A. C. Spearing and Margaret Gallyon have argued that the Book was written by Robert Spryngolde, and that he, rather than Margery, should be considered its author. Indeed, A. C. Spearing has argued that Spryngolde was likely an author of the Book, rather than one of its scribes, as “events are included at which [Margery] was not present but Spryngolde was.” Because of this, Spearing states that “our understanding would surely be improved by an experimental envisaging of The Book of Margery Kempe as The Book of Robert Spryngolde about Margery Kempe.”17

Other scholars are unconcerned about who, precisely, was the scribe that should be considered the author of the text, but nonetheless debate the relative authority that Margery might be considered to have over the Book. Lynn Staley, in Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions, takes up the issue of self-production, and its intersections with authorship and auctoritas. She affirms that Margery Kempe is the author of the text, but distinguishes the author, Kempe, from the character of her story, Margery, noting that “[a]t every juncture, [the Book] proclaims itself a collaborative effort between the subject and her ‘writer’ that is intended to capture the spiritual experience or the growth in spiritual understanding of this one woman.”18 The primary and fundamental “fiction” of the Book, according to Staley, is Margery’s illiteracy,

14 John Hirsh, “Author and Scribe in The Book of Margery Kempe,” Medium Aevum 44 (1975): 145–50, at 147. 15 Samuel Fanous, “Measuring the Pilgrim’s Progress: Internal Emphases in The Book of Margery Kempe,” in Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, eds. Denis Renevey and Christiania Whitehead (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000), 157–78, at 171. 16 Sarah Rees Jones, “Margery Kempe and the Bishops,” in Medieval Women: Texts and Contexts in Late Medieval Britain, eds. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne et al. (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 377–91. 17 A. C. Spearing, “Margery Kempe,” in A Companion to Middle English Prose, ed. A.S.G. Edwards (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004), 83–98, at 92 and 93. 18 Lynn Staley, Margery Kempe’s Dissenting Fictions (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1994), 2.

148 a plot device that demands the involvement of a scribe. Staley does not openly state that the Book’s author, Kempe, is illiterate, but she makes clear that its character, Margery, is. Staley asserts that “a key part of the Book’s fiction is its subject’s illiteracy and holiness, two conditions that demand a third party, the scribe who can transcribe the life God himself has inscribed.”19 While ostensibly forcing Margery to give up control, the figure of the scribe is, in fact a way of gaining control over the narrative, as

[w]riters … did not simply employ scribes as copyists; they elaborated upon the figurative language associated with the book as a symbol and put scribes to another use by incorporating them into their texts as tropes. Such ‘ghostly scribes’ provided authors with figures through which they could project authorial personas, indicate what we would call generic categories, express a sense of community, or guide a reader’s responses to a text.20

Denis Renevey argues that Margery speaks for herself, arguing that the Book is a translation of her performance of piety, that Margery re-performed her text for the second scribe, and thus that “it was Margery’s authorial involvement, rather than the presence of the initial text, which finally enabled the successful, through painful, translation of events experienced more than twenty years before onto manuscript parchment.”21 Renevey describes performance as a “multi-layered act of translation,”22 a process which Margery facilitates for her scribe and audience, and which she enacts herself. Her performance of piety is thus a “double performance”: one part of this performance is Margery’s “own translation of anchoritic practices and private meditations in public,” the acting out of her spiritual experiences and interpretations of the experiences of others. Thus, in Renevey’s argument, Margery’s body is the initial text, a text which needs to be interpreted and vocalized by Margery for its eventual scribal inscription. The second part of this double performance is “regulated by the liturgical events of the Christian calendar.”23

19 Ibid., 11. 20 Ibid., 12. 21 Dennis Renevey, “Margery’s Performing Body: The Translation of Late Medieval Discursive Religious Practices,” in Writing Religious Women: Female Spiritual and Textual Practices in Late Medieval England, eds. Denis Renevey and Christiana Whitehead (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), 197–216, at 199. 22 Ibid. 23 Ibid., 206.

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Nicholas Watson argues “that Kempe herself, not her scribe, was primarily responsible for the Book’s structure, arguments, and most of its language” and suggests that it is “important to her self-understanding that this be so.”24 Watson argues thus that the Book “deliberately blurs the roles of author, narrator, and protagonist that literary criticism often separates,” and argues that the Book similarly “attempt[s] to absorb the reader into its inner processes by breaking down the distinction between reading and living.”25 He argues that the Book’s effect is that of a speaking voice rather than the written word.26 In Watson’s reading, Margery knowingly circumvents authoritative tropes by positioning herself as a speaking voice, rather than a written one. Watson concludes, then, that “[f]or her readers’ sakes as well as her own, Kempe needed to speak for herself, her God, and her community; the voice in her Book needed to proceed not only from sanctity and knowledge of God’s privities but from her sense of herself as Everywoman.”27 Placing emphasis on the spoken-ness of Margery’s story at once distances it from medieval strategies of authority and authenticity, and in doing so mobilizes her voice as a legitimate editorial strategy. Alexandra Barratt argues that, since “the Church could not deny women direct access to the divine, through mystical experience unmediated by a human priesthood,” claims of mystical experiences were one of the strategies for women to “become ‘authors’ without offending their societal norms and appearing to infringe male prerogatives.”28 Margery was capitalizing on the social loophole that “[v]isionary women could bypass the human, male, authority of the Church on earth, and claim to be the instruments of a higher, divine authority.”29 Whatever authority she was able to construct for herself by way of her mystical experiences, the Book does rely on textual auctoritas of the other texts which are woven in with Margery’s narrative, as well as the authority of the Church: as Julie Chappell notes, the “Book continually rounds on notions of authority revealing in Kempe a subtle defiance of the medieval patriarchal

24 Watson, “Making,” 397. 25 Ibid., 397 and 424. 26 Ibid., 425. 27 Ibid. 28 Women’s Writing in Middle English (New York: Longman, 1992), 8. 29 Ibid.

150 order while appearing to adhere to it.”30 Janet Wilson also notes that Margery and her scribe surrounded her text with a community of literate male and female mystics and visionaries, a community that grants her safety in numbers in associating oneself with the divine.31 Likewise, Daniel Pigg argues that the form of The Book of Margery Kempe is self-consciously imitative of the commentary tradition, where two separate discourses are operative:

First, Kempe’s perceptions of form and treatment rely on the memory of her own situation in a measure created and delimited by texts influenced by the traditions of affective piety and the correction of the will.” On the second level, the scribe/compiler … uses other mystical treatises and handbooks to shape Kempe’s spirituality within an authoritative frame. The result is a text whose composition is thus heavily encrusted with its own concept of textuality.32

While this relationship of the Book to authoritative literary traditions has been noted before, Pigg identifies Margery herself as the agent of this decision.

John Erskine notes that within medieval standards of auctoritas which relied on the authority of recognizable precedents and an identifiable auctor from which inspiration was taken, Margery was at a “considerable disadvantage” since she lacked sources for her highly personal material.33 He notes, however, she was clearly influenced by the model of “experiential mysticism” recently established by Richard Rolle, and that “[t]hrough the medium of the sermon, she would have been familiar with the major saints of the past.”34 He goes on to discusses the multiple possible relations between Margery and her scribe, arguing that “the obvious assumption is that Margery’s is by far the dominant voice in the work, though the scribes are not

30 Julie Chappell, Perilous Passages: The Book of Margery Kempe, 1534–1934 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), xxix. 31 Janet Wilson, “Communities of Dissent: The Secular and Ecclesiastical Communities of Margery Kempe’s Book,” in Medieval Women in their Communities, Diane Watt, ed. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997), 155–185. 32 Daniel F. Pigg, “Medieval Theories of Textual Formation and The Book of Margery Kempe,” Studia Mystica 16 (1995): 106–15, at 109. Several critics have argued that any devout member of the medieval church would have had a kind of default knowledge of Latin and some kind of literacy—even simply knowing scripture by heart—from being surrounded by liturgy. See, for example, Roger Ellis “Margery Kempe’s Scribe and the Miraculous Books,” in Langland, the Mystics and the Medieval English Religious Tradition: Essays in Honour of S.S. Hussey, ed. Helen Phillips (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1990), 161–175. 33 John A. Erskine, “Margery Kempe and Her Models: The Role of the Authorial Voice,” Mystics Quarterly 15.2 (June 1989): 75–85, at 75. 34 Ibid., 75–76.

151 entirely passive.35 Like Pigg, then, Erskine argues that the Book is “an interesting compromise between Margery’s autobiographical novel whose functionality is betrayed by her own authorial practices, and the scribe’s saint’s life which he attempts to validate in the proem and elsewhere, and when his own voice speaks in the role of priest.”36 In a similar vein, Karma Lochrie argues that mystical discourse was separate from literary or exegetical texts, and that, as a result, they were another possible space for women’s authority to blossom:

Unlike the other modes of medieval discourse, mystic discourse does not rely on the textual system of auctoritas. In other words, the mystical text does not rely on either textual or institutional authorization of its statements. Thus, the mystical text defines, identifies, and authorizes itself differently than most other kinds of medieval discourse.37

The focus of this vein of scholarship is auctoritas, narrative authority, and authorship of the text; but rather than limiting the range of possibilities that are visible in the Book, its producers and characters, the debates represented by Erskine and Lochrie are quite generative of expanded understanding of how authority could be understood. For example, Sarah Beckwith approaches issues of authority by way of questions of genre: she argues that The Book is a work of “mystical autobiography” that “encodes an ambiguity about voice and the source of the voice,” arguing that “the hybridity which is everywhere locatable in the Book of Margery Kempe foregrounds the very conditions of subjectivity by articulating the possibilities of its dialogic function.” Beckwith’s identification of this hybrid genre—part autobiography, part saint’s life— acknowledges that the text uses the conventions of the saint’s life, as Erskine argues, but that it pushes that form to include the personal, unprecedented relations that Margery’s Book documents. She strives to propose an historicizing account of Margery’s subjectivity “which sees a more relational, dialogic account of her self-making as crucial to our historical understanding of late medieval subjectivity.”38 Beckwith notes that the totalizing relations that the saint’s life can produce is made impossible in the Book and thus that “Kempe’s account of herself is

35 Ibid., 80–81. 36 Ibid., 84. 37 Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 62. 38 Beckwith, “Problems of Authority,” 176.

152 inevitably partial, because any self is hollowed out by its relation to others.”39 Because of the duality that is made possible in Beckwith’s reading of the Book—the book can be a mystical treatyse and autobiographical—Beckwith interrogates the basis for a search for authenticity in Margery: “For if she is not authentic—what else could she be but a fake, a fraudulent and histrionic personality, an actress, a thespian par excellence.”40 Beckwith interrogates the rationale of those questions. She notes:

Critics seem often to have been so concerned with defending or attacking Margery Kempe on the grounds of her veracity or falsehood, that the central question as to why the terms of reference should have been fixed in this way has been neglected. The question to ask is not so much whether we believe in Margery Kempe but rather where to locate the centrally reiterated but unspoken (unmentionable?) problematic—that of self-production itself. 41

Beckwith’s question challenges the idea of fixity both for Margery and for the Book: why is such a notion considered to be appropriate at all, either to assign to the character of Margery or to the genre of the Book from which we draw that character? Staley, likewise, argues that rather than a work of a single conventional genre which was authored by either Margery Kempe or her scribe,

The Book is finally the work of an author whose narrative demonstrates her ability to use the conventions of sacred biography and devotional prose that she inherited as the means of scrutinizing the foundations of community. In so doing, she demonstrates a keen sense of the ways in which what we might call generic categories can be expanded.42

Similarly, Felicity Riddy doubts that Margery Kempe is truly the author of the text, but argues that this is not an important issue: for Riddy the essential issue is not of authorship but of discourse, and she thus replaces the questions “whose language is it?” with “who speaks?” and “who perceives?” In doing so, she shows that the various identities in and around the text are “the product of the blurred boundaries between writing, narrating and reading, of a text for which

39 Ibid., 180 and 179. 40 Ibid., 177. On this issue, Beckwith points to remarks made by William Provost, who asks: “Are we reading a work of fantasy or even fraud, rather than an early autobiography, a serious self-portrayal of a fascinating human being?” (“Introduction” to Medieval Women Writers, ed. Katharina Wilson, [Manchester: Manchester University Press: 1984], 298). 41 Beckwith, 177–78. 42 Staley, Dissenting Fictions, 4.

153 authorship is not claimed.”43 All of these debates emerge from the many-layered nature of the narrative and authorial voice in the Book, and thus, critics who attempt to construct a sense of the text are often forced to grapple with issues of authority simply in order be able to attribute authorship to someone acknowledged in the text. Beyond the recognition of various authorial voices in the text, however, the manuscript bears the mark of other voices as well that further complicate the text, in the form of marginalia.

4.1.1 Manuscript Marginalia The only feature in the manuscript that identifies anything of its ownership is written on the verso of the binding leaf: Liber Montis Gracie. This boke is of Mountegrace. This is written in a late fifteenth-century hand, and identifies the book as having been the property of Mount Grace, a Carthusian monastery near East Harlsey in Yorkshire. There are several sets of marginal annotations in the manuscript, which record the interpretations of several of the text’s early readers. Some critics have suggested that some of the marginalia seem to imply there was a call for it outside of the cloister and that the text was being annotated to be used as devotional or pedagogical material by lay-people, and in particular as a devotional text for lay-women readers, although there is no other evidence that the manuscript would necessarily have circulated outside of the clergy at all. Critics identify between three and six hands present in the margins of the manuscript; however, of these sets of marginalia, a few have attracted more critical attention than others.44 In particular, those written in the hand identified as the “Red Ink Annotator” have been identified as focused on the mystical elements of the text. Sue Ellen Holbrook notes that

the [Red Ink] annotator responds not only to love, thinking, compassion, charity, mourning, detraction, reward, the acceptance of tribulation, patience, the right way to

43 Felicity Riddy, “Text and Self in The Book of Margery Kempe,” in Voices in Dialogue, 435–53, at 441. 44 There is some evidence that one of the scribes of the manuscript, Salthows, was also one of these annotators, which suggests that the manuscript of the Book might have been brought to Mount Grace by Salthows for safekeeping, and thus never circulated or was copied for broader distribution. The role of the Carthusians in the circulation of manuscripts has been discussed extensively elsewhere. See, for example, Michael G. Sargent, “The Transmission by the English Carthusians of Some Late Medieval Spiritual Writings,” The Journal of Ecclesiastical History 27 no. 3 (1976): 225–240; and Jessica Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), esp. 27–79. Arguing somewhat against the Carthusian’s role in dissemination of manuscripts, Vincent Gillespie suggests that “the English Carthusians are more notable for carefully controlling and limiting the circulation of mystical books (the Cloud, Marguerite Porete, perhaps Margery)” (“Dial M for Mystic: Mystical Texts in the Library of Syon Abbey and the Spirituality of the Syon Brethren,” in Medieval Mystical Tradition in England VI, ed. Marion Glasscoe [Cambridge: Brewer, 1999], 241–68, at 248). For a thorough discussion of the history of the manuscript of the Book at and after Mount Grace, see Chappell, Perilous Passages.

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heaven and so forth, but also to the problem of being a mystic when one is also a wife, the passionate quality and the marital form of her spiritual relationship to the Lord, and, notably, the visions, the cries, the feelings of weakness and of fire burning.45

These comments on Margery’s experiences thus show empathy with the human issues that were somewhat unique to Margery’s mysticism, but they also highlight the “similarity between Kempe’s experiences and those of Methley, Norton and Rolle.”46 This suggests that the annotator was finding, within Margery’s narrative, experiential and textual connections to works of well-known and well-respected mystical exemplars, and was drawing attention to these elements for the benefit of later readers, and particularly monastic readers committed to living and examining the contemplative life.

Several critics suggest that the notations were made from a perspective that looked beyond the specific interests of the cloister. Rosalynne Voaden draws attention to the Red Ink Annotator’s interest in discretio spirituum.47 In her study of one of the more prolific annotators, Kelly Parsons notes that “much of the red ink annotator’s corpus … is difficult, if not impossible to reconcile with an exclusively monastic audience.” She notes that the Red Ink Annotator offers “a lively, fascinating and fully-engaged reading of the Book”48 that suggests “not only that the text was prepared for use outside the walls of Mount Grace, but that the red ink annotator actually customized The Book of Margery Kempe for the devotional use of an audience of lay women.”49 More particularly, Parsons suggests that many of the Red Ink annotations seem to be directed towards female consumption; she argues that the manuscript was used as a pedagogical and devotional tool for the spiritual guidance of secular women, and that the annotations would

45 Sue Ellen Holbrook, “Margery Kempe and Wynkyn de Worde,” in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, ed. Marion Glasscoe (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987), 27–46, at 37. 46 Ibid., 143–144. 47 Rosalynne Voaden, God’s Words, Women’s Voices: The Discernment of Spirits in the Writing of Late-Medieval Women Visionaries (York: York Medieval Press, 1999), 153. See also Katherine Kerby-Fulton, Maidie Hilmo, and Linda Olson, Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts: Literary and Visual Approaches (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012), 236–38. 48 Kelly Parsons, “The Red Ink Annotator of The Book of Margery Kempe and His Lay Audience,” in The Medieval Professional Reader at Work: Evidence from Manuscripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempe and Gower, eds. Katherine Kerby-Fulton and Maidie Hilmo (Victoria: University of Victoria Press, 2001), 143–216, at 143. 49 Ibid., 144.

155 serve as tools to direct the reading of the text towards events and behaviours that were considered to be particularly salient to this readership.

Recent scholarship points away from Parsons’s conclusions that the text was prepared to explicitly guide female penitents, as other scholars have focused on other aspects of the Red Ink Annotator’s work in the manuscript. Joel Fredell takes issue with the identification of a single “Red Ink Annotator,” identifying six different possible hands in the manuscript margins: he names these 1.) Little Brown; 2.) Big Brown; 3.) Big Black; 4.) Ruby Paraph; 5.) Big Red N; 6.) Red-Ink Annotator. Of these six, four write in red ink and Fredell argues that Little Brown, Ruby Paraph, Big Red N and the Red-Ink Annotator correspond to the “Red Ink Annotator” that other critics refer to. Fredell argues that these four annotators were distilling from the Book particular aspects which supported their own priorities, drawing out of the complex narrative clear lines of argument and generic patterns: the text’s mystical elements; Margery’s mystical practices; Margery’s mundane life; and the vita-structure of the Book.50

More recently, Kathryn Kerby-Fulton has argued against Fredell’s contention recording the four red-annotating hands. She argues that there was a single person responsible for the annotations and corrections written in red ink, who worked on the Book many times over many years, thus accounting for the differences in script and in ink quality and shade. Katie Anne- Marie Bugyis has taken up Kerby-Fulton’s argument for a single-hand Red Ink Annotator. She shows that

the places where he alters the reading of the text and how its annotations and corrections often work together … promote a sophisticated reading praxis, especially for passages where Kempe’s experiences defy readerly expectations of spiritual vision and mystical union.51

50 Joel Fredell, “Design and Authorship in The Book of Margery Kempe,” Journal of the Early Book Society 12 (2009): 1–28. Fredell notes that “A distinct Red-Ink Annotator does provide illustrations of various mystical images along with references to Father Richard Methley and Prior John Norton. These annotations allow us to place this manuscript at or near Mount Grace Priory after 1520” (3). 51 Katie Anne-Marie Bugyis, “Handling the Book of Margery Kempe: The Corrective Touches of the Red Ink Annotator," in New Directions in Medieval Manuscript Studies and Reading Practices, eds. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, John Thompson, and Sarah Baechle (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2014), 138–58, at 139.

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Bugyis notes parallels between the red annotations and Margery’s affective mystical experiences with Richard Rolle, John Norton, and particularly Richard Methley.52 Bugyis is interested, however, in the corrections and alterations to the text which focus on Margery’s irreconcilable experiences, and the way that his interventions “often work together to promote a sophisticated reading praxis, especially for passages where Kempe’s experiences defy readerly expectations of spiritual vision and mystical union.”53 In particular, Bugyis argues that the Red Ink Annotator’s annotations and corrections establish a “theological hermeneutic” informed by the reading of the devotional works of Richard Methley as well as his Latin translations and glosses of several well-known fourteenth century mystical tracts. Buygis notes that the Red Ink Annotator drew attention to “[t]he alienation of mind that [Margery] experienced” and showed it to be like that of Methley’s: “[s]o recharacterized, her apparent illness takes on a new, spiritual cast; indeed, her professed ability to see ‘many fayr awngelys a-bowte [Kempe]’ [178/12–13] suggests that her visionary sight may indeed bear a rightful similitude to Methley’s.”54 In reading the Book from this perspective, and altering it so that other readers could see it this way as well, Bugyis argues that the Red Ink Annotator “redefines the bounds of Kempe’s mystical experiences, so that they are neither too bodily nor too super-substantial.”55 Through the lens of Bugyis’ Red Ink Annotator, “Kempe becomes a model not only of affective devotion for laywomen readers but also of perfect contemplation for Carthusians.”56

The Red Ink Annotator, as an early reader of the text, was drawing order out of the text and leaving traces of his reading so that others could follow the same kind of order; the other writers of marginal notes were doing similarly. This impulse to draw order out of the book that we see operating in the marginalia recapitulates impulses that run throughout the Book itself. Rather, as Rebecca Schoff Erwin notes:

The idea that texts should be absorbed, revised, and recast according to the personal needs of readers is central to The Book of Margery Kempe. There is a sense in which Kempe

52 For comparisons between the Book and Methley, see Karma Lochrie, Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991), 209–20. 53 Bugyis, 139. 54 Ibid., 140. 55 Ibid.,139. 56 Ibid.

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records the story of her life expressly so that it will be read and rewritten in multiple new contexts.57

Indeed, while the future iterations of the text do not seem to be participating so obviously in this same tradition, this impulse to draw order out of the Book can be seen in later reappropriations of the text as well. This impulse to draw similarities and to establish conversations across space and time that can be seen in the Book from its earliest instances can be seen in many texts—both by individual authors and as explicit compilations of other texts—of the period; indeed, variants of the Book can be found in such compilations. 4.2 Wynkyn de Worde and A Shorte Treatyse of Contemplacyon Until very recently, little was known about the manuscript’s whereabouts between its composition in 1436 and its location at Mount Grace in the late 15th century.58 However, we do know that the text underwent several editorial transformations in the early sixteenth century attested by the existence of several printed editions. The first of these editions was produced and printed in 1501, by the London printer and stationer Wynkyn de Worde.59 De Worde’s version of the text is contained in a quarto booklet of four leaves entitled A Shorte Treatyse of Contemplacyon. The seven pages of text were constructed by excerpting and rearranging passages from the manuscript’s 124 pages. The Treatyse is composed of twenty-eight passages of varying lengths, from two to nineteen lines. These passages recount an exchange between Margery and Christ: twenty of these passages are in Christ’s voice; Margery speaks in five passages; and the remaining three are recounted by an anonymous third-person narrator, who offers descriptions of Margery’s encounters with Christ, and recounts some of the action that takes place during the exchanges. This process of extraction and recombination was clearly a laborious one, and one which could only have been undertaken by someone with a deep

57 Rebecca Schoff Erwin, “Early Editing of Margery Kempe in Manuscript and Print,” Journal of the Early Book Society 9 (2006): 75–94, at 76. 58 Julie Chappell’s Perilous Passages: The Book of Margery Kempe, 1534–1934 ((New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) is the first text to trace the text from the point at which the manuscript was last known—at Mount Grace just before the dissolution of the monasteries—until its rediscovery in 1934. Chappell’s fascinating study traces the Book’s relationship with the Carthusians and reading and preaching cultures of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries; examines records that attest to how the manuscript was secreted out of the monastery, and by whom; and addresses the relationship with the manor house in which the manuscript was found in the mid-twentieth century. 59 For discussion of De Worde’s involvement with the Stationer’s Company, see Peter Blayney, Stationers’ Company and Printers of London (Cambridge University Press, 2013), esp. Chapter 2, “De Worde and Pynson in London.”

158 knowledge of the text in its manuscript form, who had a sense of how several of its various parts could be emended to serve altogether different purposes, and who had a very clear organizational pattern in mind.

There are several theories about the temporal relationship between the manuscript and the extraction attested in the printed Shorte Treatyse. Many critics have assumed that the text in the manuscript was reconfigured at approximately the same time as it was being composed, thus assuming that the text of the Shorte Treatyse was a mid-fifteenth century construction contemporaneous with the full text of the Book, and that it was selected—over the longer work— for printing by de Worde in 1501. Sue Ellen Holbrook, for one, has argued that the redaction was done by Margery’s confessor, Master Robert Springolde, who would have been familiar with the broader content—if not the precise configuration—of the Book.60 Other critics argue that the text of the Shorte Treatyse is more likely a later creation: that the reordering and reemphasis of the twenty-eight passages was a strategic move of an editor at the beginning of the sixteenth century, and thus that this rearrangement was not the product of the same agent or time as the full text of the Book. Annette Grisé, for example, notes that the didacticism of the Shorte Treatyse can be seen in a general trend in early modern editing of medieval mystical materials, arguing that the “mystical tradition in print evinces a shift toward a more didactic focus, presenting shorter treatises more often, and ones that are more suitable for a general devout audience.”61 She thus argues that it is more likely to have been a later transformation of the Book’s priorities. However, Elizabeth Dutton’s work on similar compilations in earlier periods suggests that it is more likely that the printers in De Worde’s studio had an exemplar of the extracted text that they used when preparing the Shorte Treatyse for printing.

The Shorte Treatyse’s twenty-eight passages are drawn from twenty-four different chapters of the longer work. In the 1501 booklet, the passages are kept discrete: each passage starts on a new line and is marked off by a paraph. It is possible to view the text as an archive of quotations, as aphorisms drawn from throughout the Book, with each of the passages capable of standing alone, essentially combining to form a collection of aphorisms around the theme of devotion. However, the order in which the passages are arranged does establish a plot, and one

60 Holbrook, 38–39. 61 C. Annette Grisé, “Holy Women in Print: Continental Female Mystics and the English Mystical Tradition,” in The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England, ed. E.A. Jones (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004), 83–96, at 83.

159 that is distinct from that of the Book. The narrative of the Book is not reproduced in miniature, or in broad strokes in the Shorte Treatyse; rather, the Shorte Treatyse has its own distinct narrative logic: each passage is treated as a discrete piece of meaning, stripped of the relationships that it has in the Book, and the Shorte Treatyse is built by piecing these discrete pieces together.

The title of the Shorte Treatyse is taken from the opening lines of the Book, which asserts: “Here begynnyth a schort tretys and a comfortabyl for synful wrecchys, wher-in þei may haue gret solas and comfort to hem and vnderstondyn þe hy & vnspecabyl mercy of ower souereyn Sauyowr Cryst Ihesu” (BMK I.1: 16). The Shorte Treatyse acknowledges the Book from which it is drawn in three ways: by name, by shared intention, and by direct citation. Its opening line reads: “Here begynneth a shorte treatyse of contemplacyon taught by our lorde Jhesu cryst, or taken out of the boke of Margery kempe of lynn” (ST passage 1; 353).62 The latter opening points at the text from which its passages are drawn, noting in fact that they are “taken out” of that book. It thus acknowledges that the text of the Book is not reproduced in full nor in order, but that particular aspects have been chosen from a longer work. The changed perspective of the Shorte Treatyse begins with an important alteration in the opening line: the narrative of the Book states that it was written to provide “solas and comfort” and an “vnderstondyn” of “þe hy & vnspecabyl mercy of … Cryst Ihesu” to “synful wrecchys.” However, the first line of the Shorte Treatyse states that it was “taught by our lorde”: the Book was a work of mystical exploration, the reading of which helps to direct souls to a personal understanding of the divine, but the principle of the Treatyse is reformed into a digest of the proper form of contemplation.

The restructuring has many effects, and a few examples of the changes that occur will suffice to show the effect of the rearrangement and recontextualization of the passages in the Shorte Treatyse. Chapter 20, for example, recounts how, during Mass, Margery witnesses the flickering, fluttering Host and the moving chalice:

a ȝong man and a good prest heldyng up þe Sacrament in hys handys ouyr hys hed, scholk & flekryd to & fro as a dowe flekeryth wyth hir wengys. &, whan he held up þe chalys

62 All citations from the Shorte Treatyse are taken from the reproduction of that text in Meech and Allen, and the passage number along with page numbers from that edition will be noted parenthetically: passage 1 on page 353 will be noted as (ST passage 1, 353). Citations from the Book are likewise taken from Meech and Allen, and will be noted parenthetically as (BMK book number.chapter number: page number). For example, a passage from book I chapter 20, page 47 from the Book will be noted as (BMK I.20: 47).

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wyth þe precyows Sacrament, þe chalys mevyd to & fro as it xuld a fallyn owt of hys handys (BMK I.20: 47).

Christ then tells Margery that “Bryde, say me neuyr in þis wyse” (BMK I.20: 47). He tells her that she should be assured that “as I spak to Seynt Bryde ryte so I speke to þe, dowtyr” (BMK I.20: 47), and that she is more loved by Him because of the enmity of others. The next chapter begins with Margery being told by Christ, during a revelation, that she is “wyth childe” (BMK I.21: 49), and Margery disavowing her worthiness of Christ’s attention because “þis maner of leuyng longyth to thy holy maydens” (BMK I.21: 49). Christ replies: “dowtyr I lofe þe as wel as any mayden in þe world” (BMK I.21: 51). He then proceeds to tell Margery how best to love Him: “dowtyr, þow mayst no bettyr plesyn God þan contynualy to thinkyn on hys lofe,” to do this she should “Haue mende of þi wykydnesse & thynk on my goodnes” (BMK I.21: 49). In the Treatyse, the chapter proceeds to another revelation, with Christ asking His mother to speak to Margery.

In the Book, this passage is buried in the middle of Margery’s descriptions of holy moments to which she was witness. It is used by Christ to assure Margery that His love for her transcends the mundane: He insists that she is not only comparable in virtue and value to St. Bridget, and that she is thus assured of the same kind of revelations of truth as she was, but she is also considered on par with the purest maidens, and is visited by Christ’s mother and a host of angels too. Christ likens her throughout the chapter to several saints and the apostles, noting that she will join them in heaven and thus implying that she will be met with the same heavenly reward as these most loved:

I behest the I schal come to thin ende at thi deyng wyth my blyssed modyr and myn holy awngelys and twelve apostelys, Seynt Katheryne, Seynt Margarete, Seynt Mary Mawdelyn, and many other seyntys that ben in hevyn, whech gevyn gret worshep to me for the grace that I geve to the, God, thi Lord Jhesu (BMK I.22: 51).

He also says that He “behote the same grace that I behyte Seynt Kateryne, Seynt Margarete, Seynt Barbara, and Seynt Powle” and that, when she arrives in heaven, He will take her by one hand and the Virgin Mary by the other. In the Book, these words advise a mundane kind of inward-looking spirituality: not mundane in a pejorative sense, but rather in the sense that it is

161 eminently world-based, grounded in day-to-day, earth-bound reality, even as it is advice given in a most personal and mystical way.

In the Treatyse, the two passages drawn out of chapter 21 amount to a total of 41 words. Passage 3 and 4 read

Doughter thou mayst no better please god than to thynke contynually in his loue. Than she asked our lorde Ihesu cryste how she sholde best loue him

And our lorde sayd haue mynde of thy wyckednes and thynke on my goodnes (ST passage 3 and 4; 353).

These lines capture none of Christ’s assurance to Margery that she is valued as highly as His most exalted, just as she is; instead, there is an emphasis on doing better—on focusing on her wickedness and on God’s goodness. This emphasis is further strengthened because of three points that immediately precede these lines: 1) Margery’s assertion, in the opening lines of the Treatyse, that she wishes to die for Christ’s love: “She desyred many tymes that her hede myght be smyten of with an axe vpon a blocke for the loue of our lorde Ihesu” (ST passage 1; 353); 2) Christ’s assurance that she need not do so, telling her “I thanke the doughter that thou woldest dye for my loue for as often as thou thynkest so thou shalt staue the same mede in heuen as yf thou suffredest the same dethe & yet there shall no man slee the” (ST passage 1; 353); and 3) His assurance, from several lines later in the same chapter, that “yf it were possyble me to suffre payne ageyne as I haue done afore me were leuer to suffre as moche payne as euer I dyde for thy soule alone rather than thou sholdest departe fro me euerlastynge” (ST passage 2; 353).

In the Shorte Treatyse, the tone of these isolated lines functions to temper misguided passion, setting up the next lines which have been drawn from chapter 21 and casting them in the same tone. In the Book, the scene in chapter 21 also benefits from its foundation in the accounts of Margery’s reflection, in chapter 2, of her life of pride and greed, her pride specifically in her social status; and the account of her conversion that follows in chapter 3. This history is very relevant to Christ’s later edicts that Margery focus on her wickedness: the Book makes clear that her flaws have been, continuously throughout her life, the central focus of her attention. However, as they are delivered in passages 1 and 2 of the Shorte Treatyse, these edicts can imply a woman who is unaware of her flaws, who needs Christ to instruct her even in this most obvious

162 issue, and the issue with which all readers could relate. This is continued in the next passages, where Christ tells Margery that acts of penance will not improve her in His sight:

Doughter yf thou were the haberyon or þe here fastynge brede & water, & yf þu saydeste euery day a thousande pater noster. thou sholde not please me so well as thou dost whan þu art in scylence & suffrest me to speke in thy soule (ST passage 5; 353).

This passage was taken from the very end of chapter 35; and the discussion that follows (in passage 6, 353), taken from chapter 36. Their placement here is interesting: in chapter 35 and 36 in the Book, Margery is on pilgrimage in Rome, and has witnessed her marriage to Christ in heaven. Christ tells her that “yyf thu seydest every day a thowsand Pater Noster, thu schuldist not plesyn me so wel as thu dost whan thu art in silens and sufferyst me to speke in thy sowle” (BMK I.35: 87). The next passage emphasizes the value of silent contemplation and weeping over other more physical types of devotion, and it occurs in the Book while Margery is on pilgrimage, and precedes her description of the sensual relationship that she has with Christ-her-husband. The Book shows Margery in several acts of physical penance. This context gives meaning to Christ telling Margery that these acts of penance are no longer necessary. In their new placement, with this context removed, the Shorte Treatyse continues to emphasize calm as the appropriate spiritual mode, emphasizing silent, inner reflection over even relatively calm devotions of the saying of beads, fasting, and wearing the hair shirt. The effect is to extend the working definition of calm beyond silence and passivity, and also to deny the physical body and its associated movement and sensations. The words that Christ says to Margery are the same, but where the Shorte Treatyse suggests a woman who has not yet begun to express her devotion as well as suggesting that she should strive make herself smaller, the broader context of the Book shows that Christ recognizes the past efforts of a woman struggling to find new ways to show her devotion and is assuring her that the great lengths of devotion that she has already taken are enough.

This trend of de- and re-contextualization continues throughout the Treatyse. The most striking example is found in the passages 8 and 9, drawn from chapter 77 and chapter 79. Christ tells Margery

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yf thou wylt be hye wyth me in heuen kepe me alway in thy mynde as moche as þu mayst & forgete not me at thy mete but thynke alway þat I fyt in thy herte & knowe euery thought þat is therin both good and badde (ST passage 8; 354).

He then reminds her that “I haue suffred many paynes for thy loue therfore þu hast gret cause to loue me ryght wel for I haue bought thy loue full dere” (ST passage 9; 354). In the Treatyse, these two passages immediately follow Christ’s advice to Margery that “yf thou knewe how swete thy loue is to me, þu woldest neuer do other thynge but loue me with all thy herte” (ST passage 7; 354). In this configuration, the three passages essentially tell Margery to perform a silent and inward meditation: Christ urges her to think economically about her responsibility to this task based on what He has done to earn her devotion, and He tells her 1) what she should do, 2) how she should do it, and 3) why she should do it.

In the Book, the value attached to spiritual work has been well established by the scene more fully: the last two of these three passages are both taken from the scene in which Margery is complaining to Christ about the high cost of her sufferings, to which Christ replies with a speech where He tells her that she functions as a vehicle for others to witness His mother’s suffering, and His own. At the beginning of this speech is the passage cited in the Shorte Treatyse—“yyf thu wilt ben hey in hevyn wyth me, kepe me alwey in thi mende as meche as thu mayst” (BMK I.77: 182). This speech focuses on Margery’s responsibility to shoulder Christ’s pains and the pains of the Holy Mother, along with the argument that she must do so in order that others might be shriven; it is then followed by four chapters of Margery’s response to this responsibility. In chapter 78, Margery recounts the rituals that she performs so that she can witness and take part in Christ’s Passion; in chapter 79, she describes witnessing Christ’s Passion; and in chapters 80–84, she describes the Passion and its aftermath. From all of this, the Treatyse draws a single line: taken out of its broader context of these six chapters, that line ostensibly consists of Christ’s reminder that Margery owes Him devotion as payment for his pain. Crucially, between the two passages that are drawn from this extended scene is the detailed account, in chapter 78, of the work that Margery had done and continues to do to be granted the witness that follows. Furthermore, while chapter 79 of the Book focuses on the pain that Christ experienced, the Treatyse subtly alters the line to alter the reference to the Passion: the Book states “Dowtyr, þes sorwys & many mo suffyrd I for þi lofe, & diuers peynys, mo þan any man can tellyn in erth. þerfor, dowtyr, þu hast gret cawse to louyn me ryght wel, for I haue bowt þi

164 lofe ful der” (BMK I.79: 189, emphasis mine). Within the syntax of the paragraph, “þes” clearly refers to the specifics of the Passion that she has been relating throughout her vision. The Treatyse, on the other hand, has Christ saying that He has “suffred many paynes,” accommodating the changed priorities of the passage. “Paynes” refers, still, to the Passion, but the passage by necessity removes Christ’s references to Margery’s own visions.

Some of Margery’s words are also taken out of her mouth and put into Christ’s. An important case in point is found in passage 22, which reads “Pacyence is more worthe than myracles doyng” (ST passage 22, 357). These words are drawn from chapter 51, which follows the passage, in chapter 50, where Margery is questioned by ministry officials, and she is ordered to have a formal examination of faith by the minister. Chapter 51 draws from this experience, relating it to how “An other tyme ther cam a gret clerke onto hir, askyng thes wordys how thei schuld ben undirstondyn, ‘Crescite et multiplicamini’” (BMK I.51: 122). Margery responds by telling him that

thes wordys ben not undirstondyn only of begetyng of chyldren bodily, but also be purchasyng of vertu, whech is frute gostly, as be heryng of the wordys of God, be good exampyl gevyng, be mekenes and paciens, charité and chastité, and swech other, for pacyens is more worthy than myraclys werkyng (BMK I.51: 123).

This answer pleased the clerk, who granted his support. This event is followed by a discussion of other spiritual support that Margery gained by way of her capacity and willingness to argue. The Shorte Treatyse, however, isolates the last line of Margery’s reply, and weaves these words into a speech where Christ tells Margery that she need not go on physical pilgrimage to Jerusalem in order to gain the spiritual reward normally reserved for pilgrims, and that she need only believe in His love. The next passage states that the “day that she suffered no tribulation for our Lord’s sake, she was not merry nor glad, as that day when she suffered tribulation” which immediately prefaces Christ’s words:

Pacyence is more worthe than myracles doyng.

Doughter it is more plesure to me þat thou suffre despytes, scornes, shames, & repreues, wronges, dyseases, than yf thyne hede were stryken thre tymes a day euery day in seuen yere (ST passage 22–23; 357).

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In the Book, these words are part of Margery’s shrewd interpretation of a sticky theological point, and show her use of language and insight such that she was vindicated by clerical authority and temporarily silenced her critics. In the Book, the passage is also given important context by Margery’s previous participation in many pilgrimages, and her discussion of her desire to go on pilgrimage in chapter 10, all of which speak to her character and commitment to living by even the most arduous principles of her faith. The passage that states that pilgrimage is not necessary is also given important context by chapter 12, where Margery recounts how Christ orders her to go on pilgrimage; by chapter 15, in which Christ orders Margery to go to Rome, Jerusalem and Santiago de Compostela; by the other spiritual advisors who advise Margery to go on pilgrimage, as when her confessor Robert Springolde encourages her pilgrimage to Jerusalem, in chapter 18; and by the significant spiritual events that are visited on Margery while she is on pilgrimage, throughout the Book’s narrative.

In the Shorte Treatyse, however, all of this context is removed from these lines; but they also gain a new context, one which grants the lines a rich new meaning. Not only are these words put into Christ’s mouth, but they are used as part of a set of instructions directing her to contain herself and to see such self-containment as spiritual privilege: silent suffering privileged over vocal devotion, and so too is physical stillness privileged over pilgrimage. That Christ is telling Margery that she need not go on pilgrimage to reap the heavenly rewards is, on its own, not problematic, and could suggest a softening of the hard requirement that would exclude the many souls—particularly women—for whom pilgrimage was financially or circumstantially impossible, or suggest a recognition of precarious social climate and the dangers that attend those who would move about publically on theological business. As such, in the Treatyse, pilgrimage gains a new register of meaning. In the Book, Margery is told by Christ that she is lover, mother, and daughter to Him. These myriad relationships play out in interesting ways throughout her interactions with Him and in the way that others react to her claims of such broad intimacies. There is an explicit multi-directional power in these various dimensions of Margery’s relationships with Christ; likewise, there is a multi-dimensionality to her involvement with other members of Christ’s family, as well as the extended family of saints: there is a difficult tension between the way that Margery debases herself as a way of expressing the love and devotion she feels for Christ and those associated with Him, and the exalted roles that she is cast in throughout her visions of divine history. In the Shorte Treatyse, the relationship between Margery and Christ

166 is reconstructed as unidirectional and distinctly hierarchical. Within the twenty-eight passages and seven pages of the Shorte Treatyse, Christ calls Margery “doghter” twenty-four times. In this redaction, Margery says very little even within the limits of this filial relationship; the role of “doghter” is focused on receiving the words of Christ. She speaks in only five passages, and when Margery does speak in her own voice, her words are cut short by the redactor of the Shorte Treatyse: the longest passage in which she speaks is five lines long, and its content is, like her stance towards Christ throughout, focused on the performance of contained piety.

Gone is the meditation on the Life of the Virgin, and Margery’s active participation in the events: serving as midwife at the birth of the Virgin Mary; taking care of her in infancy and childhood; helping with the birth of John the Baptist; and being present at Christ’s birth, among other important events (BMK I.6: 18; I.6: 19). The highly personal relationship between Margery and Christ that dominates much of the Book is remade into a relationship that seems to be highly prescriptive, one which details the proper form that devotion should take, and in which language flows only in one direction. In this relationship, there is no room for the language of doubt, fear and outrage, to be sure, but nor is there much room left for language of devotion and love, of gratitude or rapture. In the Book, Margery’s sobbing and crying is emphasized as an act of devotion—one that is problematic and is presented as such, but that is nonetheless described in detail, defined, justified, and rationalized. In the Shorte Treatyse, however, all instances of Margery squabbling, crying, teaching and roaming are expunged, which produces a tamer, quieter, more obedient example of female piety. By tracing Margery’s outwardly visible movement, the Shorte Treatyse charts her invisible transformation, from the fragile vulnerability of a soul open to the promise of heavenly reward to the assurance of granted grace. The overall tone of the Shorte Treatyse is thus different from that of the Book: these discriminately selected and ordered passages do not show Margery to be flawless in her pursuit of grace, but rather underline and track her spiritual progress: charting her movement from faulty emphasis in her devotion—represented by her desire to die as a martyr—to a devotional practice that is sanctioned by Christ—represented by her practice of constant weeping and roaring. The dominant approach to the Shorte Treatyse has been to see it as a diminished, lessened form of the text which constructs a much diminished Margery. The extractor succeeds in drawing a silent and submissive Margery from the textual witness of her voice, her agency, and her unbending

167 spiritual aggression, and his success in doing so suggests that the text can be interpreted and extracted, reordered and reframed to serve many purposes.

This process might seem to be one only of diminishment: in discussing the relationship between the manuscript of The Book and the extracted Shorte Treatyse, Felicity Riddy notes that what is missing foremost from the latter is the context and circumstance of composition and narration. She argues that the Book was “the product of the occasion of its creation,” that its composition and content was “relational, in the sense that it arose out of and was embedded in social interaction: people meeting and talking at a particular time in a particular place.”63 The extracted edition rids the text of all of these relational markers, removes from the narrative the landscape on which they depended and, as such, this version of Margery’s Book is “not so much shortened as gutted”;64 and what emerges from this “gutted” version, says Riddy, is a likewise eviscerated Margery. However, the extraction and recombination also construct something new, with powers of its own. Holbrook argues that there is an organizing principle at work in the Shorte Treatyse: the passages build upon one another to form a coherent text which operates on a different register to the Book but not necessarily an oppositional one. She shows that the twenty- eight passages are significantly clustered around five central motifs and build to a central point, namely that

women should turn away from willing martyrdom, acts of penance, or other violent and public demonstrations of their love of Christ and their belief in the grace He has shown them and instead commune with Christ in silence through the forms of thought and private prayer, tears of compassion and endurance of rebuke in patience.65

The affective, outwardly-directed and extremely public shows of piety that punctuate Margery’s relationship with God, with Jesus, with the clergy and her fellow pilgrims alike, do not feature in the Shorte Treatyse at all. The extractor transforms Margery from a boisterous, outspoken mystic into a paragon of submissive, passive, and most of all silent devotion. It is through her internal meditations that Margery is shown to commune with Christ; likewise, as her devotion and

63 Riddy compares this with a police statement she once had to make: “The story of the death was truthful, as I remembered seeing it out of the corner of my eye, which anyway is a slantwise position, but I have no way of knowing if it was true, and the language of the statement was not ‘mine’—it was the statement’s” (435). 64 Riddy, 435. 65 Holbrook, 31.

168 meditative capacity increases, so does her tendency toward interiority and a solitary kind of piety.

Extending Holbrook’s argument, I would argue that, rather than seeing the Shorte Treatyse as a diminished version of the Book and of Margery, the extraction simply had different aims than the Book, and constructs a text that serves these aims just as powerfully as the Book serves its own; and while the Margery of the Shorte Treatyse is much changed, she still has the power—in the textual structure of a sixteenth-century pamphlet—to perform the revolutionary work of the Book. I would argue that the Shorte Treatyse serves a different purpose to the Book which can be seen if it is taken out of competition with it. It emerges from different processes of composition, is involved in different patterns of distribution and consumption, and also is grounded in different principles of argumentation than the Book. Seeing this might also be a way to dislodge any residual idea about the Book as a monolithic, single-authored text with a single, recoverable purpose. Indeed, the process of the extraction of the Shorte Treatyse, if evaluated according to its own priorities, can be seen to be deeply relational. 4.3 The 16th Century Afterlives of A Shorte Treatyse of Contemplacyon The only two extant copies of the Shorte Treatyse are found in two separate collections of other texts. One of these is a collection of printed sixteenth-century pamphlets and books bound together in the sixteenth century, identified by Alexandra Gillespie as the Moore Sammelband I.66 In 1521, the Shorte Treatyse was reprinted, with minor changes, as part of a compilation of devotional texts, printed by Henry Pepwell in 1521.67 In this section, I will discuss each of the two collections in which the Treatyse appears as a whole, discussing the other texts with which the text is bound. I propose that the intertextual relationships created between the Treatyse and the other items within their collections serve to highlight aspects of Margery from the Book that are notably absent from the Shorte Treatyse. In both collections, in fact, excised aspects of the Book seem to be re-created around the Shorte Treatyse by way of these intertextual relationships, suggesting that, whatever the editorial impulse behind the creation of the Shorte Treatyse, both

66 The Moore Sammelband I is now Cambridge, Cambridge University Library Sel.5.25–35 and Inc.5.J.1.2 (3541). 67 STC 20972, currently held in the British Library under the title Here foloweth a veray deuoute treatyse (named Benyamyn) of the mights and virtues of a mans soul and attributed to Richard of St. Victor.

169 the Moore Sammelband I and the Pepwell compilation remobilize Margery’s movement, voice, and power.

4.3.1 The Shorte Treatyse in the Moore Sammelband I Gillespie suggests that Moore Sammelband I was put together in the 1520s or 30s. The term Sammelband is the name for a composite book binding multiple small books together; Joseph Dane defines such composite books as “physical, material volume[s] consisting of two or more books deliberately bound together in an early binding.”68 One reason for the construction of Sammelbände was economic: Dane notes that “[i]t is obviously cheaper to bind two fifty-leaf pamphlets as one volume than as two, since the cost of the boards and construction of the spine are considerable factors in the overall cost of this binding.”69 Economic factors were not the only factors that led to the construction of Sammelbände; Dane posits technical limitations to the binding of small books in the period, resulting in the fact that “[b]ooks that contained fewer than about fifty leaves were either sewn as pamphlets or given limp vellum bindings.”70 Because of the economic benefits of the practice—both in saving the cost of multiple bindings in the short term, and saving the wear-and-tear on valuable small books in the long term—often books would be bound together somewhat arbitrarily, because the folia were roughly the same size or because they were bought at the same time. However, booksellers and printers also chose to compile books into Sammelbände. These compilations would likely have been constructed less out of necessity or convenience, and more for the strategic creation of a commercial product that could be marketed in a particular way to a particular type of patron, and Dane notes that such collections “consist of items that are related in some way conceptually.”71 These latter Sammelbände might be considered to have a unifying principle to their contents and the order in which the various pieces are bound together, although the “combinations in these Sammelbände are not fixed, even when they are issued by the printers themselves.”72

68 Joseph Dane, What is a Book? (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2012), 171. See also Joseph Dane and Alexandra Gillespie, “The Myth of the Cheap Quarto,” in Tudor Books and Readers: Materiality and the Construction of Meaning, ed. John N. King (Cambridge University Press, 2009), 25–45. 69 Dane, 172. 70 Ibid. 71 Ibid, 173. 72 Ibid, 175. For a full discussion of the process of the creation of English Sammelbande in early sixteenth century, see Alexandra Gillespie, “Poets, Printers, and Early English Sammelbande,” Huntington Library Quarterly 67.2

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It is certainly possible, as both Dane and Gillespie acknowledge, that Sammelbände were random compilations without any kind of extended logic, or that they were commissioned by particular patrons according to a personal logic. Even if the texts were brought together on grounds of general similarity—that they are all works focused on the Passion, for example, or that they all provide guidance of some kind on the apprehension of spiritual matters—there are various organizing principles that might be found in their placement within the collection: chronologically, by date of first composition, of translation, or of first printing; alphabetically, by name of author or translator, or even by name of the text’s main character; scripturally, by first biblical allusion; or many other standard systems of classification. The Moore Sammelband I, in which a copy of de Worde’s Treatyse is bound, has no such obvious order to its contents: since all of the books in the collection were printed in de Worde’s shop, the date of printing would be an obvious organizing principle; however, each of the individual books range from 1496/99 to 1521, but the texts are not organized chronologically according to this scheme. Nor is there any evidence of clusters of texts that deal with similar topics. Indeed, the collection’s seeming refusal to cluster texts topically reveals several other aspects of this collection’s physical composition and further suggests that these texts were brought together with highly conscious decisions and editorial choices, rather than by way of ordering by accident or according to neutral organizational principles.

The Moore Sammelband I contains “ten devotional verse and prose items printed about 1500–30”; these are:

1) Passyon of our lorde, translated by Andrew Chertsey, printed by De Worde in 1521;

2) A full deuoute & gostely treatyse of y[e] imytacion, Part II, translated by Margaret Beaufort, printed by De Worde in 1519;

3) Short treatyse of contemplacyon, printed by De Worde in 1501;

(2004): 189–214. For Sammelbände containing the works of Caxton, see in particular Paul Needham, The Printer and the Pardoner: An Unrecorded Indulgence Printed by William Caxton for the Hospital of St. Mary Rounceval, Charing Cross (Washington: Library of Congress, 1986); and Seymour de Ricci, A Census of Caxtons (Oxford: Bibliographical Society at the Oxford University Press, 1909).

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4) A full deuoute & gostely treatyse of y[e] imytacion, Part I, translated by William Atkinson, printed by De Worde in 1519;

5) Dyetary of ghostly helthe, printed by De Worde in 1520;

6) Simon the Anchorite’s The fruyte of redemcyon, printed by De Worde in 1514;

7) A treatyse … of a boke which sometyme Theodosius the Emperour founde, printed by De Worde in 1511;

8) The boke of comforte agaynste all trybulacyons, printed by De Worde in 1505;

9) Rycharde Rolle hermyte of Hampull in his contemplacyons, printed by De Worde in 1519; and

10) The meditations of saint Bernard, printed by De Worde in 1499.73

It is worth noting that, although there are ten items on this list, there are only nine base texts, as one—Jean Gerson’s Imitatio Christi—appears twice. As Gillespie points out, the second and fourth items are both excerpts from two different translations of different parts of the Jean Gerson’s Imitatio Christi, and the Treatyse is threaded in between them: Margaret Beaufort’s translation of book 4 of the Imitatio appears in the collection immediately before the Shorte Treatyse; and immediately after it is William Atkinson’s translation of books 1–3 of the Imitatio. Gillespie notes that

[t]he effects of this are interesting. The constraints imposed upon female utterance by De Worde’s version of Margery’s book, in which her dictated expressions become those of Christ to a spiritual “doghter,” are countered by the pairing of two texts that open with striking allusions to the Christian construction of female subjectivity: words said by “oure lord Ihesu in [Margery’s] mynde” (STC 14924, A1r); and Margaret’s “commaundement” that “he shall dwell in me” (STC 23956, Part II, A1v).74

The character of Margery in the Treatyse is altered by the company she keeps within the Sammelband, and the voice of Christ in Margery’s mind is both supported and strengthened by

73 Gillespie, 195. STC numbers for these texts, respectively: STC 14558; STC 23956; STC 14924; STC 965; STC 6833; STC 22557; STC 3295; STC 21260; STC 1917. The date of printing for the last four of these is approximate. 74 Gillespie, Sammelbände, 209. See also Jennifer Summit, Lost Property: The Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380–1589 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 126–27; and Holbrook, 27–46.

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Margaret’s words and the construction of her character. These collections point to a tradition–– with a long history, and a new significance in the context of printing––of producing textual matter in the form of excerpts rearranged, altered, and spliced together within new unities and presented as independent work, and there are compilations and anthologies within which indebtedness may be varyingly acknowledged and celebrated.75 As Barry Windeatt argues, “English reception of continental works [is] usually characterized nowadays as cautiously censoring foreign daringness into anodyne piety and conventional edification”; but the compilations and translations that survive suggest, instead, a tradition of “shrewd judgment of what is worth adding to an already accomplished native tradition.”76 This judgment also involved the act of strategic translation of texts; the combination of particular English translations of Latin texts with native Middle English texts; and the translation of Middle English texts into French, German, and back into Latin. For example, Windeatt notes that “Rolle’s succinctly useful Emendatio vitae (The Amending of Life) is translated and excerpted a number of times.”77 Furthermore, the Rhineland mystic Henry Suso’s Horologium sapientiae (The Hourglass of Wisdom) was translated and reused in various ways. For example, the Treatise of the Seven Points of Trewe Wisdom is “a radically edited and reassembled English version of … Suso’s Horologium” which was “evidently unconcerned to transmit the more mystical fervours of Suso’s original,” focusing rather on the aspects of the text that are less mystical and more focused on daily prayer; Thomas Hoccleve translated Suso’s section on the ars moriendi, likewise avoiding any replication of the Horlogium’s mystical aspects; Wisdom’s opening speech in the morality play of Wisdom focuses on piety, rather than mysticism; and Suso’s work is extracted for other compendia of piety as well.78

There are other texts within the Moore Sammelband that draw out interesting aspects of Margery’s character and that resonate with the Treatyse in surprising ways. Two texts produce

75 For example, Barry Windeatt notes the author’s preface to the Speculum spiritualium, which declares that he has drawn on many sources “with great labour and much study” in order to “produce a compendium within one volume for those without the means for an extensive library of their own” (“1412–1534,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Mysticism, eds. Samuel Fanous and Vincent Gillespie, [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011], 195–224, at 207). Windeatt notes that the work of compiling the text was for his benefit and for the benefit of other contemplatives and people in active life; and invites readers to copy selections for their own use. 76 Ibid., 196. 77 Ibid. 78 Ibid.

173 particularly interesting relationship with the Treatyse: Simon the Anchorite’s Fruyte of redemcyon; and Rycharde Rolle hermyte of Hampull in his contemplacyons.

4.3.1.1 Simon the Anchorite’s Fruyte of Redempcyon The first manuscript version of the Fruyte of Redempcyon was produced in 1514, and was identified as the work of “Simon the Anker,” known to be priest and last anchorite of All Hallows London Wall. He has been identified as Simon Appulby,79 a priest who was evidently well connected with other institutions, such as the monastery of Holy Trinity Aldgate and the Pappey, the fraternity for aged and infirm priests.80 He also seems to have been very well connected with London guilds and political figures, as well as being deeply involved and invested in the book-world, including having connections with London readers, book owners, and the early sixteenth-century printing community.

The Fruyte of Redempcyon presents a theologically orthodox text that, according to Mary Erler, “might in fact be seen as the product of a conservative attempt to make scripture … available to a wide general readership,” an audience that explicitly included women.81 Simon states that he has translated the work from Latin into English, with the statement that he “hath compyled this matter in englysshe for your ghostly conforte that vnderstande no latyn.”82 The Fruyte is a translation of a radically shortened form of the anonymous Latin Meditationes de vita et beneficiis Jesu Christi, siue gratiarum actiones. The Meditationes is a series of meditations on Christ’s life, with a significant focus on the Passion; each meditation ends with a prayer. The first edition of Meditationes was published by Ulrich Zell around 1488, in Cologne. Within the

79 See Rotha Mary Clay, “Further Studies on Medieval Recluses,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 3rd ser. 16 (1953): 74–86. 80 Mary C. Erler, “A London Anchorite, Simon Appulby: His Fruyte of Redempcyon and its Milieu,” Viator (1998): 227–239. See also Victoria History of the Countries of England: London, ed. William Page (London 1909), 465– 475; and Manuel C. Rosenfield, “Holy Trinity, Aldgate, on the Eve of the Dissolution,” Guildhall Miscellany 3 (1970): 150–173. 81 Erler, 228. 82 1514 edition, D 4, cited in Erler, 231. Erler notes that the term “compilen” has two meanings: “either to compose, or to collect and present information” and notes that “Fitzjames’ designation of [Simon] Appulby as ‘compounder of the same,’ ... might provide a better clue to Appulby’s activity, since compounden’s first definition [in the Middle English Dictionary] (2.473) is ‘to combine (different things) to form a whole,’ though another meaning ... is ‘to compose a text’” (MED, ed. Hans Kurath and Sherman M. Kuhn, 11 vols. [Ann Arbor 1956–1993]; Erler, 231n18).

174 next 12 years the work was published in five other editions.83 In its full form there are sixty chapters. A year after the Meditationes’ first publication, the text was shortened by Nicholas Weydenbosch, the Cistercian abbot of Baumgarten in Alsace; this shortened version was included within a compilation of prayers entitled the Antidotarius animae, which was described by the abbot as a manual of spiritual medicine.84 The shortened version reduces the text to 40 chapters, and this was the source for Simon’s Fruyte. Simon further shortened the text from forty chapters to thirty-one, rearranged some of the material into a different textual order, and added a substantial amount of material taken from Saint Bridget’s Revelations. The use of St. Bridget’s work places Simon’s text within the movement to provide spiritual writings to a vernacular audience, a movement in which Syon Abbey was a leader, and which Bishop Fitzjames was also deeply involved. Prior to printing, Simon’s text received an endorsement from the deeply conservative London bishop Richard Fitzjames, suggesting that there was a relationship between Simon and Syon Abbey. Fitzjames’ endorsement states

Here endeth the treatyse called the fruyte of redempcyon/ whiche deuoute treatyse I Rycharde vnworthy bysshop of London haue studyously radde & ouerseene and the same approue as moche as in me is. To be radde of the true seruauntes of swete Ihesu to theyr grete consolacyon and ghostly conforte and to the merytes of the deuote fader compounder of the same.85

Erler notes that this commendation attests to the conservatism and orthodoxy of the Fruyte itself, and also recalls the production history of Nicholas Love’s collection of orthodox meditations on Christ’s life, the Mirror of the Life of Christ. In around 1410, the Archbishop of Canterbury Thomas Arundel granted his approval to Love’s Mirror prior to the text being distributed for copying: this commendation has been interpreted as Arundel’s recognition, in Love’s text, of an appropriately orthodox response to Lollard writings on the need for direct access to scripture.86

83 These editions are: Hain Copinger, 10995; Basel, Johann Amerbach and Johann Petri de Langendorff [prior to 1498], HC 10992; Augsburg, Anton Sorg [prior to 1489], HC 10994; Cologne, Jonann Landen [around 1498], HC 10991; Paris, Jean Du Pre [around 1498]; Paris, Robert de Gourmont for Jean Petit [1498–1500]. 84 Erler, 230. See also Flora Lewis, “‘Garnished with Gloryous Tytles’: Indulgences in Printed Books of Hours in England,” Translations of the Cambridge Bibliographical Society 10 (1995): 557–590. 85 This is Short Title Catalogue number 22557. 86 Erler, 228. See also Elizabeth Salter, Nicholas Love’s “Myrrour of the Blessed Lyfe of Jesu Crist,” Analecta Cartusiana vol. 10 (Salzburg: Institut fur Anglistik and Amerikanistik, 1974).

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The approval of Simon’s Fruyte seems to have occurred in much the same way by a similarly orthodox figure: around the same time of the production and sanctioning of the text, in 1514, Bishop Fitzjames is known to have examined potential heretics on similar issues. For example, Richard Hunne was examined by Fitzjames, and finally condemned for possessing copies of scriptures translated into English.87 Susan Brigden notes that “the most convincing and credible of all the charges against Hunne was that he ‘hath in his keeping deivers English books prohibit and damned by the law: as the Apocalypse in English, Epistles and Gospels in English,’ plus Wycliffe’s works and others.”88 This approval recalls some of the pressure that Margery receives in her travels from orthodox clerics—Arundel among them—for her claims to the right to speak and interpret scripture. Without repeating these arguments, nor showing the aspects of Margery’s character that invited the criticism that led to the examination of her orthodoxy, Simon’s Fruyte and Fitzjames’ approval of it sanctions Margery’s text as an example of a delivery of orthodox scriptural interpretation in English. As Erler notes, “The English Fruyte of Redemcyon, despite its continental origins and perhaps partly because of its Bridgettine and Marian additions, was immensely successful in its calculated attempt to bring scripturally-based, meditative devotion to an ever wider audience.”89 The presence of Fitzjames' approval within the text, then, functions as approval both of its contents and author, but also approval of the Fruyte’s future readers and owners.

The Brigettine material included in the Fruyte is taken from chapters of St Bridget’s Revelations which focus on Mary’s life, on the Passion, and particularly on Mary’s role in the Passion. Due to this focus, the material resonates with aspects of Margery that are specifically not contained in the Treatyse.90 St Bridget was an emboldening figure in England: Latin texts of her Revelations had been available in England prior to 1400.91 Partly because of the establishment of Syon Abbey by Henry V and the popularity of the cult of St Bridget, the texts of St Bridget were widely translated and distributed, and the influence of her life, visions, and

87 Erler, 228. 88 Susan Bridgen, London and the Reformation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991), 98–102, at 102. 89 Erler, 238. 90 Erler notes that material on Mary’s life is taken from chapter four, and the material on the Passion is taken from chapters 16, 19–20, 22, 24, 26, and 28 (230–231). 91 For example, Oxford, Merton College, MS 215.

176 devotions were evident throughout the fifteenth century and beyond.92 Windeatt notes that, for several reasons, Bridget’s texts lent themselves to extraction and borrowing. For one thing, the politics of her text were relevant to sixteenth-century England. Furthermore,

The Liber’s relative indifference to form of structure, and its repetitiveness in theme and mode, invited the excerpting and rearrangement of its contents into new compilations and anthologies, both in Latin and English. Compilers, on the evidence of their compositions, were particularly interested to draw out three aspects of Bridget’s original: her prophetic warnings; her disquisitions on the requirements of the spiritual life; and her visionary elaborations on the lives of Christ and Mary.93

One such text was Simon’s Fruyte, in which Bridget’s revelations about the lives of Christ and Mary were “interspersed with material from other sources to form … new texts promoting meditation.”94 These intertextual resonances with Margery’s Book serve to replenish some aspects of the Book that were removed during the process of extraction to create the Shorte Treatyse: one of her primary influences—St Bridget—is present, and so too is the focus on the Passion which dominates so much of Margery’s attention in the Book but which is largely absent from the Treatyse. In particular, while Margery’s visions of the Passion, and of her own involvement within it are not present, Simon’s presentation within orthodox meditation on Christ’s Passion of Bridget’s voicing of Mary’s experience and involvement in the Passion provides a highly personal and female meditation. The positioning of the Treatyse along with other texts that openly splice together different sources of orthodox material in order to construct

92 There were two early fifteenth-century Middle English translations of whole Liber celestis, a text which also circulated in selected extracts and in compilations; see London, British Library, MS Claudius B i; see Roger Ellis, ed., The Liber Celestis of St Bridget of Sweden, EETS OS 291 (1987). For a discussion of the use of St Bridget’s texts, see Roger Ellis, “‘Flores ad fabricandum … coronam’: An Investigation into the Uses of the Revelations of St Bridget of Sweden in Fifteenth-Century England,” Medium Aevum 51 (1982): 163–86; and Domenico Pezzini, “Brigittine Tracts of Spiritual Guidance in Fifteenth-Century England: A Study in Translation,” in The Medieval Translator II, ed. Roger Ellis (London: University of London, 1991), 175–207. For discussion of the cult of St Bridget, see for example F. R. Johnson, “The English Cult of St Bridget of Sweden,” Analecta Bollandiana 103 (1985), 75–93. 93 Windeatt, 199. 94 Other texts that take up Bridget’s Revelations in this way are the “Meditaciones Domini Nostri” in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodleian 578; and the Speculum devotorum (Mirror of the Devout), in Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.v. 42.

177 new and powerful arguments about devotion supports both Margery’s compiling strategies in the Book and the strategies of extraction and recombination deployed in constructing the Treatyse.

4.3.1.2 Rycharde Rolle hermyte of Hampull in his contemplacyons of the drede and love of God Another text in the Moore Sammelband I, Rycharde Rolle hermyte of Hampull in his contemplacyons, relates to Margery in similar ways, and thus serves to recall aspects of her character that are absent from the Treatyse while also emphasizing strengths that were never present in the Book. The Contemplacyons was also a text that was constructed as a compilation and reconstruction of other texts. Windeatt notes: “However indebted to traditional sources, the Contemplations represents a stage beyond most contemporary devotional compilations in terms of how far it has absorbed its influences so as to redeploy them in a distinctive sequence of counsel on reaching towards a perfection of love in this life”;95 and notes that the Contemplacyons “represents an unusually effective fifteenth-century repackaging of some fourteenth-century English contemplative literature within its own programme of the degrees of love” that “is focused on facilitating spiritual growth by analysing pragmatically what in the love and proper fear of God may further and hinder the inner life.”96 The Contemplacyons is structured and organized in such a way to make it possible for lay-persons to consult contemplative texts within their worldly lives, with a table of contents that makes its materials easy to peruse; and it declares its intended use and audience: “for þay þou be a lord or a laidi, housbond-man or wif, þou maist haue as stable an herte and wil as some religious þat sitteþ in the cloistre.”97 The Contemplacyons contains a lot of different kinds and degrees of intertextual citations and referencing: there are frequent borrowings from St Augustine and St Gregory, St Bernard, Cassiodorus, and Peter Lombard.98 The text also contains subtle references and indebtedness to several well-known texts, including passages from Rolle’s Form of Living, some of Hilton’s texts, and St Bridget’s Revelations. However, as Windeatt notes, even without

95 Windeatt, 208–209. 96 Ibid., 208. 97 Margaret Connolly, ed. Contemplations of the Dread and Love of God (EETS OS 303, 1993), 40; cited in Windeatt, 208. 98 Windeatt notes that these citations are noted in marginal comments of the manuscript versions of the Contemplations.

178 marginal commentary, “the debt to Rolle is so transparent that Wynkyn de Worde’s printed editions of 1506 and c. 1519 (RSTC 21259, 21260) are entitled Richard Rolle hermyte of Hampull in his contemplacyons of the drede and love of God.”99

In the Contemplacyons, the author claims that people are incapable of living up to the standards set by mystics such as Richard Rolle, but that, since many are interested in working toward a contemplative practice, he aims to provide a spiritual path that is accessible to his contemporaries. The text begins with a meditation on the Passion, describing the utility of “dread of God” for people who are attempting to live a mystical life. The Contemplacyons is addressed to all kinds of people: it first addresses both lay people and those within the Church; it then addresses itself to the clergy of all kinds, both secular and regular; and finally, the text addresses women and men alike. Rolle describes three degrees of love: Insuperable, which causes man to do nothing against God’s will; Inseparable, which causes man’s heart, thought, and strength to be fully focused on Christ; and Singular, which occurs when man takes delight only in Christ and feels the fire of love of Christ. The Contemplacyons’ author summarizes Rolle’s system, but then critiques it:

But these degrees of loue ben set vpon so hyghe loue to god / that what man sholde haue the fyrst of these thre / behoued that he were a sad contemplatyf man or woman, And by cause mankynde is now & euermore the lenger the febler or perauenture more vnstable / therfore vnethes sholde we fynde now a sad contemplatyfe man or woman.100

The author then adds degrees for weaker people who cannot start on Rolle’s path:

But for as moche as there be many that haue not a sadde grounde ne but lytell felynge how they sholde loue and drede god / whiche is spedefull & nedefull for all men to knowe: Therfore to suche as be not knowynge I wyll shewe fyrste in what maner they sholde loue & drede god / that they may be þe more stable in the loue of god. After that I shall shewe by the grace of god foure degrees of loue / whiche euery crysten man relygyous & seculer

99 Windeatt, 208. 100 Contemplations, 42.

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sholde holde and kepe, & may performe for the more partye yf his wyll be feruently set to the loue of god.101

The text describes the four degrees of love that are necessary for spiritual growth and progress, each of which relate to the relationship between the soul and some other agent: Ordained, which governs the soul’s relation to the body; Clean, which governs the soul’s relation to other people; Steadfast, which governs the soul’s relation the Church; and Perfect Love, which governs the soul’s relation to God. The first three of these four are worldly relations and so the Contemplacyons focuses on the less demanding degrees of love, as opposed to Rolle’s focus on the more demanding relationship with God. In the Book, we see Margery consistently troubling her more mundane relationships, thus troubling the lower three degrees of love; and potentially falling short of the higher degree of “Perfect Love” identified in the Contemplacyons’ scheme. However, the Treatyse shows Margery has none of the three lower degrees of relations, and we see her exclusively engaged with Christ in a way that fit the profile of Perfect Love.

The relationship that emerges between the Shorte Treatyse and the Contemplacyons recalls many aspects of the Book, from its frequent allusions to Rolle to its focus on active pursuit of a relationship with the divine. The relationship between the texts also recreates, in miniature, a similar example of the mobilization of the literary compilation culture that Margery herself was a part of: the Contemplacyons pays homage throughout to many mystical figures, including those that Margery cites throughout the Book which are all missing from the Treatyse. Similarly, the Brigittine material within both Simon the Anchorite’s Fruyte and the Contemplacyons flanks Margery’s muted visions with the narrative of a female visionary who— like Margery in the Book—bears witness to women who claim to have had important roles within Christ’s Passion. The presence of these other visionary women gives voice to a woman imagining herself into significant events in Christ’s life, including the Passion; while Margery’s voice is diminished and her visions absent in the Treatyse, within this compilation she is accompanied by texts which reprise her boldest, most visionary performances.

The doctrines which precede and follow her text give women license to speak, and imply that she was capable of engaging in theological matters: however, where in the Book we see her insecure in her attachment to Christ, fighting jealously over Christ’s favours toward St Bridget,

101 Ibid., 46.

180 here we see her shrewdly, respectfully, and devoutly capable of giving the floor over to others. The Treatyse seems to operate according to the same impulse to calm the Book down, to make it speak more slowly, if only temporarily. The overall effect of the combination of the texts in the Sammelband places Margery’s story in the company of church-sanctioned radicals; and the effect of that placement is that Margery can once again be seen as a radical voice and body similar to those found in the Book. However, while the Book depends on Margery as an individual—an un- named “creatur,” but a singular one—within the Sammelband, the radicalness of Margery within this cross-textual reading almost depends on her being indistinguishable from others. Indeed, if the divisions between the composite texts of the collection could be dissolved, their differentiations elided, and thus the Sammelband looked at as a single unified book, Margery might then be seen as a member of a cast which, en masse, unravels gendered tenets of orthodoxy. As one anonymous voice among many, Margery still has much of the radical force she has in the Book.

4.3.2 Henry Pepwell’s 1521 Printed Anthology In 1521, de Worde’s 1501 Shorte Treatyse was included in a small, untitled collection of devotional texts printed by Henry Pepwell.102 Pepwell’s compilation is composed of seven texts, all of which serve as manuals for contemplation and provide practical guidance on mysticism and devotion to lay people:

1) A very devout treatise, named Benjamin, of the mights and virtues of a man’s soul, and of the way to true contemplation by Richard of Saint Victor;

2) Divers doctrines devout and fruitful, taken out of the life of that glorious virgin and spouse of Our Lord, Saint Katherin of Seenes;

3) A short treatise of contemplation taught by Our Lord Jesus Christ, or taken out of the book of Margery Kempe, ancress of Lynn;

4) A devout treatise of the song of angels by Walter Hilton;

5) A devout treatise called the Epistle of prayer;

6) A very necessary epistle of discretion in stirrings of the soul;

102 See Alexandra Gillespie’s entry on Henry Pepwell in the Oxford Dictionary of National Bibliography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004).

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7) A devout treatise of discerning of spirits, very necessary for ghostly livers.

The text of the Shorte Treatyse is identified in the Pepwell compilation as a reprint of the text printed by De Worde in 1501. However, one notable change—one of very few Pepwell introduces into De Worde’s text—is that in Pepwell’s version, Margery is identified as “Ancress of Lynn” in the text’s title.103

The components of this anthology can be treated as stand-alone texts that have been brought together in order to explore a theme from several angles, all of them discrete. However, the tonal similarity of several of the female “saints’ lives” makes it reasonable to read across the collection as a whole, in order to consider how the Shorte Treatyse both influences and is influenced by other texts in the collection. The two texts adjacent to the Shorte Treatyse in this collection are particularly interesting to consider: the Shorte Treatyse is prefaced by Divers Doctrines Devout and Fruitful, a text composed of extracts from the Lyf of Saint Katherin of Senis;104 the text that follows is Walter Hilton’s Song of the Angels.

4.3.2.1 St Catherine of Siena’s Diverse Doctrines St Catherine of Siena’s Diverse Doctrines is a text, first printed by de Worde in 1493, composed of excerpts from the Lyf of Saynt Katherin of Senis: this text presents a set of colloquies with God, in which Katherine presents the argument that contemplation is attainable to every soul; as such, she is a figure that is similar, in some ways, to Margery of the Book. Both Margery’s and Catherine’s texts serve as prompts to devotion in addition to providing guidance in the practical aspects of piety: both assert clear guidance for how to express devotion, both

103 On this alteration, Anthony Goodman notes that “Henry Pepwell … transposed Margery to where the secular world always wants to put spiritual dissidents—out of it” (“The Piety of John Brunham’s Daughter of Lynn,” in Medieval Women, ed. Derek Baker, [Oxford: Studies in Church History subsidia 1, 1987], 347–58, at 357–58). See also Windeatt, “Introduction: Reading and Re-reading The Book of Margery Kempe,” in A Companion to the Book of Margery Kempe, eds. John H. Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis (Cambridge: D S Brewer, 2004), 1–16; Chappell, 1– 18, at 1; and Melissa Crofton, “From Medieval Mystic to Early Modern Anchoress: Rewriting the Book of Margery Kempe,” Journal of the Early Book Society 16 (2013): 101–124. 104 The Lyf of Saint Katherin of Senis, from which the Divers Doctrines are extracted, is itself a redaction of a Middle English translation of Legenda Major which was written between 1383 and 1395. The Lyf was first translated into Middle English sometime after 1461 and was edited by Caxton and published by Wynkyn de Worde in 1493; this same passage, however, is also found bound up with the Divine Cloud of Unknowing in London, British Museum, MS Reg. 17 D.V. For a more detailed discussion of the publication history of The Lyf of Saint Katherin of Senis, see Alyson Foster, “A Shorte Treatyse of Contemplacyon: The Book of Margery Kempe in Its Early Print Contexts,” in A Companion to The Book of Margery Kempe, eds. John H. Arnold and Katherine J. Lewis (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2004), 100–106.

182 place emphasis on the importance for penitents to keep the Passion foremost in their thoughts, and both sanction weeping as an appropriate mode of devotion. In the Treatyse however, Margery has virtually no lines in her conversation with Christ, whereas this situation is reversed in the passages taken from St. Catherine’s Lyf. I would argue that some aspects of the Book’s Margery that are absent or are only vaguely present in the Shorte Treatyse are filled in because St. Catherine has already spoken them elsewhere in the collection. By placing Margery and Catherine’s mirrored texts side-by-side, Margery’s piety is reinforced by Catherine’s,105 but while, in the Shorte Treatyse (if it is read as a stand-alone text) that piety is muted, Margery is also reflected in Catherine’s far more vocal relationship with God. Indeed, the fact that the narrative and voice of another woman facing a similar situation and speaking out for herself immediately precedes the Shorte Treatyse puts some of those words back in Margery’s mouth.

The text of Divers Doctrines presented in Pepwell’s collection consists of thirteen passages. The passages begin with the voice of God, but, whereas in the long version of the Lyf from which the Devout Doctrines were extracted God and Catherine converse regularly throughout, the first three passages are the only ones in which God speaks; the other ten passages are spoken by Catherine. The intertextual dialogue that adjacency permits allows readers to align Margery’s voice with Catherine’s, and so the issues of doubt and uncertainty and desire that are absent from Margery’s text are expressed by the text as a whole nonetheless. These are issues that the Margery of the Shorte Treatyse would share with Catherine, and these would be utterly appropriate issues to express to a readership looking to Pepwell’s pamphlet for lessons in devotion. Surprisingly, however, Catherine’s outspokenness, and especially the degree to which this outspokenness is sanctioned, also share similarities with aspects of Margery that are not actually found in the Treatyse, and actually recall passages, and indeed whole scenes from the Book.

105 Jennifer Summit also argues that Pepwell’s anthology contextualized the extracts with works of central importance to a sixteenth century program of lay devotion which removed emphasis on physical discipline, and places emphasis on internal meditative practice, opening it up to a readership that would have been neither capable nor interested in following the devotional practices espoused by The Book’s Margery. She states that “The indulgence promoted in Pepwell’s representation of Margery Kempe seems calculated to appeal to a new devotional reader who seeks the benefits of indulgence without having to undergo the physical disciplines or actual pilgrimages that might have been expected of him or her at an earlier time” (Lost Property: The Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380–1589 [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000], 133); see also 126–38.

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Catherine claims, for example, to choose to perform physical penance, stating that “I have chosen pain for my refreshing, and therefore it is not hard to me to suffer them, but rather delectable for the love of my Saviour, as long as it pleaseth His Majesty that I shall suffer them.”106 Catherine’s speech resonates broadly with aspects of her Lyf that are not represented in the excerpt in Pepwell; but this speech also resonates with and recalls chapter 11 of Margery’s Book: Margery has repeatedly “askyd God mercy & forsoke hir pride, hir couetyse, & desyr þat sche had of þe worshepys of þe world, & dede grett bodyly penawnce”; and it is only after asking to be shriven of sin and voided of temptation, and after being granted permission to do bodily penance that she “gan to entyr þe wey of euyr-lestyng lyfe” (BMK I.11: 23). Margery’s reaction to her own human failings is extreme, but is still understandable even to those who would not choose such physical demonstrations of devotion. In response, in the Book, Christ tells Margery that

And, dowtyr, yyf thu wilt ben hey in hevyn wyth me, kepe me alwey in thi mende as meche as thu mayst and forgete me not at thi mete (BMK I.77: 182).

He then offers her some guidance: “thynk alwey that I sitte in thin hert and knowe every thowt that is therin, bothe good and ylle, and that I parceyve the lest thynkyng and twynkelyng of thyn eye” (BMK I.77: 182). However, the really practical advice on guarding against temptation, and on shriving oneself after giving in, comes from Margery’s own experience, and from her own mouth:

I wolde, Lord, for thi lofe be leyd nakyd on an hyrdil, alle men to wonderyn on me for thi love, so it wer no perel to her sowlys, and thei to castyn slory and slugge on me, and be drawyn fro town to town every day my lyfetyme, yyf thu wer plesyd therby and no mannys sowle hyndryd, thi wil mote be fulfillyd and not myn (BMK I.77: 183)

Catherine’s words in the Divers Doctrines provide a shadow of these aspects of the Book, and particularly of Margery’s vocality within it. In fact, for a reader who is working through Pepwell’s collection linearly, reading through the texts in the order that they are printed, by the time the Treatyse is reached in the Pepwell collection, many of the points that the Book’s

106 Doctrines of St Katherin of Senis, in The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Treatises, Printed by Henry Pepwell MVXXI, ed. Edward Gardner (London: Chatto & Windus, 1910), 131. I will discuss Gardner’s reprint of Pepwell’s edition below.

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Margery might have made have already been made by Catherine, thus suggesting that her silence is simply politeness: why reiterate arguments that have already been made so boldly and that have already been divinely sanctioned? Thus, not only does this Margery appear to be listening quietly while Christ is speaking, she has also clearly been listening attentively while others are speaking with Him as well.

As mentioned above, passages 3 and 4 from the Treatyse were taken from a section of the Book in which Christ tells Margery that she is held in his esteem as highly as Catherine and others. The presence, here, of these texts together—particularly with Catherine’s text preceding Margery’s—serves in a small way to recreate some of this levelled esteem: by being companion exemplars in a compendium of devotion, Margery is recontextualized back into a constellation of exemplary figures conceived and articulated in the Book by Christ. The reverberations work outward from the Treatyse as well, and just as Catherine’s words can be aligned with Margery’s silence, so too are words that are provided to Margery fill in spaces in Catherine’s. Recall the discussion of passages 5 and 6 of the Shorte Treatyse, above, and the fact that they are removed from the relationship that they had, in the Book, with pilgrimage. These passages also allude to St. Catherine of Siena’s Letter to William Flete in which she says:

There are some who give themselves perfectly to chastising their body, doing very great and bitter penance, in order that the sensuality may not rebel against the reason. They have set all their desire more in mortifying the body than in slaying their own will. These are fed at the table of penance, and are good and perfect, but unless they have great humility, and compel themselves to consider the will of God and not that of men, they oft times mar their perfection by making themselves judges of those who are not going by the same way that they are going.107

Because of the presence of Margery, the content of these words reverberates back onto Catherine as well, replenishing the excerpted version of her life with that have been cut out of the excerpts presented here.

107 Cited in Edward Gardner, ed. The Cell of Self-Knowledge: Seven Early English Mystical Treatises, Printed by Henry Pepwell MVXXI (London: Chatto & Windus, 1910), 52n4.

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4.3.2.2 Walter Hilton’s Song of the Angels Just as the Shorte Treatyse resonates with the Divers Doctrines that immediately precedes it, it likewise sets the stage for the work that follows it in the collection. The text that follows the Shorte Treatyse is Walter Hilton’s Song of the Angels, and just as with Catherine’s text, there are aspects of this text that resonate in obvious ways both with the character of Margery presented in the Shorte Treatyse and with the Margery of the Book. The first resonance is due to the fact that, in the Book, Hilton’s work is mentioned within a list of books that Margery knew well: at two separate points, we are told that she knew “Seynt Brydys boke, Hylton’s boke, Bone-ventur, Stimulus Amoris, Incendium Amoris.”108 As Windeatt notes,

By her reference to “Hyltons boke” Kempe may simply mean the Scale of Perfection, and probably the more accessible Book I, although the Mixed Life had an evident relevance to Kempe’s own vocation. Yet it may be that reference to “Hyltons boke” expresses Kempe’s sense of indebtedness to Hilton’s broader oeuvre, perhaps encountered in a manuscript that collects together a number of Hilton’s works or comprises selections and anthologies from them, for this is how the reception of Hilton often proceeded in the fifteenth century.109

It is also worth noting the mention of the Stimulus amoris, misattributed to Bonaventure, but which possibly refers to Hilton’s vernacular Prickynge of Love. Both the Scale and the Prickynge are guides to a contemplative life. The Scale establishes an ordered system of the spiritual life and the nature of different forms of virtue within that system; the text specifically discusses the effect of these virtues on the behaviour and psychology of devotees. Most relevant to Margery, book I of the Scale is directed at anchoresses, and discusses acts such as weeping at length, providing a great deal of material on contemplation and on the teachings regarding compunction. Given Margery’s “gift of weeping,” it is conceivable that the Scale would have been the sort of book that a priest might have chosen for a highly devout woman like Margery. The Prickynge presents a set of meditations on the Passion which are followed by a treatise on contemplation. The second possibility for “Hylton’s boke,” Epistle On the Mixed Life, attends to many of the difficulties of living a contemplative life: the Mixed Life discusses the challenges involved in leading a contemplative life in the outside world rather than being enclosed. The Mixed Life is

108 58:143; a similar list to this is also given, with slightly different grammar, at 17: 39. 109 Windeatt, “1412–1534,” 205–206.

186 uniquely attentive to the shifting sets of expectations and responsibilities that could get in the way of devout contemplation, challenges that Margery negotiates and articulates throughout her Book.

The Song of the Angels works differently than either the Prickynge or the Mixed Life: it relates the experience of Richard Rolle hearing the music of the angels. Hilton characterizes experiences of this type as powerful spiritual witnesses, but emphasizes that, while they may happen to those who lead a contemplative life, such experiences should not be sought for their own sake and should be used as the basis for meditation on Grace. As such, in many ways this text appears to be further emphasizing the silenced version of Margery in the Treatyse: while Catherine’s vocality and articulation of the importance of voiced prayer potentially replenishes Margery’s silence, in its broad strokes The Song of the Angels seems to justify the muting of Margery’s more mystical experiences that make up so much of the Book. However, it is worth considering Margery’s description in the Book of the experience that constituted her conversion, that initiated her “gift of weeping,” and which also initiated her intimate relationship with Christ and her claims of renewed virginity—all of the aspects of her character that have been excised from the Treatyse. Margery’s first weeping occurs immediately after she hears the music of paradise, something very much like Hilton and Rolle’s description of hearing the song of the angels. She says “Alas, that I did ever sin, it is full merry in Heaven” and writes that the melody had been so sweet that

it surpassed all melody that ever might be heard in this world, without any comparison, and caused this creature when she heard any mirth or melody afterward for to have full plenteous and abundant tears of high devotion with great sobbings and sighings after the wretched world. And ever after this experience she had in her mind the mirth and the melody that was in Heaven, so much that she could not well restrain herself from the speaking thereof. For where she was in any company, she would say oftentime, “It is full merry in Heaven” (BMK I.3: 12).

Hearing this music caused her “to have full plenteous and abundant tears of high devotion, with great sobbings and sighings after the bliss of heaven” (BMK I.3: 12) and she acknowledges the music as the reason for this uncontrollable sign of devotion. At other points, Margery also links hearing celestial music with performing acts of physical penance, including fasting, multiple

187 rounds of praying, and wearing the hairshirt. The hearing of heavenly music is linked, particularly, to her weeping, which occurs throughout the Book in conjunction with Margery’s reflection on sinfulness: “And this creature had contrition and great compunction with plenteous tears and many boisterous sobbings for her sins and for her unkindness against her Maker…. Beholding her own wickedness, she could not but sorrow and weep and ever pray for mercy and forgiveness” (BMK I.3: 13). She also weeps for others’ sins, claiming that God is granting her the grace to weep for them,110 and she also weeps at thought of Christ’s Passion, while at holy places, and in private prayer and contemplation.

None of the details of Margery’s weeping are found in the Shorte Treatyse and, as discussed above, the emphasis in that text distinctly points away from these kinds of acts of penance and shows of devotion. However, the discussion in Song of the Angels recalls Hilton’s other, more systematic articulations of the stages of contemplation: in this system, early stages of internal experience of the love of God manifest in tears, prayers, and other physical phenomena. Various forms of interior conflict arising from the shock of the presence of God result in physical manifestations: “It is something so new, so sudden, and so unfamiliar, that the soul has not the strength to bear it, but breaks out in tears, sobs, and other external manifestations.”111 Likewise, in the Prickynge, Hilton notes that these kinds of emotional and physical responses are both a desirable and a necessary effect of deep meditation on the Passion. He states that “[n]ot for thee if thy heart be so hard that it will not melt into tenderness of compunction, hold thyself but as a sack full of sin and weep for thy sins bitterly.”112 Weeping is a blessing that “Christ in his passion had,” and so he urges readers to “[s]uffer not the well of tears to wax all dry in thee,” urges that they “[s]tint not in times to weep for th[eir] own and for other men’s sins,” and that they “spare not for to weep plenteously if [they] may.”113 This kind of weakness at God’s presence is an essential stage in the process of reformation of the soul, and leads the devotee who continues to work at contemplation from acts of imagination, through to acts of intellect, and finally to perfect, unified love of God.

110 This occurs in chapters 11 and 33. 111 Walter Hilton, Scale of Perfection, trans. and intro. John P.H. Clark and Rosemary Dorward (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 227. 112 Hilton, The Prickynge of Love, ed. Harold Kane (Salzburg: University of Salzburg, 1983), 12 and 16. 113 Ibid., 52 and 123.

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In the Book, Margery experiences and relates to her audience Hilton’s first two stages of contemplation, those that are explored in Prickyng of Love and the Scale of Perfection. If the text following the Treatyse in Pepwell were one of these texts that explicitly exalted weeping, the effect might be argued to supplement the pared-down version of Margery with some of her removed aspects, as the text from Catherine’s Devout Doctrines might be argued to do. However, the effect of the Song of the Angels is very different: it simultaneously recalls the music that initiated Margery’s weeping and also recalls Hilton’s other discussions of weeping as a devotional act, such as are found in the Prickynge of Love and Scale of Perfection, while also critiquing that form of devotion as only a partial fulfilment of contemplative potential. In doing so, the Song of the Angels emphasizes that while the Book’s Margery has attained the first two of Hilton’s stages of contemplation, in the Shorte Treatyse she is presented as having ascended to the third. What is interesting is how the Song of the Angels, and the focus in Hilton’s other work on the compunction of tears links back to Margery in her Book and, in some ways, to Catherine—not to the particular excerpts found in the Diverse Doctrines but to the compilation tradition of which her Lyf was a part: St. Catherine’s Lyf was often accompanied by other contemplative or mystical works, either in excerpted and reassembled form, or in collections with whole texts or sections that had been printed together or printed separately and bound together (i.e. in Sammelbände). In particular, the works of several prominent female saints were commonly found together, and St Catherine was often found with three others: unsurprisingly, of course, St Bridget, St Mechtild of Hackeborn, and St Elizabeth of Hungary. Indeed, the Revelations of Elizabeth of Hungary was translated into English in the 1430s, and it was first printed by de Worde in 1493 and again in 1500, both times alongside the Lyf of Saynt Katherin of Senis.

Elizabeth’s Revelations are comprised primarily of dialogues with the Virgin, during which “praying and weeping go together and Elizabeth ‘myte nawt wytholdyn here from owtwardys sobbyng and clamor of voys’.”114 Because of the relationship between praying and weeping in her text, Elizabeth of Hungary was used as a model, along with Richard Rolle and Walter Hilton, for directives of the compunction of tears. In fact, in the Book, Margery recalls

114 The two middle English translations of the revelations of St. Elizabeth of Hungary: ed. from Cambridge University Library MS Hh.i.11 and Wynkyn de Worke's printed text of 1493, ed. Sarah McNamer (Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag C. Winter, 1996), 60; cited in Windeatt, 203.

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Elizabeth by name with respect to her weeping. Catherine’s voice and attitudes reflect on Margery’s silence and stillness, suggesting boldness that is no longer present in her own text; and the association with Hilton’s Song of the Angels, and by extension the arguments that extend beyond it, suggest also that she has become capable of the more advanced forms of contemplation. These flanking texts show not so much that the Book’s Margery is recalled by its placement alongside texts like St. Catherine’s and Hilton’s, but rather that Pepwell shows the potential that what has been stripped away might always be recovered by the reception of a text into a new context. Far from a reduced, diminished, muted form of Margery, this Margery—the “Ancress of Lynn”—can be seen as exalted, divinely expanded, and approaching perfect union with God. 4.4 Textual Tradition of Reconstruction The sort of sectioning-off and recombination that we see accomplished by the extractors of these texts and their printers is a very useful kind of interpretation: by placing emphasis elsewhere in the text, and by packaging the words from Margery’s Book among the words of other figures of devotion and religious import, aspects of Margery from the Book can be aligned with the Shorte Treatyse. More crucially, by way of such associations, new aspects of her character that were not evident in the Book might also be created. The effect is similar to that produced by the work of the marginal annotators of the Book: although the process of annotation appears to fulfil a different role in the tradition of textual composition than explicit recompiling, both activities are driven by a desire to make something new and dynamic out of texts.

It has been argued that this kind of intervention was always already present in the Book, that the kinds of scriptural interpretations engineered by Margery in her Book are, themselves, a kind of editorial intervention into the subject matter of her narrative, and that Margery herself was already engaging in this sort of rearrangement and recapitulation, even as her text was being conceived and composed. Discussing the relationship between the Book, the marginalia, and the recontextualized passages in the Treatyse, Rebecca Schoff Erwin notes:

Kempe herself can be observed interacting with her own sources in a similar way, particularly in the retelling of tales and exempla and in the reimagining of scenes from the Gospels. She manipulates the context of her retelling in order to guide the interpretation of her listeners and, later, readers of the written text. The processes that produced the original

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manuscript, then, owe much to the reading practices that produced the original manuscript.115

Throughout her text, Margery glosses scripture and builds the narrative of her life around a creative reconstruction of passages from the Gospel and interpretations of the Bible. Moreover, “[h]er devotional practice depends upon her rereadings of these tales in such a way as to create a web of reference and allusion that enfolds her own experience into her reading.”116 What we can see, then, is a long history of re-reading and interpretation, performed by and written into The Book of Margery Kempe. Margery performs an active interpretation of the texts which she has read, recontextualizing them to suit the purposes of the text which she is composing, all the while interpreting the visions and encounters which she, also, has had to interpret for spiritual significance. Likewise, her scribes interact with her retellings, asking questions for clarification, perhaps highlighting literary and spiritual allusions that are implicit in the telling of her story, while also inserting their voices into the text that they are responsible for inscribing. The Carthusian readers at Mount Grace perform equally active interpretations of the Book, bringing their different literary perspectives to bear on their reading of her narrative, and who seem to cluster aspects of the text into coherent arguments that suit their reading agendas.117 Likewise, the extractor performed a reading of the Book and draws that reading out of the text, reordering the sections of the text which come to make up the Shorte Treatyse. The compiler of the Moore Sammelband I binds the Shorte Treatyse together with other books and pamphlets that provided her with a voice, and that reinterprets her tamer character according to a theological scheme that exalts, rather than diminishes her; and Pepwell likewise re-interprets the character of Margery from the singular and streamlined interpretation of salvation and spiritual vision that de Worde’s extraction makes possible, emphasizing instead the anchoritic aspects of her character that he introduces by bookending her narrative with St. Catherine and Hilton. As such, these extractions and collections may not be a silencing of Margery’s voice so that she can’t argue, or a deliberate hamstringing of Margery so she can’t pilgrimage, but an exercise in tracing influence in order to draw authority from the past and add to Margery’s power rather than shutting it down. The

115 Erwin, “Early Editing of Margery Kempe,” 76. 116 Ibid., 78. 117 For discussion of Carthusian reading practices, see Jessica Brantley, Reading in the Wilderness.

191 context and environment of the passages close off modes of interpretation while opening up others. 4.5 The Book of Margery Kempe in the Twentieth Century While there is evidence that the extractor would have had access to some form of the Book when constructing the Shorte Treatyse, there is no evidence that the manuscript of the Book that we currently have was involved in that process. Indeed, until recently, very little was known about the whereabouts of the manuscript of the Book from the point of its inscription—in 1436, as attested by the manuscript itself—until 1934, when the manuscript was rediscovered. Until the middle of the twentieth century, the existence of The Book of Margery Kempe to which the Shorte Treatyse alludes was only speculated upon, primarily by specialist scholars who were familiar with the Treatyse by way of its associations with Richard Rolle, and Walter Hilton. Margery was introduced to the twentieth-century public in 1910, when Henry Pepwell’s collection was re-edited and re-issued by Edmund Gardner. In his introductory notes, Gardner calls Margery “a worthy precursor to that other great mystic of East Anglia: Julian of Norwich,”118 and as such, readers were introduced to Margery Kempe as the “Ancres of Lynn,” silent and pious, keeping good company with St Catherine and Walter Hilton. After the 1501 printed edition of the Shorte Treatyse, and the two collections, both assembled in the 1520s, there is very little trace of the manuscript of the Book, and very little known about its whereabouts.119 From the sixteenth century until the middle of the twentieth, Margery Kempe was known only because of the version of her in the Shorte Treatyse; it was assumed that there was a longer version of the text, but there was no evidence of an extant manuscript. However, a manuscript containing a much longer version of a text about Margery Kempe—called The Book of Margery Kempe—was rediscovered in the manor home of Colonel William Butler-Bowdon in 1934, by visiting scholars Charles Gibbs-Smith and Albert Van de Put.120 Gibbs-Smith and Van de Put could not identify the manuscript, but they identified it as something “important,” suggested that Butler-Bowdon have its identity verified. This task was given to Hope Emily

118 Gardner, 8. 119 Recently, Julie Chappell has started to fill this void, with her Perilous Passages: The Book of Margery Kempe, 1534–1934. Chappell traces the manuscript from the period just before the dissolution of the monasteries, when we know that the manuscript was housed at Mount Grace Priory, until 1934. 120 Hilton Kelliher “The Rediscovery of Margery Kempe: A Footnote,” The British Library Journal, 23 (1997): 259–63, at 259–60.

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Allen, an American scholar of some repute as an expert in the mystical writings of Richard Rolle, who recognized passages from the manuscript as those from the Treatyse, recognizing the manuscript as the lost text of Margery Kempe from which the Treatyse was drawn.

Soon after the manuscript’s discovery, Allen wrote to The Times, detailing the manuscript’s unanticipated contents. In a letter dated 27 December 1934, Allen wrote that the Book

is found to be crammed with highly interesting narratives of real life … It does give remarkably elevated spiritual passages, but they are interspersed with others highly fanatical … a neurotic strain runs through her religious life … Her earnest desire to set down everything just as it happened brings us many narratives full of unconscious humour….121

The news of the discovered manuscript was met with great excitement by the general public, and these were the expectations of the reading public, who hoped to find England’s Joan of Arc. Two editions were planned for early release: a modernized version, to be prepared by Col. Butler- Bowdon; and a scholarly edition for the Early English Text Society. Of the content of the Book, the public could only expect more of the same Margery with whom they were already familiar, by way of Gardner’s 1910 reprint of the Shorte Treatyse; for those who were waiting with great anticipation to see what the Book had to offer, the release of the first edition was disappointing.

The first edition of the manuscript that was available to twentieth-century readers was edited by the owner of the manuscript: in 1936, Colonel William Butler-Bowdon prepared a version of the text for Jonathan Cape, entitled The Book of Margery Kempe 1436: A Modern Edition. When this edition first came out, The Observer listed it as one of the books most in demand in bookshops.122 Butler-Bowdon acknowledges that a scholarly edition was being prepared simultaneously by Meech and Allen for the Early English Text Society: he refers to the EETS edition in his introduction, noting that it was to be “a literal copy of the manuscript” which would “meet the demands of experts and scholars.” Butler-Bowdon notes that his edition had different goals and a different audience. It was thus meant as a “modernized” counterpart to

121 Hope Emily Allen, Letter to The Times, December 27, 1934. 122 Originally in The Observer, 4 October 1936; cited Marea Mitchell “Uncanny Dialogues: ‘The Journal of Mistress Joan Martyn’ and The Book of Margery Kempe” in Maistresse of My Wit: Medieval Women, Modern Scholars, eds. Louise D’Arcens and Juanita Feros Ruys (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 251–52.

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Meech and Allen’s scholarly edition, one that would better accommodate a broad and non- scholarly readership: a mass-market celebration of Margery Kempe’s triumphant return to English letters on the quincentenary of her birth.

Butler-Bowdon states his intention to make reading easier for a non-expert audience, and identifies the changes he enacted on the text for this reason. Butler-Bowdon explains that he updated spellings since the “archaic spelling and meanings preclude its easy perusal by the ordinary reader.”123 He also identified words that would prove troublesome and replaced words whose meanings he found difficult, rather than providing either a marginal gloss or equipping his edition with a dictionary of difficult terms. The manuscript’s Middle English was not the only barrier to easy comprehension that Butler-Bowdon found: the mystical elements, specifically Margery’s many-layered relationship with Christ, were an aspect of the text which he deemed unnecessarily incomprehensible. He notes that “[e]xcept to those particularly interested in it, the great amount of mystical matter would probably prove wearisome” and thus states that “[c]ertain chapters, entirely devoted to that subject have therefore been removed from the body of the book and printed as an appendix.” Butler-Bowdon claims that this alteration “does not affect the sequence.” Since the chapters containing this objectionable material were contained in their entirety in the appendices, the “more studious reader can take the book easily in sequence if he wants to” by reading the excised chapters in full.

The discovery of the Book, and the massively expanded version of Margery that it contains, provoked varied reactions from the excited public. Some took the new and unanticipated aspects of her character as a challenge, and worked to understand her. A writer for The Listener suggested that “it would have been wonderful to have met her on a bus.” Graham Greene, in the Morning Post stated: “Nowhere else can we find so vivid a picture of England in the early years of the fifteenth century … her book is a kind of Froissart of civil life … she had a sense of this world.”124 Likewise, the Rev. Sir John R. O’Connell argued that

This book is of supreme importance because it is the first conscious and deliberate autobiography in the English tongue and not less because it is written with a vigour and

123 Colonel William Butler-Bowdon, The Book of Margery Kempe 1436: A Modern Version, with an introduction by R.W. Chambers (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936), 16. 124 Ibid, 3.

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vividness which marks a notable advance in the common use of the vernacular in the development of the English language. This book shows a definite progress on the road of the growth of English which came to something akin to perfection a century later in the English prose works of Sr. Thomas More.125

To a public expecting more of the Shorte Treatyse, the Book was a great disappointment. A public accustomed to the version of Margery presented in the Shorte Treatyse—by way of the “Anchoress” in the 1910 reissue of Pepwell—expected a quiet recipient of God’s grace, and anticipated an expanded version of that silent, still devotional body. The scholar who wrote the introductory material to Butler-Bowden’s edition, R. W. Chambers, acknowledged that “to those who had hoped to find a new Scale of Perfection Margery’s book must be, from certain points of view, painful.”126 Even those who could have accepted a radically expanded version of Margery had objections to the way in which the Book’s Margery recontextualized the passages that were familiar from the Treatyse. These objections were not specifically toward the mysticism that Butler-Bowden was wary of, but rather the presentation of mysticism in a form of a woman so broadly capable of making noise and nuisance. Indeed, according to some early critics, neither Margery nor her text could truly be called mystical. The Spectator’s Evelyn Underhill states that “There is very little in Margery Kempe’s book which can properly be described as mystical” and The Evening Standard, in an article entitled “Tears, Idle Tears,” admitted that “Margery was certainly queer, even in a queer age.”127

Much of the criticism of the Book was due to unmet expectations about Margery as mystic. W. R. Inge, for one, wanted to remove Margery from the canon of mystical Englishwomen, leaving only Julian of Norwich, “the most beautiful gem of medieval literature.”128 But others took issue with the title of “mystic” itself, and defended Margery against any claim to it: Martin Thornton, for example, argued that Margery cannot be compared with other mystics because she speaks for everyone and to everyone: “Julian is a mystic, Margery is not. Julian disturbs, rouses, and terrifies us: Margery gently teaches and guides.

125 Cited Marea Mitchell, The Book of Margery Kempe: Scholarship, Community & Criticism (New York: Peter Lang, 2005), 76. 126 Cited Windeatt, 2; from introduction to Butler-Bowdon’s modernized version. 127 Cited Windeatt, 2. 128 Mysticism in Religion (London: Hutchinson and Co. Ltd., 1947), 124.

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Julian is the mystical Professor: Margery is the Sunday School teacher and comparative values apart, it is the latter whom most of us need.”129 Others simply believed her sincerity, with or without the identity as a mystic. E. I. Watkin defends her, he says,

not simply in the hope of obtaining the heavenly reward promised, she tells us, to her champions (!) but because after careful study of her life both in the modernised version and in the original text I am convinced that she loved God and her neighbour with a genuine, deep and wholehearted love. And this after all is the sum and substance of sanctity.130

While these early critics were reading the Book in its first edition, prepared for a general audience by Butler-Bowden, another edition was being prepared for a scholarly audience, by the Early English Text Society. It was to be co-edited by Sanford Meech and Hope Emily Allen, and was intended to provide a survey of the manuscript, its history, its scribal hands and language, and its text, including the sixteenth-century redactions and the explicit textual allusions. The edition prepared by Allen and Meech is exhaustive. Meech and Allen’s edition provides a diplomatic transcription of the manuscript, and notes proposed emendations and alterations; it includes all of the marginalia and scribal notations; it includes, in appendices, the text of the De Worde Shorte Treatyse with clear notation of the orthographic and grammatical differences to be found in Pepwell’s version; it includes excerpts from relevant works of scriptural commentary and literature; and includes a glossary to the text.

In the past decade, there has been a tide-shift in Margery Kempe scholarship with scholars focusing on the people involved in the production not just of the manuscript of the Book and its internal and external readings, but also of the editors who first worked on it. In particular, scholars such as Carolyn Dinshaw, Marea Mitchell, and Julie Chappell have discussed the roles that Hope Emily Allen and Sanford Meech played in the early editions of the Book, and the ways in which Allen’s voice and work were silenced by the processes of authority by which the first edition was produced. Allen was critical of medieval studies as a top-down history: she saw the need to move away from the traditional philological and language-based study that had dominated medieval literary analysis. She stated: “I am a great believer in the living picture as a stimulus to study” and asserted her intention, in the EETS edition of the Book, to “combine

129 Cited Mitchell, Scholarship, 76. 130 Cited ibid, 78–79.

196 literary and historical research and concentrate on what would interpret religion as it was brought home to the individual, rather than as it touched ecclesiastical institutions or theological doctrines.”131 The full scope of the project that Allen had in mind for the Book could not have been produced in single volume, and she articulated her plans to write a second volume, more biographical than editorial, that would serve as a companion to the edition of the Book, and that would be a “synthesis of Margery the mystic and the woman.”132 In a sense, Allen identified the need to deal with the irreconcilabilities of the text and of Margery by moving beyond the logic of a single, authoritative version of the text. Indeed, before she had ever begun working on the Book, her editorial philosophy was based on expanding her perspectives to see beyond what she assumed she might find. She wrote to another medievalist, Mabel Day, about her luck being the one called to see the manuscript, but vitally cites that part of this “luck” was her willingness to investigate what others had already presumed was of little interest. She states that “those who were first approached as to the Butler-Bowdon MS did not go to see it, being so sure the BMK [Book of Margery Kempe] was written by an anchoress” and drawing from this the necessity for scholars to clear their “minds of all preconceptions or we will miss clues to great discoveries.”133 But her project for the Book, governed as it was by this capacious, expansive, and ever- expanding methodology of multiplying possibilities, was doomed almost from its inception. Allen was interested in Margery as a person, the shifting relationship between that person and her Book, and between that person and the authorities that governed how her voice could be heard and what her body could be allowed to do. It was this interest that caused Allen’s work to become mired in its own complexities: the second volume of Allen’s Book never came to fruition. As such, the editorial principles that were used to produce the EETS edition were chosen largely by Meech, motivated by a desire to establish a fixed, usable, and authoritative text. More and more, as Allen’s work on the manuscript is being examined by scholars, what is revealed is

131 Cited Marea Mitchell, 24. 132 Ibid., 25. 133 Cited Marea Mitchell, 15. I am glossing over the tremendous controversy over the editing of the manuscript, and particularly the way that Hope Emily Allen was overlooked for the primary authorship of the EETS edition of the Book; although this has direct bearing on the type of argument that I am making here, many other scholars have recently dealt with this issue in depth, and since I cannot deepen these analyses, for the time being I will only direct attention to, especially: Marea Mitchell; David Wallace Strong Women: life, text, and territory, 1347–1645 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011); and Carolyn Dinshaw’s Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Post-Modern (Durham: Duke University Press, 1999) and How Soon is Now (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012).

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Allen’s work on the Book was so easily over-written by Meech due to Allen’s deep critical engagement with the Book’s complexity, and her willingness to state that she could not say anything authoritative about the text.

Shortly after the publication of the EETS edition came a republication of Butler-Bowdon’s edition, which had been explicitly altered so that it could be used alongside the EETS edition, and it was acknowledged as a translation rather than just a “modernization.” Discussing this re- issue of Butler-Bowdon’s text, Mitchell notes that, at this point “[t]he movement towards uniformity of presentation then begins to build a stable sense of what the book looks like, so that whether we read the modernised version or the scholarly edition, a more consistent picture emerges of what we mean by the Book,” and thus what readers expect to find in it. 134 In the eighty years since these first three editions, there have been several republications of the text. The text was translated by Barry Windeatt in 1985, and then again in 1995 by Tony Triggs;135 another translation was produced by John Skinner in 1998; and another by Liz Herbert McAvoy in 2003. The text was edited by Lynn Staley in 1996 for TEAMS and was re-edited and translated by Lynn Staley for a Norton Critical in 2001. Most recently, in 2015, Anthony Bale produced a new translation of the text. All of these editions and translations are thorough and responsible versions of the Book; they provide background on Margery and her time, and provide interesting and probing analysis on the methods and modes of construction of the Book, and its readership from the fifteenth century through to the modern age. These editions and translations are used for scholarly and pedagogical purposes, but given the frequent inclusion of the Book in undergraduate literature courses, and particularly within survey courses that offer a range of texts from the Middle Ages, the dominant manner in which the Book is read and taught is through extracts in anthologies. These anthologies, by extracting particular passages and by linking these passages contextually to different texts, provide a representation of Margery Kempe and of her Book that is interpretive and strategic. The fragmenting, repackaging, and anthologizing of bits of The Book of Margery Kempe enacts a process on her narrative that appears to have been going on ever since it was first read, by the monks at Mount Grace. Lines of continuity—sparse and difficult as they certainly are to identify and follow in the Book—are marked so that they can be

134 Mitchell, 100. 135 The full title of Trigg’s translation is The Autobiography of the Madwoman of God: The Book of Margery Kempe (Liguori: Triumph Books, 1995).

198 found again without the risk of getting lost down another path. In these anthologies—again, as has happened to the Book in its earliest physical form, and indeed even as it was being composed—the Book has been mined for what can be removed from it and those bits used as building materials for the construction of something else entirely. 4.6 Conclusion The Book of Margery Kempe has always been, even in the earliest version to which we have access, a compilation and, indeed, was being edited even before it was written; the Book was always already the subject of editorial dissent, and was always a matrix of competing voices, each straining for or against editorial control over the text. The text is the written record of the spoken memories of the real-life experiences of one woman, dictated long after the fact to an unnamed and untrained scribe, transcribed again even further from their occurrence by another scribe while being read aloud and verbally corrected by their now-very-aged author. This text was then interpreted by several readers who wicked out what they found most important. Several of these extracted readings are on record in the manuscript itself, in the form of marginal commentary and notes of emphasis. Another reading of the text is found in Wynkyn de Worde’s extracted version, printed first in 1501, and another was anthologized by Henry Pepwell in 1521, and onward throughout the twentieth century as further editions, translations, adaptations, and interpretations have been added to the textual matrix of The Book of Margery Kempe. Indeed, the text seems to encourage this sort of interaction. As was discussed above, Margery actively engages with the texts that she has read, including rewriting the major events of scripture by casting herself in central roles.

Two of the first three twentieth-century editors of the Book—Colonel Butler-Bowdon and Sanford Meech—were committed to principles of editorial stability, and thus worked to limit and circumscribe the text in the interest of recovering an authoritative version of Margery and her text. But even though editions of the Book have been influenced by the editorial impulse to correct and stabilize the text, critics have largely pushed back against these attempts at stabilization and, in fact, have used them at once to generate new perspectives on Margery, the world that she describes, and the textual legacy she left, and even to test possible new ways of theorizing medieval conceptions of authority. Overall, the impulse to push back against stabilizing the text has been driven by an acceptance of multiplicity and multivocality as

199 fundamental characteristics of the text, and the recognition that Margery can simultaneously be an exemplar of silent feminine devotion and an outspoken radical. And just as both of these figures can co-habit in Margery’s person and both can have cultural and theological merit, myriad other versions of her character could likewise be found that might be edifying in surprising ways. These several editions of Margery’s text, and the several versions of Margery that they create and present to us propose a dynamic dialectic: the penitent, the pilgrim, the visionary, the mother, the wife…. The fact that Margery is shown to have many roles in her life is not necessarily a problem, as many of these categories overlap and reinforce one another. Nor is it problematic to temporarily draw one or another of these roles out, to focus on it and consider what kind of Margery it allows us to see. The trend of stabilizing the instability of the character of Margery fits into a long tradition that can be seen as silencing and limiting her; but, given that even the most silent versions of her have been allowed to speak, that need not be seen as the only, or the primary goal of that tradition. The inherent difficulty is not that there are many Margerys and many texts where we might want one: this certainly causes difficulties for concepts such authenticity, and for practices such as editing, but both editorial and literary scholarship have strategies and a working vocabulary to address these normal difficulties. However, besides the stickiness of multiplicity where unity would be more comfortable, these many versions of Margery’s text, and the many versions of Margery that they make possible, present an opportunity to recognize some difficult and paradoxical truths that are, nonetheless, true. Since the text of the Book was always unstable, each of these textual manifestations might be considered as authoritative a version of Margery’s Book as any other.

As we have seen, a simple “return to the manuscript origins” will not help with these difficulties. The authentic Margery will not be revealed by un-editing her associated texts, or trying to clean any one of the text’s versions of disrupting influences––at least not if the logic of such practices is to remove layers of accreted interpretation from early witnesses in the hope that, with sufficient rounds of the unediting process carried out by a careful and discerning agent, the textual object will be returned to its origins, and if not to an authorial holograph then at least to the earliest possible recoverable state. To attempt a “return to origins” for the Book by tracing provenance back through chronological time, and by disavowing changes that were introduced at any point will produce results. Of course it will. But, perhaps engaging in a “return to origins” on this text also takes us further from understanding it. Indeed, seeking out an original version of

200 this text sends us down the same rabbit-hole as does pushing on Margery’s character to define her identity: it doesn’t work. Indeed, putting pressure on any one variant, either of the text or of Margery herself, causes a splintering and multiplying of the options: if you put firm boundaries around one aspect of Margery, the pressure catalyses the revelation of others. Is it possible to acknowledge that the way to understand Margery is not by looking for more authentic versions of Margery, identifying each one’s particularities and tracing her throughout her text, perhaps providing guidewires for readers to find and follow her, too? To put this question another way: is it possible to recognize multivocality without needing to find its univocal components? Such a strategy would require readers, critics, and editors to put into practice the kind of perspective that Margery herself is capable of enacting in her own patterns of belief and behaviour.

It is worth, perhaps, reconsidering Hope Emily Allen’s desires for the expanded version of the EETS edition: it was Allen’s curiosity that drove her to seek out the text initially, and she was driven to continue to edit the text with a mind cleared of all preconceptions in order to see within it things that she did not already know were there. As I discussed briefly above, Allen’s project was crushed under the weight of her own expectations and hopeful anticipation of new discovery. This may be true, but as Dinshaw, Chappell and others have shown, Allen’s vision was also limited by the expectations of proper editorial procedure, of commitment to principles of correctness and authority, and thus by a desire to identify the “true” Margery and her “original” text. It would seem, perhaps, that the critical capacity to accept the text’s multiplicity that has emerged in the past thirty years, and the willingness of scholars—eagerness, even—to engage with the text on its own contradictory terms, might be an opportunity to re-engage with Allen’s curiosity-driven editorial vision.

I would not wish Allen’s confusion on those who would try to build a new kind of edition for Margery’s text, but I do think that the curiosity that precedes it is enormously productive in a text like this. While Allen’s curiosity was not effective against the logic of her colleagues’ commitment to editorial stability, I hope that the critical energy committed to her multiplicity that has been building for the past several decades could provide support for this practice. In this, a focus on process is key to untroubling the idea of origins: a “return to origins” for the Book is possible if those “origins” are imagined not as a physical, authoritative exemplar that represents any kind of “authentic” text, but rather as the dynamism and mobilizing energy behind the process of composition. This recognition that a singular nameable authority is a fantasy is, in

201 many ways, an argument fundamental to critical editorial theory, as it speaks to the complex issues that editors must constantly negotiate in their practice. But it is also just as fundamental to questions of literary scholarship, to questions of authority and meaning in texts like Margery’s, and, really to the act of reading at its root. In order to hope to understand Margery at all, one must hope to be able to hold her multiplicity—including and especially the contradictory parts of herself—at once, not just as an intellectual exercise, but actually as an act of faith in the person that she describes herself to be. This is also the act of faith required of the kind of Christian believer that Margery worked so hard to be, as she attempted to reconcile all of the incommensurable parts of the identity she was forced to accept: a witness to the virgin birth of Christ, a staunch defender of His status as both God and man, a mother of fourteen wearing maiden’s white, a married woman divinely sanctioned to live in celibacy. These characteristics would not be easy to enact and are not easy for her readers to rationalize, but perhaps one way to better understand Margery is to try to believe as she believes, as Emily Hope Allen tried to do, and to use this motivation to find new ways of exploring her various texts.

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Conclusion

In my introductory chapter I discussed the past and current models for editorial scholarship that are most commonly utilized by those working on texts of the medieval period. When I first began this study, and for a long time going forward, I was trying to use the manuscript texts to see what changes editors had introduced into the texts, to reconsider these choices, and to suggest ways that the manuscript text could be made more visible in modern editions. I hoped, by turning to the manuscript, to also reveal the wrongness of other readings. I was particularly driven to reveal the wrongness on which modern editions have been founded, to show the limitations and bias of the editors, especially early editors of the manuscript: many of them—particularly those whose decisions have cast the longest shadow—were nineteenth- century English gentlemen whose perspectives on the world I do not share. I hoped to find, perhaps I was actively seeking, something different in the manuscript so that I could call out these editors for their limitations, the things that their world did not include and so could not conceive of in the medieval worldview they were curating.

In other words, I too was looking to find a better reading, to back it up by using the most authoritative source of the text available: the single version of the text in its manuscript form. As much as I believed that my plan was to un-make the work of “best-text” editing, and of questioning decisions made on principles of a “return to origins,” I have come to see that my questions were not very different to those of any other scholarship that is motivated by a return to origins, and of finding—by looking back at the “authoritative” source—better readings, more right readings. As much as I was trying to construct a new way of reading the text, my methods and the perspective that drove them, were no different from those of a best-text editor: I consistently found myself identifying the failure of perspective of scholars and editors, and dictating readings of better readings that would come if we could correct the results of their myopia. Even as I am consciously trying to move away from this approach, it has been surprisingly difficult to fully root this practice out of any kind of reading or analysis. My hope, then, has been not to reveal the flaws of these past perspectives or of the structures and arguments that have been based upon them; rather, I want to actually be able to see those changes, try to understand their rationale on which the structures, arguments, and changes were based; and by doing so, to experiment with other potentials that inhere in the texts. I do not wish

203 to unedit the text, nor to return to the manuscript form, but to see what other options inhere in that form, what other structures might work with the text, what other readings might be possible when we see the text differently.

It is the possibility of a reconsideration of these texts, far more than the necessity of that reconsideration, that drives this study: namely, the physical form of this manuscript, and the relationship between aspects of that form and its literary contents, can be asseessed now in different ways and by different people than before because the manuscript has been digitized and is available for perusal from anywhere by virtually anyone. Because of advances in communication and a massive cultural shift that is driving an expansion of conceptions of authoritative knowledge—including an expansion of the literary canon—we are encountering truths about our past that are radically different from those attested by authoritative histories and the stated priorities of our cultural institutions. As such, new truths from different cultural, linguistic, and experiential perspectives that challenge hegemonic narratives of our shared, outstripping our capacity to conceive of minds and experiences other than our own. We are now both uniquely able and obligated to confront the problematic history of our discipline and of the cultural institutions which house and support it. This is a good thing, only. It is a good thing for the project of the humanities, simply because it is a good thing for humanity: what a gift, to be required to look closely at our shared project and speak out on its behalf, justify its continued existence not by cleaving to the authorities of the past but by showing it to be a vehicle of imaginative expansion, a means of creating a future that has learned from that past and continues to mine it for perspectives that have been subjugated in the process.

The message of methodologies based on past authorities seems to be: Sure, we’re willing to engage with ideas that contradict ours, and if you can hold your own, you can be part of our discussion. But, realize that “holding your own” means articulating positions that are consonant with ours, and means doing so in such a way that we are convinced that your voice is worth being heard before we risk listening to those opinions. There is a paternalist logic to this: you need to learn the alphabet before you will be able to write, and so a teacher might rationalize examining pupils on the alphabet before offering to read their compositions. Perhaps, in some cases, the rehearsal of these past truths can be an exercise that exposes new directions. But sometimes—perhaps more often than not—the ability to rehearse these perspectives depends upon a belief in these perspectives. Or, rather, the rehearsing of authoritative arguments amounts

204 to subscription to their form: treading their path and seeking their logic leads to an acceptance of their logic and a habit of thinking according to the logic of their terms. Intention matters, but it is not the only matter: habits of thought are created through repetition, especially if the kind of thinking that might inoculate against inevitable belief is systematically deferred until after the paths of past authority are trodden so thoroughly that they have become second-nature.

What if the rehearsal of authoritative forms, however, is tantamount to agreeing with them: that knowledge of them comes by way of understanding which comes by way of belief— then those who do not believe these truths will not be able to rehearse them, even as a matter of form, because rehearsing their form amounts to agreement. But what if I don’t agree? What if I have another position, but one which depends upon another foundation and governing logic, and so I cannot establish my position on the foundation of the older system? Is there no way that the validity of my perspective might be ascertained by considering other, non-contingent and non- contradictory, but nonetheless different foundations? This might mean starting from scratch, rejustifying the exercise from first principles. The risk with starting again from first principles, of course, is the possibility that examining the exercise separate from its history might reveal that the exercise itself—not just the method by which it has long been practiced—can no longer be justified.

Furthermore, the role of the public intellectual, a role that academics and scholars are encouraged to play, is far more about the capacity to drive social change, to predict, explain, or provoke paradigm shifts, than it is about cataloguing the facts of the past. But if, in order to be granted the right to speak of new ways of seeing or knowing, scholars must first prove their authority by rehearsing their knowledge of already-authoritative forms, a continued allegiance to archaic methods of establishing authority is problematic. For this, we need to build a capacity to consider ways of seeing and knowing that are different than our own: to be sure, many scholars and much of critical practice already have this capacity. However, there are some aspects of literary critical practice that are still largely governed by principles of originary authority and correctness, and the stickiness of these concepts in the construction of texts that are used for literary criticism affects the capacity of the field to do the work that it is purpose-built to do.

In reconsidering the deep allegiance of editorial practice to concepts like authority and correctness—concepts that, otherwise, are largely outdated in critical discourse—it is necessary

205 to build a vocabulary of practice that encounters troubling intellectual and cultural problems by asking: what would happen if we didn’t already think that we knew the answer? And, what if we didn’t immediately defer to the authority of someone who claims to know? The argument I have been trying to explore here is about authority and the difficulty of getting out from under the weight of systemic authority to speak of perspectives that come from other kinds of knowing, and the power of the concept of curiosity in doing so. For unlike constructing competing-but- equally authoritative arguments, or hoping to find new points that can be established as “correct,” a curiosity-based praxis recognizes ways that “authority” might be supplemented by different kinds of knowing, and also that categories of “authority” be expanded by acts of imagination. Essentially, I am proposing a kind of criticism not that stands unquestioningly on the shoulders of criticism that has gone before, but that interrogates those shoulders; anatomizes the body of which they are a part right down to the ground on which it stands; and then, maybe, starts to build something else. But with this revisionist principle we find an uncomfortable circularity, for how is this criticism different from the knock-down criticism that makes room for itself in a crowded critical field by expelling one or several of those already present at the table? How, then, do we practice a criticism that is grounded in a practice of deeply-empathic interrogation without—as a by-product of the process of that interrogation—reproducing competitive modes of correction and authority?

There is a risk—and I have fallen into this trap regularly—of reconsidering roots and origins with a tone of exasperation, at best— “how silly that our forefathers were so blind to their own cultural position”—and, at worst, excoriation— “the field was built by and for the purposes of white men in the age of Empire, and thus the field as a whole is built upon a foundation of racism, classism, and misogyny.” While this kind of critique might be directed at a worldview that is ostensibly more capacious, this kind of critique come no less from a commitment to “correct” ways of seeing than do the dominant modalities of the past. Indeed, developing a compassionate perspective for those whose perspectives were no more or less limited than my own but were limited in different ways and by different factors, requires the same broad- mindedness as recognizing other experiences and perspectives that are invisible to our own. There is one important thing to remember about scholarship that stands on the shoulders of giants: a scholarship that stands, generations and generations, on the shoulders of giants, each generation adding a level to that tower but never broadening out its base, creates a tower that is

206 extremely unstable. A system that is built only on authority will, almost necessarily, take such a form, as once a tradition already exists, it is almost impossible for new authorities to be established from the ground up, without having to pay deference to the extant towers. Criticism that tries to prove past scholars wrong by showing better ways of being right—my own tendencies included—might be motivated by a desire to expose this instability, to dig down to the foundation of the tower of authority to expose the feet of clay at its base. But destruction of the base is not the only way of effecting change: there are things we can do with feet of clay other than douse them with acid and bash them till they crack. For another important thing, perhaps, is less about the feet and the shoulders, but the sensate bodies in between. Sure, we can cause the feet of clay to crack, which might unsettle the tower; but might we also engage the giants, ask them questions, tell them their shoes are untied and their flies are open, make them laugh, cajole them not so that they lose their footing and come crashing down, but so that they sit down for a chat and give up space at the foundation of knowledge. This latter practice takes humility and courage, but most of all it takes an abiding curiosity. Curiosity functions not as a corrective, nor as an antidote to limitations imposed by scholarly modes’ drive by and toward establishing authority. Rather, a practice mobilized by curiosity can hopefully wonder about the origins of all decisions, trace back from final forms to possible rationales, and then consider what that form—editorial form, critical interpretation, etc.—might have otherwise been, had it been drawn out of different foundations.

Building a new humanities upon a radically new foundation starts with our capacity to reimagine the roots of individual fields. And if we look at the foundations of our field and see that it is in fact balanced on the backs of exploited peoples? Or recognize that the foundation of the field is providing shelter for prejudice and hatred, and the justification for destructive ideologies? We cannot unmake that history by knocking down the tower, but we can respectfully decline to formulaically recognize the authority of our predecessors, and climb down off of their shoulders emboldened by a faith in many truths to start to build new foundations that might give support to those whose stories have not yet been told.

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