Three Fifteenth-Century Collections of Communal Song A
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‘Synge we now alle and sum’: Three Fifteenth-Century Collections of Communal Song A study of British Library, Sloane MS 2593; Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1; and St John’s College, Cambridge, MS S.54 Kathleen Rose Palti University College London Volume I: Thesis I, Kathleen Rose Palti, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. Signed: Kathleen Palti 2 Abstract The manuscripts British Library, Sloane MS 2593, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1, and St John’s College, Cambridge, MS S.54 are compact collections of song lyrics written during the fifteenth century, largely without notation. My thesis seeks to develop responsive ways of reading these anthologies and uses the manuscripts to illumine the creative processes that produced and circulated their songs. I integrate attention to song lyrics within the material books and exploration of wider textual networks. As many of the anthologies’ texts are in carol form, a combination of refrain parts and stanzas, the books provide an opportunity to examine the form’s identity and significance within fifteenth- century English songwriting. The thesis is in three parts and the first introduces critical approaches to the manuscripts and the carol, followed by an examination of the books and their contexts, especially manuscripts with which the anthologies have textual connections. The central section investigates the songs’ production and circulation by examining textual networks, how the anthologies were written, how the songs may have been performed, and the role of memory in shaping the songs and anthologies. The final part explores women’s role in the songs, the range of forms used, and the centrality of the many imagined voices and performances within the texts. This is the first extended study focused upon these three sources, which as anthologies offer insight into ways songs were shared and organised. I investigate the role of short collections and booklets in the construction of longer anthologies, and the possibility of an especially productive song culture within 3 fifteenth-century East Anglia. Rather than repeating assertions familiar from earlier studies of carols that the anthologies’ songs are either popular or clerical productions, I suggest how the anthologies engage with communal performance cultures and participate in varied song traditions, from liturgy to lullaby. Word count: 98, 735 4 Acknowledgements This PhD was undertaken with financial support from the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and in the fourth year from University College London Department of English. I thank my supervisor, Ardis Butterfield, for her guidance throughout this project. The Department of English at UCL has been a supportive and stimulating environment to work in and I thank in particular Marilyn Corrie and Henry Woudhuysen for their advice and interest. I am also grateful to Bernard O’Donoghue for introducing me to the medieval lyric. I thank my parents, Lucie and Stephen Goodwin, who have been the constant source of encouragement and inspiration throughout my education. Lastly and most of all I thank my husband, Eran, who made this possible. 5 Contents Volume I Abbreviations 10 Part One: Introduction to the Songbooks Chapter 1. Introduction 13 Chapter 2. Approaches and Categories 23 I. The Manuscripts Debated 23 II. Carol and Lyric 28 III. The Carol: Establishing a Genre 32 IV. Fourteenth-Century Carols: Shape and Language 45 V. Fifteenth-Century Carols: Shape and Burden 54 VI. Methods 62 Chapter 3. The Manuscripts and their Contexts 68 I. The Three Manuscripts 69 II. Further Manuscripts and Printed Books 87 III. Norfolk 104 Part Two: Approaching and Exploring Communal Song Chapter 4. The Song Text 124 I. Identifying the Text: Page, Performance and Versions 126 II. Burdens and Bounding the Carol 141 Chapter 5. Writing Songs 153 I. The Authority of the Book 155 II. Characterising Writing 167 III. Books Personal and Anonymous 173 Chapter 6. Performing Songs 182 6 I. Performance Contexts 183 II. The Notated Repertoire 196 III. Representation of Song: Why does Performance Matter? 209 Chapter 7. Remembering Songs 215 I. Mnemonic Songs 217 II. Song and Book: Representations of Transmission 223 III. Rhetoric and Liturgy 235 IV. Making and Using an Archive of Communal Song 244 Part Three: Mixed Voices and Forms Chapter 8. Women and Communal Song 250 I. Introduction: Whose Communal Song? 250 II. Women Singing and Women Sung 257 III. Women’s Songs 270 Chapter 9. Breaking up the Songs or Breaking into Song 292 I. Singing Scripture 293 II. Latin Songs and Translation 301 III. Ballads and Stories 306 IV. Playful Songs and Parody 315 Chapter 10. Conclusion 330 Bibliography 337 Volume II 371 Appendices Appendix A. Transcriptions 372 British Library, Sloane MS 2593 372 7 St John’s College, Cambridge, MS S.54 427 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Eng. poet. e.1 443 Appendix B. Tables 509 Appendix C. Lincoln College, Oxford, MS Lat. 141 520 8 Illustrations [Illustrations have been removed from this e-thesis for copyright reasons.] 3.1 British Library, Sloane MS 2593, ff. 10v-11r 71 3.2 Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1, f. 11r 78 3.3 Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1, f. 20r 79 3.4 Balliol College, Oxford, MS 354, p. 465 92 3.5 Huntington Library, Christmas carolles newely inprynted, STC 5204.5, pp. 28-29 101 Image produced by ProQuest as part of Early English Books Online. Inquiries may be made to: ProQuest 789 E. Eisenhower Parkway Box 1346 Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 USA Telephone: 734.761.4700 Email: [email protected] Web page: www.il.proquest.com 4.1 Bodleian Library, Oxford, MS Eng. poet. e.1, f. 60r 127 6.1 Bodleian Library, MS Arch. Selden. B. 26, f. 7r 200 6.2 Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1, f. 41v 204 7.1 British Library, Additional MS 49622, f. 8r 220 8.1 Mediaeval Carols, ed. John Stevens, 2A 284 9.1 The Annunciation to Mary and The Visitation, fifteenth-century stained glass, Norwich, St Peter Mancroft 297 9 Abbreviations BL British Library, London Bod. Bodleian Library, Oxford CUL Cambridge University Library, Cambridge CURSUS CURSUS: An Online Resource of Medieval Liturgical Texts (http://www.cursus.uea.ac.uk) EEC Richard Leighton Greene, ed., The Early English Carols, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977) EL Carleton Brown, ed., English Lyrics of the XIIIth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1932) ESPB Francis James Child, ed., The English and Scottish Popular Ballads, 5 vols (New York: The Folklore Press and Pageant Book Company, 1956) IMEV Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: British Library, 2005) LALME Angus McIntosh, M. L. Samuels and Michael Benskin, A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English, 4 vols (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1986) MC John Stevens, ed., Mediaeval Carols, Musica Britannica IV, 2nd edn (London: Stainer and Bell Ltd, 1958) MED Hans Kurath et al., eds, Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1954-2001) NLS National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh 10 OED The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007) RLXIV Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XIVth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924) RLXV Carleton Brown, ed., Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939) SL Rossell Hope Robbins, ed., Secular Lyrics of the XIVth and XVth Centuries, 2nd edn (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1955) STC A. W. Pollard and G. R. Redgrave et al., A Short-Title Catalogue of Books printed in England, Scotland and Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad, 1475-1640, 2nd edn (London: The Bibliographical Society, 1986) TM William A. Ringler, Jr, Bibliography and Index of English Verse in Manuscript 1501-1558 (London: Mansell, 1992) TP William A. Ringler, Jr, Bibliography and Index of English Verse Printed 1476-1558 (London: Mansell 1988) Walther Hans Walther, Initia Carminum ac Versum Medii Aevi Posterioris Latinorum: Alphabetisches Verzeichnis der Versanfänge mittellateinischer Dichtungen (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1959) 11 Conventions All quotations from the three manuscripts use my own transcriptions, given in Appendix A. Numbers refer to those used in the Appendix, with the letter S to indicate Sloane, J to indicate St John’s, and E to indicate Eng. poet. The songs’ IMEV numbers are given in the Appendix. References where appropriate give stanza number and line number within the stanza, following the conventions in EEC (carol burdens disrupt attempts to number lines consecutively). For the sake of consistency, this method is used to number the lines of all songs in the manuscripts. Conventions of transcriptions are described in Appendix A. Quotations from other manuscripts giving folio numbers rather than references to editions used are also my transcriptions, used where appropriate (for example, to show how a manuscript represents a text). Where published translations are not specified, translations are my own. 12 Part One: Introduction to the Songbooks Chapter 1. Introduction The fifteenth century deserves a place of honour within the study of English song because it is the first period from which substantial volumes of English vernacular songs survive, written down either with or without music. They can be found in manuscripts that include authorial lyric collections and polyphonic music-books, and scribbled in margins and on flyleaves. Hundreds survive in coherently planned anthologies that testify to the confidence and popularity of written song in pre-Reformation England. This thesis focuses upon three such anthologies that together illuminate the ways that songs were written and shared in the fifteenth century. The three manuscripts are British Library, Sloane MS 2593 (Sloane), Bodleian Library, MS Eng. poet. e.1 (Eng. poet.), and St John’s College, Cambridge, MS S.54 (St John’s).