Participatory Reading in Late-Medieval England Blatt Ulture C Iterature 781526 117991 Manchester Medieval L and 9 ISBN 978-1-5261-1799-1 ISBN
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Late-medieval England witnessed a remarkable rise in the MANCHESTER prominence of poetry and the sophistication of the English England late-medieval in reading Participatory vernacular, to which both writers and readers contributed MEDIEVAL in fundamental ways. But while the transition of the LITERATURE medieval writer into the modern author, with a modern AND CULTURE understanding of authority and the ownership of a text, has been extensively studied, the crucial role of the reader has been overlooked. Tracing affinities between digital and medieval media, this book explores how participation helped to define reading practices and shape relations between writers and readers from the late fourteenth to early sixteenth centuries. It draws on a wide variety of works – from Chaucer to banqueting poems and wall-texts – to demonstrate how medieval writers and readers engaged with practices familiar in digital media today. This includes such apparently modern ideas as crowd-sourced editing, nonlinear apprehension, mobility, temporality and forensic materiality. Writers turned to these practices in order to control readers’ engagement in ways that would benefit their reputations and encourage the transmission and interpretation of their texts. Readers, meanwhile, pursued their own agendas, which often conflicted with or simply ignored writers’ intentions. Shedding light on a previously unexplored area, Participatory reading in late-medieval England will be of interest to students and scholars of medieval literature and the history of the book, as well as those interested in the long history of media studies. Blatt Heather Blatt is Associate Professor of English Literature at Florida International University Participatory reading in late-medieval England Front cover— Master of Cardinal Bourbon, ISBN 978-1-5261-1799-1 Anna Teaching the Virgin Reading, c. 1500. The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles. www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk 9 781526 117991 Heat Her Blatt BLATT379_PPC.indd 1 12/03/2018 14:14 PARTICIPATORYsanctity and pornography READING IN LATE-MEDIEVALin medieval culture ENGLAND Series editors: Anke Bernau, David Matthews and James Paz Series founded by: J. J. Anderson and Gail Ashton Advisory board: Ruth Evans, Nicola McDonald, Andrew James Johnston, Sarah Salih, Larry Scanlon and Stephanie Trigg Manchester Medieval Literature and Culture publishes monographsFounding series and editors essay j. j. anderson, collections gail ashton comprising new research informed by current critical methodologiesThis series is broad in on scope the and receptiveliterary to innovation, bringing together a variety of approaches. It is intended to include monographs, collections of commissioned essays, cultures of the Middle Ages. We are interested in all periods,and from editions the and/or early translations Middle of texts, Ages with a focus on English and English-related literature and culture. It embraces medieval writings of many different kinds (imaginative, through to the late, and we include post-medieval engagementshistorical, political,with scientific,and representa- religious) as well as post-medieval treatments of medieval tions of the medieval period (or ‘medievalism’). ‘Literature’ material.is taken An important in a broad aim of the sense, series is thatto contributions to it should be written in a style which is accessible to a wide range of readers. include the many different medieval genres: imaginative, historical, political, scientific, religious. While we welcome contributions on the diverse culturesalready published of medieval Britain Language and imagination in the Gawain-poems and are happy to receive submissions on Anglo-Norman, J.Anglo-Latin J. Anderson and Celtic writ- ings, we are also open to work on the Middle Ages in EuropeWater more and fire: widely, The myth andof the Flood beyond. in Anglo-Saxon England Daniel Anlezark The Parlement of Foulys (by Geoffrey Chaucer) Titles Available in the Series D. S. Brewer (ed.) Greenery: Ecocritical readings of late medieval English literature 6. A knight’s legacy: Mandeville and Mandevillian lore in earlyGillian modern Rudd England Ladan Niayesh (ed.) 7. Rethinking the South English Legendaries Heather Blurton and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (eds) 8. Between earth and heaven: Liminality and the Ascension of Christ in Anglo-Saxon literature Johanna Kramer 9. Transporting Chaucer Helen Barr 10. Sanctity as literature in late medieval Britain Eva von Contzen and Anke Bernau (eds) 11. Reading Robin Hood: Content, form and reception in the outlaw myth Stephen Knight 12. Annotated Chaucer bibliography: 1997–2010 Mark Allen and Stephanie Amsel 13. Roadworks: Medieval Britain, medieval roads Valerie Allen and Ruth Evans (eds) 14. Love, history and emotion in Chaucer and Shakespeare: Troilus and Criseyde and Troilus and Cressida Andrew James Johnston, Russell West-Pavlov and Elisabeth Kempf (eds) 15. The Scottish Legendary: Towards a poetics of hagiographic narration Eva von Contzen 16. Nonhuman voices in Anglo-Saxon literature and material culture James Paz 17. The church as sacred space in Middle English literature and culture Laura Varnam 18. Aspects of knowledge: Preserving and reinventing traditions of learning in the Middle Ages Marilina Cesario and Hugh Magennis (eds) 19. Visions and ruins: Cultural memory and the untimely Middle Ages Joshua Davies BLATT 9781526117991 PRINT.indd 2 14/03/2018 11:32 Participatory reading in late-medieval England HEATHER BLATT Manchester University Press Copyright © Heather Blatt 2018 The right of Heather Blatt to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 1 5261 1799 1 hardback ISBN 978 1 5261 1800 4 open access First published 2018 This electronic version has been made freely available under a Creative Commons (CC-BY-NC-ND) licence. Details of the licence can be viewed at https://creative commons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/ The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Typeset by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Stockport, Cheshire Contents Acknowledgements vi Introduction: Reading practices and participation in digital and medieval media 1 Part I: Participatory discourse 1 Corrective reading: Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde and John Lydgate’s Troy Book 27 2 Nonlinear reading: the Orcherd of Syon, Titus and Vespasian, and Lydgate’s Siege of Thebes 62 Part II: Evoking participation 3 Reading materially: John Lydgate’s ‘Soteltes for the coronation banquet of Henry VI’ 105 4 Reading architecturally: the wall texts of a Percy family manuscript and the Poulys Daunce of St Paul’s Cathedral 128 5 Reading temporally: Thomas of Erceldoune’s prophecy, Eleanor Hull’s Commentary on the penitential Psalms, and Thomas Norton’s Ordinal of alchemy 167 Conclusion: Nonreading in late-medieval England 193 Appendices 204 Bibliography 235 Index 256 Acknowledgements As will surprise no readers of a work focused on participation, its production involved the support and contributions of many members of my family, friends, and communities of colleagues. I would like to thank them for their aid and contributions, great and small. To Mary Erler, Martin Chase, Mary Bly, and Jocelyn Wogan- Brown, who read and commented on the nascent version of this book when it began life as a dissertation, most sincere thanks. My grateful appreciation goes to James Sutton, Nathaniel Cadle, Jason Pearl of the Department of English at Florida International University for welcoming me when I arrived, and supporting me in the years that have followed as I laboured to bring this book to fruition. Jason and Nathaniel, to you, Nandini Dhar, Martha Schoolman, Wanda Raiford, and Vanessa Sohan, I offer my heart- felt thanks for wise counsel, helpful feedback, and timely prodding. I would also like to thank Tovah Bender for critical insights on the framing of this book, and Mary Flannery and Carrie Griffin for their suggestions on a chapter, and the encouragement their interest provided to my work on the whole. To other colleagues and friends, Janice McCoy, Erika Harlitz Kern, Rhona Trauvitch, Allison Adair, Mary Kate Hurley, and Sarah Noonan, thank you for wading through drafts early and late, and offering the insights and suggestions that improved it immeasurably. My appreciation to Elizaveta Strakhov for her enthusiasm over my naming of ‘extra- codexical texts’, which inspired me to engage in the timely and necessary revision needed to incorporate it here. To Lois Swales, who worked with me on a project that became the seed that led me to study medieval reading practices, thank you. Maija Birenbaum assisted me with some tricky bits of the French of England, for which I’m very appreciative. For brief, but influential comments at conferences that encouraged me to continue work at pivotal Acknowledgements vii moments, I thank Robert Yeager, Michael Sargent, Holly Crocker, Martin Foys, Julia Boffey, and Christopher Baswell. My appreciation extends to the staff members who assisted me at the Morgan Library & Museum, the Newberry Library, the British Library, the Bodleian