Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 9781526130648

Citation preview

Elisab e t h S alt e r

Popular reading in E n g l i s h c. 1400–1600

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 1

21/05/2012 10:15:01

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 2

21/05/2012 10:15:01

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

Elisabeth Salter

Manchester University Press Manchester

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 3

21/05/2012 10:15:01

Copyright © Elisabeth Salter 2012 The right of Elisabeth Salter 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, UK www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN  978 0 7190 7799 9 hardback First published 2012 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 Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 4

21/05/2012 10:15:01

Contents Contents

Contents

Acknowledgements

page vii

List of illustrations

ix

1 Introduction to methods and terms

1

2 Religious reading and reform

47

3 Making meaning from moral reading

93

4 Practical texts: husbandry and carving

137

5 Fictional literature: Gawain in a Middle English miscellany

177

6 Conclusion

224

Bibliography 235 Index 257

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 5

21/05/2012 10:15:01

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 6

21/05/2012 10:15:01

Acknowledgements

This book was in process when I taught the ‘Blotterature’ class of 2007/8 in Aberystwyth. I want to thank them for their interest and insights. I am grateful to the staff of the National Library of Wales and particularly the Manuscripts Librarian Dr Maredudd Ap Huw for help with finding things. I would like to thank my colleagues in the Department of English & Creative Writing at Aberystwyth University for continuing to make it a good place to be, and to the people at Manchester University Press, particularly Matthew Frost, for their assistance. I thank the AHRC peer reviewers and also the Press’s readers for their positive comments, and The Hughes Parry Fund at Aberystwyth University which generously contributed to the cost of reproducing the colour plates. For their interest in the subject since before this book came about and for helpful comments, I am grateful to Dr Emily Richards, Dr Helen Wicker, Dr Rob Lutton, Prof Michael Clanchy, Dr Tiffany Atkinson, and also Anne Worrall, and I will thank Dr Ian Davidson for his help with it all. For sharing with me their pleasure in the materiality of books, I would like to dedicate this book to my first nephew, Daniel Francis Collier, and now also to my second nephew, Alexander Michael Collier, and to my son, Gruffydd Salter Davidson.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 7

21/05/2012 10:15:01

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 8

21/05/2012 10:15:01

List of illustrations List of Illustrations

List of illustrations

Plates The plates can be found between pages 118 and 119 1 CCAL H/L-3-4, ‘The Canterbury prayer book’, fol. 66v. Reproduced with permission from Canterbury Cathedral Library. 2 NLW Peniarth 394D, p. 118. Reproduced by permission of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales. 3 NLW Peniarth 394D, p. 116. Reproduced by permission of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales. 4 NLW Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 12r. The opening of ‘Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle’. Reproduced by permission of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales. 5 NLW Brogyntyn 2.1, fol. 79v ‘Erthe upon erthe’. Reproduced by permission of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales. Figures 1 CCAL H/L-4-10 (R 330), The primer in Englishe and Latine (London, Jhon kyngston and Henry Sutton, 1557), p. 265. Reproduced with permission from Canterbury Cathedral Library.

page 64

2 CCAL H/L-4-10 (R 330), The primer in Englishe and Latine (London, Jhon kyngston and Henry Sutton, 1557), p. 266. Reproduced with permission from Canterbury Cathedral Library.

65

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 9

21/05/2012 10:15:02

x

List of Illustrations

3 Anon, Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn de Worde: London, c. 1510), STC (2nd edn) 212863, Sig Biv v–C i r. Taken from A.2.18 (4) and reproduced by permission of the Master and Fellows of St John’s College, Cambridge.

104–5

4 NLW Brogyntyn 2.1, fol. 201r ‘Dear son leave thy weeping’. Reproduced by permission of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales.

195

5 NLW Brogyntyn 2.1, fol. 150r ‘Ever say well’. Reproduced by permission of Llyfrgell Genedlaethol Cymru / The National Library of Wales.

201

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 10

21/05/2012 10:15:02

1

Introduction to methods and terms Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

Introduction to methods and terms

General introduction The nature and experience of reading, for the common and uncommon reader across the centuries, is an enduring subject of interest for academics, journalists, fiction writers, poets, and those straddling these definitions.1 This book focuses on the period c. 1400–1600 and there is a lot of surviving evidence for popular reading in English during these two centuries.2 I examine four kinds of literature in four case studies, which represent an important constituent part of the whole body of popular texts available for study c. 1400–1600.3 Other studies, which I hope may follow, might examine some of the many other forms of available evidence for popular reading in medieval and early modern England. There has been much excellent work on reading in recent years. One distinctive element of this book is that it attempts to uncover evidence for the reading practices and experiences of real, rather than ideal, readers using evidence that is found within the material of book and manuscript itself, or within the structure of a specific genre of literature. This does not, in general, mean examining the marks and traces left by real readers (although these are not ignored on the occasions that they are present). I explain my method and its underpinnings in this first chapter. Chapters 2 to 5 each take a themed case study investigating a specific kind of literature: religious in Chapter 2, moral in Chapter 3, practical in Chapter 4, and fictional in Chapter 5. As I explain in this introductory chapter, my intention in writing this book has been to attempt an exploration of some detailed evidence for reading practice and experience. I have chosen to cover a range of types of literature in these case studies and I have begun from specific examples in particular manuscripts and early printed books. The purpose of a case study is not to cover everything about a particular subject.4 Aside from the idea of ‘covering everything’ being intellectually flawed, each of the books I examine takes the investigation in a specific direction. Obviously, as with any investigation of

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 1

21/05/2012 10:15:02

2

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

archival evidence, these ‘directions’ are partly because of decisions I have made and research questions I wish to address but there is also, often, the element of surprise when one examines in detail a medieval or early modern text even if it has been well studied before. Chapter 2’s investigation of religious texts tends to focus on service books such as primers and prayer books. Beginning from one unusual manuscript prayer book, I examine some of the ways that a manuscript itself provides extensive evidence for the reading process in terms of performance, intertextuality, and the connections between word and image. This chapter then proceeds with a consideration of the complex relationships between the changes in religious reading one might reasonably expect across the date range taken for this book and the continuities of reading experience that the evidence of manuscript and early printed book seems to suggest. I ask some questions along the way about why and how some books should be perceived as an easier read than others. Chapter 3’s investigation of moral reading takes as its main focus a collection of popular short stories known as the Gesta Romanorum. The nature and structure of the stories explored in the chapter lend themselves to a conceptually orientated analysis of reading experiences. I emphasise an exploration of how meanings might be made, how symbols may be construed in the different symbolic spheres set up by different stories in the same collection, the impact that these differences may have on reading experience, and the evidence that this provides for the fluid process of making meaning. I explore the role and uses of inscription, making reference to factors outside of the story collection and attempting to convey some of the impact of inscription through the shape of my own narrative. Chapter 4’s investigation of practical texts sets out with a detailed investigation of one manuscript which juxtaposes two ‘practical’ texts, the husbandry treatise attributed to Robert Grosseteste and The Boke of Kervyng, printed by Wynkyn de Worde in the early sixteenth century. The evidence of annotation is used to confirm the existence of this book as a single item in the sixteenth century and also, then, to consider some elements in the psychology of the process of book use and reading. The chapter proceeds with a set of comparisons between different versions of the Grosseteste treatise and between printed and manuscript versions of Grosseteste and the Boke of Kervyng and between Grosseteste and the sixteenth-century Book of Husbandry by John Fitzherbert. Detailed consideration of specific manuscripts provides particular evidence for individual readers’ and writers’ perceptions of the significance of material

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 2

21/05/2012 10:15:02

Introduction to methods and terms

3

issues such as page layout and decoration. I use particular manuscripts to explore these issues and the evidence that ‘scribe–readers’ can provide for fifteenth- and sixteenth-century perceptions of text and reading process.5 Chapter 5’s investigation of fictional literature is based, ostensibly, on one of the Arthurian characters, Gawain. A number of different Gawain stories survive in manuscript and in printed text, and these are discussed in the first part of the chapter with particular reference to understanding and defining popularity and the ways that concepts of orality and literacy are useful. The chapter is guided by manuscript evidence for the organisation of a Middle English miscellany and the making of thematic connections between texts within it. While its focus is on the Gawain story, therefore, the chapter is also very much concerned with the ways that specific issues raised by this miscellany’s contents impact on and provide evidence for likely intended uses and readings of the Gawain story in this particular manuscript context. The combination of texts in this manuscript raises questions about the role and prioritisation of orality for the manuscript’s compiler and its readers, and the book also provides some evidence for the possibilities of creative readings or mis-reading of specific items. The remainder of this introductory chapter is divided into two main sections. The first addresses critical issues which lead to the formation of a vocabulary for the discussion of reading practice and experience. The second addresses the nature of the evidence used in this book including the approach I take to the formation of case studies and associated issues of how to employ empirical evidence in a non empiricist mode. Critical issues forming a vocabulary The history of reading The history of reading is a burgeoning area of scholarly interest at present and this has brought renewed attention to studies of the manuscript and early printed book, especially given the simultaneous revival of interest in material culture.6 Indeed, one of the key scholars of the history of reading, Roger Chartier, frequently asserts the necessary connections between the material form of the text being read and the production of meaning by the reader.7 And in this he often cites important work by D.F. McKenzie discussing how ‘forms effect sense’.8 The issue of materiality has perhaps become particularly resonant in the age of digital technologies and the possible changing nature of reading practices, and the potential ‘reading revolutions’ associated with these.9 Medieval devotional reading has received particular attention often

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 3

21/05/2012 10:15:02

4

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

in relation to the role of religious houses in the promotion of lay literate devotion, particularly in the period approaching the Reformation, which emerges as an important site for the transmission of books and of ideas.10 There has also been some useful recent work on laypeople’s attitudes to devotional, moral, and fictive reading in medieval and early modern society.11 Early modern studies have been particularly strong on the consideration of the materiality of text and its relations to reading, and alongside this there is continued interest in readings of canonical works and in the scholarly reading practices of specific individuals.12 Evidence for reading practice and experience can be elusive. On the subject of practice as part of his discussion of communities of readers, for example, Roger Chartier discussed the ‘disquieting challenge’ of Michel de Certeau’s famous statement about ‘readers as travellers’.13 Chartier extrapolates from this to address the challenging issue at the heart of de Certeau’s statement, which concerns the fixed and conservative nature of written text in comparison to the ephemeral nature of reading practice.14 He identifies the paradox between asserting the ‘creative and inventive force of practice’ and the ways that tactics of reading are necessarily informed by the logical systems of the written page.15 Similarly, Chartier proposes that it is inappropriate to make a dichotomy between practice and discourse (where practice is reading and discourse is the texts being read) to the effect that practice enables creativity and inventiveness whereas discourse brings order, domination and authority.16 And Chartier also suggests that the experience of being ‘[o]n the edge of the cliff’ (taken from de Certeau’s image of Michel Foucault’s work), is appropriate for all intellectual approaches having at their heart relations between the ‘products of discourse and social practices’.17 He goes on to describe the ways that a set of scholars (Norbert Elias, Phillipe Aries, Michel de Certeau, Louis Marin, D.F. McKenzie) have been influential in the formation of his own now very influential version of cultural history that, once emancipated from the traditional definitions of the history of mentalities, came to pay more attention to the modalities of appropriation than to statistical distribution, more to processes of constructing meaning than to the unequal circulation of objects, and more to seeing connections among practices and representations than to inventorying mental tools. These shifts (one, for example, changed the history of the production and diffusion of the book into a history of the practices of reading) were based on parallels and comparisons that historians borrowed from the works of the authors discussed here, all of whom ‘did’ history but none of whom was, either by training or by intellectual practice, an ‘ordinary’ historian.18

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 4

21/05/2012 10:15:02

Introduction to methods and terms

5

McKenzie’s proposition (brought to life frequently and vigorously in the work of Roger Chartier) is that a text truly comes to life when a reader makes it his or her own and that this process of making meaning needs to be understood in a historicised way such that it is the moment (in history) at which the reading is taking place that is central to the reconstruction of the meaning of a text by a reader. The statement that ‘[n]ew readers of course make new texts, and … their new meanings are a function of their new forms’, extracted by Chartier, is, as he points out, very useful because it makes clear that in order to reconstruct reading practice it is necessary to consider it as a set of issues including the reader’s competence, expectations and habits alongside the ‘forms in which the texts are presented for reading’.19 And Michel de Certeau’s readers as travellers, also often frequently cited by Chartier, provide a model for what might happen during reading.20 Both de Certeau’s and McKenzie’s approaches may be applied to a range of historical periods. Regarding reading experience and its relationship to interpretation, Stanley Fish has recently addressed some of the difficulties of pinpointing this elusive subject: if the intention, form, and the shape of the reader’s experience are simply different ways of referring to (different perspectives on) the same interpretive act, what is that act an interpretation of? I cannot answer that question but neither, I would claim, can anyone else.21

Wolfgang Iser’s statement that ‘[r]eading has the same structure as experience’ is also useful as an abstract concept insofar as it encourages an idea of reading as a state of mind or being which has a set of perceptive structures.22 Iser also uses a concept of ‘entanglement’ to explain the connections between the process of reading and the process of experiencing. ‘Entanglement’ is a useful concept as it makes connections between the conceptualisation of reading and postmodern thinking about the processes by which meanings are made in the social relations and the individual experiences which constitute culture. In order to understand more about the reading practices and experiences of real readers in the period c. 1400–1600 (or any other), what is needed is more empirically based work which assesses the evidence of book and manuscript in some detail.23 In this book, the case study chapters seek to do this whilst I also use various theoretical approaches in order to interpret the empirical evidence in relation to the processes of reception, consumption and creativity in which the reader engages.24 Some pioneering studies have sought to understand reading habits

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 5

21/05/2012 10:15:02

6

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

more closely by examining the surviving manuscripts whose ownership can be traced to particular individuals or networks of people from specific social groups and classes, often the gentry or the wealthy townsperson,25 although it has recently been pointed out that evidence for the ownership of books is not, in itself, evidence for reading.26 Nevertheless, both ownership and provenance are often very significant in uncovering the likely readerships of a particular book, and this biographically orientated work on book ownership and readers has been a necessary precursor to approaches, such as the one I propose here, which seek to prioritise reading practice for readers whose identity is not necessarily known by name and social group. Other studies of manuscripts with an interest in reading and use tend to focus on provenance, circulation and transmission,27 and on theories, rather than practices, of reading.28 William Sherman has recently proposed that there remains a ‘more or less adversarial division between those who study “imagined”, “implied” or “ideal” readers and those who study the traces of “real”, “actual” or “historical” readers’.29 My priority in this book is towards the second group as identified by Sherman although I do not wish to be adversarial about it, and in working with popular readers the concept of actual, real and historical readers does not mean named or known people but, in general, the unnamed masses. I therefore use reconstructions based in part on the models provided by studies of imagined and implied readers.30 What is popular? What is culture? Definitions of ‘popular’ and of ‘popular culture’ are varied now and have varied a lot over the last few centuries and there remains, currently, a healthy uncertainty about precise definitions for this term.31 Raymond Williams explored this issue in his consideration of cultural ‘keywords’, providing some useful general definitions based on changing attitudes from the sixteenth to the twentieth century.32 He identifies the way that although a modern sense of popular has been understood to mean ‘widely favoured’ or ‘well liked’, yet there lingers the pejorative view of ‘popular’ in relation to, for example, popular literature where this means inferior kinds of work.33 Other definitions of popular culture are based on modern conceptions of mass consumption and communication, and tend to understand popular forms as either substandard or banal. Here, as Jane Gilbert shows, ‘mass culture is considered to represent the degradation undergone by the popular as a result of modern Western social forms’.34 Forms of popular culture existing earlier than this modern age of mass consumption are viewed, by contrast, as more valuable and

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 6

21/05/2012 10:15:02

Introduction to methods and terms

7

positive. This definition makes a set of perhaps mistaken assumptions about what constitutes ‘mass’ consumption, locating it in the modern era, largely after the nineteenth century. A further definition discussed by Williams uses the idea of a folk culture which tends to be defined as powerful and elemental and belonging to a past before mass culture spoilt the particularity and native energy of the people. Joyce Coleman’s review of scholarship ‘beyond’ that of Walter Ong’s universalising schema for orality and literacy helpfully demonstrates the problematic assumption that oral ‘folk’ compositions lack structural complexity.35 Peter Burke’s proposition that popular culture is ‘everyone’s culture that could be consumed by both wide audiences and restricted ones’ therefore remains useful and at once avoids the problems of the more structurally based definitions of, for example, ‘folk’ which are found in Williams’ discussion.36 A similarly inclusive sense of who might gain access to the artefacts and activities of popular culture is found running through the collection of essays Understanding Popular Culture.37 In his revised introduction for the 1994 reprint of Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe, Burke identifies that, among the morass of scholarship on popular culture for the fifteen years since the first publication of his seminal text, debate has tended to focus on two main questions: ‘What is popular?’ and ‘What is culture?’.38 The issue of how culture is constructed is relevant to this study as it forms part of the underpinning to an understanding of a historicised reconstruction of real readers’ practices and experiences and how these may be construed. Clifford Geertz’s semiotic definition of culture as ‘webs of significance’, the analysis of which is an ‘interpretative one in search of meaning’, has been very influential and is still widely used in humanities scholarship.39 Roger Chartier has discussed the possibility of ‘a provisional distinction between culture as a specific domain of artefacts and practices’ (and this would include books and reading) and ‘culture as an anthropological dimension present in any practice’. His first definition uses the concept of the ‘cultural field’ which is attributed to Pierre Bourdieu, indicating that this identification of a separation between different elements of cultural practice tends towards a structuralist approach.40 Regarding the problems of defining culture, Burke also reflects on the distinctions that might be made between objects and specific activities on the one hand and the everyday practices of life on the other. He reflects that while he did try to ‘take account of everyday life’ in the first edition of the book, ‘[i]n practice, … the book concentrates on a narrower range of objects’.41 I find most useful models for the definition and construal of culture

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 7

21/05/2012 10:15:02

8

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

that are based on an assumption of less coherence than the coherence and structuralism approaches, such as that taken by Geertz, imply.42 Renato Rosaldo suggests that ‘rather than the self-contained whole made up of coherent patterns, culture can arguably be conceived as a more porous array of intersections where distinct processes crisscross from within and beyond its borders’.43 James Clifford writes that ‘“culture” is always relational, an inscription of communicative processes that exist, historically, between subjects in relations of power’.44 And Jean-Loup Amselle’s mestizo logic refers to ‘culture’ as a ‘reservoir of conflictual or peaceful practices used by its actors to continually renegotiate their identity’.45 The implications of such approaches, which see culture as a dynamic process, are that (although working within the restrictions of historical contingency) symbols, signs and representations have disrupted meanings. These meanings are dependent, at least in part, on the pragmatic context, and available for creative innovation (as part of the practice and experience of reading, for example).46 This use of ‘disrupted meanings’ is not intended to replace a simple concept of structure with a simple concept of complexity.47 Two other important concepts, emulation and appropriation, are tied into this way of understanding cultural formation as a process of disruption. Roger Chartier, for example, identifies the ‘subtle game of appropriations, reutilizations and redirections’ involved in cultural transmission, noting that ‘differing cultural configurations criss-cross and dovetail in practices, representations, or cultural products.’48 The business of emulation and its cognate ‘aspiration’, similarly, need to be understood as creative processes which do not follow a clear set of rules and logics. Despite the constraints of cultural expectation and possibility, a ‘diversity of meanings’ is available (to a reader), depending on the context in which that reading is taking place, and the particular perception of the emulator.49 On the matter of defining popular culture, Johannes Fabian describes the situation in which although current scholarship such as that cited above would tend to deny an absolute definition of the concept ‘culture’; nevertheless, the practices which are performed by individuals and written about by ethnographers are real: This is why concepts such as (popular) culture are anything but a matter of definition. Consequently, when we want to defend the notion of popular culture, we should concentrate on what it makes appear and become known, rather than agonize about the adjective ‘popular’.50

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 8

21/05/2012 10:15:02

Introduction to methods and terms

9

Fabian’s suggestion that overmuch recourse to defining the term ‘popular’ might come in the way of investigating modes of popular behaviour is a warning against a structuralist mode of applying expected categories onto the subjects of study.51 What he seems to propose instead is an ethnographic method of allowing the subject or the body of evidence to speak and define the categories him-, her- or itself. This is borne out by his autobiographical description of how his approach to studying popular culture developed. Fabian recounts his realisations about his early work on Jamaa, a popular religious movement found in the Shaba region of Zaire.52 He realised that what he had initially been pursuing was ‘a movement’ which he was viewing in isolation from a whole range of other activities. ‘In fact religion’, he writes, was just one domain and one kind of discourse that, together with music painting and theater, made up a vast complex of thought, representations, and performances. And that was popular culture.53

Most of the people who inhabit popular culture in any period are not traceable as individuals and not recorded as part of the grand narrative of history. The study of ‘forgotten peoples’, ‘history from below’ and ‘mentalité’ forms an important part of the historiography of my use of the term popular culture.54 To summarise, the small-scale studies of microhistory and also the large-scale studies of the Annales School have both served to legitimate investigations of popular culture.55 Carlo Ginzburg’s work has been very influential, for example. His study of the miller of Friuli reveals details about the mentality of one peasant that would otherwise have been lost behind the general heading of ‘heretic’.56 This study also directly relates to the matter of reading or, at least, mis-readings. There is also a debt to pay to some pioneering scholars in medieval and Renaissance studies.57 Marxist work on the peasantry has also helped to legitimise the detailed consideration of the lives of ordinary individuals living in this historical period. The possibility of gaining access to otherwise unheard voices and experiences of men and women of the medieval and early modern period has driven my research into popular reading.58 This might on the surface seem similar to the New Historicist agenda proposed as a ‘commitment to the value of the single voice’ but it is not.59 Rather, my aim is to understand more about the experiences and practices of the individual (unknown) reader by close attention to the perceptions, practices and experiences of ‘history’s actors’ as informed by their social world and the limitations and opportunities which construct this.60

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 9

21/05/2012 10:15:02

10

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

Studies of popular literature and popular reading In term of popular literature, Peter Burke’s definition of popular culture means studying the texts which seem to have the widest possible circulation amongst what might be called a reading public.61 As Roger Chartier has pointed out, this remains awkward to prove absolutely, especially if one resists, as I also do, a rationale based entirely on quantifications.62 However, the reasonably frequent occurrence of book bequests from the fifteenth century onwards indicate that there was some circulation of reading matter intended for private use in local society. Bequest evidence also proves that some of this literature was devotional and tends to suggest that less of the popularly circulated literature was from genres of fictive literature (although testamentary evidence does not disprove the availability of such literature).63 Sherman’s study of the use, by Renaissance readers, of the Bible and The Book of Common Prayer notes and corrects the ‘relative lack of attention’ given to religious books in the Renaissance despite the growing number of religious texts available to the reader from the period he studies (c. 1530–1700). He notes that there are more studies of ‘used books from the fields of literature, rhetoric, politics, law, mathematics and medicine’. Rather than being a direct measure of interest, or lack of it, in devotional literature, this might indicate the prevalence of Renaissance studies on elite reading where books of rhetoric, mathematics and so on were more likely to be used.64 And Heidi Brayman Hackel’s study which looks to a wider sector of the reading population of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century England by ‘displac[ing] both the singular “ideal” or transhistorical reader and the extraordinary male reader’ is a welcome foray into the field of popular reading practices.65 In assessing the subject of popular literature, some quantification can be useful, as, for example, with understanding the number of print runs for one of the practical texts, John Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry, as a sign of its enduring popularity and saleability.66 Some very useful evidence for the quantities and prices of texts in circulation using booksellers’ accounts is provided by H.S. Bennett. He proposes that the accounts of Oxford bookseller John Dorne are ‘the most illuminating’. Bennett notes that ‘the price for broadsheets of ballads and the like was a halfpenny or a penny; a single leaf of carols, or of popular lives of saints, or prognostications, or books on carving or husbandry all cost a penny’. Dorne’s accounts also provide insights into the cost of other sorts of books ‘from the rhyme of Robin Hood for 2d, or the romances of Sir Eglamour, or Robert the Devil for 3d or 3½d, and so up to the massive volume of The Golden Legend for 3s4d or 3s8d, or Lyndewode’s Constitutions bound in

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 10

21/05/2012 10:15:02

Introduction to methods and terms

11

leather for 6s8d’.67 These are useful figures giving an idea of the economic value of books. Luckily, however (seeing as such evidence is sparse), these quantities do not in themselves describe the nature of reading practice or experience nor, indeed, do they provide the only evidence for this. Throughout the twentieth century the subjects of popular reading and also popular texts received scholarly attention, but often with reference to a later historical period than the one discussed here.68 Some of the many excellent manuscript studies touch on possible reading strategies for specific manuscripts and their likely or known audiences: male, female or both; lay and religious.69 However, the general trend is not towards reconstructions of reading practice and experience for the unknown reader. In her consideration of audience, Jane Gilbert’s theoretical introduction to the volume The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance approaches the study of popular reading.70 Undercutting the structuralist tendencies of the definitions of popular culture she discusses earlier in the introduction, Gilbert identifies ‘a multiplicity of inscribed reader-positions and ideological identifications’ in the romances studied in that volume. In demonstrating the vitality of medieval popular romance and its readers, the volume, Gilbert posits, turns away from the ‘deadening effect on interpretation’ that definitions of popular as a simple folk culture have had.71 Margaret Spufford’s assessment of the ‘mental world’ of the reader in Small Books and Pleasant Histories is based on the later seventeenth-century period, where the cheap print known as chapbooks (their nineteenthcentury name) was being produced in significant quantities. These were sold ‘by chapmen up and down the country’ for 2d.72 Her comparative examples tend towards the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, rather than the earlier period which I consider here.73 In the opening chapter, Spufford usefully draws attention to the difficulties of how the fact that reading matter was available can be translated into evidence for the ‘sensibility of English rural society’.74 She responds, here, to Donald Davie’s somewhat pessimistic proposition that we have ‘no method by which to translate the quantitative facts of so many copies printed and sold year after year, into the qualitative consideration of how they conditioned the sensibility of the English-speaking peoples’.75 In his work on the material culture of popular texts, particularly the livrets bleus of sixteenth and seventeenth century France, Chartier has identified evidence for the deliberate alteration of textual formats in the production of books for the popular market.76 This study of the livrets bleus also enabled Chartier’s exploration of culture as appropriation; an

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 11

21/05/2012 10:15:02

12

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

idea which relates directly to his idea of appropriation being part of the process of cultural transmission more broadly. He views cultural consumption, in which (popular) reading may be included, as not ‘passive or dependent and submissive but as creative, and … sometimes resist[ing] suggested or imposed models’.77 Chartier has also added an important historicising note to his analysis of the livrets bleus. He proposes that during the seventeenth century a situation began to arise in which the books produced cheaply became the books that ‘no longer belong to the elite culture’. This causes him to conclude that this differentiation in the nature of the books means that they become a marker of cultural identity separating the elite from the non-elite reader. By this analysis the popularly available texts become stigmatised as unworthy reading because they are available to the popular classes. This fragmentation of the market, Chartier proposes, drew new ‘cultural boundaries’ between the popular and the elite reader.78 This transition, according to Chartier, is specific to changing conditions of printing during the seventeenth century from which it is possible to infer that the period c. 1400–1600 is a special one for the consideration of popular literatures and popular reading. When considering the broader sphere of popular reading, distinctions between private individual (and perhaps therefore silent reading) and public uses of text become problematic.79 For many lay people, the book-centred reading of private devotion, for example, may well have taken place initially in the public space of the church; the subsequent ‘use’ or ‘borrowing’ of such books possibly being through memory in the privacy of the home. But, as Chartier identifies, it is also problematic to assume that collective reading is popular and elite reading is private.80 To consider the ordinary reader engaged in private reading in a public space requires questions to be asked about the imaginative world of the reader and how interactions between the daily life of public and private practice engage with the reading of such literature. In describing these types of engagement with reading matter it sometimes seems more appropriate to use verbs other than ‘to read’ such as ‘to see’, ‘to use’, ‘to enjoy’, ‘to consume’. Indeed, some scholars of the history of reading are currently choosing to move away from the term ‘reading’ in favour of the term ‘use’.81 Sherman’s employment of ‘use’ is partly aimed at avoiding the word reading’s ‘associations with particular protocols and etiquettes – including privacy, linearity, and cleanliness’, and he also notes that ‘use’ is part of contemporary (i.e. later sixteenth-century) terminology, making it particularly appropriate for his study of Renaissance book use.82 My suggestion

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 12

21/05/2012 10:15:02

Introduction to methods and terms

13

is that all of these activities which seem to require other verbs should be understood as part of the broader sphere of popular reading, especially in the historical timeframe covered in this book. In the prioritisation of literatures in this book, I am very aware that I am discussing just one element of the popular cultures experienced by the readers of these texts. This is necessary at this stage in order to focus sufficiently even on the few examples and categories of popular literature which I discuss here. I try to incorporate a sense of the broader spheres of popular practice and experience where possible. The seminal work of Tessa Watt is admirable in this regard, with its references to, for example, the culture of ale-house textuality where broadsides would be pinned onto the walls for popular consumption. In my discussion of moral reading, for example, I make reference to some place-setting mats which use moralised ditties as part of their decoration. These seem to use short proverbial extracts and the citation of biblical passages in a way which has resonance with the structure of moral literatures. I try, also, to refer to occasions of literate activity which are different from the immediate business of one reader looking at a book, such as individuals’ involvements with textuality through listening, perhaps to a sermon or to a story being read. Regarding the role of the church and sermon as a place where popular reading may be stimulated and enabled, there is evidence to suggest that texts used by priests such as service books and sermon exempla were also available for borrowing by the laity in the parish church, and sometimes chained there.83 The parish church was therefore the earliest form of public library.84 This is significant for the consideration of how such texts might have entered into the popular imagination. Literacy Following the seminal work of Michael Clanchy, it seems safe to state that literate activity, including popular involvements with this, increased during the three centuries following the Norman Conquest. Clanchy identified the very significant role of administrative literatures in a long-term and fundamental cultural change which began with the development of royal record-keeping, and led to the widespread practice of using literate communication at the level of local manorial court and personal transaction.85 Like Clanchy, Brian stock made a persuasive case for the impact of increasing uses of literate communications during the eleventh and twelfth centuries demonstrating the significant role of legal practice in this, and the significant interactions between oral and literate practice that this transition entailed.86 Stock also explored the impact of rising uses of

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 13

21/05/2012 10:15:02

14

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

religious text and suggested that ‘in general, literate theology crystallised the distinction between the internal and external aspects of penitential activity, thereby providing a model for interrelating theory and practice in such influential areas of life as work, contemplation and the search for salvation.’87 During the same period, and into the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries too, the spread of vernacular literatures through heretical movements also augmented this expansion in literate communications.88 In his introduction to the subject of ‘pragmatic literacy’ – by which is meant the uses of writing for law, administration and other practical (sometimes more private) purposes – for example, Richard Britnell gives various examples to support his statement: ‘Grammar schools were a feature of even quite small towns all over Europe by 1300’.89 There is a general consensus that levels of literacy rose amongst the laity during the late medieval and early modern periods. Adam Fox proposed that these rising literacy levels cannot be dissociated from the proliferation of written texts, including administrative documents, and books of fiction, theology and medicine.90 England’s book trade is generally thought to have expanded rapidly from the fifteenth century and to have been stimulated by the increased production of cheap print.91 A centre for production was London but there was also widespread copying of manuscript and printing in the regions as well as importation from the continent.92 Patronage by the aristocratic and wealthy was clearly an important part of this proliferation.93 But the popularity of vernacular works, particularly amongst a widening audience, was probably an equally significant driving force.94 The connections between literacy and reading (and the differences between being able to read and being able to write) have long been a subject of scholarly interest.95 The administrative or ‘pragmatic’ literatures which are central to Clanchy’s hypothesis of rising literacy are not considered in detail in this book. Pragmatic literatures are often produced in the relatively formal setting of the court by professional scribes and are unlikely to be read, therefore, by the majority of the population. These literatures have an ongoing significance for the communities on behalf of whom they are written: they play a significant role in the formation of a community’s sense of itself and its traditions;96 if not read by the local people, then the records were sometimes heard by those assembled at the court occasion.97 The subject of hearing, or ‘aurality’ (where aurality is defined as ‘the reading of books aloud to one or more people’), is the central concern of Joyce Coleman’s important study of medieval textual practices.98 Using her ‘ethnographic methodology of bracketing the texts in time and place,

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 14

21/05/2012 10:15:02

Introduction to methods and terms

15

reading them in their full context, and seeking to work outwards from the detail they provide’, Coleman presents a substantial case for the significance of aurality in the reading practices and experiences of medieval society.99 She demonstrates a persuasive set of evidence for the mutuality of private reading with public reading (and its associated listening audience) in late medieval society. Her evidence mainly relates to ‘uppermiddle- and upper-class elite audiences of both France and England’.100 There is, however, no reason to think that a similar combination of listening and reading activities should not be associated with popular practices of literate activity. Coleman suggests a rise in a more privatised practice of individual reading towards the end of the fifteenth century but it may be coincidental that she finds evidence of this change just as well known texts such as Reynard the Fox are being produced for the popular market.101 As she points out, it is interesting that Caxton’s preface to his 1481 edition of Reynard seems to ridicule the activity of private reading, perhaps indicating that this popular text was probably still intended for an aural reading practice.102 This milieu of literate activity comprises what have been termed literacy practices and literacy events. Shirley Brice Heath coined the term ‘literacy events’ in order to understand a broader spectrum of activities associated with literacy, such that individuals not actually skilled or educated themselves in ‘literacy practices’ (such as the act of writing) might be part of the occasion (or event) in which literacy is used.103 Joyce Coleman’s ‘aurality’ identifies one element in the social nature of this type of reading practice and experience.104 This broader cultural context in which literacy operates was usefully explored by Brian Street, whose ‘ideological model’ aims to understand the role of literacy in society.105 Approaches which examine the ways that literacy becomes part of the process whereby groups and individuals formulate their sense of identity have stemmed from those ‘ideological’ models which sought to view literacy as part of, not outside of, cultural formation. Recent anthropological work, for example, has examined the ways that groups, societies or individuals may appropriate literate practices for their own ends.106And Johannes Fabian’s work on ‘people writers’ very usefully explores the ways that people with limited education in literate practice may appropriate the structures of grammar and syntax for their own purposes, exhibiting a much freer sense of conventional linguistic rules.107 In connection with Fabian’s term ‘people writers’, I use the terms ‘people readers’ and ‘scribe–readers’ in this book. I use the term ‘people reader’ as an attempt to understand the ways that the rules for popular reading may

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 15

21/05/2012 10:15:02

16

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

be freer than those associated with elite or scholarly practice.108 I use the term ‘scribe–reader’ to define an important group of manuscript writers (and annotators) who were non-professional scribes. I use this particularly in my discussion of Brogyntyn 2.1 in Chapter 5, and in relation to the Trinity manuscript containing practical texts discussed in Chapter 4. Using Fabian’s model, I suggest that the rules which govern these scribes’ activities may be different, perhaps freer, than those associated with the educated writer or professional scribe.109 Although I am not discussing the ‘pragmatic’ literatures which tend to be associated with the public literacy events of the court room and community, it is useful to consider the reading of popular fiction, practical books, moral stories and devotional literature as part of the same social world. Those people who were part of the literate community because of their involvement with literacy events, therefore, were also able to be involved, at a similar level, with ‘reading’ those popular literatures I discuss here. Sometimes this involvement with literacy may occur because of family or group reading aloud together; at other times it may involve listening in a church setting. These oral and aural occasions are important. Ian Green suggested, for example, that orality was very significant for the transmission of religious literature in the years following the Reformation and that into the seventeenth century, when Protestantism became more established and there were ‘growing numbers of literate parishioners’, the sermon remained important for the aural transmission of ideas and texts.110 Also important, as Joyce Coleman has explored, are the many aural occasions of textual reception and transmission.111 ‘Oralisation’ is a further but related concept which I use particularly in Chapter 2. By ‘oralisation’ I mean a reading process which involves the appreciation of the sound of the words being read but which might be carried out silently. Oralisation is not, therefore, the same as reading aloud. I propose that oralisation is a common element in reading practices associated with popular texts and this is partly because of their relatively frequent use of simple rhyme schemes. In Chapter 2, particularly, I discuss some evidence for an oralised process of reading and this involves the related issue of what I term ‘proverbialisation’, which refers to the use or making of proverbial phrases and ditties in popular reading. These often have a doggerel rhyme quality and they appear in the official texts as well as in annotations added by readers from other literary sources (such as the Bible) or from their own invention.112 These issues of oralised and proverbialised reading are connected, I suggest, with the creative practices of popular reading including the relative freedoms associated

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 16

21/05/2012 10:15:02

Introduction to methods and terms

17

with the practices of new literates and ‘people readers’ and their abilities, as Johannes Fabian has discussed, to use language freely and often in ways which imitate spoken forms.113 Although acts of reading might involve a person and his or her book in individual acts of making meaning, it is important to incorporate this broader sphere of involvement with ‘reading events’ into the idea of popular reading.114 This is fortunate considering that measuring individual literacy rates amongst the population is notoriously difficult. David Cressy’s attempt to do this using signatures is often mentioned.115 This method provides a quantity of individuals who were able to sign their names (or put a mark), which does not really help with providing a quantity of individuals who were able to read. The quantity is also based on a sample which survives by chance, leaving open to query the number of signatures that have been lost.116 Recourse to quantitative analysis, I would suggest, does not reach to the more fragmented and nuanced issues associated with the recovery of reading practice and experience.117 Towards a vocabulary for reading practice and experience All these issues feed into the vocabulary I use to investigate reading practice and experience. In particular, the influence of the material form of the book on reading experience, the idea of literacy as being part of a social environment rather than private individual acts of writing, the creative possibilities for people-writers and -readers, and the mestizo logic of cultural configuration all inform my approach to reading practice and experience. There is no satisfactorily complete vocabulary but I find it useful to consider reading practice and experience as a process of creativity which is at once constrained by a framework of cultural expectations and also enabled to create novel or innovative interpretations.118 Another way of phrasing this is to suggest that readers may experience a fluidity of meanings according to the moment of reading combined with their own life experiences and knowledge which feed into that moment. Reading practice and experience are highly specific to individual moments whilst also having generalisable facets based on the prevailing tendencies of perception, contextual issues such as the nature and extent of literacy and its practices, and the material culture of the book in a given timeframe. If the useful notion of the ‘community of readers’ is put into play here, it becomes possible to suggest that even during ‘private reading’ the individual joins in with a communal event. This event is bound by the constraints of the ‘rules’ for interpreting texts which are formed out of

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 17

21/05/2012 10:15:02

18

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

the cultural context and readers’ ‘horizons of expectation’.119 The phrase ‘life experiences and knowledge’ is sometimes usefully understood as part of the business of being intertextual, where textuality is considered broadly to include both pieces of writing and lived experiences.120 The popularly used idea of performativity is also useful, here, for conceptualising what happens at the interface between the experiential (the reader’s imagination) and the material book.121 During the activity of construing meaning, the interaction of textual meaning and the reader’s imagination is a dynamic process rather than a static condition and it involves the elements of reiteration which are central to the making of meaning.122 Because acts of reading involve entering into specific states of mind, it is quite useful to understand these states as moments of performance, which create rather than simply represent or repeat knowledge.123 Because popular reading, particularly in pre-modern society, often involves intensive repetition and the familiarity that brings with it alongside the fluidity of meanings inherent in any acts of interpretation it is quite useful to borrow the vocabulary of ‘tangled states’ which has been used to understand the experience of ritual action.124 The concept of ‘tangled states’ is useful if referred to the bodily and perceptual experiences of uncertainty, confusion and complexity which form an important part of an individual’s engagement with the process of comprehending or construing meanings (from text).125 The ‘entanglement’ to which Wolfgang Iser refers is resonant here too. For newly literate groups such as the people-writers identified by Fabian or the people-readers I discuss in this book there may be particular possibilities for creativity on account of the relative lack of constraint by formal rules of grammar, syntax and other elements of formal education. I use these approaches and this vocabulary to underpin the case study chapters of this book, each of which engages with a specific set of issues for the reconstruction of reading practice and experience. The cases are guided in part by the manuscripts and printed books which provide the evidence. Each chapter refers to specific pieces of evidence and this is necessarily detailed. I draw out more general issues in interim and main conclusions throughout. It is through this detailed evidence that ­articulation of a vocabulary for reading practice and experience begins.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 18

21/05/2012 10:15:02

Introduction to methods and terms

19

The nature of the evidence The kinds of books and texts discussed here Evidence about the nature of reading is, as Margaret Spufford declared, ‘necessarily fragmentary and impressionistic’.126 Much of this book is about the nature of the evidence for reading, and how it may be interpreted in relation to medieval and early modern readers’ experiences of and practices of reading.127 I am using the kinds of textual evidence that have been investigated by others (often to address issues such as book ownership and readerships) in order to discuss matters associated with reading. For those other studies, texts in pamphlets, manuscripts, chapbooks and miscellanies are often used in large quantities as a sort of sample.128 The method I am adopting here moves away from the largerscale study and also from the idea of the sample (with its implications of a scientifically justifiable collection of evidence) in order to conduct analyses which make closer consideration of the materiality of individual books and texts, sometimes conducting comparisons between two versions of ‘the same’ text.129 During the course of this book, therefore, I examine manuscripts and printed texts (some containing individual texts or types of texts and others containing mixtures, or miscellanies, of literature). I compare different versions of the same text in manuscript and different versions found in both manuscript and printed text. Much of my analysis is therefore comparative, taking aspects of the materiality of the text such as the structure, layout and style of the page as significant indicators of reading experience. The method I use here is novel because I demonstrate that there is substantial evidence for reading practices and experiences in the material of the books themselves, meaning that the study of reading is not dependent on the traces of real or idealised readers that are (sometimes) found in marginalia and annotation. I demonstrate this novel method for the analysis of reading experience – with its focus on physical details and comparisons of details – using this set of case studies. It may be possible, following from these select case studies, to use this method to conduct a larger-scale study, using a greater number of examples. Such a study could be a continuation of the same method if the attention to material detail and comparison was maintained, and this would require a lot more case study work in the first instance. The non-empiricist mode I elect to move away from those larger-scale studies which sometimes treat the (empirical) evidence statistically or in that quasi-statistical method

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 19

21/05/2012 10:15:02

20

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

which involves the multiplication of examples.130 In these larger-scale modes of analysing, where there is an empirical logic to the method, the nature and construction of the sample is of clear importance. Ian Green agonised over the appropriate method for his large-scale study of printed works c. 1530–70.131 He points out, in his comprehensive work on print and Protestantism, that the identification of a ‘sample’ is problematic, particularly with respect to popular literatures.132 He opted to study what he defined as a sample of steady sellers across the period 1530 to 1730, which is one perfectly appropriate way to proceed and only as artificial as any other method using either case studies or samples.133 The new method Green uses takes ‘religious works which sold steadily over a generation: titles which were probably printed at least five times in the space of thirty years’. The figure of five is taken as a threshold which includes ‘steady sellers’ as well as best sellers, whilst eliminating ‘those works which do not appear to have caught the public imagination sufficiently to warrant more than a couple of editions’.134 Green’s whole chapter devoted to considering the sample and its main categories amply demonstrates the processes of calculation and elimination required to construct a sample based on the necessary empirical logic which a ‘sample’ demands.135 Examples in this mode of analysis are often drawn from across a fairly long period of time and from a wide geographical area. Statistical sampling of itself does not reconstruct reading practice and experience: indeed, I would concur with Spufford, who identified the ‘bleak and arid’ nature of statistical approaches to reading and literacy if they do not give some sense of the relevance to a community.136 Approaches following an empiricist logic, such as that taken by Green, are valuable. Green’s findings set up many possibilities for a consideration of reading practice and experience: any number of the works or the categories he identifies would make an excellent body of material from which to study evidence for reading. The consideration of ‘readers and readerships’ throughout Print and Protestantism provides ample amounts of very useful evidence from all over the UK and across the period c. 1530 to 1730. But this evidence, like evidence for book ownership, does not of itself provide access to the how element of understanding reading.137 An important distinction should be made, here, between the subject of readers and readerships on the one hand, which is very valuably considered by Green, and the subject of reading (practices and experiences) on the other, which is what I attempt to consider in this book. Green’s work therefore stands as a very useful example of an approach to the general subject of reading. This approach uses significant quantities of evidence (for book

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 20

21/05/2012 10:15:02

Introduction to methods and terms

21

ownership, individual readers’ identities, types of readers, and laws and proclamations about reading) in an empirical mode, and this does not seek to uncover matters such as experience and practice.138 None of the empirical evidence of book and manuscript provides, as it is, evidence for reading process. None of what is plentiful evidence for reading in popular culture, such as annotation or the form and intended meanings of specific literatures, provides direct evidence for the creative processes involved with making meaning. Reconstructing the innovative activity of reading requires imaginative reconstructions based on detailed analysis of the texts, integrated with detailed attention to reading situations. However, the method I adopt in this book begins from the premise that there is substantial evidence for reading practice and experience in the actual texts themselves and that, therefore, other writing which refers to or records reading practice and experience (in the form of annotation or separate pieces of writing) are not the only form of evidence for reading.139 At all times, then, the activities involved with the ‘creativity of reading’ need to be considered, which is why I find it is necessary to theorise from the empirical evidence discussed in each case study.140 The case study method One alternative to those larger-scale studies that follow empiricist logic is to use case studies.141 I employ a case study method here. Other studies of reading have used case studies to reconstruct the practices of named individual readers.142 Some recent work examines case studies of particular types of reading matter.143 What is a case study? Michel Vovelle discusses the merits of the case study in contrast to the quantitative methods he describes as ‘serial history’.144 He approaches this from his experience with ‘French style’ history and he uses the term ‘series’ to refer to the use of archival evidence which survives in quantities large enough to be used in quantitative analyses.145 As he points out, for scholars interested in the ‘domain of the history of cultures and mentalities’ (which is still associated with a distinctively French style of cultural study) the possibility of quantification was very attractive for the further ­investigation of the ‘popular masses’.146 In one chapter of Ideologies and Mentalities, published in 1985 in French and translated into English in 1990, Vovelle examines the advantages of the case study method in comparison to the serial method. This was particularly significant coming from a historian of mentalité, whose stock-in-trade had been the quantitative series. During the course of this examination he set into context the rise of the quantification method

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 21

21/05/2012 10:15:02

22

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

during the 1960s, seeing this as a reaction to earlier tendencies towards biographical approaches with their ‘historizing history’. The use of case studies, Vovelle suggested, marked a resurgence of interest in historical reconstruction of more individualised subjects such as biographical analyses. Amongst the biographical he included the microhistory approach championed by Carlo Ginzburg, with its attention to the significance of the individual (sometimes exceptional) example.147 This resurgence, he suggested, may have been in reaction to the vogue for quantification. Vovelle’s support for the case study method and its process of ‘finding the typical in the particular’ is not without criticism: he points to a ‘comical situation’ where one archival example had been claimed as defining a distinctively Protestant ideology, prompting him to mischievously find ‘hundreds of examples in both Protestant and Catholic documents’.148 Neither, he concluded, should the case study method be viewed as a corrective to serial methods, which might find some ‘truth coming straight from the mouth’ of its individual subjects.149 Nor, should the ‘serial study’ be rejected as long as it does not ‘fall into the statistical illusion … of belief that it can grasp the whole of reality by the magic of quantification’.150 Despite Vovelle’s conclusion that case study and serial methods are not antagonistic, it seems necessary to stress, here, that the case study method can probably not be understood from a perspective of empiricist logic. The methods are very different. The case study is not a second-best, quicker, lazier, or more foolish version of the large-scale empirical study. The case study method may be used to work with material and produce findings which the large-scale study cannot do.151 In this book, a case study method is used to analyse reading practice and experience which the large-scale study of books and texts that are being read cannot do in the manner that it has so far been conducted. The problematic issues surrounding the construction of a sample or a case study of books and texts is one of the greatest impediments to proceeding with the kinds of detailed reconstruction needed for a study of reading practice and experience for any particular time period, especially perhaps for the pre-modern. In general, a case study approach is necessary, which means that it is never possible or desirable to consider all of the possible examples available. It is very easy to ask the question, therefore, why are these being taken and why not these?152 The whole point about a case study approach is that it is one way to proceed with making some more detailed investigations of a specific cultural phenomenon or collection of evidence and, crucially, the case study never claims to

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 22

21/05/2012 10:15:02

Introduction to methods and terms

23

be covering the whole ground nor need it necessarily use the scientific recourse of sampling. Case studies also lead to new questions which would never have been raised by a large body of evidence.153 Only when numerous case study methods for a particular subject (such as popular reading) have been carried out, producing many findings about reading practice and experience, will a larger-scale project which assesses the large amount of evidence for reading practice and experience be possible.154 Using a case study method does not mean a way of working which avoids contextual detail and champions anecdotes (as negatively understood). The anecdote comes in for negative treatment by scholars who value cultural context because of the way the term and concept have been used (misused I would suggest) by New Historicism.155 There is nothing wrong with the anecdote if it is taken to mean the disjointed pieces of evidence which represent individual cultural moments or individuals’ perceptions. In his reference to Natalie Davis’ biographical study of Martin Guerre and the significance of contextualisation in this, Vovelle questions whether the case study method ‘runs the risk of descending to the level of anecdote’. However, he continues with the useful sentence: ‘As if, it will be said, there was ever a purely anecdotal level in history which is truly devoid of meaning’.156 Examples of the method employed in this book It is the case studies located within the chapters of this book which introduce the novel method that I am proposing for analysing reading experience. This method uses a set of ways of thinking, many of which I formulated in earlier work on creativity.157 By way of preliminary introduction, I will give some examples of the themes and issues addressed here. Making comparisons My use of comparative analysis varies from a synchronic approach, as with the comparison of different manuscripts of ‘the same’ text written at about the same time, to a diachronic approach comparing, for example, ‘the same’ text found in a fifteenth-century manuscript and in a sixteenth-century printed text. An example of the former comparison is found in Chapter 4’s consideration of three fifteenth-century manuscripts of practical texts. Also in this chapter I make comparisons between manuscript and printed versions of practical texts such as The Boke of Kervynge. This comparison between manuscript and printed versions discusses the implications of differences such as the uses of illustrative woodcuts in the early printed

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 23

21/05/2012 10:15:02

24

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

texts, but also some significant similarities in page layout.158 I use the term ‘aesthetics of the page’ to discuss these similarities of layout. The aesthetics of the page By aesthetics of the page I mean the evidence for what seems to be a prevailing set of rules for the construction or layout of the page, either for a specific text across different versions or because of personal choices made by one scribe. I use this concept in Chapter 4, for example, to examine the use of a similar aesthetic for versions of the same text in the two different media (manuscript and print) or in more than one manuscript copy. I also use the idea of the aesthetics of the page in Chapter 5 for my discussion of evidence for the role of one (possibly two) ‘scribe–readers’ in the shaping of the Middle English miscellany Brogyntyn 2.1. In this example, I refer to the occurrence of a set of decorative flourishes such as the distinctive serifs and the dusting of rubrication down the left-hand side of the written page. I propose that the discussion of these features as an ‘aesthetic’ helps to identify the work of one (possibly two) scribes within the compilation. I take these aesthetics to be useful evidence for attitudes to specific texts by their scribes and producers. The two different examples of page aesthetics given here work slightly differently: an aesthetic which is repeated in various versions of ‘the same’ text signifies a set of expectations about how that text should be produced and consumed. Roger Chartier has also proposed that decisions made by printers about the structure and layout of printed texts were informed by their perception of readers’ expectations.159 This is a set of expectations which must also be shared and understood by readers contemporaneous to that production as they are operating within the same set of cultural norms.160 An aesthetic which seems (perhaps for lack of comparative evidence) to be the product of a set of personal decisions by one individual scribe about the layout of one or more texts, as in the Brogyntyn example, perhaps offers less generalisable evidence about broader expectations of how a text should be read. If the writer choosing this distinctive aesthetic is also what I describe as a ‘scribe–reader’ (someone who is at least in part writing for his or her own reading experience) as I propose with the Brogyntyn example in Chapter 5 and Trinity College 0.1.13 in Chapter 4, then the choices about layout and style made by that scribe may be understood to have a direct relationship to that writer’s own expectations about the reading experience.161 As no writer or reader exists in a cultural vacuum dissociated from more general perceptions and expectations then it is possible to consider individual examples of choices made by

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 24

21/05/2012 10:15:03

Introduction to methods and terms

25

scribe–readers as representative of a more generalisable attitude to reading which would be understood by a broader set of readers than simply one scribe–reader.162 At the same time, it is useful to maintain the possibility that scribe–readers (like Fabian’s people writers) owned a more flexible attitude to the conventions such as the expected aesthetics of the page as imposed and used by professional scribes. This may be the case with the Brogyntyn example, although interestingly, in the example of Trinity College 0.1.13, there is also a preservation of the conventional aesthetic for the husbandry treatise despite the pressure on written space. Where the attitude to reading evidenced by a scribe–reader is generalisable, then, it is not necessarily conventional. Annotation evidence Alongside the material structure and appearance of the ‘official text’ (by which I mean that set down by the producer), annotation is also a useful form of evidence for reading practice and experience.163 I discuss annotations specifically in Chapter 4 and mention them again in Chapter 2. In the other chapters, there is not much to be said about annotation as the texts selected for these case studies are not annotated to any significant degree. Considerations of annotation currently in print have often tended to concentrate on lay ‘learned’ readerships, and these from a period just later than that covered by this book. However, one recent study of Renaissance annotations, that by William Sherman, is a key text for the study of annotation in the Renaissance (roughly c 1530 onwards) and other time periods.164 Brayman Hackel’s study of marginalia in Sidney’s Arcadia, which finds the variety of ‘material traces of readings of one text’ by looking at many copies of the same text, also makes the best use of annotation evidence.165 Both Sherman and Hackel also make use of printed marginalia for the construction of historically appropriate models for readers.166 Annotations may provide some very interesting insights into aspects of the reading process and more particularly the conceptualisation of what it is to do reading in popular culture.167 Any reader-annotations found in the literatures of the masses are invariably not associated with other biographical information, and yet these sporadic and sometimes very brief commentaries should be understood as providing very significant access into the mental world of the reader.168 In his study of Renaissance book use for which annotation (or the marks of use) form the central evidence, Sherman begins by identifying the problematic issue of the kinds of examples produced by the evidence of ‘marginalia’ where ‘the ineluctable specificity of the marks of individual

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 25

21/05/2012 10:15:03

26

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

readers’ sometimes renders the task of making general rules of reader experience very difficult.169 That responses made by different annotators to the same text vary so widely can also make it difficult to form general conclusions about the meanings made by readers at a specific moment.170 For the purposes of this introduction it is necessary to stress two issues about the use of annotation evidence. Firstly, in many situations an individual annotation should not be understood as the reader/annotator seeking to make a lasting statement of belief or intention. This is particularly the case when popular practice is under consideration as it is here. It is often better to understand annotating not as making grand statements of belief but as an integral part of moments in the reading process. The second issue is that scholarly annotations, which have recently been discussed quite extensively, are a distinctively separate subject and therefore a separate class of evidence from popular annotations.171 The psychology of annotation The pre-modern reader, it seems, was very clear on his or her rights to make additions to a book.172 This annotator is also very practical and takes the opportunities of blank space which the book offers.173 Within the psychology of annotating, the reader’s perception of permanence – the permanent mark of the ink on paper or parchment – is interesting. Some popular annotations are clearly connected to the subject of the official text and are therefore defined as marginalia rather than annotations by some scholars.174 Examples from religious reading indicate the ways that an emphasis on making proverbial annotations, or short poetic ditties, shows a tendency towards oralising as part of the reading process.175 I mention this again as part of my study of devotional reading in Chapter 2 and in relation to annotations on the compilation of practical texts such as NLW 394D in Chapter 4.176 Some annotations more than others are so clearly not intended as a lasting statement of reception to be looked at 500 years later in the search for highly significant utterances by a reader from the past: shopping lists, accounts and pen practice are good examples. Despite the lack of insight into a reader’s perceptions of the official text that these annotations provide, the evidence they do offer is often useful, always remembering the caveat about an annotator’s lack of intention to signify a lasting meaning.177 One of the ways such apparently unconnected and therefore apparently ‘non-meaningful’ annotation becomes useful is through the information it provides about other concerns in a reader’s life. Therefore, I also answer yes to Sherman’s rhetorical question: are students of marginalia and readers’ marks supposed to study these inscriptions and,

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 26

21/05/2012 10:15:03

Introduction to methods and terms

27

if so, how are they to be described and approached?178 This is because there is more to this non-meaningful information than non-meaningfulness: the evidence provided by the ways that annotation space is used and made gives valuable insight into the reader’s perceptions of the written text and his or her sense of ownership of, or involvement with, it. These non-meaningful annotations also provide evidence of reading experience too, I would suggest, and therefore I would not wish to make a distinction as Brayman Hackel does between ‘marginalia’, which relate to the text, and ‘annotations’, which do not.179 While readers often choose to annotate in marginal spaces alongside a particular issue they also use the ‘blank’ spaces left at the end of a text, or on a frontispiece/title page for various annotations.180 These features of annotation are commonplaces to anyone working on manuscript and early print culture. They have been identified by some as ‘graffiti’ which perform and locate the producer’s involvement with the text.181 The very normality of these texts, whether or not they are defined as graffiti, does not mean that their significance for understanding reader experience should be overlooked.182 In manuscripts such as NLW 394D, discussed in Chapter 4, for example, there seems to be an interesting division between the numerous pages which are hardly touched by the annotator(s) and other pages which are absolutely festooned by a number of different writers. Annotations on a ‘blank’ page or other portion of the official text offering ample space address different subjects as well as sometimes engaging in dialogue with previous annotations. Quite apart from the practical business of readers employing the pages with a lot of space for annotation, it is as if these ‘non-meaningful’ annotations provide an important opportunity for the reader to signal his or her engagement with the community of readers.183 The idea of a community of readers has been used extensively in recent discussions of reading and it is not new to suggest that annotations are an important aspect of this.184 However, it is also nice to consider that annotations not specifically connected with the official text of the page or book (non-meaningful annotations as I am calling them, provocatively, here), were being used by readers to insert themselves into a textual community (however fleetingly).185 And this idea allows a re-evaluation of the many ‘blank pages’ filled with non-meaningful annotations, moving towards a consideration of them as a very active part of a pre-modern reader’s experience of using and reading a book.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 27

21/05/2012 10:15:03

28

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

Prefaces to readers One aspect of the official text which clearly provides some access to reading practice is the preface to the reader. These are quite frequently found in early printed books and sometimes in manuscripts. A set of case studies focusing entirely on these prefaces might be a very valuable subject for building up a greater understanding of reading practice and experience, although abstracting only the prefaces from texts is very artificial.186 In this book there is not much discussion of prefaces to readers simply because they do not occur in most of the texts examined in my case studies. I give brief consideration to a preface in Chapter 4. In Chapter 2 I examine some attitudes found in prefaces to the innovations in primers during the reforming period, specifically the late 1530s. There is evidence, for example, that printers wished to claim that the traditional structures of reading and devotion remained significant even if some of the contents of the primer looked new. Prefaces to readers are a significant source of evidence for the ‘implied reader’.187 But it must be remembered that these prefaces are rhetorical devices and therefore that any reader being implied (as with the readers created in fictional works) is very much a construct. As Wolfgang Iser helpfully remarks: the reader’s role is not identical to the fictitious reader portrayed in the text. The latter is merely one component part of the reader’s role, by which the author exposes the disposition of an assumed reader to interaction with [the] other perspectives, in order to bring about modifications.188

Nevertheless, and similar to the case of annotation, the constructed reader must necessarily be appropriate to the cultural norms and expectations of real readers of the same period.189 The book proceeds now with the four case study chapters. These are self-contained and therefore not intended to be read in any particular order. They are followed by a concluding chapter which aims to bring together some of the threads running through the book. Notes 1 Well-known works include V. Woolf, The Common Reader (London: The Hogarth Press, 1948), for example the discussion of Sir John Paston reading Chaucer in ‘The Pastons and Chaucer’, p. 23ff.; A. Bennett, The Uncommon Reader (London: Profile, 2007); E. Pound, ABC of Reading (London: George Routledge & Sons Ltd, 1934). For a more recent consideration of the ‘common reader’ see, J. Rose, ‘Re-reading the English common reader: A

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 28

21/05/2012 10:15:03

Introduction to methods and terms







29

preface to a history of audiences’, in D. Finklestein and A. McCleery (eds), The Book History Reader (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 324–39. 2 On the difficulties of generalising about popular literatures see, for example, J. Thompson, ‘Popular reading tastes in Middle English religious and didactic literature’, in J. Simons (ed.), From Medieval to Medievalism, ‘Insights’ series (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 82–100, p. 83. 3 See Thompson, ‘Popular reading’, in Medieval To Medievalism, p. 85 on the ‘uncertain evidence of surviving manuscripts and texts’. On the issue of choice see H. Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender and Literacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 13: Hackel resolved to ‘“wander the archives” for a while’ to make her choice of texts to be studied. 4 Case studies are discussed in this chapter (see pp. 21–3). 5 Scribe–readers are discussed later in this chapter (see pp. 24–5). 6 For a recent overview of the study of reading across historical periods see, for example, L. Price, ‘Reading matter’, PMLA 121/1 (2006), pp. 9–16. For an important work which thoroughly legitimates the history of reading as a distinct field, see G. Cavallo and R Chartier (eds), A History of Reading in the West (Oxford: Polity Press, 1999); see also R. Chartier, The Order of Books: Readers, Authors and Libraries between the Fourteenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). For an important stimulus to beginning the recovery of reading from archival evidence see R. Darnton, ‘First steps toward a History of Reading’, in R. Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (London: Faber & Faber, 1990), pp. 154–87. For an anthology of work on reading see A. Bennett (ed.), Readers and Reading (London: Longman, 1995). For significant studies of reading focusing on different historical periods see, for example, R.D. Altick, The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800–1900 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1957); S. Colclough, Consuming Texts: Readers and Reading Communities, 1695–1870 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). On manuscript studies see, for example, J. Mann and M. Nolan (eds), The Text in the Community: Essays on Medieval Works, Manuscripts, Authors, and Readers (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press: 2006), especially M. Nolan, ‘Introduction’, pp. 1–7, see p. 3; J. Thompson and S. Kelly, ‘Imagined histories of the book: Current paradigms and future directions’, in Thompson and Kelly (eds), Imagining the Book: Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), pp. 1–14, p. 6. For a new reader in the history of reading, which includes some consideration of specific communities of practice and an overview of various theoretical approaches, see also S. Towheed, R. Crone, and K. Halsey (eds), The History of Reading, Routledge History Readers (London: Routledge, 2010). This reader was published after the substantial writing and conceptualisation of this book had taken place.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 29

21/05/2012 10:15:03

30

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

7 See, for example, R. Chartier, ‘Preface’, in The Order of Books, pp. i–xi, p. ix; R. Chartier, ‘Libraries without walls’, Representations, 42, Special Issue: Future Libraries (1993), pp. 38–52, pp. 48–9. See also B. Cormack and C. Mazzio (eds), Book Use, Book Theory, 1500–1700 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Library, 2005), p. 5 on the relationships between materiality, use and practice. 8 See, for example, R. Chartier, ‘Languages, books and reading from the printed word to the digital text’, Critical Inquiry, 31/1 (2004), pp. 133–52, p. 147 citing D.F. McKenzie, and again in Chartier, ‘Libraries without walls’, p. 49. The work to which he refers is D.F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (London: The British Library, 1986), the quotation is p. 9; R. Chartier, ‘Introduction: Aesthetic mystery and the materialities of the written’, in Inscription and Erasure: Written Culture from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007), pp. vii–xiii, pp. vii–viii on D.F. McKenzie and form; R. Chartier and E.D. Friedman, ‘The end of the reign of the book’, Substance, 26/1, Special Issue: Metamorphoses of the Book (1997), pp. 9–11, p. 10 on the ways that the electronic age upsets conventional categories for discussion of book and text, and p. 11 on the greater need (therefore) to understand the history of textual production. 9 See, for example, Chartier, ‘Languages, books and reading’, pp. 142–3 on the conjunction of transitions in the digital age; p. 142 on the fragmentation involved with reading digital text. On the earlier reading revolution (from intensive reading to extensive reading, which was thought to have occurred during the eighteenth century) see, for example, Darnton, ‘What is the history of books?’, in Kiss of Lamourette, pp. 107–35, p. 133. 10 M. Sergeant, ‘The transmission by the English Carthusians of some late medieval spiritual writings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical Studies, 27 (1976), pp. 225–40; V. Gillespie, ‘Vernacular books of religion’, in J. Griffiths and D. Pearsall (eds), Book Production and Publishing in Britain, 1375–1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); V. Gillespie, ‘Cura pastoralis in deserts’, in M. Sergeant (ed.), De Cella in Seculum: Religious Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), and A. Hutchinson, ‘Devotional reading in the monastery and in the household’, in Sergeant (ed.), De Cella in Seculum; P. Lee, Nunneries, Learning, and Spirituality in Late Medieval English Society: The Dominican Priory of Dartford (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, Boydell & Brewer, 2001). On interactions between lay and religious women see, C. Meale, ‘“…alle the bokes that I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensch”: Laywomen and their books in late medieval England’, in C. Meale (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); F. Riddy, ‘“Women talking about the things of God”: A late medieval sub-culture’, in Meale (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain, pp. 106–11; and J. Boffey, ‘Women authors and women’s literacy

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 30

21/05/2012 10:15:03

Introduction to methods and terms

31

in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England’, in Meale (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain, pp. 165–75. 11 On the nature of a medieval lay reader’s ecstatic mystical experiences in the use of devotional poetry see, V. Gillespie, ‘Mystic’s foot: Rolle and affectivity’, in M. Glascoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1982), pp. 212–20. On the significance of the private ownership of devotional books in the development of silent reading, as well as the broader political implications associated with lay independence from the clergy, see P. Saenger, ‘Books of hours and the reading habits of the later middle ages’, in R. Chartier (ed.), The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), pp. 143–4, 145. On significant evidence for the popularity of romance literature in the fifteenth century including ‘mercantile concern’ with English translations of such fiction from the early fifteenth century, see Meale, ‘“gode men / wiues maydnes and alle men”: Romance and its audiences’, in C. Meale (ed.), Readings in Medieval English Romance (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 210–15, 219–20; also J. Thompson, Robert Thornton and the London Thornton Manuscript: British Library MS. Additional 31042, Manuscript Studies II, gen. ed. J. Griffiths (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987), p. 1. On conduct literatures, particularly those for gentlemen, see G.R. Keiser, ‘Practical books for the gentleman’, in L. Hellenga and J.B. Trapp (eds), Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, Vol. 3: 1400–1557 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 470–94. 12 For important recent work on materiality and reading see, for example, W. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008); J. Richards and F. Schurink (eds), The Textuality and Materiality of Reading in Early Modern England, Special Issue Huntington Library Quarterly 73/3 (2010); and Brayman Hackel, Reading Material for a detailed study of non-extraordinary readers: the central study of reader annotations is on the canonical Sidney’s Arcadia. For seminal work on reading practices of individual scholars see, for example, W. Sherman, John Dee and the Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amsherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995); and L. Jardine and A. Grafton, ‘“Studied for action”: How Gabriel Harvey read his Livy’, Past and Present, 129 (1990), pp. 30–78; K. Sharpe, ‘Uncommonplaces? Sir William Drake’s reading notes’, in S. Alcorn Baron (ed.), The Reader Revealed (Washington, DC: Folger Library, 2001), pp. 58–65. Demonstrating the general current interest in issues of materiality and textuality is, for example, J. Daybell and P. Hinds (eds), Material Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social Practices, 1580–1730, Early Modern Literature in History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), see Daybell and Hinds ‘Introduction’, p. 2 on the influence of McKenzie and Chartier in this field.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 31

21/05/2012 10:15:03

32

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

13 This is found in M. de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. S. Randall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 165–76. 14 Chartier, ‘Communities of readers’, Chapter 1 in The Order of Books, pp. 1–23, p. 1. The same text is also found in R. Chartier and J.A. Gonzalez, ‘Labourers and voyagers: From the text to the reader’, Diacritics 22/2 (1992), pp. 49–61, pp. 49–50. 15 Chartier, ‘Communities of readers’, p. 23: ‘This reflects the paradox underlying any history of reading which is that it must postulate the liberty of a practice that it can only grasp, massively, in its determinations.’ 16 R. Chartier, ‘Writing the practices’, French Historical Studies, 21/2 (1998), pp. 255–64, p. 259. 17 R. Chartier, ‘Introduction’, in On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language, and Practices (Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), pp. 1–10, p. 1. 18 Chartier, ‘Introduction’, On the Edge of the Cliff, p. 2. One of reasons Chartier is attracted to the work of D.F. McKenzie is because of the connections between description and interpretation that his proposed mode of analysis encapsulates. See Chartier, ‘Texts, forms and interpretations’, in On the Edge of the Cliff, p. 83: ‘[B]y assigning to bibliography the fundamental task of comprehending the relations between forms and meaning, McKenzie obliterated the old divisions between sciences of description and sciences of interpretation, and he made that discipline, based on techniques of its own, central to the study of symbolic practice.’ 19 This consideration of the work of D.F. McKenzie is found in Chartier, ‘Texts, forms and interpretations’, p. 86. 20 See, for example, Cavallo and Chartier (eds), History of Reading, p. 1, which begins (as do other of Chartier’s works about reading) by citing Michel de Certeau’s generalised claims concerning the role of readers as ‘travellers’ (and references above). 21 S. Fish, ‘Interpreting the Variorum’, in Finklestein and McCleery (eds), Book History Reader, pp. 450–8, p. 454. 22 W. Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980), p. 132. 23 On the useful idea of the book as always being in process as both ‘a material object and a cultural phenomenon’ see Thompson and Kelly, ‘Imagined histories’, in Thompson and Kelly (eds), Imagining the Book, p. 5. On the general lack of consideration of real readers by reader-response theory see also Sherman, John Dee and the Politics of Reading, p. 55; and for further consideration of the ways that it may be possible to produce some bigger pictures and broader brush-strokes, see Sherman, Used Books, pp. xi–xii, citing here Jonathan Rose’s ‘frustrations’ about the ‘thinness of the evidence for individual readers’ before 1800. On the return to the archives in the wake of the crisis of interpretation see Chartier, ‘Introduction’, On the Edge of the Cliff, pp. 4–5.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 32

21/05/2012 10:15:03

Introduction to methods and terms

33

24 On reading and creativity see E. Salter, Cultural Creativity in the Early English Renaissance: Popular Culture in Town and Country c. 1450–1560 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), Chapter 7. On the possibility of creative readings rather than conservative ones in popular culture see Colclough, Consuming, p. 25. Here Colclough refers to W. St Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 25 See, for example, Riddy, “‘Women talking about the things of God’, pp. 106–11, and J.  Boffey, ‘Women authors and women’s literacy’, pp. 165–6, 169–75; J. Thompson, ‘Another look at the religious texts in Lincoln Cathedral Library, MS 91’, in A.J. Minnis (ed.), Late Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission, Essays in Honour of A.I. Doyle (D.S. Brewer, Cambridge, 1994), pp. 169–87, pp. 172–3 for particular consideration of the evidence for ‘reading tastes’. 26 Cavallo and Chartier (eds), History of Reading, p. 4. For a statement of this issue as a preface to a detailed consideration of evidence about real readers based on extensive archival work, see Colclough, Consuming Texts, pp. viii, 2. 27 On issues of book circulation see, for example, Minnis (ed.), Late Medieval Religious Texts, particularly A.S.G. Edwards, ‘The transmission and audience of Osbern Bokenham’s legend of Hooly Wummen’, pp. 157–67, p. 162 on the circulation of booklets; S. Powell, “The transmission and circulation of The Lay Folks’ Catechism”, pp. 67–84, pp. 73–4 on evidence for transmission and circulation, with mention of private reading of this text by Robert Thornton on p. 74; on evidence for book ownership see, Meale, “‘…alle the bokes that I have”’, pp. 130–3, on the evidence which the last will and testament provides for book ownership see also, Salter, Cultural Creativity, Chapter 7. 28 This issue is also discussed in Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, pp. 6, 8, identifying the tendency of reader-response theory and feminist criticism to theorise not historicise. I have discussed the differences between theories of reading and practices of reading elsewhere, see E. Salter, “‘The Dayes Moralised’: Reconstructing devotional reading, c. 1450–1560” in R.S.G. Lutton and E. Salter (eds), Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences c 1400–1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 145–62, pp. 149–50. See also R. Krug, Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2002), especially pp. 170–4 for a discussion of rules for reading in a Bridgettine context, and pp. 100–2, 107–8 for some considerations of reading rituals; also K. Zieman, “Playing doctor: St Birgitta, ritual reading, and ecclesiastical authority”, in L. Olson and K. Kerby-Fulton (eds), Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 207–334, pp. 309–13 on the power of words in a Bridgettine context; and E. Schirmer, ‘Reading lessons

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 33

21/05/2012 10:15:03

34

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

at Syon Abbey: The Myrroure of Oure Ladye and the mandates of vernacular theology’, in Olson and Kerby-Fulton (eds), Voices in Dialogue, pp. 345–76, pp. 346–7 on the possible power of women readers (in a Bridgettine context) to shape the devotional literature they read. 29 Sherman, Used Books, pp. 99–100. 30 See Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, pp. 6–7 for a similar approach, although her historicising involves looking for traces of actual readers which mine does not necessarily. 31 On the (positive) connections between uncertainties about the definition of ‘notions’ such as popular culture and the crises of interpretation associated with the crumbling of the triumphant historiography of a previous age of certainty in historical scholarship, see Chartier, ‘Introduction’, On the Edge of the Cliff, pp. 2–3. For a set of questions concerning how to define ‘popular culture’ see also S.L. Kaplan, ‘Preface’, in Kaplan (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Berlin, New York and Amsterdam: Moulton Publishers, 1984), pp. 1–3, p. 1. Also, see Rose, ‘Re-reading the English common reader’, pp. 324–39, p. 328 on the problems of definition. 32 R. Williams, Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana, 1983), pp. 236–7. 33 Williams, Keywords, p. 237. Williams’ view is usefully summarised in J. Gilbert, ‘A theoretical introduction’ as part of J. Gilbert and A. Putter ‘Introduction’, in A. Putter and J. Gilbert (eds), The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance (London: Longman, 2000), pp. 1–38, pp. 16–17. 34 See Gilbert, ‘Theoretical introduction’, p. 18. 35 J. Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 1–33, p. 11 on work folklorist Barbara Babcock concerning the complex nature of folk myth. On the antiquarian ideas about connections between orality and popular culture see also D. Hall, ‘Introduction’, in Kaplan (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture, pp. 5–18, p. 7, on the lingering of a perceived oral/literate dichotomy see p. 8, and on the problems of associating folklore with popular culture see pp. 8–10. 36 This is cited in A. Hadfield and M. Dimmock, ‘Introduction’ in A. Hadfield and M. Dimmock (eds), Literature and Popular Culture in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 1–12, p. 7. 37 The collection is Kaplan (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture, and for a discussion of the way the collection emphases ‘interchange’ between dominant and subordinate classes see Hall, ‘Introduction’, p. 12. 38 P. Burke, Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994), p. xvi. 39 C. Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (London: Fontana Press, 1993), p. 5. 40 Chartier, ‘Writing the practices’, p. 263. On the structuralism of Pierre

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 34

21/05/2012 10:15:03

Introduction to methods and terms

35

Bourdieu’s concepts of the ‘cultural field’ and also of ‘habitus’, see, for example, Salter, Cultural Creativity, p. 34. For a recent consideration of the structuralist nature of Bourdieu’s concept of ‘habitus’, see also J. Gunning, ‘The inward keeping of the self: Affective discourse and the acquisition of virtue in vernacular devotional writing’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, Aberystwyth University, 2011), Chapter 1 (p. 50). 41 Burke, Popular Culture, p. xxiii. 42 See Darnton, Kiss of Lamourette, p. 216 on Geertz’s definition as ‘too coherent’. 43 R. Rosaldo, Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 20. 44 J. Clifford and G. Marcus (eds), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley, London: University of California Press, 1986), p. 15. 45 J.-L. Amselle, Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere, trans C. Royal (Stanford, CA: University of Stanford Press, 1998), p. 2. 46 On the negotiation of symbolic meanings in a period of re-formation, see, for example, J.W. Fernandez, ‘Symbolic consensus in a Fang reformative cult’, American Anthropologist, 67 (1965), pp. 26–43. 47 J. Clifford, Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 10, on the idea that ‘[c]ulture is a deeply compromised idea I cannot yet do without’. 48 R. Chartier, Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations, trans L.G. Cochrane (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press with Basil Blackwell, 1988), p. 39. 49 On emulation and contemporary perception see, M. Johnson, Behind the Castle Gate: From Medieval to Renaissance (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), pp. 165–7; also, L. Weatherill, Consumer Behaviour & Material Culture in Britain 1660–1760 (London: Routledge, 1988), pp. 6, 196; J. Brewer and R. Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 5; H.L. Moore, Space, Text, Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya, 2nd edn (London and New York: Guildford Press, 1996), p. 202. 50 J. Fabian, Moments of Freedom: Anthropology and Popular Culture (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1998), p. 3. 51 This view is also expressed by Chartier in relation to the historical specificity of the definition of popular culture, see ‘Culture as appropriation: Popular cultural uses in Early Modern France’, in Kaplan (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture, pp. 229–53, p. 230. 52 Fabian, Moments of Freedom, p. 4. 53 Fabian, Moments of Freedom, p. 6. 54 For a recent summary of similar points see also, Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, pp. 12–13, who names Carlo Ginzburg, Natalie Zemon Davis and Robert Darnton as key influences.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 35

21/05/2012 10:15:03

36

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

55 On microhistory, see C. Ginzburg, ‘Microhistory: Two or three things I know about it’, Critical Inquiry, 20/1 (1993), pp. 10–35. For Annales approaches to private life, see for example, G. Duby (ed.), Revelations of the Medieval World and R. Chartier (ed.), Passions of the Renaissance, Vols 2 and 3 in the series, A History of Private Life, 5 vols, gen. eds P. Ariès and G. Duby (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1988). 56 C. Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. J. and A. Tredeschi (London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). 57 See, for example, E. Power, Medieval People, first published in 1924 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1951) for an early example. For Marxist approaches see, R.H. Hilton, The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975); also, R.H. Hilton, ‘Lords, burgesses and hucksters’, Past and Present, 97 (1982), pp. 3–15; C. Dyer, Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England, c. 1200–1520, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); Z. Razi, ‘Family, land and the village community in later medieval England’, Past and Present, 93 (1981), pp. 3–36; for a controversial approach, see A. Macfarlane, The Origins of English Individualism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978). For New Historicism and the individual, see C. Gallagher and S. Greenblatt, Practising New Historicism (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000), pp. 9–10, 16, 20, 49–50, 60. 58 P. Braunstein, ‘Toward intimacy: The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, in Duby (ed.), Revelations of the Medieval World, p. 536, for the temptation of abolishing a ‘distance that stands between us and a lost world’. 59 Gallagher and Greenblatt, Practising, p. 16. For my explanation of the divisions between my approach and that of New Historicism see, for example, Salter, Cultural Creativity, pp. 9–11. 60 See Chartier, ‘Introduction’, in On the Edge of the Cliff, p. 4, discussing the use of concepts such as ‘social habitus’ in the work of Norbert Elias. For Chartier’s discussion of Elias’s work on the relations between society and individual see, ‘Self-consciousness and the social bond’, in On the Edge of the Cliff, pp. 107–23. 61 H.S. Bennett, ‘Printers, authors, and readers, 1475–1557’, The Library, 5th Series, 4 (1949), pp. 155–65, pp. 161–3; J. Wogan-Browne, N. Watson, A. Taylor and R. Evans (eds), The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280–1520, Exeter Middle English Texts and Studies (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1999), especially part 3. See also Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public; J.A. Hoeppner Moran, The Growth of English Schooling, 1340–1548: Learning, Literacy, and Laicization in Pre-Reformation York Diocese (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 44–6; also, N. Orme, English Schools in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1973), pp. 62–3; P. Lee, ‘Monastic and secular religion and devotional reading in late medieval Dartford and West Kent’ (Unpublished

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 36

21/05/2012 10:15:03

Introduction to methods and terms

37

PhD thesis, University of Kent, 1998), p. 221; M. Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Methuen, 1981), pp. 28–9. On what people read, see Moran, Growth of English Schooling, p. 186; Meale, ‘“gode men”’, p. 217. 62 Chartier, ‘Communities of readers’, pp. 19–20. For a useful discussion of the potential for reconstructing reading and readerships using resources such as The English Short Title Catalogue see Colclough, Consuming, pp. 2–3. 63 I discuss book bequests in more detail in Salter, Cultural Creativity, Chapter 7. 64 Sherman, Used Books, p. 72. 65 Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, p. 8. 66 See, for example, Keiser, ‘Practical books’, in Hellenga and Trapp (eds), Cambridge History of the Book, pp. 470–2. On measuring popularity through print runs see also, M.W. Driver, The Image in Print: Book Production in Late Medieval England and its Sources (London: British Library, 2004), p. 3. 67 Bennett, Books and Readers, vol. 1, p. 231. 68 See, for example, R.K. Webb, The British Working-Class Reader 1790–1848 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1955); R. Hoggart, The Uses of Literacy (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957); Rose, English Common Reader. 69 On reading women, for example, see Zieman, ‘Playing doctor’, pp. 309–13 on the power of words in a Bridgittine context; and Schirmer, ‘Reading lessons at Syon Abbey’, pp. 346–7 on the possible power of women readers (in a Bridgittine context) to shape the devotional literature they read. For excellent manuscript based work on heterodox readings see, for example, A. Moss, ‘A merchant’s tales: A London fifteenth-century household miscellany’, Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 33, ‘Medieval and Early Modern Miscellanies and Anthologies’ (2003), pp. 156–69. 70 Gilbert, ‘Theoretical introduction’, pp. 20–6. 71 Gilbert, ‘Theoretical introduction’, p. 22. 72 Spufford, Small Books, p. 2. 73 Spufford, Small Books, pp. 9–15, for example. 74 Spufford, Small Books, p. 8. 75 Spufford, Small Books, p. 8. 76 Chartier, ‘Communities of readers’, pp. 13–15; Chartier, ‘Culture as appropriation’, p. 232: ‘These booklets are the results of adapting learned works, rewritten to be read by readers who were not learned.’ 77 Chartier, ‘Culture as appropriation’, p. 234 (here using ideas about ‘doing’ from Michel de Certeau). 78 Chartier, ‘Culture as appropriation’, pp. 251–2. 79 For some implications of silent reading in public, see P. Saenger, Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, CA: University of Stanford Press, 1997), pp. 273–6. 80 Chartier, ‘Communities of readers’, p. 18. 81 See, for example, Sherman, Used Books, pp. xiii–xiv.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 37

21/05/2012 10:15:03

38

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

82 Sherman, Used Books, p. xiv. The date of his example is 1586. Commenting on Sherman’s choice of ‘use’ and the history of the origins of this term with Robert Darnton’s work, see J. Richards and F. Schurink, ‘Introduction: The textuality and materiality of reading in Early Modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 73/3 (2010), pp. 345– 61, pp. 345–6. 83 J.W. Adamson, ‘The extent of literacy in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’, The Library, 4th Series, 10 (1930), p. 170, identifies churches as centres of lay reading, especially of vernacular texts, in the sixteenth century. See C. Cotton, ‘Churchwardens’ accounts of the parish of St Andrew, Canterbury’, part 1, from AD 1485 to AD 1625, Archaeologia Cantiana, 37 (1917), pp. 181–246; J.M. Cowper, ‘Accounts of the churchwardens of St Dunstan’s, Canterbury’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 16 (1885), pp. 289–321, pp. 314–15. 84 For a recent discussion of church libraries see S. Gee, ‘Parochial libraries in pre-Reformation England’, in S. Rees Jones (ed.), Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 199–222. See also the piece of evidence recorded in ‘The Reading Experience Database’ (www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/redback.htm), dated 1530–40: ‘A fifteen-yearold boy caught owning a primer and New Testament described how “divers poor men in the town of Chelmsford … bought the new testament of Jesus Christ, and on Sundays did sit reading [aloud] in lower end of church, and many would flock about them to hear their reading then I came among the said readers to hear them”’. This is Record 4432 and is abstracted from D.D. Hall, Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), p. 52. 85 M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1327, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1993). See also B.V. Street, Literacy in Theory and Practice, Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), pp. 110–21. 86 B. Stock, The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987), eg. pp. 42–59. 87 Stock, Implications of Literacy, p. 77. 88 See for example, P. Biller and A. Hudson (eds), Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994); also, Moran, Schooling, p. 19. 89 R. Britnell, ‘Pragmatic literacy in Latin Christendom’, in R. Britnell (ed.), Pragmatic Literacy East and West, 1200–1330 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1997), p. 6; for the definition of pragmatic literacy see the Preface, especially p. vii. 90 A. Fox, Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700, Oxford Studies in Social History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000), pp. 13, 15. 91 On the flourishing book trade see, H.S. Bennett, ‘The production and dissemination of vernacular manuscripts in the fifteenth century’, The

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 38

21/05/2012 10:15:03

Introduction to methods and terms

39

Library, 5th Series, 1 (1946–47), pp. 167–78, pp. 167–71, 173–4, 176–7; Bennett, ‘Printers, authors and readers’, p. 163; Meale, ‘“gode men”’, pp. 216–17; Fox, Oral and Literate Culture, pp. 13–19. On cheap print, see, for example, T. Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). 92 C.P. Christianson, ‘A century of the manuscript-book trade in late medieval London’, Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, 12 (1984), pp. 143–65; Bennett, ‘The production and dissemination’, p. 173. 93 J.L.  Rosenthal, ‘Aristocratic cultural patronage and book bequests, 1350–1500’, Bulletin of John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 64 (1982), pp. 522–48, pp. 533–5. 94 Bennett, ‘The production and dissemination’, pp. 170–1. 95 Adamson, ‘Extent of literacy’, pp. 163–5, 166, 170. See also Stock, Implications of Literacy, p. 7 on related issues of the distinctions between literacy and textuality (‘[l]iteracy is not textuality’). 96 A.F. Butcher, ‘The functions of script in the speech community of a late medieval town, c. 1300–1530’, in A. Walsham and J. Crick (eds), The Uses of Script and Print 1300–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 160–2. For a general consideration of pragmatic literacy see, Britnell (ed.), Pragmatic Literacy East and West, particularly Part 1, pp. 3–164 for studies based on Europe. 97 See, for example, for an earlier period, P.J. Geary, ‘Oblivion between orality and textuality in the tenth century’, in G. Althoff, J. Fried and P.J. Geary (eds), Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 111–22. 98 Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public, p. xi. 99 Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public, p. 109. 100 Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public, p. xii. 101 Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public, p. 220. 102 Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public, pp. 217–18. 103 Street, Literacy, p. 125. 104 Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public, p. 28. 105 Street, Literacy, pp. 94–125. Coleman’s review of Street’s work and associated debates around the distinctions, or lack of them, between orality and literacy (Walter Ong, Jack Goody, Ian Watt) is useful; see Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public, pp. 4–7. 106 N.  Besnier, Literacy, Emotion, Authority: Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll, Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, 17 (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995), on the way that Nukulaelae peoples appropriated colonial literary practices to express the needs and ethos of their society. 107 J. Fabian, ‘Keep listening: Ethnography and reading’, in J. Boyarin (ed.), The Ethnography of Reading (Berkeley and London, University of California Press, 1993), pp. 80–97.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 39

21/05/2012 10:15:03

40

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

108 For a consideration of the differences between ‘goal orientated’ scholarly readers and the population of popular readers see also Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, pp. 175–9. This is discussed in a recent essay by Fred Schurink, published after this chapter was written: F. Schurink, Manuscript, commonplace books, literature and reading in Early Modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 73/3 (2010), pp. 453–69, pp. 454–5. 109 On the difference between professional uses of misreading for the production of new schools of interpretation and the mis-readings of common readers, see Colclough, Consuming, p. 12 (discussing the work of D.F. McKenzie). 110 I.  Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 187. 111 Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public, pp. 27–32. 112 See also Sherman, Used Books, pp. 80–1; on window writing in the seventeenth century, which is made up of rhyming couplets, see also J. Fleming, Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), pp. 29–72; p. 57, suggesting that this indicates ‘material, and popular poetic practice’, p. 29, on the appearance of Thomas Tusser’s poesies on Elizabethan walls. 113 On the relative freedoms of new literates and for a definition of the term ‘people readers’ see above in this chapter; Fabian ‘Keep listening’, pp. 80–97; and also Salter, ‘The Dayes Moralised’, pp. 150ff. 114 On acts of reading, see for example, Fish, ‘Interpreting the Variorum’, p. 455: My disposition to perform these acts … constitutes a set of interpretive strategies, which, when they are put into execution, become the large act of reading. 115 See, for example, D. Cressy, ‘Levels of illiteracy in England, 1530–1730’, Historical Journal, 20 (1977), pp. 1–23. 116 This is discussed in Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, pp. 57–9, and 65 (mainly referring to evidence from 1570 onwards). 117 See, Fleming, Graffiti, pp. 9–11, on the significance of other locations for understanding early modern literacy as evidenced by the chalk sold for wall writing. 118 See, for example, J. Liep (ed.), Locating Cultural Creativity (London: Pluto Press, 2000), ‘Introduction’, p. 2, on the use of the cultural process approach to creativity. On the role of ‘novelty’ and on the concept ‘innovation’ see Rosaldo, Culture and Truth, p. 5 where novelty and innovation are understood as distinct from ‘improvisation’. 119 See, for example, H.R. Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. T. Bahti (Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 1982). 120 On ‘being textual’ see Salter, Cultural Creativity, pp. 137ff. 121 For a seminal text on performativity, see J.P. Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993), p. 13, and n. 9 for a summary. See, also, R. Schechner, Performance Studies: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2002) for an overview on performativity. With a

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 40

21/05/2012 10:15:03

Introduction to methods and terms

41

caveat on the potential overuse of the concept of performance see, J. Fabian, ‘Beyond the written and the oral: performance and the production of history’, in Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire, narrative and paintings by Tshibumba Kanda Matulu, essays by Fabian (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 247–67, p. 248. 122 For the classic theoretical approach to reiteration see, for example, J. Derrida, ‘Signature, événement, contexte’, in Limited Inc., trans. E. Weber (Paris: Galilée, 1990), especially pp. 45–7 on citation; and Butler, Bodies that Matter, pp. 1–23, p. 11. 123 Fabian, Remembering the Present, p. 249. 124 See, for example, D. de Coppet (ed.), Understanding Rituals, European Association of Social Anthropologists (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), and D. Parkin, ‘Ritual as spatial direction and bodily division’, in Coppet (ed.), Understanding Rituals, pp. 11–25, p. 23. 125 Parkin, ‘Ritual as spatial direction’, p. 23. 126 M.  Spufford, Contrasting Communities: English Villages in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 206. On the ‘chancy business’ of ‘constructing reader profiles for specific texts without specific provenance’ see also Driver, Image in Print, p. 2. 127 See A.  Johns, The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1998), p. 46, stating that ‘if reading has a history’ then the difference between modern perceptions of a text and those of early audiences needs to be considered. 128 For large samples see, for example, Green, Print and Protestantism. Spufford, Small Books; Fox, Oral and Literate; Watt, Cheap Print also have fairly large numbers of examples, which becomes equivalent to a ‘sample’. 129 For influential work on the issue of form effecting meaning see, McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts. It is the work of Roger Chartier which has brought this important study to light in the context of the analysis of reading practice: see, for example, Chartier, ‘Texts, forms and interpretations’, pp. 81–9. 130 On ‘mutiplying examples’ during his assessment of the value of the individual example, see M. Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities, trans. E. O’Flaherty (Cambridge: Polity in association with Basil Blackwell, 1990), p. 241. Against a statistical approach to the recovery of reading practice see also Chartier, ‘Communities of readers’, p. 23. 131 Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 170–3. 132 Green, Print and Protestantism, Chapter 4. For a discussion of formulating the sample around popular works in which Green refers to C.J.  Sommerville’s Popular Religion in Restoration England, see pp. 172–3. 133 Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 173–82. 134 Green, Print and Protestantism, p. 173. 135 For the empiricist sense that there is an ultimate reality which can be

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 41

21/05/2012 10:15:03

42

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

found if sufficient evidence or the right sample is examined see G.R. Elton, The Practice of History (London: Collins, 1967), pp. 72–3. For a critical consideration of the potential for historians to conduct an objective enquiry which finds a verifiable truth see, A. Munslow, Deconstructing History (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), p. 15, 20 for Geoffrey Elton’s idea that historians should engage in ‘rational, independent, and impartial investigation’. 136 Spufford, Contrasting, Chapter 2, ‘The importance of reading in the village community’, pp. 206–8, p. 206. 137 This approach is sometimes on the verge of considering the practices of individual readers; see, for example, Green, Print and Protestantism, p. 577: ‘But when we come to gauging the impact of such works in individual cases it is the wide reading and grafting together of different elements that again comes to the fore.’ The experiences and practices of the individuals named here are not actually discussed. 138 See Green, Print and Protestantism, p. 688. 139 It is interesting to note, in this context, that the very valuable ‘Reading Experience Database 1450–1945’ is concerned with individuals who ‘left letters, diaries, annotated books, autobiographies etc. which contain references to their reading’ rather than the evidence of the actual text being read. 140 See also the recent consideration of the ‘poetics of annotation’ in J. Anderson and E. Sauer (eds), Books and Readers in Early Modern England (Material Studies) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). 141 On the necessity of case studies for the analysis of reading practice in historical context see, for example, Chartier and Friedman, ‘End of the reign of the book’, p. 10. 142 For a useful discussion of the case study as the investigation of individual readers see, Colclough, Consuming, pp. 15–20. For specific case studies see, for example, Jardine and Grafton, ‘“Studied for Action”’ (discussed in Colclough, Consuming, pp. 15–20). 143 See, for example, Sherman, Used Books, for case studies on readings of the Bible, and of The Book of Common Prayer, for example; Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, for a case study on the readings of Sidney’s Arcadia; Richards and Schurink (eds), Textuality and Materiality of Reading, for a selection of case studies. 144 M. Vovelle, ‘Serial history or case studies: A real or false dilemma in the history of mentalities?’, in Ideologies and Mentalities, Chapter 12, pp. 232–45. 145 Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities, p. 232. 146 Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities, pp. 232–3. 147 Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities, p. 242. 148 Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities, p. 242; on the particular and the general, see p. 240.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 42

21/05/2012 10:15:03

Introduction to methods and terms

43

149 Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities, p. 244. 150 Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities, p. 243. 151 Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities, p. 244 for the idea that the serial study is capable of a global understanding whereas the case study is capable of in-depth exploration. 152 See also Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, pp. 12–15 on how she ‘chooses’ her textual subjects proceeding from book lists and progressing to a choice of fruitful material for her study. 153 Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities, p. 241. 154 Vovelle, Ideologies and Mentalities, p. 241 for the suggestion that from ten or twelve case studies comes the possibility (‘ironically’) of assessing the evidence in series. On this, see also, J. Raven, ‘New reading histories, print culture and the identification of change: The case of eighteenth century England’, Social History, 23/3 (1998), pp. 268–87. 155 For the detrimental view that the anecdote is a new historicist tool, which is ‘irritatingly antithetical to historical discourse’ see Gallagher and Greenblatt, Practising, p. 50. 156 Vovelle Ideologies and Mentalities, p. 242. 157 Salter, Creativity, Chapters 1 and 2. I discussed a set of issues here as a proposed new approach to cultural history. 158 On the uses of woodcuts see the important study by Martha Driver (Driver, Image in Print). 159 Chartier, The Order of Books, p. 13. 160 On ‘cultural norms’ and reading communities, see S. Colclough, Reading Experience 1700–1840: An Annotated Register of Sources for the History of Reading in the British Isles (Reading; History of the Book – On Demand Series [HOBODS], University of Reading, 2000), p. iv. 161 See Sherman, Used Books, Chapter 5, ‘An uncommon Book of Common Prayer’, for the examination of what I would describe as the ‘scribe–reader’ who produced the manuscript version of the Book of Common Prayer, p. 95: ‘we appear to have a scribe who has assimilated the design conventions of both printed books and manuscripts, deploying them separately or in combination with a surprisingly free hand ’ (emphases added). 162 The issue of expectation is discussed in abstract terms in Iser, The Act of Reading, for example pp. 107ff. 163 See, for example, S. Barney (ed.), Annotation and its Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), particularly S.G. Nichols, ‘On the sociology of medieval manuscript annotation’, pp. 41–73. On the very common occurrences of annotations in Renaissance texts, see Sherman, Used Books, p. 5, and on the growth of annotation studies as a recognised field of study, see p. 21, citing the propositions of Bernard Rosenthal in relation to the cataloguing process; also, on the growth of interest in annotation evidence for early modern studies, see Richards and Schurink (eds), ‘Introduction’, Huntington Library Quarterly, pp. 346–8, 350.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 43

21/05/2012 10:15:03

44

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

164 J.B. Trapp, ‘Literacy, books and readers’, in Hellenga and Trapp (eds), Cambridge History of the Book, vol. 3, pp. 31–43, especially pp. 40–3 on ‘individual readers’. He cites particularly the following studies: A. Grafton and L. Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Europe (London: Duckworth, 1986); Sherman, John Dee; and other studies by Grafton, Jardine, and Sherman. The important recent study in this field to which I refer is Sherman, Used Books. 165 Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, p. 138. 166 Sherman, Used Books, Chapter 4 and Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, Chapter 3. 167 Salter, ‘“The Dayes Moralised”’, p. vi on the connections between book inscriptions and the ‘syntax which structured reading’. 168 For pioneering work using a codicology approach to reading see, for example, Thompson, Robert Thornton, p. 69 for the relationships between processes of book production and compilation, as the ‘mixture of obvious and sometimes happy accident, and occasional careful design’ in this process; Boffey, ‘Women authors’, pp. 165–6, 169–75; Meale ‘“alle the bokes”’, pp. 137–43; Riddy, ‘“Women talking”’, pp. 106–11. 169 Sherman, Used Books, p. xvi. On the use of the term ‘mark’ and its contemporary relevance to renaissance readers, see p. 3, and p. 15 on the ‘challenge of extrapolating general taxonomies of readerly behaviour’. The issue of printed marginalia as found in bibles of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries seems to me a separate issue (see Used Books, Chapter 4). 170 Sherman, Used Books, p. 10. 171 I discuss this in Salter, ‘“The Dayes Moralised”’. As with all these issues, clear distinctions between what constitutes popular and what not (in this instance scholarly) are difficult to make. By scholarly, here, I mean the extensive discourses of annotation attached to official texts such as treatises on medicine, philosophy or religion by scholars with a professional interest in the subject. For a reference to renaissance terminology for annotation that seems to imply scholarly activity see Sherman, Used Books, p. 20, referring to George Joye’s response to William Tyndale in 1535. 172 See Fleming, Graffiti, p. 33, for the comment that there is no early modern term for graffiti. 173 See Sherman, Used Books, pp. 15, 17 for a similar use of the term ‘blank’ (i.e. pages with no official text that may become cluttered with annotations). 174 Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, pp. 141, 139: ‘As these ownership marks and other stray records reveal some of the circumstances of reading, marginalia provide a glimpse of the process of reading.’ 175 See Salter, ‘“The Dayes Moralised”’, pp. 158–60. Some examples of rhyming annotations are given in Sherman, Used Books, for example pp. 17, 80. 176 For the suggestion that more work on rhyming annotations is needed, see also Sherman, Used Books, p. 18.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 44

21/05/2012 10:15:03

Introduction to methods and terms

45

177 But note Sherman, Used Books, p. 23: by no means all of the interesting notes written by readers in the margins and other blank spaces of books comment directly or indirectly on the text they are found in. Many of the notes that readers wrote in their books – doodles, pen practices, ownership formulas, and a wide variety of quotidian marks that were entered in books simply because they offer a convenient space for writing and archiving – do not qualify as ‘annotations’. 178 For a list annotations in Renaissance books for which I would use the intentionally provocative term ‘non-meaningful’, see Sherman, Used Books, p. 15: ‘penmanship exercises, prayers, recipes, popular poetry, drafts of letters, mathematical calculations, shopping lists and other glimpses of the world in which they circulated’. For the question quoted in the text see, Sherman, Used Books, p. 23; also commenting on this question and giving the same answer is J. Scott Warren, ‘Reading graffiti in the Early Modern book’, in Huntington Library Quarterly, 73/3 (2010), pp. 363–81, p. 365. 179 Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, pp. 139–41 (noted above). 180 On the possibility that marginal annotations were in part a product of the high price of paper, and the possibility that the introduction of mass-produced notebooks during the seventeenth century decreased the need for some marginal annotations, see Sherman, Used Books, p. 7; countering this in relation to the changes experienced in the transition from manuscript to print (and the associated idea of a move towards passive rather than active reading with the invention of printing), is evidence that marginal annotations may have been greater than those on manuscript in the early print era; see Used Books, pp. 8–9. 181 See Fleming, Graffiti, pp. 9–72; Scott Warren, ‘Reading graffiti’, pp. 364–71. 182 Witness Sherman, Used Books; J. Dagenais, The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Buen Amor (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. xvi on annotations, cited by Sherman. 183 For a recent essay (published after I wrote this chapter), suggesting a similar way of approaching manuscript annotations understood as ‘graffiti’ which occupy or create a ‘shared space’, see Scott Warren, ‘Reading graffiti’, p. 373. For formative work on the community of readers see Fish, ‘Interpreting the Variorum’. See also Thompson and Kelly, ‘Imagined histories’, in Thompson and Kelly (eds), Imagining the Book, p. 9 on ‘attending to the constitution and interests of medieval reading communities might reveal, in our view, that the material characteristics of the manuscript book encode and record the cultural currency of texts specific to the communities within which they were made and used’. 184 See, for example, K. Sharpe, Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000) pp. 60–1; Colclough, Consuming,`p. ix, 8–9, 13–15 and Chapters 5 and 6; R.L. Radulescu, The Gentry Context for Malory’s Morte Darthur, Arthurian Literature Series 55 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003). On the connections

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 45

21/05/2012 10:15:04

46

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

between the reading community and the material nature of the text see Kelly and Thompson, ‘Imagined histories’, in Kelly and Thompson (eds), Imagining the Book, p. 9. On the problems of identifying the community of readers when evidence such as annotation suggests dissimilar readings by apparently similar readers, see Sherman, Used Books, p. 10. 185 With a related point, made in an essay written after this chapter was produced, see Scott Warren, ‘Reading graffiti’, p. 373. 186 See Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, p, 17 and Chapter 3 (pp. 69–136), which uses prefaces to readers alongside printed marginalia that constructs the ‘gentle reader’, and see p. 136 where she identifies the caveat for using this source, that it constructs an ‘ideal’ (even though historically specific) reader. 187 On the printer’s use of the preface as part of his (or her) role as shaper of literary taste, see Thompson, ‘Popular reading’, in Simons, Medieval to Medievalism, pp. 90–2. 188 Iser, Act of Reading, p. 36. For a manuscript based discussion of the related intended reader’ see, for example, J. Thompson, ‘Another look at the religious texts in Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91’, in A.J. Minnis (ed.), Late Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission, Essays in Honour of A.I. Doyle (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 169–87, p. 174; also, Thompson, ‘Popular reading’ in Simons, Medieval to Medievalism, pp. 83–4. 189 This is a point made by Brayman Hackel in her use of prefaces to construct the ‘gentle reader’: Brayman Hackel, Reading Material, Chapter 3.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 46

21/05/2012 10:15:04

2

Religious reading and reform Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

Religious reading and reform

Introduction A huge amount of religious literature survives from the period c. 1400–1600, and this indicates the extent of its circulation.1 This chapter focuses on one particular kind of religious literature, which I will call ‘service books’. I take this to encompass primers and prayer books, both of which are connected to the distinctively medieval ‘book of hours’. This group of literature, the service book, is one of the most widely available to the widest sector of the population.2 It was used for private individual devotions and also in the communal setting of the church service. The format of these books varies considerably although in essence they serve to guide the reader through the hourly, daily and yearly devotional calendar.3 Service books survive as some of the most beautiful expensive books as well as some of the most scruffy and cheaply produced. Some of the most luxurious manuscript books of hours, for example, were made for very wealthy patrons and sometimes personalised with extravagant illuminations.4 There are also numerous middle-brow service books in manuscript and in print available to the not particularly wealthy, and, indeed, there is evidence for the ownership of service books by the non-elite as well as the elite in other documentary sources such as the last will and testament and various court records.5 There is also evidence for the availability of service books in that very earliest form of library, the parish church, where they were chained for common usage.6 Many of these books combine a didactic and devotional role.7 Versions of the primer, for example, were often used in teaching children how to read, although the ABC primer should not be confused with the service book, which is discussed in this chapter.8 Primers and prayer books from c. 1400–1600 survive in huge numbers in main research libraries of the UK like The British Library, Cambridge University Library, the Bodleian in Oxford, and The National Library of Wales; cathedral libraries such as Canterbury; and tucked away in various

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 47

21/05/2012 10:15:04

48

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

local record offices, and there are many more in international libraries.9 They are extremely varied in format, size and quality (often reflecting the people who owned them from royalty to the relatively poor). The grander sort in both manuscript and print are often a pleasure to read, easily, with their clear layouts and amply spaced pages. Others, often the cheaper ones but also those which are very small for the purposes of portability, are extremely difficult to read on cramped faded pages tattered from avid reading and the ravages of time. Much of the content of service books originates from the formalisation, during the twelfth century, of the communal devotions conducted in monasteries. This particularly concerned the twenty-four-hour and weekly cycle of devotions focusing around the psalms. It was divided into seven main parts: Matins (or Vigils, a night time office), Lauds (at dawn), Prime, Terce, Sext (the day offices), Nones (the evening office) and Compline (the final service of the evening).10 Additions made to this include other groups of psalms, the ‘Little Hours of the Virgin’, Litany of the Saints, and the office for the dead. These additions – most of which were found in the book known as the breviary, or portiphorium in Latin – probably represent an accrual and appropriation of devotional practices in various monastic houses over a period of centuries.11 Alongside these, particularly in the books used by laity, were also additional non-psalm-based prayers from the Old Testament known as the canticles (the song of Moses, the praise of Tobias), and the New Testament prayers such as the Magnificat in praise of Mary and the Canticle of Simeon (Nunc Dimittis) both from the Gospel of Luke, as well as the liturgical elements of the Creed and the Lord’s Prayer.12 Added to this are innumerable variations found in manuscript and printed books in the form of annotations, specific images selected from a manuscript workshop, devotional prayers added by hand to printed or manuscript books (or added in print by printers), and other didactic and devotional works appended to both manuscript and printed service books. In this chapter, I begin with a case study of one fairly unusual prayer book in order to demonstrate some of the possibilities presented for the synchronic analysis of reading practice using evidence from one manuscript.13 This case study raises some issues about the languages of devotion, with particular reference to Latin and the vernacular (English in this case), which leads into an examination of the significance of vernacularity in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in connection with popular literacy. A comparative case study, using a diachronic analysis, is useful here in order to consider how Latin and English text

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 48

21/05/2012 10:15:04

Religious reading and reform

49

was employed and understood across the ideological changes of the reformation period. Finally, continuing with the theme of investigating changes and continuities in reading practice and experience during the time of reform, the chapter ends with a series of case studies about reading experience across the intense reform period, roughly 1540–60, and on up to 1590, with a particular focus on the connections between practice, experience and ideology. Case study 1: synchronic analysis I am going to begin this chapter by examining a fifteenth-century manuscript prayer book, which is not the most widely available type of popular literature because it looks a relatively expensive book with its numerous full colour illustrations. It is not of the highest quality, however, because the illustrations are not finely worked, being described in Neil Ker’s catalogue, for example, as ‘competent’.14 So this book falls somewhere between a most widely available and an elite product. It is a small volume, probably dating from the second half of the fifteenth century, and it is where I began with the study of reading practice, as a graduate student. The manuscript is held in Canterbury Cathedral Archives but internal evidence suggests that there was a Yorkshire owner in the fifteenth or sixteenth century.15 The provenance of this book’s production is presently open to debate.16 It is easily held open in the hands measuring, in its present state, 21.0cm by 8.6cm by 3.2cm. It has a nineteenth-century binding on which is misleadingly written ‘missal’.17 Although it would be questionable to suggest that the Canterbury prayer book was ever intended for the cheapest end of the market, there is some evidence that the book was being used in the fifteenth century by individuals without clear claims to high status. For example, fol. 76r has the name ‘Robarte Wallbanck’ written down the right-hand margin; fols 108v–112v, which are ‘blank’, have various names and pen practices. The name ‘Edward Walker’ is signed on fol. 112r, underneath which are various practice letters probably related to this name. The name ‘John Walker’ is written twice on fol. 106v, one of which signatures is in Greek suggesting a learned reader. Underneath these signatures, and partially rubbed out, is another name, probably ‘hugh lidon’. All of these names are written in roughly contemporary hands. Nor do the names in themselves provide the interesting evidence about reading experience. They are all male, as it happens, although this does not confirm the gender of the intended reader. In fact, one prayer, addressed specifically to a widow,

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 49

21/05/2012 10:15:04

50

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

might suggest a female readership.18 Individuals’ names do not preclude the use of the book by a family or other kind of reading group. The Canterbury prayer book contains a collection of prayers based on Old Testament figures. They range from offerings of thanks to pleas for help and requests for forgiveness. Various moral groups are represented such as enemies and heretics, righteous, devout and lecherous; the various social categories include the married, widows, daughters and sons. They all also address a contemporary subject such as the church, adversity, sickness and grace; prayers are all illustrated, generally by characters from the Old Testament. In general, all prayers begin with a coloured typographical illustration that represents a traditional iconic biblical moment summarising the content of the prayer as well as the biblical narrative from which it is drawn.19 There is usually an explanation of the prayer written in English, in a red script, which begins with the phrase, ‘this praier folwinge’; below this there is a caption for the illustration in Latin, in a blue script, and then the main part of the text is written in Latin, in a black script (see plate 1).20 The standardised presentation and internal organisation of this book suggest production in a workshop.21 Evidence for continuities between apparently different sections would seem to corroborate this.22 On initial inspection it is clear that this book is itself a hybrid object like many manuscripts from the fifteenth century. In other words, it is not any one of the types of book often associated with medieval religious devotions: parts of it might be defined variously as ‘prayer manual’, ‘Hours of the Virgin’ and ‘Psalter of St Jerome’, and the nineteenth-century binding calls it ‘missal’. However, comparisons with other devotional manuscripts suggest that generic definitions are often inappropriate. Within one genre, such as ‘book of hours’, there are numerous differences in systems of image–text juxtaposition. The wide varieties in size and the varying types of annotations and other additions by owners or later compilers both signal a variety of uses.23 This evidence suggests that devotional books such as this, like other kinds of medieval manuscript, contain a hybrid mixture of various kinds of generic medieval text. As I have outlined in Chapter 1, the concepts intertextuality and performativity are useful for talking about what happens in the process of reading at the interface between the experiential (the reader’s imagination) and the physical (the book itself). In using the term intertextuality I intend to take on the complexities and vagaries of the imaginative process involved with reading any given text, and the dynamic nature of this process (in other words its non-structural nature). It is particularly useful

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 50

21/05/2012 10:15:04

Religious reading and reform

51

to combine this sense of the intertextual experience of reading with the business of acting out the practice of reading: the performance. Over time, between texts and within specific imaginative moments, this interaction of textual meaning and imagination is a dynamic process rather than a static condition. Indeed, the following discussion suggests that the Canterbury prayer book was written and assembled so that even the individual prayers are structured to provide the reader with an intertextual experience. This is particularly the case for the habitual reader, whose practice of reading the book becomes ritualised; in other words, it is at once familiar yet special and separated from the normal activities of everyday life. I use ritual here to refer to the process of construing meanings (from text) whereby the reader may have bodily and perceptual experiences of uncertainty and complexity as part of the tangled state of comprehending.24 Manuscript evidence suggests that an appropriate order for the habitual reader of a book like the Canterbury prayer book might be: i) the reader chooses the appropriate prayer; ii) he or she is then reacquainted with the traditional iconic biblical moment of the image; iii) the reader then proceeds to read or recite the Latin prayer.25 It does not matter whether or not the reader actually followed this suggested structure. What is very useful, here, is the evidence for reading experience that this type of intended reading practice conveys. In the following paragraphs I discuss these reading stages in more detail, by also comparing the Canterbury manuscript with other devotional books. In the Canterbury prayer book, the first stage – the choice of a prayer – is encouraged by the English script, which is highlighted by being rubricated. Reading the rubricated instructions constitutes part of the pious practice of using this book as an instrument of meditation and contemplation. Paul Saenger connects this aspect of a devotional book’s use with a fifteenth-century perception that private reading formed a threat to religious authority. Within the reading process, this voice is a fictive creation of appropriated authority exterior to the reader. Yet repeated readings of this book, which are probably fundamental to devotional practice, may have encouraged an internalisation of this voice that was potentially subversive to the authority it appropriated.26 The instruction is perhaps equivalent to a priest’s explanations of stained-glass images.27 In the sample image, the instruction is: ‘This praier folwinge is to be sede in like wise for al hooly chirche as the next bifore was’ (see plate 1).28 This is the second of two consecutive Jeremiah prayers which have been linked together by this instruction. In other manuscripts, a rubricated initial or final word may act as a

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 51

21/05/2012 10:15:04

52

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

pointer for the beginning of the hymn, psalm or collect that is appropriate for a specific date or liturgical occasion. In a small, late fifteenth-century book of hours, for example, rubricated Latin text appears at the end of certain prayers with the phrase ‘Pater noster, ave Maria’.29 Another Latin book of hours uses rubricated text to introduce the beginning of a new section.30 Examples of the use of rubrication to instruct the reader how to understand the purpose of the prayer also exist. A book of hours owned by the Tudor dynasty in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, for example, has rubricated introductions to prayers in both Latin and English, such as: Who that saieth devoutely this prayer daylie shall not depart out of this worlde without penaunce and mynistracon of the holy sacrament the whiche was shewed by an angelle unto saint Bernarde.31

The Canterbury prayer book constructs the second stage of the reading order through the use of an image corresponding to each prayer. Each image is captioned by a short Latin phrase made distinct by its blue colour. The images use invocatory moments to represent the whole of the written narrative of the prayer and its associated biblical narrative.32 Such invocation suggests that the idea of vocalisation or oralisation was important to silent devotional reading.33 A typical caption translates as ‘The prayer of Isaiah 37 and Jeremiah 10’, giving information about the biblical figure (or figures) depicted in the image.34 The identity of the image would probably have been known to the reader from conventional devotional practice. Comparable to this, perhaps, is the way that the images in a highly illustrated Life of Christ manuscript are captioned. In this manuscript a double page, measuring 180 × 130mm, corresponds to one prayer and the written space might take up 60 × 80 mm on the right-hand page. The colours of the (unbordered) illustration occupy the whole of the rest of the double page.35 At the start of the text, there occurs a short sentence, which provides both a caption for the illustration and also a summary of the main body of text. For example, the sentence ‘Orayson devote a S. Sebastien’ begins a passage which tells the story of the saint’s martyrdom and which is illustrated by a figure being pelted with spears and arrows.36 In the Canterbury prayer book, it seems to be important that the reader knows whose voice or voices are contained within the Latin invocation. Numerous biblical references in captions, or in the margins, appear to reflect this priority. While contemplating the image, then, the reader might imagine the relevance of biblical imagery to the contemporary situation as given by the rubricated script.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 52

21/05/2012 10:15:04

Religious reading and reform

53

The third stage of the suggested reading order involves the reader in the complex imaginative processes of reading the prayer whilst also thinking about its contemporary relevance and the relevance of the caption and image. The reader’s understanding of the prayer text depends on the extent of his knowledge of Latin but the words ‘me’ and ‘te’ are basic, and make the prayer easily understandable as being from me (reader or biblical figure) to you (God). These invocations use an emotive language highlighted by the address to God being in the second person singular with the reader employing the first person singular (me) or the plural (noster). The prayers are expressed, as in other contemporary religious literature, in the familiar and confident tones of the Old Testament prophets.37 The emphasis on invocation provides evidence for the workings of intertextuality within the structure of the Canterbury prayer book. The prayer-maker is enabled to enter imaginatively into the known dialogue of the biblical text, by using the voices of the Old Testament prophets. Uttering the words of the Old Testament, the reader may employ a distinctively meditational voice, expressing a separation from other forms of personal discourse as part of the ritualised process of reading. The prayer-maker’s imagination is guided by the blue caption that tells him or her to which Old Testament figure the prayer belongs. Religious reading as ‘ imaginative overlaying’ Having argued that the reader’s activity of intertextuality is an imaginative performance, it becomes necessary to consider the reader’s imagination as operating at the interface between the various elements of the physical page and the stored knowledge and experience of his or her imagination. Reading understood as this involves a complex process of what I think of as ‘imaginative overlaying’, which blurs the distinctions between the page and the imagination. This requires a performance of intertextuality that is usefully illustrated in the representations of reading painted in many fifteenth-century Flemish images. Since I began to think about devotional reading practice and experience, a particular favourite for me has been Petrus Christus’ Portrait of a Young Man, c. 1444–76. This does a particularly good job of representing the complicated interaction between a reader’s mental world and the book he or she is holding.38 Christus represents the mixing of the materially present with the imagined or the remembered that is involved in devotional reading by surrounding the figure of the reading man with various other texts. The Petrus Christus image appears to allude to the imaginative activity of intertextual engagement. The representation of the man reading includes

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 53

21/05/2012 10:15:04

54

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

what seems to be one particular reference to the role of memory and imagination: a small parchment wall prayer, its corners peeling away, hangs behind him.39 Depicted above the prayer is the stained shroud, held by St Veronica. In this self-consciously represented Flemish interior, it is as if the prayer is inscribed in the mind’s eye of the young reading man at the moment that is portrayed. The portrait also alludes to the young man’s ability to write: a small purse strapped to his belt is probably the kind used to carry wax tablets; these purses were used by merchants to keep account of their transactions. The painting represents the momentary condition of his imagination as he considers and overlays aspects of his prayer book, his devotional focus and his stored imaginative – and perhaps written – knowledge. Over time, he might acquire and record new views or reprioritise and erase old views in this imaginative process. The comparative evidence of paintings, such as this one by Petrus Christus, together with other devotional manuscripts, provides further evidence for the imaginative reading strategies encouraged by the Canterbury prayer book. The reader’s complicated sequences of imaginative performance involve a constant overlaying of intertextual moments. After he or she has finished reading the prayer, the reader would need some time to contemplate all the overlaying of meaning, voice and relevance.40 A small, late fifteenth-century manuscript refers to one way in which the reader might behave whilst engaged in this reflective part of devotional practice. A rubricated instruction advises the reader to have available devotional images or focuses beyond the book. And this pyer muste Be sayd knelyng Or stondyng before An auter of o’ lady or els before an ymage of o’ lady 41

This is similar to Petrus Christus’s representation of reading, which shows the man concentrating on a separate devotional object outside of the book. Such a focus might help to channel the reader’s attention both during and after reading. The repetitive nature of this habitual process of devotional reading is critical to its dynamic quality. Each re-reading might involve the re-imagination of different intertextual references. Over time, the thickness of this overlaying would vary as the reader’s priorities are changed and as issues of past relevance are erased in favour of new concerns and values.42

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 54

21/05/2012 10:15:04

Religious reading and reform

55

This dynamic process of knowledge application, reapplication, acquisition and replacement is perhaps at the heart of a reader’s practice of intertextuality. The Canterbury prayer book seems to be constructed so that this performance is inevitable, necessary and permitted when reading the prayers. Concluding manuscript case study 1 In this examination of the small unusual Canterbury prayer book, I have proposed that intertextuality is usefully understood as a performance. This is dependent on the extent of the reader’s textual knowledge and cultural experience. The structure of the Canterbury prayer book appears to permit and encourage an imaginative engagement with the prayer texts and the biblical texts to which they are ascribed. The rubricated instruction involves a process of abstracting morals, which may be applied both to the ancient biblical narrative and to contemporary situations. The book therefore encourages certain ideas about the meaning of contemporary events in relation to the ancient past. However, the performative element of this process means that the book would permit the reader to have a broader spectrum of views about these relationships between the past and the present. The three-phase structure of reading encouraged by the book therefore also encourages the reader’s involvement in the interpretation of meanings. The reader’s private devotions involve a dynamic process of constructing and reconstructing his or her imaginative relationship with the prayer book and his or her own contemporary situation. The book appears to encourage the reader to reflect on his or her contemporary situation as part of the praying process by including the texts which provide the contemporary contextualising of each prayer in English. The significance of the vernacular Given that this book covers 1400 to 1600, the reformation era has to loom large in my consideration of religious reading. Modern scholarship of the reformation process understands this change and transition in terms of various significant time periods, often during the sixteenth century but with the ‘long reformation’ beginning as far back as the late medieval premature phase defined by Anne Hudson.43 The modern revisionist approach to reformation – which tends to emphasise more detailed reconstruction taking into account local and regional dynamics, and group or individual experience – is appropriate to a consideration of reading practice and experience.44 This modern approach to reformation in general

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 55

21/05/2012 10:15:04

56

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

includes a tendency to examine evidence for a period of uncertainty, perhaps confusion; some individuals or places demonstrating resistance to change from the traditional religion with others welcoming new ideas and practices more readily.45 In this mode of analysis, reformation may be understood as a series of little reformations containing within them flashpoints of interpretation where significant changes are imposed, perceived, or experienced.46 The primer service book has been viewed as a crucial text of popular reading and one which particularly reflects the process of reform.47 Primers were described by Charles Butterworth as ‘religious handbooks’ compiling a set of information derived from the medieval book of hours. Alongside the offices of the church (canonical hours, litany, dirge, seven penitential psalms) a primer generally included an almanac, a calendar of saints’ days, and often the catechetical basics such as Pater noster, Ave, Creed, the ten commandments, perhaps an edifying treatise, some special prayers and graces, and information about confession.48 The primer is the descendant of the medieval book of hours in many respects and also the forerunner of the Book of Common Prayer (first introduced in 1549). Helen White used changes in the use of the vernacular in the English primer as significant evidence for the role of this type of book in the process of reform, although she also drew attention to the long history of English language text in the printed primers dated from c. 1494.49 She goes on to discuss the primers of the later 1530s to the 1550s, which make some distinct doctrinal changes and which explicitly identify themselves as Protestant texts. There is clearly an increase in the use of English in primers across this period, particularly those she identifies as having a reforming zeal such as the books printed by Godfray and Byddell & Marshall in the 1530s.50 So it is indeed possible to identify increased use of English as a symptom of reformation ideology in primers. Eamon Duffy’s recent study of primers, Marking the Hours, which usefully considers both manuscript and printed primers, also chooses not to consider the manuscript inheritance in his trajectory for the uses of English introductions to prayers, as found in the printed Regnault hours.51 The issue of Latin and English in primers is a complicated one which requires some unpacking. First of all, to consider primers as being either in Latin or in English is often not possible across the period c. 1500–60: the titles of a number of primers produced between these dates indicate that they are in both languages. There has been some confusion about how to describe primers which have both languages. One of the problems with identifying the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 56

21/05/2012 10:15:04

Religious reading and reform

57

extent of innovation in the use of English in manuscript and early printed primers is also the way they have been categorised, often taking the lead from Edgar Hoskins’ important catalogue.52 A look through the sections in Hoskins on ‘Latin’ and ‘English and Latin’ books shows that there is a definite grey area between these two categories. Wynkyn de Worde’s Horae of 1502, for example, is described as one of the ‘Hours in Latin’ despite its reasonably extensive English instructions for elements of the service printed in Latin.53 The Horae printed by Endhoven in 1530/31 is also defined as a Latin book and yet it begins with ‘The days of the week moralysed’, which is followed by ‘The manner to live well devoutly and salutarily’.54 These are significant issues concerning how to categorise and define the primer over a period of time, and they have a direct bearing on the impact of these books on the reader. A second issue regarding Latin and English is that prefaces to readers found in the primers of c. 1530–60 were quite assertive about their uses of English. Perhaps because of a residual anticipation by scholars that the increased use of English text in religious literature signals a move towards reforming ideals, the introduction of English into the printed primer in c. 1530 has been viewed as a sign of increasingly Protestant emphasis.55 It is very likely that assertions about new content in English found in prefaces to primers contributed to the formation of an official view on reformed religion promulgated by the state that may have been accepted by the common reader.56 Often quoted prefaces to primers include the Wayland primer of 1539 and the book known as Henry VIII’s Primer of 1545. The two prefaces to the 1539 edition of the Wayland primer (one of which is for the newly devised calendar and the other more generally to the reader) provide some useful evidence for both changing attitudes towards elements of Christian worship and the ways that English and Latin should be used.57 This primer is described by Ian Green as having ‘Protestant features in a work built up essentially of Catholic material’.58 The general tenor of the preface to the reader is that English text is being provided so that the unlearned who do not read Latin might have access to the meaning of the texts without misconstrual. It is not therefore a statement against the traditional practices of the established church.59 The preface to the calendar in the ‘new fashion’ also emphasises its intention to increase the knowledge of the reader, this time describing the inclusion of references to Bible readings so that ‘the reader may knowe what scripture the church do use thorow out the yeare, & to study & use the same’.60 The preface in the 1545 manual of prayers and primer (Henry VIII’s Primer), which

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 57

21/05/2012 10:15:04

58

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

Green suggests is different enough from the 1539 book to be ‘deemed a Protestant work on balance’, also contains some useful comments on the uses of English as well as on the intentions of the book as a means of standardising Christian worship.61 This preface is actually in the form of an injunction from Henry VIII. While there is a similar emphasis on the use of the ‘vulgate tong’ to enable those not literate in Latin but who have ‘the knowledge of reading’ to be ‘the more provoked to true devotion’, there is also a clear statement that English should be used for the teaching of the ABC and primer or book of prayers to the ‘yong beginners in lernyng’ until that they ‘be of competent understandyng and knowledge to preceyve it in Latyn’.62 The interest of these two books seems, therefore, to be in asserting the significance of using English for the edification of the unlearned common reader rather than making statements against traditional practice. One of the primers thought to have a particular role as a reforming text, partly because it is almost entirely in English, is a book known as the Marshall primer of 1534.63 The preface to this book does makes a definite claim against traditional religious practices although it does not make specific assertions about its uses of English. It may be that by c. 1530 these primers were increasingly Protestant-leaning but it is a mistake to attribute the inclusion of English language text in these books as in itself a sign of a Protestant emphasis. Manuscript, print, vernacularity, and popular reading In assessing the significance, role and chronology of the spread of vernacular writing in service books there is a problem in that there has been a tendency for the contents of manuscript and printed primers to be considered in isolation from each other. Helen White’s seminal book, for example, focuses on print culture, although she does not claim that nothing interesting had been happening to primers before print.64 The Canterbury prayer book, to take one example, predates the printed primer texts which have traditionally been viewed as innovative in their uses of English language and changing usage of images. One of the very early ‘English’ printed primers was produced by Wynkyn de Worde in various versions between 1494 and 1520. These contain a number of prayers in English alongside Latin text for many parts of the service and have a considerable amount of English material in them, including the rubricated preface to the ‘Oes of St Brigd’.65 One of this group, the Horae beate marie virginis ad vsum insignis ecclesie Sarum, produced in 1502, is a large

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 58

21/05/2012 10:15:04

Religious reading and reform

59

vellum book probably intended (on account of its size and the extent of its decoration) for a relatively wealthy audience.66 Some of the same prayers and sequences of prayers occur in this and the Canterbury book.67 These parallels suggest that, although the types of manuscript are similar to other more widely known books, the Wynkyn de Worde print and the Canterbury prayer book may belong to a distinct group of devotional ‘service books’ which used English and Latin in manuscripts of the mid to late fifteenth century through to the early printed texts of the very late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Interestingly, de Worde also printed a close relative to this edition in 1503. This is a Sarum hours which is almost entirely in Latin, indicating that, certainly from this printer’s perspective, there was at the same time a market for books dominated by Latin and books with a significant English content.68 The primers produced by Francois Regnault from about 1526 also provide a good, slightly later, example of a mixed English and Latin production.69 The primers of this continental printer have been identified as very significant in the production and circulation of service books containing English in England. The earliest which receives attention is generally the 1527 edition, which has a sequence of occasional prayers including ‘O Glorious Jesu O mekest Jesu’ and ‘O the most swetest spouse of mi sowle’.70 As Mary Erler shows, over a period of ten years from about 1526, Regnault added some significant innovations in English such as ‘The Days of the Week Moralized, Copland’s Maner to lyve well, and Jean Gerson’s Three Verities’ in the 1529 edition.71 These primers also had images spread throughout them, often illustrating the prayers, including the prayers to saints.72 And, like the Wynkyn primer of 1502, English was used in the form of a caption or instructions to aid readers of English with those parts of the book that were mainly in Latin.73 As well as producing a number of editions, Regnault also produced various sorts of primer which may have been directed at different kinds of market, from the relatively expensive to the fairly cheap, including what Erler described as ‘an inexpensive and truly popular primer’.74 I began this chapter with a discussion of the evidence for practices and experiences of devotional reading provided by one (unusual) prayer book, not because that prayer book is particularly representative of books in general circulation in the fifteenth century, but because it seems to me that it opens up some very useful ways of talking about the activity of devotional reading. Nevertheless, private devotional books in Latin and vernacular languages have been recognised to be very popular in the fifteenth century.75 The Canterbury prayer book is certainly related

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 59

21/05/2012 10:15:04

60

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

to other types of devotional book such as the book of hours and primer. Such books, particularly the ‘fine’ manuscripts, have been widely studied. Often such studies have been largely descriptive, with particular attention being paid to the history of illuminated images and their relationships with similar images in other manuscripts.76 The Old Testament prayer sequence is not unusual, and indeed these sequences of prayers are used in a number of versions of the primers printed across the period c. 1502–60.77 The extent to which the prayers are illustrated alongside the inclusion of English instructions about how to use each prayer is, however, unusual. These particular illustrations are, as far as I have been able to discover, unique survivals both in the context of manuscript prayer books and the printed primers.78 The Wynkyn version of these prayers is very similar except that it omits the illustrations which, I have suggested, have a significant impact on the experience of reading the prayers. The English instructions are not unique to the Canterbury prayer book although they are particularly full in this manuscript and their references to contemporary (that is fifteenth-century) social situations are fairly unusual. As I have said, there has been a tendency to view the use of English for instructions to the reader with these prayers and with elements of liturgical text as a feature of the printed primers from about 1530, and this is linked with the assertions made in the prefaces to readers of those books. English text in this context has been construed as a sign of a new reforming attitude to praying and reading. This seems to ignore the earlier use of English instruction in devotional manuscripts of the fifteenth century. There remains a set of debates surrounding the connections between Protestantism and the rise in the use of the vernacular (in this instance English) for the circulation of popular literatures. But considerations of the use of English need also to look to the long reformation period in order to acknowledge the role and significance of heretical movements such as Wyclifism and Lollardy, and of heterodoxy more broadly.79 In general, the years c. 1497–1528 are seen as the last years of Lollard activity and indeed of Lollard persecutions. So for these years the ownership of English religious texts, particularly catechetical and scriptural materials, comes with another set of debates concerning uncertainties and dangers.80 Because of the threats posed by accusations of Lollardy against those owning and using English scriptural and catechetical writing, the years that might be called the ‘late Lollard period’, c. 1480–1525, have sometimes been considered by modern scholars as a time when the availability of English (printed) religious literature actually decreased.81 This decrease

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 60

21/05/2012 10:15:04

Religious reading and reform

61

is viewed in comparison to the late medieval manuscript circulation of, for example, English psalters and other devotional writings, including catechetical texts found in numerous compilation manuscripts and in other collections such as Speculum Vitae, Mirk’s Festial and Mannyng’s Handlyng Synne.82 Continuing with this line of thought, the years c. 1527–30 (in other words after the end of the main Lollard persecutions and at the start of the official reformation process) have then been identified as particularly crucial in the introduction of new English texts particularly through the medium of the primer, although this is sometimes thought to have come to an abrupt end for a few years in 1530–34 with the ‘Proclamation Against Erroneous Books in English’ in 1530 and the further restrictions on foreign importations in the 1534 statute.83 By 1534, however, and again generally based on the circulation of the primer, there is thought to have been a revival in the production of English religious texts, some of which have a specifically reforming agenda, such as the primers printed by John Byddell for William Marshall and by Thomas Godfray and sometimes known as the ‘reforming’ primers.84 Printing is still often implicated as a major tool in the spread of Protestantism through its production and circulation of English texts to the masses, and one of the very influential voices on the connections between Protestantism, the uses of English and the printing press was John Foxe, whose intentions were, of course, to make connections between the Lollard past and the coming of Protestantism.85 In his important study of print and Protestantism, Ian Green subscribes to the current scholarly trend to propose a lack of abrupt difference between Catholic and Protestant devotional practices.86 However, in his consideration of continuity and change in the character of devotional aids, c. 1530–1740, he implies that one of the main changes in the two centuries following Reformation is the translation of key catechetical texts (the Creed, the Lord’s prayer and the ten commandments) into English. This does imply, albeit accidentally, that these translations were a feature of the devotional aids of reformation and post-reformation printing. In her consideration of a situation-based approach to what defined Lollard practice (including what counted as Lollard reading matter), Shannon McSheffry has recently discussed the ‘plasticity of the categories of orthodoxy and heresy’ with reference to Lollard reading (and more particularly book ownership).87 She describes the ways that the ownership of certain English texts, especially catechetical and scriptural material, was sometimes part of an accusation of heretical practice. At other times

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 61

21/05/2012 10:15:04

62

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

the very orthodoxy of the common reader owning, using and learning English catechetical material was emphasised.88 As Anne Hudson pointed out, these accusations are sometimes much more about the identity of the accused than about the text he or she owned and read.89 McSheffry also points out that Foxe may have deliberately emphasised or even overplayed the role of the ownership and use of English text for his own propagandist agenda. Other scholars of reading have started to break down this over-simplified way of understanding the transition from Catholicism to Protestantism in relation to script and print. Based on evidence for scribbled-out words in religious books, Martha Driver has explored the ‘complex relationships Protestantism had with Catholicism’, suggesting that post-reformation readers may have had an interest in preserving the medieval past whilst carrying out the required modifications of early reforming years.90 In his detailed examination of a manuscript copy of a Book of Common Prayer (1562), Sherman demonstrates the possibilities of producing a hybrid volume which both problematises easy distinctions between Catholic and Protestant devotional reading and also indicates the sometimes experimental interactions between manuscript and print culture.91 And Alexandra Walsham gives (later) examples of both fear on the part of some Protestant commentators of the effects of circulating amongst the masses vernacular literature in print, particularly the Bible, and excitement about the uses of the printing press as an agent of evangelism for some Catholics.92 The following case study demonstrates one way in which a consideration of visual issues such as page layout alongside issues of language might contribute to understandings of the changing experience of reading in the transition from Catholicism to Protestantism c. 1400–1600. Case study 2: diachronic analysis Examining the Canterbury prayer book alongside some later books containing similar contents shows the value of diachronic comparative analysis in the development of a better understanding of reading practice and experience. In particular, such an analysis can demonstrate that there is no easy answer to what made a devotional book popular or readable. A clearly demarcated layout is not necessarily intended for wider circulation than a book which has fewer signposts or fewer images. Similarly, the presence of images in books does not signal an object intended for circulation amongst those with only basic reading skills. One of the primers which contains a sequence of Old Testament

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 62

21/05/2012 10:15:04

Religious reading and reform

63

prayers like that found in the Canterbury prayer book is The primer in Englishe and Latine set out along, after the use of Sarum printed by John Kyngston and Henry Sutton in 1557 (see plate 1 and figures 1 and 2).93 This group of prayers is given the rather Protestant-sounding title of ‘Godly prayers’. I have found it useful and puzzling to compare the appearance of the equivalent prayer in this book and the Canterbury prayer book. The example taken here is the set of two prayers of Jeremiah. In the 1557 prayerbook neither Jeremiah prayer is given any explanation about its occasions of use (although some of the prayers in the sequence, such as the prayer of ‘Jesus sonne of Syrach’ which follows, are). The text of these two consecutive prayers is as follows: A praier of Hieremie Ieremias. xvii Heale me O Lorde, and I shall be whole: save thou mee, and I shall be saved, for thou arte my praise. Be not thou terrible unto me, O Lorde, for thou are he in whom I hope. When I am in perill, let my persecutors be confounded, but not me. Thou shalt bringe upon them the time of their plage, and shalt destroy them right sone. Amen. A praier of hieremie Ieremias, xxxi. O Lord thou hast chastened me, and thy chastenynge have I received as an untamed calfe, convert thou me, and I shal be converted, for thou art my Lorde GOD, for as sone as thou diddest turne me, I repented my selfe, and when I understode I smote upon my thighe, I confessed and was ashamed bicause I suffred the reproche of my youthe.94

To make this comparison is absurd in some ways because of the difference in date and the great ideological changes which had happened between the two production dates, crudely speaking from Catholicism to Protestantism and somewhat back again with the ‘sober and scriptural’ tone of a primer of the Marian period.95 However, it remains interesting to observe the differences between these two prayer texts. In theory, the later text should be much more accessible because it comes from the period of very determined wide circulation of printed matter. Much of the 1557 book is in English, which is perhaps its trump card for accessibility when compared to the Canterbury prayer book’s version in which the main body of the prayer text is in Latin. The Godly prayers sections are almost entirely in English; the liturgical sections tend to be in parallel text with

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 63

21/05/2012 10:15:04

Figure 1  CCAL H/L-4-10 (R 330), The primer in Englishe and Latine (London, Jhon kyngston and Henry Sutton, 1557), p. 265.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 64

21/05/2012 10:15:04

Figure 2  CCAL H/L-4-10 (R 330), The primer in Englishe and Latine (London, Jhon kyngston and Henry Sutton, 1557), p. 266.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 65

21/05/2012 10:15:05

66

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

the Latin at the edges of the page and the English text in the centre. These liturgical sections also have some pictorial woodcuts, particularly depicting scenes from the life of Christ. The Canterbury prayer book has in its favour, however, the image as well as the three colours of ink, which include the English instruction in red and the caption in blue. All of these elements of the layout seem to provide a number of footholds for the reader which, arguably, are more accessible than the unbroken mass of text found in the 1557 version. How, then, is the 1557 text, a book presumably printed for significant numbers of sales, more accessible than the Canterbury prayer book? Obviously, across that period it might be argued that an ideological shift had also taken place which changed the parameters for what layouts were possible. The Canterbury book is representative of Catholic piety before Reformation, whereas the 1557 Godly prayers is representative of the counter- Reformation Catholicism, in which the ‘wonder world of charm, pardon, and promise in the older primers had gone forever’.96 Perhaps one answer is that the 1557 prayer book is more accessible because it is dominated by English-language text. Concluding case study 2 But, when making a comparison such as this, it is first of all important to remember that reading pictures is not necessarily more simple than reading words. As Michael Baxandall pointed out, a present-day assumption might be that pictures are easy to read, but this would be to disregard the complex culture of iconography in which medieval individuals lived.97 The often quoted pronouncements by medieval writers about the use of pictures as books for the laity (such as Pope Gregory’s idea that the illiterate may use pictures to ‘read by seeing’) has been frequently cited as proof that pictures were easier to read.98 This may sometimes be the case, but not always. The Canterbury prayer book should not therefore be viewed as an easier read simply because it is illustrated.99 However, I would suggest that its pages offer the reader a much more attractive entry into the reading process than do the pages of the 1557 Godly prayers. The comparison, though somewhat absurd given the number of years between their production (roughly a century) and the massive ideological changes which had happened between the two, draws attention to the significance of page layout for reading experience. It does not offer any particular answers, but it does emphasise the importance of the presence or absence of picture, Latin text and vernacular text in the experience of reading. This comparison therefore sets up a useful set of parameters for a consideration of what is happening to reading experience across this period of particular

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 66

21/05/2012 10:15:05

Religious reading and reform

67

changes to the uses of Latin, vernacular and image. It is important to stress that the nature of the transition in reading experience from the deluxe pre-reformation image-filled book to the plain style of the Marian Godly prayers, apparently for the masses, is complex. Popular literacy and learning to read Literacy Although it is its Englishness which seems to be the main feature demarcating the 1557 primer as a more popular read than the Canterbury book, there are some further issues concerning the popular languages of literacy. It is, first of all, important to remember that the definition of literacy is not straightforward.100 As I discussed in Chapter 1, rather than thinking that people could either read or they could not – in other words that they were either literate or illiterate – it is more appropriate to also consider individuals’ involvement in occasions that included literate activities. Perhaps particularly with devotional literature, and more particularly again with service books, participating in events which involve literate activity can be seen as a significant aspect of being literate.101 The individual may be reading from his or her own book in a church service; he or she may be following words in a book without more advanced skills in reading; he or she may be listening and looking at writing on church walls or monuments. All of these activities should be seen as significantly connected with the business of reading. A book such as the Canterbury prayer book certainly has the potential for use by an individual without advanced reading skills in either English or Latin. He or she may well know much of the written text in the book off by heart having heard it read numerous times as part of the liturgy of church worship. Indeed, this being the case, the parts of the prayer book the basic reader is likely to be able to follow best are the bits in Latin. He or she is less likely to have heard the more unusual aspect of this book, the English instructions, read with the same frequency. In combination, however, the Canterbury prayer book with its narrative images, English instruction and Latin liturgical prayers provides plenty of signposting for the reader. The entirely English godly prayers in the 1557 primer do not provide so much help although, again, the elementary reader is likely to have memorised much of the text of the prayers from hearing them in services (very possibly in the Protestant services of the pre-Marian period) and may have learned to read by following the prayers in his or her own book.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 67

21/05/2012 10:15:05

68

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

Learning to read There is some evidence for attitudes about how children and adults should learn to read, and this provides some useful contextualisation for the consideration of how readers engaged with popular devotional texts. Nicholas Orme’s consideration of learning to read for children in medieval society seems to show as much evidence for learning the ABC in the context of Latin words and phrases (such as Pater noster) as English, at least up until the 1530s.102 Certainly, his discussion of the ABC and its connections with the phrase ‘Christ Cross me Speed’ puts learning to read into a context which is imbued with religious practice, in whichever language that may be conducted.103 Based on survival rates of ABC books, Michael Clanchy has recently proposed that learning to read was often conducted in Latin.104 In my consideration of primers as devotional manuals, here, it is important not to get confused between what might be the quite basic reading skills of adults and the education of children, although the two are not unconnected. Richard Whitford’s A Werke for Housholders (printed c. 1531–37), which belongs within a tradition of instructional manuals, adds some useful evidence about perceptions of the learning process. The tone of Whitford’s text belongs at the very devout end of lay religious practice, and he was himself a Bridgettine monk, which puts his manual into a specific context of traditional devotional practice.105 The manual’s printers (surviving texts are printed by Robert Redman, Peter Treveris, John Wayland and Wynkyn de Worde) must have felt there was a market for it. Robert Redman reprinted the book in 1537, the same date as he was also printing primers which have been identified as innovative in their use of English and perhaps, therefore, part of the reforming agenda.106 The Werke for Householders’ insistence on repeated daily devotional practices and readings has some similarities with the unique surviving manuscript known as the ‘Instructions for the Devout and Literate Layman’ discovered by W.A. Pantin.107 Whitford’s instructions are not, however, anywhere near as extreme as this manuscript, which constantly presses its reader to acknowledge how worthless he or she is with instructions such as: At the door when you go out say: ‘All the men of this city or town from the greater [or the mayor?] to the less are pleasing to God, and only I am worthy of hell. Woe is me. Welawey’; let this be said from all your heart so that the tears run; you need not always say it with your mouth; it is sufficient to say it with a groan.108

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 68

21/05/2012 10:15:05

Religious reading and reform

69

I have extracted two passages from Whitford’s Werke for Housholders below. The first passage comments particularly on teaching young people (although it also refers to servants). The manner of learning proposed is interesting: Whitford recommends that a person who can read should gather his (her?) household and neighbours together in order to inform them of the ‘poor lesson’. The poor lesson mentioned is how to say the Pater noster, Ave and Creed, the text of which lesson follows after this passage. The second passage follows the explanatory pages about how to say and use the Pater noster and Creed and reinforces the importance of regular practice for the process of learning these elements in devotional practice. How be it we thynke it not sufficient nor ynough for you to lyve well your selfe but that all other chrystyans also lyve better for you & by your example & specyally those that you have in charge & governaunce that is to say your childer & servauntes. And me semeth it shuld also be a good pastyme & moche merytoryous for you that can reede to gader your neyghbours aboute you on the holy day specyally the yonge sorte & rede to them this poore lesson. For therin ben suche thynges as they ben bounde to knowe or can saye that is the Pater noster the Ave maria & the Crede with suche other thinges as done folowe. I wolde therfore you shulde begyn with them bytyme in youthe as soone as they can speke for it is an olde sayinge. The pot or vessell shall ever savour or smell of the thynge wherwith it is fyrst seasoned. And your Englyssh proverbe sayth that the yonge cocke croweth as he dothe here & lerne of the olde. You may in youthe teche them what ye wyll and that shall they lengest kepe & remember … And as soone as they can speke let then fyrst lerne to serve god & to saye the Pater noster Ave and Crede as I sayd before. And not only your chylder but also see you & prove that all your servauntes what age so ever they be of can say the same. And therefore I have advysed many persones & here not to counsayle that in every mele dyner or souper oone persone sholde in Lowde voyce saye thus …109 This maner of the Pater noster Ave and Crede I wold have used and redde upon the boke at every mele or at the lest ones a daye with lowde voyce (as I sayd) that all the persones present may here it. And yet further I wolde advyse & counseyle you to se knowe and prove that every persone in your house and all they ben under your governaunce & charge can say the same & therefore you must take the labour to here them your selfe and where nede is to teche them. For many that ben aged and can not saye wyll be abasshet to lerne it openly & yet yf they here it dayly redde after the maner shewn before that shall by use and custome lerne it very well. And some other persones there ben that can say ryght well bothe upon the boke &

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 69

21/05/2012 10:15:05

70

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 without but yet amonge them some ben dullardes & slouthfull & some neglygent and careles & so done they not saye it but in tyme for gete it as in maner they had never lerne it. I praye you therefore (good devoute christyans) take the peyne to here them youre selfe at the leest ones a weke & let none escape you olde nor yonge. It shall (byleve me) be unto you a great dyscharge of conseyence and not without meryte and great rewarde. And charge then straytly under peyne of punysshment that they say it every day thre tymes at the lest that is to saye in the mornynge at none or mydday & at nyght. Than must you teche them to knowe by ordre the preceptes or commaundementes of god the names of the vii princypall synnes & of theyr v wyttes as thus …110

It is immediately noticeable that this learning process does not need to involve everyone in actually reading. The person leading Whitford’s programme of advice needs to read, and there is potential for a number of individuals within any learning group to have a go at reading the advice on how to practise the Pater noster and so on (in a loud voice) before certain meals. It is worth remembering, however, that much of the devotional practice involved here is concerned with memorising and repetition. As I have discussed earlier in this chapter and more fully in Chapter 1, this use of literature should be understood as belonging within the broad range of activities associated with literate practice. The use of language in Whitford’s digest of Pater noster, Ave and Creed to which the two passages I have quoted refer is also interesting in the context of considering the interplay of Latin and English in devotional practice. The section begins: Pater noster qui es in celis: sanctificetur nomen tuum Good lorde god our holy father that art in heven leet thy name be sanctifyed that is to meane I beseche thee graunte us grace to blesse to honor to laude and prayse thy holy name.111

The format of the digest continues in this way, providing each time a sentence or phrase of Latin followed by a short English passage which translates and elucidates the Latin text. The mixing of Latin and English given by Whitford here is also an important aspect of the reading process when using the primer and prayer book in this period of transition. The evidence from a number of primers at this time, c. 1500–40, confirms the significance of considering the interplay of Latin and English text. Versions of the Prymer in Englyshe and in Laten printed by Robert Redman, for example, use a visually interesting system of parallel text. In the 1537 edition the page is often divided into two columns with Latin text in a narrower column at the outside edge of the page (almost in the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 70

21/05/2012 10:15:05

Religious reading and reform

71

layout of a gloss) and the English text in the middle of the page.112 A double-page spread might also have elements of the text which are not in double columns, as well as rubricated titles and a woodcut image, making the layout quite complex.113 The need for parallel text on the pages of this version seems almost to compromise the clarity of its layout. Each of the opening lines of Matins in English, for example, is spread across two lines because of the lack of width on the page caused by the combination of the woodcut and the Latin text. At the same time Redman’s primers from this period also have a particularly educational tone, emphasising their intention to ease the reader into using and understanding this book on his or her own without clerical assistance. The introduction for Matins, for example, is as follows: For the more evidence explanacion & understandyng of this primer is it to be noted that this worde (Matyns) is asmoche to say as the morning houres, or morning service, & so is called, because the same is and hath ben alwayes accustomed to be sayde and songen in the mornynge. And for asmoche as the hole processe therof dothe specially bringe to your remembraunce the Nativitie and byrthe of Christe, conceyved & borne of the moste inviolate virgin Mary, it is called the Matyns of our Lady. In whose most worthy prayse and comendacion many solempne hymnes, divine colettes, & pleasaunt anthemes are herin wryten.114

These transitional primers appear to be teaching the reader to recognise the basics of the service in both Latin and English by presenting both languages on the page. This is an interest in the two languages that the prefaces to readers I discussed earlier seem to corroborate, as do also some ABC primers of the early sixteenth century which focus on parallel texts of Latin and English.115 Devotional reading across the reformation period from the perspective of reading experience In the following section I consider some important issues about the nature of devotional reading during years which have been designated a time of particular reform and uncertainty in the transition from Catholicism to Protestantism c. 1530–80. In general my study ends at the time (c. 1580) which Patrick Collinson usefully defined as the decade for the establishment of a more mature Protestantism.116 My intention, here, is to explore the structures (the types of text and the reading strategies these require) through which daily and popular devotional reading was framed across this period of ideological change. My purpose is to query the extent

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 71

21/05/2012 10:15:05

72

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

to which experiences of reading radically changed across this period, and from this to propose that it is necessary to differentiate between practice and ideology: I intend to show that practices of devotional reading remain remarkably consistent because the types of text being read remain remarkably consistent. It has been proposed that the appropriation by Protestants of the literary structures used by Catholics represents a smuggling in of the new ideology in disguise. The idea of the ‘Trojan horse’ has been used as a metaphor for this process of appropriation and smuggling.117 This has been taken as evidence of a perceived and actual resistance to the new ideology by the Catholic populace.118 However, I propose that from the perspective of most readers (apart from the relatively few zealous proponents of change) and their practices, the ideology being promulgated may actually have been a secondary consideration to the continuity of the practice.119 Printers would have been aware of their readers’ liking for traditional ways of doing things and hence they continued to use familiar types of text requiring familiar reading strategies across the years of reform. While evidence for the continuation of apparently Catholic texts requiring apparently Catholic practices of devotion is interesting, then, it does not provide evidence for the ideological commitments of most readers during this time of transition and uncertainty.120 I use the example of a sequence of short prayers to discuss the continuities of some literatures across this period and the misleading assumption that they represent either a Catholic or a Protestant point of view. My intention is to understand more about where the continuities and discontinuities lie, whether there is such a thing as an empty structure in devotional literature, and how the structures in which devotional literature is framed may have impacted on the reader. Continuities in one sequence of short prayers c. 1520–60 As with the whole of this section on the relationships between reform and practice, it is the time of intense reform and uncertainty that I explore here, c. 1520–60. There is clear evidence demonstrating that specific elements of primers persist across the period in question, one example being the set of seven doggerel verses known as ‘The Dayes Moralised’.121 Other examples of continuity have been discussed by Martha Driver. These include evidence from the often flimsy single-sheet indulgence cards where the image has been preserved while the indulgence text has been crossed out, and the example of the continued production of The Fifteen Oes in the reforming primers of the 1530s.122 The continuity in

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 72

21/05/2012 10:15:05

Religious reading and reform

73

appearance of these texts indicates that elements of the daily practice of using a devotional manual across this forty years of the reforming process remained remarkably consistent. Some primers and associated manuals of how to engage in devotional practice contain sequences of prayers which offer a distinctive type of evidence for there also being continuity in emphasis on the sensuality of devotional reading across this forty-year timespan.123 One such sequence of prayers in particular emphasises the relationships between perceptions of the physical body and the spiritual business of praying, and in so doing it provides echoes of the catechetical texts that were central to medieval devotions (in the vernacular).124 The sequence is made up of a set of short prayers as follows: For the kepynge of the syght saye this prayer folowynge O Lorde Jesu chryst I comede my syght both inwarde and outwarde unto thy devyne wysdome that it wold please thee to graunt me the lyghte of Ghostly knowledge by the whiche I maye knowe thy wyll and all thynges that shulde be to thee acceptable. For the herynge saye thus O Lorde Jesu chryst I comende my Herynge to thy great mercy besechyng thee to gyve me understandynge of such thynges as I shulde hear. And graunt me grace good Lorde, that I here no thynge whiche shall be hurtefull to my soule. For the mouthe and speche say thus O Good Lorde Jesu chryst, I praye thee to open my mouthe, that therewith I maye prayse thee and gyve unto thee thankes, for all thy goodnes towarde me, and I beseche thee to kepe it fro all vayne speche, from all lesynges, and from all maner offences, that therby myght come. For the handes saye thus O Lord Jesu chryst I betake and commende my handes to thy holynes, besechyng thy pytefulnes, that I may ordre all myne actes to be done with my handes accordynge to thy pleasure, and that they may be conformable to thy werkes, and in them to be made perfyte. For the herte saye thus O Lorde Jesu chryst I comende my herte to thy love, that it may entre in to thy herte by love, and spyrituall delectacion, and I beseche the good lorde to inflame my herte ardently with thy love so to kyndle my herte with the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 73

21/05/2012 10:15:05

74

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 blissed love of the good Lord, that never hereafter I fele any earthly ioye or carnall delectacion. So be it.125

These prayers are printed as a sequence, for example, in the tiny book of prayers entitled A Spirituall Counsayle very necessarye for euery persone to haue, dating from 1540 and thought to be printed by the evangelical reformer John Mayler, who was an associate of Richard Grafton and who also printed works by Thomas Becon and Heinrich Bullinger; in the 1555 primer known as ‘Queen Mary’s Primer’ printed by John Wayland; and in the Kingston and Sutton Uniforme and Catholyke Prymer in Latin and Englishe of 1557.126 The prayer appended to this sequence in the Spirituall Counsayle but found a few pages later in the 1557 primer entitled ‘A fruitfull medytacyon not to be sayde with the mouthe lightly but to be cryed with herte and minde often and exyghtely’ further emphasises the connections which are being encouraged through this sequence, between the bodily activity of reading and the spiritual process of being devotional.127 Each of the prayers in this sequence focuses on a particular body part or one of the five senses. They each work this element into the familiar vocabulary of Christianity. The prayer for sight asks for help with seeing the ‘light of Ghostly knowledge’, for example; the prayer for hearing asks for the ability to hear good things and not hear things which will harm the soul; the prayer for the mouth and speech uses a familiar request like the ‘O Lord, open thou our lips’ at the beginning of the Matins service and goes on to ask for protection against vain speech; the prayer for hands uses the idea of Christian action and good works; the prayer for the heart uses the idea of the fire of love burning in the heart. This final prayer particularly seems to use the language of affective piety, with words such as ‘ardently’ and ‘inflame’, making it sound similar to some of the fourteenth-century writing very much associated with affectivity.128 Using these prayers, the reader is very much encouraged to focus on his or her own body and person in relation to the familiar vocabularies of Christian worship.129 The prayers can only enhance the sensitivity of the reader to the material world around him or her, and that includes the book being held during prayer. The very tiny size of the Spirituall Counsayle (the copy in the British Library measures around 3cm by 6cm) might actually enhance this sense of materiality, although it is interesting to note that other versions are found in primers which are relatively large for this genre: the 1557 primer, for example, is about A5 size. Whilst being distinctive, corporeal and particularly encouraging of sensitivity to the material associated with the reading and praying process,

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 74

21/05/2012 10:15:05

Religious reading and reform

75

these prayers also exist in a textual context of standard Christian prayers from the liturgy. In Wayland’s 1555 ‘Queen Mary’s Primer’ the short prayers occur in the middle of the section of the ‘Godly Prayers’ at the back of the primer, which includes several under the heading ‘A devoute prayer to our lord Jesus Christe’.130 Their appearance on the page, each with a centred title and paragraph marks to indicate the beginning, offers a visual relief from the remainder of the prayers which are much longer, presenting a solid block of text on each page. The entry given for these Godly prayers in the table of contents shows that the short prayers are fully integrated into this collection, as they are not itemised but described simply as: ‘Fyftie devoute Prayers contayning severally what so ever is mete to be prayed for, as by their tytles doeth appere’.131 The same sequence in the 1557 primer is placed amongst the Old Testament prayers discussed earlier in this chapter.132 The mood and ethos of these prayers might lead to an assumption that they are part of the tradition of medieval affective piety.133 Indeed, Duffy seems to be referring to a sequence very similar to this in his discussion of evidence for continued Catholic practice.134 The prayer for the heart which he quotes is almost exactly the same as that found in this sequence, except for the use of the heart symbol by the annotator and the exclusion of ‘so be it’ from the end of the prayer.135 However, as my three examples indicate, the identification of these prayers with either Catholicism or Protestantism would be too straightforward. They are printed across the reform period in books which declare themselves Catholic (but during that specific mode of post-reform Catholicism during the Marian interregnum), and the Spirituall Counsayle was probably printed by a reformer. Spirituall Counsayle is entirely in English apart from a few phrases in Latin in ‘A Devout Prayer to Jesus Christ’, parts of which, incidentally, have been struck out by an annotator.136 A number of the other prayers in this little book do, crudely speaking, sound Catholic: it has prayers against the seven deadly sins, a salutation of Our Lady, and how to pray during or after confession.137 The theme of the heart is also emphasised in the seven prayers for the seven days of the week.138 There is also a prayer for ‘Our Sovereign Lord the king’, presumably Henry VIII.139 The set of doggerel rhymes known as ‘The Dayes Moralised’ and this short sequence of corporeal prayers were being made available to readers across the transitional years of 1520–60. The corporeal prayers appear in books which signal a traditional ethos and books which signal a reforming ethos. Some of the elements of the prayers are reminiscent of what tends to be thought of as a medieval (Catholic therefore) aesthetic of affective

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 75

21/05/2012 10:15:05

76

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

piety. A different but analogous situation with regard to the continued popularity of what Alex Walsham describes as ‘spiritual and devotional writing’ seems to be occurring by the very end of the sixteenth and the early part of the seventeenth centuries. By this date there had been sufficient time since the official break with Rome for a more definite idea and identity of recusant Catholicism to emerge. Works of spiritual and devotional instruction produced by Catholic presses such as Person’s Firste Booke of the Christian Exercise (first published in 1582) sold very well both to Catholics and to Protestants, according to contemporary commentators. Protestants retaliated by ‘recycling’ pre-reformation favourites or by plagiarising from those contemplative texts produced by the contemporary Catholic press.140 It is possible to appreciate why the sequence of short corporeal prayers might have been appealing to readers at this time: they are succinct, offering a welcome change from some of the longer prayers in the Queen Mary primer, for example. They are also powerful, and seem to encourage the reader to reflect intensely on the material and spiritual business of individual reading. Their continued production at least between 1540 and 1557 (and the continued use beyond 1557 which this implies) would signal continuity in this element of daily devotional reading during these years of transition Continuities as evidence for a popular reading style The Trojan-horse model for the transition from Catholic to Protestant devotional reading practice proposes a situation in which Protestantism used familiar forms of devotional text, in other words Catholic literature, in order to smuggle in the new ideology.141 The clear implication here is that the Protestant authorities were aiming to dupe the reader into thinking they were engaging in their traditional routines of devotion whilst what was actually happening was the infiltration of Protestant worship. This model usefully highlights that there were intentional similarities in the appearance or/and the contents of devotional books across the early reformation years, both Catholic and Protestant. It is possible that the smuggling in of a new form might have been a motivation for the producers of texts and the licensing authorities. But if this continuity in forms of literature is considered from the point of view of the reader it is perhaps more interesting to examine what kinds of texts persisted, why, and how readers were using them. There is evidence to suggest that certain key elements in textual form used in ‘Catholic’ literature persist in the early ‘Protestant’ literatures.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 76

21/05/2012 10:15:05

Religious reading and reform

77

These include: texts which encourage the reader to ‘proverbialise’, in other words to engage in a reading process which trades in short moralised ditties; texts which encourage the reader to ‘oralise’, in other words to engage in a reading process which appreciates the sound of the doggerel rhyme as part of the reading process (even if the reading is silent); and texts which use both systems.142 The emphasis on short often rhyming texts throughout the marginalia of John Day’s Christian Prayers, for example, seems to encourage both proverbialisation and oralisation, and in doing this it also makes a distinct connection with a specific mode of popular religious writing found in primers, books of hours and other devotional manuals during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.143 Duffy has described this as the ‘conscious cultivation of a devotional idiom which synthesised Protestant conviction with Catholic piety’.144 Further evidence for the popular appeal of proverbial text and of text which encourages oralisation is found in annotations made in devotional literatures such as the primer.145 It is possible therefore that the producers of (printed) primers used simple rhyme for various elements of their books because this was popular amongst their readership, perhaps particularly (though not exclusively) amongst those with relatively elementary skills in reading. The fact that annotators of these books often make up their own doggerel rhymes or indeed use rhymes available from other sources, such as scriptural and homiletic texts, is an indication of this popularity and also, more than that, it is an indication of the ‘oralised’ ways in which these readers experienced and perceived this fairly basic form of literature.146 Rather than seeing texts such as Day’s Christian Prayers as an attempt to smuggle in Protestantism, then, I would suggest it provides further evidence for a popular reading style which involved both oralisation and proverbialisation. Christian Prayers enabled readers in this early reforming period to continue to read in a way which was familiar to them from the various primers and other service books available during the sixteenth century. I would query the extent to which the Protestantism of Christian Prayers was significant in its popularity. This is not to suggest that it was the Catholic element of the continuity which was significant for its popular readership. Rather, I suggest, it is the familiar devices or literary structures or idioms (in this case proverb and doggerel) which are the more significant factors in the continued popularity of certain kinds of literature across the early reforming period. Taking into consideration Day’s Christian Prayers (first issued in 1578 and available as a new edition in 1590) the years of transitional reading matter stretched at least from 1540 to 1590. This fifty-year

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 77

21/05/2012 10:15:05

78

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

time span easily forms a lifetime of reading experience for many sixteenthcentury readers. The significance of the continuities of reading practice and experience across this period of early reform, therefore, should not be overlooked. Conclusion Aside from the interim conclusions at the ends of each section, it remains to stress the fundamental issues addressed by this chapter in terms of their implications for understanding more about the practices and experiences of religious reading c. 1400–1600. As with the rest of this book, a crucial purpose is to show the extent of the evidence for reading practice and experience which is found in the manuscript or printed books themselves. I show specifically two case studies using this kind of evidence, firstly a synchronic study using one unusual prayerbook and secondly a diachronic study looking at changes and transitions during the years of reform, c. 1450–1557. An underlying issue which forms the basis to much of this chapter is that there is a lack of straightforward disjuncture in reading practice and experience during these years of transition and this falls in line with the modern historiography of Reformation as a process rather than an event. I discuss this issue through consideration of language use, page layout, printers’ prefaces, and continuities in types of devotional text being read, and this demonstrates that incorporating more detailed knowledge of reading practice and experience into the ways that reformation is understood contributes to the more general historiography of reformation. While this underlying issue of continuity is important in its own right, it leads to the more complex consideration of trying to understand – from the perspective of the reader – the significance of continuities in reading practice across that time of ideological change. I propose that specific features of religious literature are maintained because they are particularly popular with their readers. The specific features to which I draw attention in this chapter are the sensual prayers and proverbialised text, together with text which calls for an ‘oralised’ reading process. Both of these latter types seem to use a doggerel form. I refer to the ways that annotation evidence seems to back up the popularity of the doggerel-type structure both in terms of the ways a reader comprehends the official text of the book and also in the ways that he or she chooses to respond in annotation. The continuity of these ‘structures’ (by which I mean the sensual type and the proverbialised or oralised forms) in religious text spanning the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 78

21/05/2012 10:15:05

Religious reading and reform

79

years of transition points to an important situation such that the religious meanings of the texts are partially dissociated from the practices of using them. The evidence in this chapter seems to demonstrate that, during the years of changing religious orthodoxy across the years of reform, whether a text was Catholic or Protestant was not necessarily the sole or central concern of the popular reader. Instead, I propose that the style of reading any religious text encourages was of greater or equally great significance for the reader. Evidence from popular religious books indicates that two popular styles of reading are those connected with oralisation and those connected with proverbialisation. In some ways, this implies that there is an ‘absence of meaning’ in terms of the religious content of the devotional text.147 But this absence is not to say that the readers of these popular literatures did not experience anything when they read and performed their devotions. Nor does absence imply that the continuities in particular structures of religious reading render the texts meaningless. A reader is constantly, after all, bringing his or her own meanings to a piece of text whether it is devotional, moral or fictional. The consideration of how contemporary situations are related to the ancient past in the Canterbury prayer book case study at the start of this chapter indicates one example of how meaning is made. There is often an absence of clear-cut divisions between Catholic and Protestant religious reading during the years c. 1450–1590, and so identification of texts, books and their readers as either Catholic or Protestant, traditional or reforming, only because of the character of the literature they were using is not appropriate. A focus on reading experience shifts the analytical parameters away from understanding the appropriation by Protestantism of apparently Catholic types of religious literature as simply a ruse by printers to keep their readership or at worst a cynical smuggling in of new ideas in ‘Trojan horses’. My assessment of devotional reading practice and experience in this chapter indicates that while there were some significant changes in the nature of religious literature (contents and appearance) during the years covered by this book, c. 1400–1600, there were also ways of perceiving text and ways of reading it which had significant currency throughout these two centuries. The absurd comparison of the Canterbury prayer book with the 1557 primer demonstrates a key alteration in the visual appearance of religious texts (alongside a change in the mode of production), and the impact of this change on reading practice and experience is queried in that case study as there is no clear sense of the later mass-produced item

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 79

21/05/2012 10:15:05

80

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

being entirely easier to read and use. The significant continuities which are discussed in the second half of the chapter relate to the years of transition and reform c. 1500–90. The case studies here indicate that the sensual and the proverbial are both sufficiently important modes of popular reading practice and experience and that they survive the radical ideological shifts of the reforming process. Notes 1 See for example, S. Nash, Between France and Flanders: Manuscript Illumination in Amiens in the Fifteenth Century, The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture (Toronto: The British Library and University of Toronto Press, 1999); E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1992); I. Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); see also I. Green, The Christian’s ABC: Catechism and Catechizing in England c 1530–1740 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 580; also, M.T. Clanchy, ‘The ABC reading primer: Was it English or Latin?’, in E. Salter and H. Wicker (eds), Vernacularity in England and Wales c 1300–1550, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), pp. 17–39. S. McSheffry, ‘Heresy, orthodoxy and English vernacular religion 1480–1525’, Past and Present, 186, pp. 47–80, pp. 57–9; on works by Mirk, Bonaventura and others, see D. Loades, ‘Books and the English Reformation prior to 1558’, in J.-F. Gilmont (ed.), The Reformation and the Book, St Andrew’s Studies in Reformation History, trans. K. Maag (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 264–91, pp. 285–6. 2 For important seminal work on the primer see, C.C. Butterworth, The English Primers (1529–1545): Their Publication in Connection with the English Bible and the Reformation in England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953) and H.C. White, Tudor Books of Private Devotion (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951). On the enduring and increasing popularity of the primer and the related work The ABC with the Catechisme, into the late Elizabethan and Stuart periods, see Green, Print and Protestantism, pp. 181–2. 3 See Butterworth, The English Primers, p. 3, where they are described as ‘religious handbooks’ (see below). 4 For a case study on the personalisation of a book of hours, see, for example, C. Donovan, The de Brailes Hours: Shaping the Book of Hours in ThirteenthCentury Oxford (London: The British Library, 1991). 5 H. Littlehales (ed.), The Prymer or Lay Folks’ Prayer Book, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 105 and 109 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trubner, 1895, 1897), vol. 109, pp. xlii–li. Also, E. Salter, ‘“The

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 80

21/05/2012 10:15:05

Religious reading and reform

81

Dayes Moralised”: Reconstructing devotional reading, c. 1450–1560’, in R.G.A. Lutton and E. Salter (eds), Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences c. 1400–1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 145–62; E. Duffy, Marking the Hours: English People & their Prayers, 1240–1570 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 4. 6 See, for example, evidence from two Canterbury parish churches: C. Cotton (ed.), ‘Churchwardens’ accounts of the parish of St Andrew, Canterbury, part 1 from AD 1485 to AD 1625’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 37 (1917), pp. 181–246; and J.M. Cowper (ed.), ‘Accounts of the churchwardens of St Dunstan’s Canterbury’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 16 (1885), pp. 289–321, pp. 314–15. For a more recent discussion of church libraries see S. Gee, ‘Parochial libraries in pre-Reformation England’, in S. Rees Jones (ed.), Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 199–222. 7 On books of hours as ‘books for everybody’ see Duffy, Marking, p. 4 referring to C. de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts (London: Phaidon Press Ltd, 1994). 8 N. Orme, Medieval Children (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2001), Chapter 7 ‘Learning to read’. Commenting on the higher cost of the service book primer than an ABC book see Clanchy, ‘The ABC reading primer’, p. 23. For the price per sheet mode of calculating costs, see Green, Print and Protestantism, p. 39 (200–300 pages cost about 8d in 1560). 9 For a recent study using the extensive archives of service books in the USA, for example, see W. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). 10 Littlehales, The Prymer, Part 2 (vol. 109), ‘The origin of the Prymer’, pp. xi– xxxviii; White, Tudor Books, pp. 56–7; Duffy, Marking, pp. 5–6. 11 On these variations and accruals see Littlehales, The Prymer, pp. xxxi–xxxvi. 12 White, Tudor Books, pp. 32–3, 55. 13 In between producing this case study and publication of this book, William Sherman has also used an unusual book as the focus for a case study, which helps to justify the value of such an approach. See Sherman, Used Books, Chapter 5, ‘An uncommon book of common prayer’. 14 N.R. Ker (ed.), Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–92), vol. 2 (1977), pp. 299, 300–1 (p. 299 for the description of the illustrations as ‘competent’, suggesting that this manuscript is not of the highest quality). 15 Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library, MS H/L-3-4.See Ker, Medieval Manuscripts, vol. 2, pp. 300–1. 16 In a conversation I had with Ian Doyle, he suggested a mixture of distinctly northern French elements in the border decoration mixed with a distinctly English, if very unusual, style for the illustrations. 17 Ker, Medieval Manuscripts, vol. 2, pp. 300–1. There are 108 leaves of the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 81

21/05/2012 10:15:05

82

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

text with one modern flyleaf at the front and five end leaves of which fols 109–112 are medieval parchment. Pages measure 8.0cm by 11.5cm. The written space is 6.5cm by 4.2cm. The manuscript is constructed of fourteen quires, which have eight folios, except for quire 4 which has six folios. Some quires have missing folios, such as quire 12; other quires have an added folio, such as quire 4. A contemporary system for organising the gatherings is only partially visible because the manuscript has been clipped, probably during rebinding. Modern pagination consecutively numbers each surviving folio. 18 CCAL, MS H/L-3-4, fos 31v–33v. 19 On the ‘complex and subtle process’ of reading typological images such as these see M.W. Driver, The Image in Print: Book Production in Late Medieval England and its Sources (London: British Library, 2004), pp. 19–20, 26–9. 20 CCAL, MS H/L-3-4. Sections 1 and 4 have prayers beginning with an illustration, which is followed by red script in English explaining the form of the prayer. All are of the width of the written space but they vary in height between 2.1cm and 2.8cm. This is followed by a short sentence of blue Latin text which acts as a caption for the picture and generally contains the word ‘oracio’; there follows black Latin script which forms the majority of script in each prayer. Sections 2 and 3 have no English script and no blue illustration captions, but red Latin script is used immediately beneath each picture. Section 5 also has no English script and is all written in black, but there is an ‘oracio’ caption immediately below the illustration. 21 CCAL, MS H/L-3-4, fol. 81v. See K.L. Scott, Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390–1490: A Survey of Manuscripts in the British Isles, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996), vol. 1, pp. 62ff; C. de Hamel, Scribes and Illuminators (London: British Museum Press, 1992), pp. 5, 35, 48, 51. 22 There are also some inconsistencies, particularly with regard to the style of pictures; see, for example, CCAL, MS H/L-3-4, fols 1–55v compared to fols 56r–86v. 23 On varieties of size see, for example, the following manuscripts: British Library, Additional MS 32454, measuring 185 × 245mm, was produced in France and written in Latin with illustrations that have an Italian influence and texts that are abbreviated to allow for the inclusion of the miniatures. British Library, Additional MS 58280, a book produced in England, measuring 54 × 40mm, is written in Latin with some English rubrications and illustrations of a ‘provincial’ style. British Library, King’s MS 9, measuring 187 × 125 mm, is an hours written in both/either Flanders and/or England with some English rubrications. British Library, Stowe MS 20 measures 70 × 115mm and is an hours written in Latin probably in the Netherlands but with a ‘Flemish style’. British Library, Additional MS 62523, measuring 186 × 125mm, was written in England but is entirely in Latin. British Library Stowe MS, 23, measuring 185 × 130mm, was written in France and is in Latin except for French rubrications. For a range of additions and annotations, see the following manuscripts: BL, Stowe MS

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 82

21/05/2012 10:15:05

Religious reading and reform

83

20, fols 2r, 168r, 169r, has added prayers, one of which (fol. 168r) is in a hand that imitates the main book hand, and the other two prayers being in the same(?) secretarial-style hand. British Library, Additional MS 28681 is mainly thirteenth century but has a Latin prayer of the fifteenth century added at fol. 17. British Library, Additional MS 19962 has a Latin prayer, in a rough fifteenth-century hand, added at fol. 180v. British Library, Additional MS 22720 has short English sayings together with rough drawings of the calendar months/seasons between fols 6r and 11v. 24 This is discussed in Chapter 1. See also D. Parkin, ‘Ritual as spatial direction and bodily division’, in D. de Coppet (ed.), Understanding Rituals, European Association of Social Anthropologists (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 11–25. 25 CCAL, MS H/L-3-4, fos 1r–86r. On these issues of reading and comprehension, see also N. Zieman, ‘Playing doctor: St Birgitta, ritual reading, and ecclesiastical authority’, in L. Olson and K. Kerby-Fulton (eds), Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 207–334, pp. 309–13 on the power of words in a Bridgettine context. 26 For examples of different kinds of rubrics and a discussion of their relevance to reading practices, see P. Saenger, ‘Books of hours and the reading habits of the later middle ages’, in R. Chartier (ed.), The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989), pp. 142–3, 153, 155. 27 See R. Marks, Stained Glass in England During the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 61. 28 CCAL, H/L-3-4, fol. 66v. 29 British Library, Additional MS 58280, fols. 332v, 334r. 30 British Library, Additional MS 62523, fol. 69r. 31 British Library, King’s MS 9, fol. 299r, and for a Latin instruction see for example fols 292v–3r. Similarly, British Library, Additional MS 22729, which is written mainly in Dutch, uses rubricated Dutch at the beginning of some devotions. For example, see fols 20v–21r. 32 For a discussion of changing styles of prayerful attitude see Saenger, ‘Books of hours’, p. 152. 33 For a discussion of contemporary debates about the relative merits of silent reading and reading aloud see Saenger, ‘Books of hours’, pp. 143–4, 145, 150. Oralisation is discussed in Chapter 1 and again later in this chapter. 34 CCAL, MS HL/3-4, fols 66v–70r, 18v–21r. 35 British Library, Additional MS 31838, fols 1v–2r. 36 British Library, Additional MS 31838, fols 52r–v. 37 M.P. Kuczynski, Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), p. 124: ‘Middle English religious poets … encourage their readers to identify their own sentiments with David’s by way of specific references to

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 83

21/05/2012 10:15:05

84

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

David’s own language, or language that works conscious variations on psalm discourse.’ 38 See also Duffy, Marking, p. 54 where the image is reproduced. For a digital reproduction of the image at the London National Gallery’s ‘Picture Library’, see www.nationalgalleryimages.co.uk/ image NG2593. 39 M. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 256, and see p. 246, ‘Trained memory is a storehouse a treasure-chest, a vessel into which the jewels, coins, fruits, and flowers of texts are placed’, and p. 246 for a discussion of Geoffrey of Vinsauf ’s use of hunting metaphors when he advised his students that they should practise recalling their memory stores. 40 For a discussion of these issues see, M.F. Bloch, ‘Time, narrative and the multiplicity of representations’, in M.F. Bloch (ed.), How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, and Literacy (Oxford: Westview Press, 1998), pp. 100–13. 41 British Library, Additional MS 58280, fols 361v–362r. 42 Bloch, ‘Time, narrative’, p. 110. 43 For the long view (1380–1536) see, for example, A. Hudson, The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). On the significance of considering late medieval heterodoxy for understanding the process of reform, see R. Lutton, Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England: Reconstructing Piety, The Royal Historical Society (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006), p. 38. On the organic connections between late medieval Catholicism and reform see also R. Rex ‘The friars in the English Reformation’, in A. Ryrie and P. Marshall (eds), The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 38–59. 44 On detailed reconstruction see, for example, P. Marshall, ‘Introduction’, Marshall (ed.), The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–1640, Arnold Readers in History (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), pp. 1–14, p. 6 proposing A.G. Dickens’ 1959 study as the forerunner of local approaches to Reformation. See also D. Palliser ‘Popular reactions to the Reformation during the years of uncertainty, 1530–1570’, in C. Haigh (ed.), The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 94–113 and R. Hutton ‘The local impact of the Tudor reformations’, in Haigh (ed.), English Reformation, pp. 114–38. For an extended consideration of transitions see R.G.A. Lutton and E. Salter (eds), Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences, c. 1400–1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). On local dynamics see, for example, Ryrie, ‘Counting sheep, counting shepherds: The problems of allegiance in the English Reformation’, in Ryrie and Marshall (eds), Beginnings, pp. 84–110, pp. 94–5, 107; and A.C. Dickens ‘The early expansion of Protestantism in England, 1520–1558’, in Marshall (ed.), Impact, pp. 85–116, p. 87 for the need to investigate local dynamics before making generalisations.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 84

21/05/2012 10:15:05

Religious reading and reform

85

45 See Ryrie, ‘Counting sheep’; on the problems of trying to quantify numbers of protestants see Dickens, ‘Early expansion’, p. 89; on the vague chronology of the popular reformation see Palliser, ‘Popular reactions’, p. 95. For the seminal text on traditional religion see also Duffy, Stripping. 46 For the idea of the many little reformations see C. Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society Under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 12–21; on interpretive flashpoints see Marshall, ‘Introduction’, in Impact, pp. 9–10. 47 G.L. Barnes, ‘Laity formation: The role of early English printed primers’, Journal of Religious History, 18/2 (1994), pp. 139–58, pp. 149, 153 for ideas about the primer being a significant instrument in the formation of religious ideas amongst the laity. On the number of editions produced see, for example, M.C. Erler, ‘The Maner to Lyve Well and the coming of English in Francois Regnault’s primers of the 1520s and 1530s’, The Library, Series 6, 3 (1984), pp. 229–43, p. 232. Andrew Petigree has noted that across dates of 1468–99 and 1514 most books printed in England in the STC are primers. See A. Petigree, ‘Printing and the Reformation: The English exception’, in Ryrie and Marshall (eds), Beginnings, pp. 157–79, pp. 163–4. For evidence of the popularity and circulation of primers amongst the humbler sort from the mid sixteenth century see, for example, M. Spufford (ed.), The World of Rural Dissenters 1520–1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), pp. 66–70. 48 Butterworth, English Primers, p. 3. 49 White, Tudor Books, Chapter 5, especially p. 71. 50 White, Tudor Books, Chapter 6 (‘The Primer as an instrument of religious change’), pp. 87 ff. 51 See, for example, Duffy, Marking, p. 140: ‘But already in the early sixteenth century the Latin versions of such prayers were often preceded by lengthy English explanatory rubrics which guided the user to the meaning of the Latin text, and which anticipated that mid-Tudor moralising devotional tone.’ 52 E. Hoskins, Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis: or Sarum and York Primers, with kindred books, and Primers of the Reformed Roman Use. Together with an introduction (London, New York and Bombay: Longmans, Green & Co., 1901). 53 Horae beate marie virginis ad vsum insignis ecclesie Saru[m]], STC 15898. 54 Hoskins, Horae, no 92, calendared on p. 35, fuller description on p. 147. See, for example, British Library, C35 D 12. 55 See, for example, Duffy, Stripping, p. 222 but note also the discussion of the extent of vernacular translation of catechetical and other religious texts ‘long before the reformation’ on pp. 80ff. On ‘the primer as an instrument of religious change’, see White, Tudor Books, Chapter 6 (pp. 87–102). On the first Marshall primer of 1534 see Butterworth, The English Primer, Chapters 5 and 6 (pp. 47–69); Erler, ‘The Maner to Lyve Well ’, pp. 237ff. On the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 85

21/05/2012 10:15:06

86

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

role of John Foxe in the historiography of the impact of the printing press on reformation see, for example, Hudson, Premature Reformation, p. 510; Duffy, Stripping, pp. 77–8. 56 For a negative view of the ‘gullible labourers’ who were the most easily swayed to conform with new directives, see J. Maltby, ‘“By this book”: Parishioners, the prayer book and the established church’, in Marshall (ed.), Impact, pp. 257–78, p. 271. 57 STC 16009.5. 58 Green, Print and Protestantism, p 245. 59 STC 16009.5, BBiv,v. 60 STC 16009.5, BBiv,r. 61 STC 16034; see Green, Print and Protestantism, p. 245. 62 STC 16034, pp. 2– 3. 63 STC 15986, Biir. See also Butterworth, ‘The English Primer’, p. 61ff. 64 White, Tudor Books. 65 Duffy, Marking, pp. 131–2. 66 For a description of the Wynkyn de Worde print see Hoskins, Horae, pp. 118–23. This is STC 15898. 67 There are four groups where the consecutive order of prayers is the same, involving a set of six prayers, a set of four, a set of three and a pair of prayers. The Canterbury manuscript contains more prayers than the Wynkyn de Worde book and some of these occur between the groups of consecutive prayers included in both sections. 68 Duffy, Marking, p. 42; Erler, ‘The Maner to Lyve Well ’, p. 230 on the various markets for these books. 69 See, for example, White, Tudor Books, Chapter 5; Duffy, Marking, pp. 138–40; Erler, ‘The Maner to Lyve Well ’, p. 232. 70 White, Tudor Books, pp. 69–70. White points out that Regnault is not alone in these ‘innovations’: other printers such as Kerver and Bonhomme were also producing texts with some English content. 71 Erler, ‘The Maner to Lyve Well ’, p. 232. 72 STCs 15954 and 15955 (1527) and 15961 (1529) are all illustrated with woodcuts. See Erler, ‘The Maner to Lyve Well ’, p. 232. 73 See, for example, STC 15954, ‘The hours of the cross’, fols 31–46. 74 Erler, ‘The Maner to Lyve Well ’, p. 230. 75 M. Deanesly, ‘Vernacular books in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, Modern Language Review, 15 (1920), pp. 349–58; A. Middleton, ‘The audience and public of Piers Plowman’, in D. Lawton (ed.), Middle English Alliterative Poetry and Its Literary Background: Seven Essays (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1982); Saenger, ‘Books of hours’, p. 155, Saenger suggests the intimacy of the relationship between owner and devotional book; V. Gillespie, ‘Vernacular books of religion’, in J. Griffiths and D. Pearsall (eds), Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989); C.M. Meale, ‘“…Alle the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 86

21/05/2012 10:15:06

Religious reading and reform

87

bokes that I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensch”: Laywomen and their books in late medieval England’, in C.M. Meale (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and F. Riddy, ‘ “Women talking about the things of God”: A late medieval sub-culture’, in Meale (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain; T.H. Bestul, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996), pp. 4–10. 76 See, for example, J.P. Harthan, Books of Hours and the Owners (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977); Nash, Between France and Flanders. For more interpretative studies see L.L. Brownrigg (ed.), Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Seminar in the History of the Book to 1500, Oxford, July 1988 (Los Altos Hills, CA: Anderson-Lovelace, 1990); Donovan, The de Brailes Hours. 77 White, Tudor Books, p. 78. See also STC 15995 (1527), fol. 86v ff. and STC 16087 (1559), sig. Aaii ff. 78 There are two prayer rolls and a fifteenth-century prayer book, listed by Neil Ker, that show some similarities to the Canterbury prayer book; see Ker, Medieval Manuscripts, vol. 3 (1983), p. 538; Ker, Medieval Manuscripts, vol. 1 (1969), pp. 399–400; E. Charlton, ‘Roll of prayers formerly belonging to Henry VIII when prince’, Archaeologia Aeliana, New Series 2 (1858), pp. 41–5; H.A. Dillon, Proceeding of the Society of Antiquaries (1877), pp. 299–306; W. Sparrow-Simpson, ‘Magical roll in the British Museum’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 48 (1892) pp. 38–51. I have not been able to examine these in detail. 79 For seminal work on the long reformation see Hudson, Premature Reformation. On the significance of considering late medieval heterodoxy for understanding the process of reform see, for example, Lutton, Lollardy and Orthodox Religion, p. 38. 80 Clanchy, ‘The ABC reading primer’, pp. 28–9. 81 White, Tudor Books, pp. 37–8. On the ‘Lollard inheritance’ see, Loades, ‘Books and the English Reformation prior to 1558’, pp. 264–5. See McSheffry, ‘Heresy, orthodoxy’, p. 48 and n. 5. She uses these dates, 1500 being the restart of Lollard persecutions after a ‘half-century hiatus’ and1525 being the ‘approximate beginning of the reformation in England’. 82 For a guide to the extent of the scripturally related English literatures of c.  1200–1500, see, for example, J.  Morey, Book and Verse: A Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000). On the possibility that England lagged behind in the European context of concerns about the circulation of vernacular material, see pp. 37–8. Also, on the change in mood between Pecham’s Constitutions of the late thirteenth century and Arundel’s Constitutions and Statutes of the early fifteenth century, see N. Watson, ‘Censorship and cultural change in late medieval England: Vernacular theology, the Oxford translation debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum, 70/4 (1995), pp. 822–64,

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 87

21/05/2012 10:15:06

88

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

p. 828. White, Tudor Books, pp. 36–8. See J. Thompson ‘Another look at the religious texts in Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91’, in A.J. Minnis (ed.), Late Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission, Essays in Honour of A.I. Doyle (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 169–87, p. 177; on Speculum Vitae see R. Hanna (ed.), Speculum Vitae: [Vol 1] A Reading Edition, Early English Text Society, 331 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008); on the contents of manuscripts CUL Ff 2/38 and Oxford Bodleian Ashmole 61, which is probably sixteenth century and may be copied from a printed text, see E. Salter ‘Evidence for devotional reading in fifteenth century England: A comparative analysis of one English poem in six manuscript contexts’, in Salter and Wicker (eds), Vernacularity, pp. 65–97. 83 Butterworth, English Primers, p. 14. On the 1534 statute, see Loades, ‘Books and the English Reformation, p. 278. 84 On ‘the primer as an instrument of religious change’, see White, Tudor Books, Chapter 6 (pp. 87–102). On the first Marshall primer of 1534 see Butterworth, English Primers, Chapters 5 and 6 (pp. 47–69); Erler, ‘The Maner to Lyve Well ’, pp. 237ff. 85 See Hudson, Premature Reformation, p. 510. 86 Green, Print and Protestantism, p. 303. 87 McSheffry, ‘Heresy, orthodoxy’, p. 49. 88 See, for example, McSheffry, ‘Heresy, orthodoxy’, p. 59. 89 Hudson, Premature Reformation, p. 484 on the case of The Shepherd’s Kalender being taken as an example of heretical reading c. 1518–21; McSheffry, ‘Heresy, orthodoxy’, pp. 66–7. 90 Driver, The Image in Print, pp. 212–14. On the removal of Thomas Becket from the calendar after 1538, see pp. 197–9; for the removal of references to the pope, see pp. 200–1. 91 Sherman, Used Books, Chapter 5, ‘An uncommon Book of Common Prayer’, pp. 87–109, p. 95 on hybridity and the creativity of the scribe–reader. 92 See, A.  Walsham, ‘“Domme Preachers”? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the culture of print’, Past and Present, 168 (2000), pp. 72–123, especially pp. 74–9, 102; see also A. Walsham, ‘Inventing the Lollard past: The afterlife of a medical sermon in early modern England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58/4 (2007), pp. 628–55, p. 629. 93 Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library, H/L-4-10 (R 330), The primer in Englishe and Latine (London: Jhon kyngston and Henry Sutton, 1557). 94 CCAL H/L-4-10, p. 266. This is also found in British Library C.10.a.13 O vi r–v and C.35.c.24; Sig Ovi r–v. C.10.A.13 is an interesting volume which begins ‘imperfectly’. In added pages after sig +viiiv and before sig Aiir, a later annotator has attempted to fill in the missing section by hand in imitation of the printed structures. The annotator provides ‘An account of ye following writing’. Here, he proposes that ‘to perfect this booke word for word’ he has ‘taken out of another salisbury primer which was much of

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 88

21/05/2012 10:15:06

Religious reading and reform

89

this size and was also as this was in the Raignes of Phillip and Mary King & Queen of England Printed att London in the yeare of our Lord 1557 or then about’. 95 Duffy, Stripping, pp. 537–43, p. 542 for the ‘sober and scriptural’ tone of the Wayland primers. 96 Duffy, Stripping, p. 540. 97 M. Baxandall, Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 7. 98 See, for example, J. Wogan-Browne, N. Watson, A. Taylor and R. Evans (eds), The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280–1520, Exeter Middle English Texts and Studies (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1999), p. 216; M. Clanchy, ‘Images of ladies with prayerbooks: What do they signify?’, in R. Swanson (ed.), The Church and the Book, Studies in Church History, 38 (London: Ecclesiastical History Society, and Boydell and Brewer, 2004); E. Richards, ‘Writing and silence: Transitions between the active and the contemplative life’, in Lutton and Salter (eds), Pieties in Transition, pp. 163–79, p. 171. 99 On the uses of illustration to aid lay understanding of the Latin material in Horae see Duffy, Stripping, p. 225. 100 On mnemonic images, for example, see Walsham, ‘“Domme Preachers”?’, p. 116, and her references (n. 166) to work by Margaret Aston, Eamon Duffy and Tessa Watt. Also see Driver, Image in Print, pp. 19–20, taking the example of the mnemonic triggers used in illustrations of the Old Testament figures in texts such as Biblia Pauperum. 101 See, for example, N. Zieman, ‘Reading, singing, and understanding: Constructions of the literacy of women religious in late medieval England’, in Rees Jones (ed.), Learning and Literacy, pp. 97–120, p. 97 on the definitions of literatus. 102 Orme, Medieval Children, Chapter 7, especially pp. 254–63. 103 Orme, Medieval Children, p. 253. 104 Clanchy, ‘The ABC reading primer’. 105 Walsham, ‘“Domme Preachers”?’, p. 78. 106 R.  Whitford, A werke for housholders or for them that haue the guydynge or gouernaunce of any company. Gadred and set forth by a professed brother of Syon, Richard Whitforde: and newely corrected [and] prynted agayne with an addicion of polici for housholding, set forth also by the same brother (Imprynted at London: In fletestrete, at the sygne of the George, by me Robert Redman, The yere of our lorde God. M.D.xxxvii. The. viii. daye of Nouember. 1537). This is STC 25425. See also White, Tudor Books, p. 84. 107 W.A.  Pantin, ‘Instructions for a devout and literate layman’, in J.J.G. Alexander and M.T. Gibson (eds), Medieval Learning and Literature, Essays presented to Richard William Hunt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976), pp. 398–401.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 89

21/05/2012 10:15:06

90

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

108 Pantin, ‘Instructions’, pp. 398–9. This is a modern translation of the text originally in Latin. 109 These quotes are taken from R. Whitford, A werke for housholders (Imprynted at London, in Southwarke by me Peter Treueris, 1531?), sig B iir–iiv. This version is STC 25422.3. 110 Whitford, A Werke for housholders, STC 25422.3, sig Cir. 111 Whitford, A Werke for housholders, STC 25322.3, sig Biiv. 112 The Prymer in Englyshe and Laten (London: Redman, 1537), STC 15998. 113 See, for example, The Prymer, STC 15998, sig Dir. 114 The Prymer, STC 15998, sig Dir. 115 See, for example, The BAC in Latin and English (1538), STC 19 (unfoliated) (8 folios). 116 See P.  Collinson, The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988). Discussing this, see Marshall, ‘Introduction’, in Impact, p. 16. 117 See, Duffy, Marking, pp. 171–2. He uses this phrase expressly to refer to John Day’s Book of Christian Prayers (1578), as a ‘Trojan Horse, harnessing the old forms to smuggle in the new religion’; also see Walsham, ‘“Domme Preachers”?’, p. 86, for a slightly different use of this referring particularly to the distribution of recusant Catholic tracts in Protestant places with the intention of infiltration. For a discussion of the problems of the Trojan horse concept in relation to the continuities of popular reading practice, see E. Salter, ‘What kind of horse is it? Popular devotional reading during the sixteenth century’, in A. Hadfield and M. Dimmock (eds), Literature and Popular Culture in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 105–20. 118 Duffy, Stripping, for example p. 479. 119 Ryrie’s proposition that ‘most English people never experienced a dramatic individual conversion’ is probably appropriate in relation to the changes and continuities in reading practice and experience: see Ryrie, ‘Counting sheep’, p. 105. For a similar idea concerning the desire to preserve medieval tradition see Driver, Image in Print, pp. 212–14. 120 For the seminal text on traditional religion see Duffy, Stripping, passim., and for example p. 543. On the difference between participation and ideological commitment see Marshall, ‘Introduction’, in Impact, p. 7. On the ideological commitments of some protestant printers, however, see Petigree, ‘Printing and the Reformation’, p. 76. See Walsham, ‘“Domme Preachers”?’, p. 120 and n. 174 for discussion of the continued practices of ‘magic associated with devotional books, pious images from books, pages from the bible and so on’. 121 Salter, ‘“The Dayes Moralised”’, pp. 156–7. 122 Driver, Image in Print, pp. 209, 212. 123 See also Driver, Image in Print, p. 212 for a similar idea of The Fifteen Oes being preserved because of continuities of ‘taste and sensibility’. For a recent

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 90

21/05/2012 10:15:06

Religious reading and reform

91

consideration of sensuality and reading in the seventeenth century see also H. Smith, ‘“More swete vnto the eare / than holsome for ye mynde”: Embodying Early Modern women’s reading’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 73/3 (2010), pp. 413–32, for example pp. 417–20. 124 The references to the senses provide some similarities to the element of the catechism known as ‘The Five Bodily Witts’; see Thompson, ‘Religious texts in Lincoln’, p. 177. 125 British Library, C. 106.a.24, A Spirituall Counsayle very necessarye for euery persone to haue (London: ?John Mayler, 1540), fols Ev v–Evii v. 126 British Library, C. 106.a.24, A Spirituall Counsayle; British Library, C. 110.e.13, An vniforme and Catholyke Prymer in Latin and Englishe (London: John Wayland., 1555), STC 16064; CCAL H/L-4-10 (R 330), The primer in Englishe and Latine. On John Mayler’s evangelical interests in reform, see Walsham, ‘Inventing the Lollard past’, p. 642. Mayler was imprisoned for ‘unlawful printing’ in 1543. 127 I have discussed this prayer in Salter, ‘“The Dayes Moralised”’, pp. 157–8. 128 See, for example, Bestul, Texts of the Passion. For an example of the attention to corporeality in the ecstatic verses of affectivity see, for example, BL MS Add. 39574, edited in M. Day, The Wheatley Manuscript, Early English Text Society, Original Series 155 (London: Oxford University Press, 1921) and see R. Rolle, Fire of Love and The Mending of Life or The Rule of Living [...], edited with introduction and glossary by R. Harvey, Early English Text Society (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1896), pp. 105–21 for The Mending of Life, and see p. 121 ‘On Reading’ for the connections between private devotions and the heart. 129 For a discussion of the affective responses stimulated by ‘gruesomely realistic portrayals of specific scenes of torment’, for example, see R. King, ‘The Fifteen Oes’, in A. Clark Bartlett and T.H. Bestul (eds), Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 107–17, p. 108; and Bartlett and Bestul, ‘Introduction’ in Cultures of Piety, p. 2. 130 An Uniforme and Catholyke Prymer, STC 16064, sigs aa ii, ff. 131 An Uniforme and Catholyke Prymer, STC 16064, sigs aa v–vi. 132 The primer in Englishe and Latine, pp. 249–318. 133 See also Salter, ‘“The Dayes Moralised”’, p. 157. 134 Duffy, Marking, pp. 160–2. 135 Duffy, Marking, p. 162. 136 A Spirituall Counsayle, sigs, Hiv v–I iv r. The two Latin phrases which have been struck out both contain the word ‘Sancte’; one is in praise of the Virgin Mary. 137 See, for example, A Spirituall Counsayle, sigs Aiv r, Bi v, Ciii v–Dii r. 138 A Spirituall Counsayle, Div v to Dvii r. Monday’s and Wednesday’s prayers both mention the heart. 139 A Spirituall Counsayle, sig Kv r.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 91

21/05/2012 10:15:06

92

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

140 Walsham, ‘“Domme preachers”?’, pp. 104–5. She cites the reprinting of Thomas a Kempis’ Imitation of the Life of Christ and the plagiarising of Person’s First Book of the Christian Exercise by Edmund Bunny in 1584. 141 Duffy, Marking, pp. 171–3 and discussed more fully in Salter, ‘What kind of horse’, pp. 107ff. See also Duffy, Stripping, p. 222 for the slightly different emphasis of referring to ‘introducing the Trojan horse of the vernacular into traditional liturgical observance’. 142 The roles of orality and of ‘oralisation’ in reading are discussed in Chapter 1. The concept is based on an idea of Johannes Fabian concerning the role of oralisation in the practices of newly literate groups in society, See J. Fabian, ‘Keep listening: Ethnography and reading’, in J. Boyarin (ed.), The Ethnography of Reading (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 80–97. 143 For further examples of this, see Salter, ‘“The Dayes Moralised”, pp. 155–60. For a recent examination of John Day’s role as a protestant printer see John N. King, ‘John Day: Master printer of the English Reformation’, in Ryrie and Marshall (eds), Beginnings, pp. 180–208. 144 E. Duffy, ‘Continuity and divergence in Tudor religion’, in R. Swanson (ed.), Unity and Diversity in the Church, Studies in Church History, 32 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 171–205, p. 202. 145 See Salter, ‘“The Dayes Moralised”, pp. 159–60. 146 Further evidence for the popularity of doggerel is found in the appropriation of, for example, ballad forms by the Protestant church in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries; see Walsham, ‘“Domme Preachers”?’, p. 114. For the identification of one proverbialised reader-annotation as homiletic and scriptural rather than invented, see P. Marshall, ‘Review article, Pieties in Transition’, The Catholic Historical Review, 95/2 (2009). This identification does not alter the argument concerning the uses and perception of proverbialised text. 147 C. Humphrey and J. Laidlaw, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 264.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 92

21/05/2012 10:15:06

3

Making meaning from moral reading Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

1

Making meaning from moral reading

This chapter is concerned with moral reading and focuses on a collection of short moral stories known as the Gesta Romanorum (Tales of the Romans), which were being copied, printed and circulated during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The stories have a distinctive style and follow a particular pattern. They are all set in the time of a particular named Roman emperor, each story being identified as the story of that emperor. This locates them outside of contemporary society in a far away and distant place and time. They are also all designed to have two parts: firstly the story section when the particular adventure of that emperor is related, secondly a moral section which explains the symbolic meanings of the characters and events in the story with reference to fundamental issues of Christianity. The sample story reproduced here gives a sense of the way that a classic Gesta story works. This is one of the shortest ones, for the sake of brevity here, but it contains a set of key elements that one would expect from this genre.2 In Rome dwelled sometime a mighty Emperor and a wise, named Edsenne, who ordained a law that whosoever ravished a maid should be at her will whether she would put him to death or that she would have him to her husband. It befell after, on a day, that a man ravished upon a night two maidens: the first damsel desired that he should die and the second desired wedding. The ravisher was taken and led before the judge that should satisfy both these damsels through his wisdom and rightfulness. The first maid ever desired his death according to the law. And then said the second, ‘I desired him to be my husband for like wise as thou hast the law for thee, in likewise I have it for me. And nevertheless my petition is more and better than yours for it is more charitable, therefore me thinketh in my reason that the Justice should give sentence with me’. Then the Justice understanding the great mercy of the second maiden gave judgement that he should wed her and so it was done.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 93

21/05/2012 10:15:06

94

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 This Emperor betokeneth our lord Jesus Christ. The ravisher betokeneth every sinner which ravished God’s mercy as often as he dissoileth the commandments of God by sin, for the devil may never overcome man but if it be suffered by will, for saint Augustine sayeth ‘Non es peccatum niscit voluntarium’ [that is] ‘It is no sin but if it be voluntary’. The sinner ravisheth the mercy of God as often as he hath very contrition. The ravisher also is called afore the justice when the soul is departed from the body and anon the first damsel that is the devil said against the sinner that he ought to die everlastingly by the law of righteousness. But that other maiden that is Christ said for her the mercy of God ought to help by contrition and confession, which is the highway to everlasting life. Unto the which, God bring both you and me. Amen.3

It can be seen that this typical Gesta story is divided into two parts, that the first part tells the story (the narrative) and that the second half produces the moral from this by turning the characters and elements of the first half into symbols (the moralisation). Other references from authoritative texts, most often the Bible and the church fathers, are often introduced during the moralisation. These are used to support the moral of the story. My intention in this chapter is to move towards a better understanding of the reader’s experience(s) of Gesta stories, individually and, perhaps more significantly in this instance, as a collection. I take as my principle focus the collection of forty-three stories printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1510.4 There is little published work on Gesta Romanorum, although other collections of moral exempla have received some attention. There is, in general, very little consideration of how these types of stories may have been read and experienced by fifteenth- and sixteenth-century readers. My findings here, therefore, have application for better understanding of how other moral, didactic and exemplary stories were read too. This chapter falls into two halves: the first is more concerned with description and the second more with analysis, although there is some analysis in the first half and some description in the second. A necessary first stage in paying these stories more attention is to describe them, and so this chapter gives quite a lot of space to description of contents, narrative and modes of making meaning, whilst using this evidence to interpret reader experience. Following a consideration of some of the critical background to the broader genre of moral tales and exempla, I describe the texts in which Gesta tales survive, focusing on the English versions. I then go on to discuss the aesthetics of the page in these texts with particular reference to Wynkyn de Worde’s addition of illustrations in his printed version of

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 94

21/05/2012 10:15:06

Making meaning from moral reading

95

c. 1510 and the evidence this provides for the processes of abstraction these illustrations encourage in the reader. I consider the evidence for the circulation of Gesta stories, and their qualifications as a popular form of literature in conjunction with their role as sermon exempla. The intersection between listening or hearing and the issue of reading is explored here. In the second half I focus more on analysing specific issues and themes in order to understand more about the strategies used in particular stories and their impact on the reading experience. This includes an examination of the ways that Gesta use intertextual references indicating their self-referential qualities, which leads to a consideration of narrative structure and the stories’ methods of making symbolic references in the ritualised sphere of reading these ostensibly repetitive narratives. I explore these issues further with a consideration of how the stories use inscription and, here, I seek to exhibit some of the effects of the reading experience through the structure of my own narrative, ending with a consideration of how and when Gesta stories might make explicit reference to contemporary social conditions. Throughout, this chapter seeks to demonstrate how evidence for reading and reception may be found in the literatures themselves. I also make some reference to external evidence where this helps with building up a contextualised picture of how this kind of text may have been used and read. I do not prioritise annotation evidence here. With its emphasis on how meanings might be made, how symbols may be construed and so on, the chapter tends to consider reading experience conceptually – the stories lend themselves to this. Some critical background Collections of moral stories such as the Gesta Romanorum and those like them including the Alphabet Tales, Vitas Patrum (Lives of the Fathers) and others deserve much more attention: any perception of their simplicity, brought about perhaps by their short length or their formulaic structure, is mistaken. Actually, in some ways it is the formulaic narrative structure and apparent simplicity of Gesta Romanorum which makes them so interesting. The significance of narrative structure, exemplarity and moral meaning in these stories also seems to invite various forms of analytical approach which are not particularly useful for uncovering more about reading experience. There is, for example, the possibility of engaging in the philosophical discourses on these matters, and there are approaches to narratology, made popular in the first half of the twentieth century, which necessarily inform any present interest in narrative.5 When trying

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 95

21/05/2012 10:15:06

96

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

to uncover processes of reception and interpretation, however, narratology, and its interest in forms and structures, remains problematic in its structural expectations. This is because the structuralist, narratological approach tends to exclude the flexibilities inherent in the reception of a narrative, whereas I propose that reading experience is fluid.6 There have also been some approaches which seek to understand or impose a historical trajectory in the development of these kinds of stories. The analysis of exemplary narrative which sweeps across a broad historical period tends to lose acuity on the particularities of how exempla may have been used and understood in particular periods.7 Changes in exemplary narratives from the early medieval to the renaissance period (roughly the twelfth century to the seventeenth century), for example, have been given some consideration recently. Here, there seems to be a tendency to propose a rather predictable movement from the medieval to the early modern. It goes from the relatively static medieval situation where morals are unambiguously made by narratives and heard (rather than read) unambiguously by homogenous audiences. This gives way to the early modern crisis of confidence in knowledge and the authority of the past leading to the fragmentation of the moral exemplum into different modes according to its newly literate and varied audiences.8 While there are very likely to have been changes in the methods and reception of moralising across these centuries, the incision at the point where the early modern period begins is surely too neat.9 Perhaps it is more useful to consider that numerous changes took place across this period in the structuring of these types of text.10 Elizabeth Allen, for example, traces a path from Aristotelian ethical thought to Gregory the Great’s advocation of examples over doctrine. She suggests that it is more useful to stress the choices intentionally produced in medieval exemplary narratives rather than the ‘view of medieval didacticism as a systematic perpetuation of universal orthodoxies’.11 However, even this proposition, which moves away from rigidity and homogeneities of meaning, does not really account for the constant circumstance of changing understanding: this is necessary if the stories are considered from the point of view of the reader. And it is debatable whether the interpretive strategies of most medieval readers (especially the sorts of reader who have access only to the ‘popular literatures’ I discuss in this book) were (consciously) informed by Aristotelian principles. It may be possible to identify, however, certain highly significant changes in the structuring and use of moral exempla during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One example is the changes associated with the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 96

21/05/2012 10:15:06

Making meaning from moral reading

97

increased circulation of vernacular writing during the late medieval period, as explored by Helen Wicker in her insightful study. Wicker identifies the significant impact of the vernacular turn on exemplary narratives dealing with deviant language. She posits that a process of ‘adaptation, refashioning and accentuation in exempla’ signals the negotiations taking place between clerical and popular discourses in the vernacular during this period.12 The religious politics of using the vernacular in the fifteenth century, the period from which manuscripts of tale collections such as the Gesta Romanorum survive, were acute.13 Larry Scanlon’s Narrative, Authority, and Power also represents an important field in the study of exempla. His particular concern is with the Chaucerian tradition of exemplary narrative and he usefully posits the need to consider the lay appropriation of a ‘vernacular tradition that emerged in a culture previously dominated by the Latin traditions of the Church’.14 From the outset, Scanlon stresses the importance of examining the relationships between an ‘exemplum’s narrative and the cultural authority embedded in its sententia or moral’.15 This marks a concerted movement towards investing the rhetoric of the narrative with a richness and complexity of its own rather than considering it merely a vehicle for an essential moral. This fits with my consideration of the narrative structures, even playfulness, found in the Gesta Romanorum. However, Scanlon’s particular concern with the appropriation of clerical power by the lay Chaucerian tradition has the potential to encourage assumptions that those vernacular discourses with clear clerical and religiously didactic concerns (such as Gesta Romanorum, Alphabet Tales and so on) lacked the ability to be part of the appropriation of cultural authority by vernacularity. Considering the great writers in the Chaucerian tradition as Scanlon does is very valuable, but it also has the potential to diminish the role and significance of the shorter anonymous moral narratives such as Gesta Romanorum. My suggestion is that the short narratives (Gesta, Alphabet Tales and so on) were probably more accessible to the lay person of the fifteenth and sixteenth century than were the now canonical works by writers such as Chaucer. The short anonymous narratives also have a sophistication of rhetorical structure and narrative device which is distinctive from Chaucerian exemplary narrative but nevertheless artful. My suggestion is also that the signs and symbols used in the short clerically orientated moral narratives and sermon exempla are also very much open for lay readers to appropriate in the process of making meaning from them. I have written about this before, where my main approach was twofold:

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 97

21/05/2012 10:15:06

98

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

firstly, to conduct detailed comparisons of the words used in the five surviving English manuscript versions of the Gesta to find out what the prevailing issues were in particular stories;16 secondly, to explore the ways that the structure and vocabulary of the stories might intersect with the popular imagination through their use of familiar structures of representation and modes of expression. My interest was specifically in the interpretive processes and experiences of real readers rather than the embedded readers or implied readers who often make themselves available in these and other medieval narratives.17 Texts of the Gesta Romanorum Sidney Herrtage’s printed edition of Gesta stories for the Early English Text Society demonstrates the extent of the survival of this collection in a number of different languages. He lists thirty-four manuscripts surviving in ‘English libraries’ – thirty of which are in Latin, three in English and one in German – and proposes a figure near to 200 for the total number of surviving manuscripts if continental libraries are included.18 This is probably a conservative estimate: Herrtage does not mention the Latin collection of Gesta tales in the National Library of Wales, for example, and there are in fact five manuscripts containing English stories: four contain substantial collections of stories and all date from the fifteenth century; the other contains just one story and dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century. British Library Manuscript Harley 7333 is a large book written in a neat, even hand on good-quality vellum. It contains a variety of prose and poetry, including work by Lydgate and Chaucer, and seventy tales from the Gesta.19 British Library Manuscript Additional 9066 is a moderately sized volume written on parchment in a plain style with a little decorative rubrication which probably dates from the sixteenth or seventeenth century. It contains forty-six stories from the Gesta along with tales from another similar story collection known as the Vitas Patrum.20 The Gloucester Cathedral manuscript which contains eighteen Gesta stories is written on paper throughout in a plain style with only a little rubrication. The manuscript is now divided into three items, the other two containing sermons (which is a significant point when considering the role and circulation of Gesta stories).21 The fourth manuscript containing a substantial number of stories is Cambridge University Library Kk.1.6, also known as Eleanor Hull’s book. This contains a range of literary and devotional items. The name ‘Alynore Hull’ is written into the text,

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 98

21/05/2012 10:15:06

Making meaning from moral reading

99

claiming that she ‘drowe out of Frensche all this before wretten in this lytyl booke’.22 The fifth manuscript in English is Oxford Baliol College Manuscript 354, otherwise known as Richard Hill’s Commonplace Book, dating from c. 1500–30. It has the distinctive tall, thin shape of a tradesman’s account book and contains a wide range of prose (including one story from the Gesta) and poetry, alongside recipes and administrative details.23 My principal focus for this chapter is the selection of stories printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1510. This survives in one copy bound, probably at a much later date, with two other printed texts: The Way to the Holy Land (1524) and The Histories of Italy by William Thomas (1549).24 Where instructive, I compare Wynkyn’s versions with those of three manuscripts, the Harley, Additional and Gloucester texts. Circulation evidence There are several significant pieces of evidence to support the identification of Gesta Romanorum as a type of literature which had broad circulation and availability to a wide spectrum of the population. The extent of the survival of the manuscripts is one indicator. There is evidence for the circulation of these stories amongst the relatively wealthy townsfolk of London: the connection between the Harley manuscript and John Shirley, who was an early pioneer in the formation of libraries and lending networks, for example, and the appearance of one story in the book of London merchant Richard Hill both attest to this metropolitan audience.25 Other evidence from a bequest indicates the circulation and use of a book of Gesta stories in the vicinity of a provincial college of priests, which probably also had a role in educating lay people.26 The form and structure of these stories certainly relate to their role as exempla for teaching occasions, particularly religious teaching. They lend themselves very well to extraction and use in sermons. One very good example of this is found in the group of Gloucester manuscripts whose contents (one-third Gesta stories, two-thirds sermons) give unequivocal indication of the connection between these stories and sermon occasions. Added to this there is this reference within one of the sermon texts: We rede in gestis Romanorum that in the olde tyme the pepyll of Rome were fallyn in to grete povett grete mysery & grete wretchedness … so gostly to our purpose by these romanys that were in so grete dyesse may be understode all unfeythefull pepyll to almygti god.27

Sermons are important occasions for the dissemination of knowledge

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 99

21/05/2012 10:15:06

100 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 and information and for the transmission of ideas into the imaginations of people whose access to the actual material objects containing literate communication is likely to be relatively little. Indeed, this is not a one-way process of transmission as exempla are also useful vehicles for clerical appropriation of popular belief.28 In the context of this investigation of popular reading, texts which become available through the medium of the sermon form an interesting issue. I have discussed the interaction between oral occasions and reading experience in Chapter 1, but, to reiterate, there seems to me little problem with understanding this type of textual dissemination as being relevant to popular reading, although the relationships between the act of reading and the act of listening are not simple. As I hope to demonstrate during the course of this chapter, Gesta stories are highly textual; in other words, they are self-consciously constructed narratives which employ all manner of narrative tricks and which also reflect on their own consistency as pieces of writing. The extent to which a listener experiences the text in a literate manner is an interesting issue. It is important to remember, however, that the average low-status person in the fifteenth or sixteenth century was likely to have been a highly trained listener, and he or she would be accustomed to the sermon format. The repetitive nature of each Gesta story, as well as the very distinct generic structure, is probably also key here both to its usefulness as a sermon exemplum and to its ‘listenability’. It is debateable whether or not the listener was able to appreciate some of the more complicated referential tricks made in some of the stories I will be discussing here. Perhaps these come into their own at the point of reading either by the priest as the sermon writer or by the lay person who has access to a manuscript or printed collection of tales. It is feasible to propose, however, that the act of listening to stories which are explicitly concerned with textuality – not just their own but also the texts of religious authority which are cited throughout the stories (and discussed below) – must in some ways prepare a listener for the more acutely literate experience of reading. The production of a collection of Gesta Romanorum stories by Wynkyn de Worde in 1510 seems to attest to the popularity of this genre. And perhaps the decision to print this collection was partly based on the knowledge that a relatively wide sector of society would already have some familiarity with the tales through listening in the context of church services.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 100

21/05/2012 10:15:06

Making meaning from moral reading

101

The aesthetics of the page In terms of visual layout, Gesta Romanorum are characterised by being unexciting. The English manuscripts, for example, are all written in full-page prose with very little decoration. Flicking through the Additional manuscript, which contains only moral tales, gives the impression of a densely packed book with a lot of text in it. The Harley manuscript, by contrast, contains a number of different formats, including the characteristic columns of tale rhyme and various types of stanzaic layout, and it is the most luxuriously produced of all the English Gesta manuscripts. Yet the Gesta stories are written in full-page prose with comparatively little rubrication and embellishment. It is noticeable that the Latin manuscript of the Gesta Romanorum, which is housed in the National Library of Wales, also has a very similar page aesthetic, indicating that this feature is not confined to the English-language texts.29 This aesthetic also seems to have been preserved, by and large, in the Wynkyn edition although Wynkyn, who has been described as a pioneer in the use of illustrative title pages, has also added a few woodcuts.30 The addition of illustrations to the otherwise very plain appearance of the Gesta collection may significantly reflect what Wynkyn at least believes to be a popular selling point.31 The images do add something distinct to the collection. At first glance the illustrations certainly stand out in comparison to the very plain appearance of the manuscript versions. It is interesting to explore the choices that have been made about how to illustrate the eight stories which have woodcuts, and the relationships between individual stories and their illustration. What effects might the presence of illustrations have on the experience of reading a particular story or, indeed, the collection of tales? While there is often a somewhat tenuous link between text and image, the nature of the connection (or lack of it) actually provides some useful evidence for understanding more about experiences of reading. Illustrations in Wynkyn de Worde’s version In the Wynkyn edition of the Gesta Romanorum (c. 1510), there are eight stories which have a woodcut illustration. It is noticeable that the eight woodcuts relate to their stories in a variety of different ways. There is, in other words, no consistent rule for the relationship between the content and/or moral meaning of the story and the illustration. The woodcuts also vary in size, some being small narrow rectangular images which occupy about fifteen lines of writing in depth with a width of about a quarter of

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 101

21/05/2012 10:15:06

102 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 the written page (such as the Christ figure in story 9), others being square and of a similar depth to the rectangular images (such as story 10), and the remaining images taking the full width of the page and about half the page in depth (such as story 11).32 For story 9, the image is of Christ holding an orb with a cross on it (the world?) and a staff.33 The story is concerned with a lame man and a blind man who team up in order to get to a feast which has been organised, for rich and poor alike, by the emperor. The lame man represents priests who live on laypeople’s alms, and the blind man represents laypeople who do not know the right way to heaven without the teachings of a priest. For story 28, the half-page image is the same as that found on the front page of the Gesta and it simply shows an emperor (or a Christ figure) with very fine clothing including an ermine-lined cloak, wearing a crown and holding an orb and sceptre, seated on a throne.34 These two different images each relate to the theme of their story insomuch as the emperor represents Jesus. For story 10, the image is of a built structure something like a tower with windows at first-floor level, buttresses around the ground floor and crenellations at the top35 (see figure 3). It almost looks as if it has scaffolding around it, against which two ladders lean, one on each side of the structure, each ladder having a person climbing up it. The story is concerned with two cities: one has an easy pathway and is full of ‘pain tormenting sorrow and mischief’ and the other has a difficult pathway and is full of treasure, precious stones and riches. The biblical trope of the narrow, difficult way to heaven and the wide and easy route to hell is clear. The relation of the image to the story is interesting in that it seems to work at an abstract representational level even though the details are incorrect. The built structure represents city-ness, although there is only one city, whereas the existence of two cities is crucial to the story in this instance. The two ladders represent entry into the city, and again the detail is wrong (because both the ladders enter the same place) although the concept of two entrances and pathways is well represented by the ladders. For stories 11 and 15, the images have a distant relevance to the content and moral of the story.36 Both stories have a similar moral emphasis, which is to remind the reader of the sacrifice on behalf of mankind made by Jesus through the crucifixion. For 11, the image is of a man and a woman in the foreground with a city made of a number of different kinds of buildings rising up behind them. Both figures are dressed in apparently costly clothes, judging by the number of folds in their garments, and they all have a scroll above their heads which would be available for a caption,

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 102

21/05/2012 10:15:06

Making meaning from moral reading 103 although both are left blank in this instance. The story is concerned with original sin and is told through the experiences of the daughter of an emperor who inherits everything after his death, an earl who tricks her, deflowers her and then banishes her from her kingdom, and a knight who finds her and offers to regain for her the kingdom in return for her hand in marriage with the condition that, if he dies, she will have his bloody shirt as a reminder and will stay faithful to him. He does die in the process and she remains faithful to him. The daughter represents the soul of man, the earl is the devil and the knight is Jesus. The direct relevance of the image is difficult to ascertain, except for the fact that there is a man and a woman who probably represent the daughter and the knight, that their clothing probably identifies them with this status, and that the buildings behind them may be viewed as representative of the kingdom which she loses and then regains. Interestingly there is no reference to the bloody shirt, which seems to be the single most poignant image in the written text of this story. Story 37 also has a very similar image to story 11, especially as one of its two male figures in the foreground is actually identical to the male figure of story 11.37 The story is concerned with two brothers and the marriage of one of them to a common woman for which he is exiled and then allowed to return. The image relates to the story in that there are two men and there are also two women standing behind, one of whom is addressing one of the men. That is as much relevance as there is in this instance. At stories 25 and 33 the images each represent social occasions in half-page woodcuts which are relatively full of people.38 For story 25, the image depicts a scene in a room with a squared floor with diamond paned windows where an emperor is sitting with a child on his knee, a man kneeling at the feet of the emperor, and a woman is standing behind. There is also a soldier standing behind the emperor. The setting is clearly somewhere important and the people are all clearly dressed in fine clothes. The story is concerned with a child of an emperor over whom there is a competition amongst a number of knights who wish to bring him up. The image is clearly relevant because of the child, who represents Christ in the story. For story 33, the scene is more packed with people and it depicts a wedding with a priest standing between the bride and groom holding their outstretched hands together in the foreground, with a cluster of men and of women behind the groom and bride, respectively. The room is signified by the diamond paned windows in the background and also the ornately decorated arch which frames the tableau. Both of these images represent the concept of an occasion in the way that story 10’s image

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 103

21/05/2012 10:15:06

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 104

21/05/2012 10:15:07

Figure 3  Anon, Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn de Worde: London, c. 1510), STC (2nd edn) 212863, Sig Biv v–C i r.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 105

21/05/2012 10:15:07

106 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 represents the idea of cities even if the details do not relate to the precise happenings of the story. The varying connections of the image to the story alongside their varying sizes points to the printer’s pragmatic use of woodcuts already available in the workshop.39 This in itself is an interesting issue in relation to the reader’s experience of illustration: the same woodcut may appear in a number of different contexts in order to illustrate a range of different issues, and the reader may well recall these. This means that the reader of incunabula such as Wynkyn’s Gesta Romanorum must be naturally accustomed to a situation where there is, in general, a very flexible relationship between illustrative material and textual content or/ and meaning.40 Nevertheless, as the example of story 10 shows, there is potential for the reader to find abstract concepts of relevance to the story they are reading, if not direct illustrations. The process of interpretation invited by the abstract relevance of, for example, the built structure in story 10 is in many ways much more interesting than if the woodcut precisely illustrated the story. The abstract relation of image to story encourages the reader to conceptualise, visually, some key points from the story and its moral. The moralising nature of these stories involves a focus on conceptualising, but this visual situation added in the written version seems to add a different and particular element in the experience of reading these tales. It is also noticeable that some of the most obviously visual imagery in the Gesta tales, such as the highly charged issues associated with affective piety, are excluded from the woodcuts in the Wynkyn version. A number of the stories make explicit references to the stuff of affective piety – like story 36, for example, which converts the five pools that are a healing well in the story into the five wounds of Christ in the moral: that is to say five wounds in his body of the which ran both blood & water whereby all mankind were raised from death to life and so he led them up into the palace of heaven. Unto the which our blessed Lord Jesus Christ that shed his blood upon the rood tree for thee and me and all mankind.41

Perhaps words such as these are considered to be evocative enough of a visual impression in the reader’s mind. Wynkyn de Worde was surely not short of woodcuts which might illustrate this scene. Perhaps his lack of pious illustration was a marketing device, pitching the tales as being more generally moralising rather than emphasising the devotional potential of them.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 106

21/05/2012 10:15:07

Making meaning from moral reading 107 Textuality in the stories A number of Gesta stories use intertextual references in their moralisation, usually making reference to Bible texts. This element in their distinctive structure clearly relates to the stories’ uses as sermon exempla. Alongside their use of inscription (discussed below), for example, stories 39 and 11 also employ references to textual authorities in the construction of their moral. When describing the cause of the fall of man from paradise, story 11 makes reference to the psalms: ‘like as the psalm sayeth. In sudore vultus tui &c in the sweat of thy visage thou shalt eat thy bread’.42 This is clearly a place for making such references as both the Harley and the Additional manuscripts also provide a reference here or indicate that a reference is possible. The Harley version provides exactly the same reference, and also an additional passage concerning the devil’s words during the temptation of Eve is quoted, also in Latin, near the beginning of the moral.43 The Additional version does not provide either of these quotes but mentions a homily by Saint Augustine on the subject of the fall from paradise.44 Story 39’s textual reference is similarly short, and in a similar place at the beginning of the moral. It concerns the description of John the Baptist as the forerunner for Christ, with reference to the narrative’s sergeant who was sent to warn the people of the forthcoming search for fire and water in their houses: ‘Ecce mitto angelu. Lo I send my angel afore me. &c’.45 The inclusion of citations from other texts, usually the Bible, often in Latin followed by English, also forms an interesting element in the experience of reading and using these stories. It seems to emphasise the extent to which the stories are carefully constructed narratives rather than simple artless stories which are driven only by the intention of presenting a fundamental Christian moral. Some of the stories seem to engage playfully with their own textuality. Story 31, for example, makes a nice self-referential comment on writing when it describes how the poor man who is central to the story tells his wife a set of events which have just occurred in the narrative: ‘Then told he her all the process as it befell as it is written above.’46 Story 42 also plays with textuality through its use of letters which form an integral element to moving the narrative through its various episodes of significant action.47 Structure, symbol, reading process The use and production of symbolic meanings is a central aspect of how these stories work. Each story relies on a set of characters and events

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 107

21/05/2012 10:15:07

108 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 which are all used to make the moral point in the second half of the story. There is a fairly small stock of characters and events employed: poor person, knight, earl, maiden, steward, child, brother, sister all being frequent characters; battles, legal cases, status promotions, marriages, interfamilial feuds, rapes, banishments all being frequent occurrences. Other recurring additional props include water (which lends itself to the water of life) including wells and springs, blood (lending itself to the blood of Christ), ditches (the fall, the consequences of pride), various animals (used to signify various aspects of human nature and good or bad characteristics). The same elements are used to create a particular ‘symbolic sphere’ in a number of different stories and they do not always signify the same concept. Even the emperor, who is almost always God or Christ, occasionally represents the devil or Christian man. Despite the ostensible simplicity of the stories, then, as a group they form quite a complicated collection of signs and symbols, each of whose meaning is very important for its particular story but is subject to change between stories. Nor is the structure, as shown in the example at the beginning of this chapter, entirely rigid: although all the Gesta stories in the Wynkyn version have the two sections formed of story and moral, there are two stories which have two morals as their manuscript counterparts also do, and at least one of the English manuscript copies chooses not to include morals.48 Some of the stories also seem to delight in keeping the reader guessing about what will be the moral and how each of the signs will be turned into a symbol. I discuss some of these at greater length below. Narrative structure Some of the stories are particularly playful with regard to their own structure and therefore playful with the distinctive Gesta genre. In some ways it is of course easier to be playful when there is a definite, formulaic, structure to play with, and the playfulness is more noticeable too. Some stories also seem to be particularly sensitive to the ways that they use the characteristic device of narrative repetition. Story 31, for example, one of the longest narratives that has a number of sub-stories within it, provides a reminder to the reader through the voice of one of the central characters. This character is Sir Gye, who was a pauper until he was rewarded with gifts that enabled him to gain great riches for his good deeds. The emperor is interested in the magic stone that has increased Sir Gye’s wealth and so he asks Gye, in the second half of the narrative, to tell him the story of how he came to gain the stone along with other gifts in the first place. Gye’s reply involves him in providing for the reader

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 108

21/05/2012 10:15:07

Making meaning from moral reading 109 a useful recap of the events from the first part of the story. Sir Gye says to the emperor: By my faith that I owe to you I shall tell you truly the very truths touching this stone. Your steward, which is promoted up from nought, let make many deep pits in your forest and it fortuned not long after that he fell in one of them himself and might not rise again for deepness of the pit … that time was I a poor man and as I walked in the forest with my ass for to gather wood he cried unto me that I should help him out of the pit and save him from the death for there were in the pit with him three venomous beasts.49

Gye’s repetition of earlier events is introduced in a way which emphasises to the reader that this is a useful moment of recapitulation which takes us back to the beginning of the story as it actually retells the issue (the promotion of the steward from a pauper) forming the very first piece of action. Given the function of Gye’s reply to the emperor’s question as both a narrative reminder and a part of the story, his emphatic opening (‘truly the very truths’) seems quite witty. Making symbols Other stories seem exuberant, perhaps playfully so, with regard to how they devise their symbolisms from some of the characters within the story. This seems especially the case when the fundamental elements of the symbolic sphere have been dealt with and there are extraneous characters to identify. In story 25, for example, which is fundamentally concerned with the placing and keeping of Jesus in the heart of the good Christian man, there is a moment of instruction given to the reader concerning what a good Christian man should do following his confession. This involves an exuberant leap onto a horse, which gains a symbolic meaning in the process: And when he hath done thus [confession] he must leap on the palfrey of good life & ride forth with his three squires that is to say with fasting, prayer and alms deeds and then without doubt he shall find the child.50

Another example which demonstrates the ways that all features of a particular character may be used in the making of symbolic meanings is found in the use of the serpent in story 31. This is particularly interesting given the obvious connotations of the serpent in much Christian narrative. For the meaning of the serpent the tale gives: by the which is understood penance for two causes: for the serpent beareth

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 109

21/05/2012 10:15:07

110

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

in his mouth venom and his tail is a medicine. Right so, penance beareth at the beginning bitterness unto the doer. Nevertheless, it is full sweet and medicinal unto the soul at the end. And therefore every righteous man should draw unto him the serpent of penance.51

The effect of reading a number of the stories (or reading and rereading them over a period of time) is an interesting mixture of familiarity with the distinctive genre, bombardment regarding the fundamentals of Christian doctrine and uncertain anticipation about specific meanings. This is quite a heady mixture of fluidity and fundamentalism even within the intended and often didactic meaning of the story never mind the possibilities which are also always present for the reader to bring his or her own creativity to bear on the matter of making meaning. Reading process Reading Gesta Romanorum stories often involves intensive repetition and the familiarity this brings with it. Alongside this the reader must also engage with the fluidity of meaning that is inherent in any act of interpretation, but in this instance this fluidity is combined with the pretence of fixed or fundamental meanings that is provided by the intensely symbolic structures of the stories. It is quite useful, therefore, to borrow the vocabulary of ‘tangled states’ which has been used to understand the experience of ritual action.52 The concept of ‘tangled states’ is useful if referred to the bodily and perceptual experiences of uncertainty, confusion and complexity which form an important part of an individual’s engagement with the process of comprehending or construing meanings (from text).53 For this reason it is useful to consider the practice of reading Gesta stories as akin to ritual with its integration of old patterns and new movements (innovation and tradition), serious morality and exuberant performance.54 My intention is further to articulate the relationships of these elements of the reading process through the structure of the remaining parts of this chapter, seeking to explore fluidity in the movement between the sections and the subjects of the chapter itself. To imagine the situation of familiar (ritual) action in which the stories are heard or read, it is useful to remember the traditional opening to a story-telling session, recorded by anthropologist Johannes Fabian. To set the event in motion, the story teller speaks to the assembled listeners and they reply as follows: Story teller: The story is this Listeners: This is the story.55

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 110

21/05/2012 10:15:07

Making meaning from moral reading

111

Inscription In this section I talk more about how symbolism is made with particular reference to the use of inscription and how readers may have perceived this element in the narrative structure. The inclusion of inscribed text is a device often used in Gesta stories as in other contemporary narratives as part of their ever-present process of creating symbolic meaning.56 As an example of how this works in Gesta stories, take the story of Emperor Anselm (story 32 in Wynkyn’s edition).57 Here, at the end of a long story, three caskets – one of gold, one of silver and one of lead – are each labelled with an inscription informing the girl who is being tested (and the reader) of what is to be found, conceptually if not materially, inside each. The gold vessel’s inscription, for example, is ‘they that choose me shall find in me what they deserve’. It contains dead bones, whereas the lead vessel, whose inscription reads ‘they that choose me shall find in me what God hath disposed’, is full of precious stones. The morality is concerned with material goods and the importance of not being tempted by the glistening surface of the gold and its contents of worldly goods but rather to go for the dull lead, which will lead to eternal life. The concept of inscription is exciting in its complexity. In the Oxford English Dictionary the most prominent definition of inscription seems to be a simple process of adding writing to a material object. (Another definition connected to the technicalities of geometry builds in an interesting concept of the boundary.)58 Both the simple definition and the one concerning boundaries are useful for this consideration of inscription. Firstly, the very simple process of adding text to a material object is at the heart of the significance of inscription in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century society, as I outline below. Secondly, with regard to the more complicated definition, the word boundary is popular in current theoretical vocabularies largely in consideration of the permeability of the boundaries between different states – material or mental. The idea of the boundary has been used in this way with regard to the construction of identity and the multiplicities of belonging that an individual identity encompasses; the boundaries between different affiliations being permeable and fluid for this individual identity or indeed for groups or ethnicities.59 To consider inscription conceptually in this way alongside its basic material meaning is useful for understanding the reader’s activities whilst undergoing the process of making meaning. It might almost seem that the inscriptions written into narratives form interruptions, moments of specific exegesis, in an otherwise flexible process of construing symbolic meaning.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 111

21/05/2012 10:15:07

112 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 Inscription as a concept came alive in many ways through the consideration given to it by Jaques Derrida.60 Derrida explored Husserl’s notion of inscription expressed as ‘writing seeming to fix, to inscribe, record and incarnate an already prepared utterance’.61 This gave rise to his consideration of the role of speaking as the primary form because it comes before writing (which involves inscribing). Writing, then, in Derrida’s logic became a secondary level of activity somehow removed from that initial utterance in speech. It became, therefore, absence. In his work on the role and nature of the sign and the essential deferment of meaning produced through the process of writing (his work on différance), Derrida went on to explore the situation that speech also requires the system of signs called language. Here, he engaged again with the concept of inscription and emphasised the significance of acts of inscribing for the formation of understanding. The concept of inscription was therefore brought alive through Derrida’s playful consideration of terms, signs and their vocabularies. Inscription becomes, in this way of thinking, an act which is of fundamental significance for the making of meaning through the symbolic discourse which is language (spoken or written). I find this post-structural logic useful for any consideration of inscription because it emphasises the extent of the significance of this concept and its processes. It is an abstract concept which may very usefully be applied to the fifteenth- or sixteenth-century situation of making meaning, for reasons which I outline in the following paragraph. In my investigation of cultural creativity I gave extended consideration to the uses and perceptions of inscribed objects for people living and dying in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. My particular interest, here, was in the ways that inscribing a message into a possession added symbolic value to it. This inscription might involve the actuality of carving letters into an object such as a goblet. It might also involve the description given to a possession (a precious, everyday or occupational item) in a piece of writing such as the last will and testament. From extensive empirical evidence, I proposed that inscribing possessions was a significant and culturally familiar mode of expressing and constructing symbolic value in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.62 It is plausible to assume that the kinds of inscriptions found in Gesta stories (and others like them) would form part of this familiar mode of expression which involves using inscription to attribute symbolic value. Whilst reading the Anselm story, then, the reader would quite naturally reflect across and between different situations in which inscription is used to convey meaning.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 112

21/05/2012 10:15:07

Making meaning from moral reading

113

There is also other evidence which demonstrates a similar interest in inscribed objects during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. One example is the use of moral ditties on table settings known as fruit-trenchers. These are rectangular, square or round plate-like objects often in wood and of about 15cm in diameter, surviving generally from the sixteenth rather than the fifteenth century. Some of these objects are enthusiastically described in a sequence of entries from the late nineteenth-century Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries.63 They include verses on the vices of specific status groups;64 a set of twelve four-line ditties on friendship and its vagaries;65 a set of seven delicately painted beechwood rectangles depicting various Bible scenes with short biblical inscriptions to accompany them;66 and a set of twelve four-line ditties about household matters (including various witty quips about the qualities of a wife) with appropriate biblical extracts around the circumference of these round plates.67 In his article-length consideration of fruit-trenchers also in the late nineteenth century, Albert Way queried the suggestion that they may have been used in ‘some social game, like modern conversation cards’.68 He cites George Puttenham’s description (1589) of similar objects as New Year’s gifts and seems to take this to mean that such trenchers were intended to have ceremonial gravitas despite their use of what Way describes as ‘uncourtly’ ‘doggerel’ verse.69 It seems to me that both roles may easily be brought together. Understanding this inscribed tableware as being all of ceremonial, moralising and playful at once forms a further useful piece of evidence for the interactions, for fifteenth- and sixteenthcentury readers of Gesta Romanorum, between the serious business of making moral meaning, the importance of ceremony or ritual, and the playfulness of textuality. Rather appropriately, one of the collections of trenchers that Way describes seems to have been designed to appear like a book when stored. They were ‘enclosed in a wooden case formed like a book with clasps, the sides being decorated with an elegant arabesque design, imitating the patterns of impressed bindings’.70 In this design, the individual trenchers play the part of pages from a book. In the following paragraphs I explore some further uses of inscription by Gesta stories in order to extend my consideration of the ways these stories engage their readers in the symbolic sphere. Examples of inscription in Gesta stories The concept of inscription is customarily used in relation to religious ideas about the role of the heart in Christian devotion. A recurring theme in Gesta stories concerns the presence of Christ in the Christian heart.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 113

21/05/2012 10:15:07

114

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

This has a clear connection with the ‘writing on the heart’ motif which forms part of the affective tradition. Gesta stories bring these themes interestingly together, using the device of inscription. A closer look at three stories from the Wynkyn collection that use these ideas reveals some of the ways that moral meaning is formed for the reader. Story 11 in Wynkyn is also printed in Herrtage from two fifteenthcentury manuscript versions and helpfully titled ‘The bloody shirt, or a knight who restored a princess to her kingdom and of her gratitude to him’.71 The story, which has a woodcut illustration, is about a girl (the soul of man) who inherits the kingdom of her father, the emperor (God), and who is then disinherited by an earl (the devil), who deflowers her; she is then rescued by a knight (Jesus), who promises to fight for her kingdom. The knight, whom the girl has promised to marry, dies in the battle and so she is bound by her promise to keep his bloody shirt as a memento. The knight describes the bargain as follows: that if it fortune me to die in battle for thee & to obtain the victory that thou shalt take my bloody shirt and hang it upon a perch in thy chamber and this shalt thou do for two things. The first is that whensoever thou beholdest the shirt thou shalt weep for me. The second is that whatsoever man come for to woo thee to be his wife then thou shalt hastily run unto thy chamber and behold my bloody shirt and think heartily within thy self thus: ‘The lord of this shirt died for my love in battle the which recovered mine heritage, God forbid that I should take any other man after his death.’ 72

The Wynkyn version of the story relates how the knight won the victory but was ‘deadly wounded’ and therefore bequeathed the bloody shirt to the girl ‘desiring her to keep her promise’.73 The girl wept sorely and took the shirt as she promised and the story goes on to describe that: in his shirt was written this verse: ‘Think on him and have mind / That to thee was so kind.’ 74

Not long after, the newly re-inherited princess is advised by her counsellors to marry, but on seeing the shirt she refuses and with a pleasing echo from earlier in the narrative: said oftentimes, ‘Alas alas thou suffered death for my love and thou also recoverest again mine heritage God forbid that ever I should take any other man but thee.’ 75

The moral of the story works through the various parts of the narrative in the customary manner, reminding the reader that the knight represents

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 114

21/05/2012 10:15:07

Making meaning from moral reading

115

Jesus Christ who with compassion for mankind took flesh and blood and gave battle to the devil. In relation to the shirt, the Wynkyn version gives: Therefore let us do as this young lady did. Put we this bloody shirt, that is to say the mind of the passion of Christ in the perch of our heart & think we how our Lord Jesu Christ shed his blood for su [us]. And if any man, that is to say the devil or any other would flyte [tempt] us to sin anon think we on the passion of Christ and say we thus: ‘I shall take none other but the which hast shed thy blood for me’. And thus shall we win everlasting life.76

The way that the shirt is described in Wynkyn is noticeably different from three of the manuscript versions as it embellishes the description of the shirt adding the detail about the verse inscribed on it.77 This addition found in Wynkyn’s version may, therefore, be a copy from a different version which does not survive or perhaps an embellishment by Wynkyn himself at the time of printing. The extra detail about the verse on the shirt narrated through the story seems to use inscription in order to give emphasis to the moral meaning. In this version, then, the reader has already encountered the ideas associated with thinking about the sacrifice (of Jesus) as part of the story of the knight and the girl, before he or she comes to the moral implications of this in the second part of the story. Story 39 approaches a similar set of issues concerning the position of Jesus in the heart of the good Christian but uses a different narrative to do this. This story is about finding a carer for a child born to the emperor. In this story, the honour of care will go to ‘whose house were first found fire and water’ and when the child is grown up this carer will be promoted to a place of high honour.78 Many people therefore make ready fire and water in their houses but overnight a tyrant (the devil) comes by, quenching the fire and throwing out the water. Only in the house of a man named Jonathas can fire and water be found, and so he takes the child home and orders carpenters and painters to set up a fine chamber decorated with ten images whose inscriptions are described in the following way: with this poesie written above their heads: ‘Who desoileth these images shall die foul death’. And that he drew on the door a gallows and a figure of himself hanging thereupon with this poesie written above his head: ‘So shall he be served that nourisheth the emperor’s son amiss’. Also he let make a chair of gold and himself sitting therein crowned with a crown of gold with this superscription above his head: ‘Who that nourisheth the son cleanly thus shall be honoured when this was done’.79

The story describes how Jonathas was tempted to ‘defile’ the images or not look after the emperor’s son well enough but then he read the first

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 115

21/05/2012 10:15:07

116

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

two sets of superscriptions and this stopped the temptation, and then he would look at the image of himself wearing the crown and he was ‘right joyful’. Jonathas gets the promised reward from the emperor following his diligent care of the child. The moral of the story describes the different characters in terms of various elements from the bible, including the identification of the people who wanted to look after the child as the Old Testament prophets who did not have the fire of the Holy Spirit or the water of baptism. The fire also represents perfect charity and the water also represents true contrition, ‘which now a days faileth in many men and therefore they may not have the little child Jesu in their hearts’.80 The explanation of the images and inscriptions is as follows: Therefore awake we as Jonathas did that we enter not in temptation. And call we to us masons, that is to say discrete confessors which can make in our hearts a chamber of stone, that is to say a sure faith & hope. Than call we to us painters that is to say preachers of God’s words which can paint in our hearts ten images that is to say ten commandments which if thou keep and preserve daily & devoutly without doubt thou shalt be honoured in heaven. And if thou keep well the Emperor’s son thou shalt sit in charity of gold crowned with a crown of gold & if thou nourish not well without doubt thou shalt be hanged on the gallows of hell from the which save us our dear Lord Jesus. Amen.

Story 25 in the Wynkyn collection has a very similar plot to story 39. Here a knight (good Christian man) named Josyas wins the tournament ordained to decide who will care for the emperor’s child (Jesus). Josyas arranges that the child’s bed should be placed in the middle of the castle and that ‘the seven scyences’ should be painted above the child’s bed so that ‘when the child wakened out of his sleep he might lie in his bed & read his lesson’.81 The narrative diverges here from story 39 by adding in some further details including a fruitful and wholesome well which is by the child’s bed in which the knight washes and for which the knight’s wife (the flesh of man) holds the key, and also a window by the well where the sun shines in. It happens that the wife leaves the well open one day and a bear (the devil) gets in and causes the water to become leprous, which results in the family catching leprosy. An eagle (the power of God) also flies in and steals the child. Luckily a physician (a confessor) comes by and orders the knight and his wife to let blood and then be washed clean, which cures them, and he advises also that they should go out and seek the child which the eagle has dropped. They find the child, return him to the emperor in good health and receive the honour they deserve.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 116

21/05/2012 10:15:07

Making meaning from moral reading

117

The moral reveals that this story is particularly set in the context of Lent penance as it is the Christian that achieves the best penance or fasting who will receive Jesus into his or her heart. The reader is then advised: ‘do we as the knight did: send we before messengers to dight & to make clean the castle of our heart from all spots of sin by works of mercy & so shall this child Jesus Christ bring light in the midst of our heart’.82 The seven scenes (or ‘scyences’ in Wynkyn) seem therefore to be the seven works of mercy. These seven ‘crafts’ (Harl) or ‘arts’ (Add.) are described more clearly as ‘meritory works’ in both the Harley and the Additional manuscript versions. So while the details of these ‘lessons’ painted above the child’s bed for him to read when he wakes are not described in the same amount of detail in this story as the equivalent images are in story 39, the reference to an important element in devotional practice (in this case the popular textual tradition of the seven works of mercy) is clear.83 Story 25 also adds a specifically oral element to its moral in relation to the confessor (physician), whose advice to let blood signifies the good Christian’s practice of expelling sin ‘through very confession of tongue before his ghostly father’.84 Inscriptions in these Gesta stories form what seem like simple visual images within apparently simple stories. It is only with the realisation of the significant role that inscribing has in the process of making meaning more generally for the fifteenth and sixteenth century reader that the elegant poignancy of this narrative device becomes clear. Taken as being a culturally familiar mode of adding symbolic meaning to an object or event, the uses of this device within Gesta narratives form part of a commonplace of construing important meanings for the reader. Fifteenth- or sixteenth-century readers were, then, sensitised to this device as signalling significant meanings, and this impacts on the experience of reading narratives which contain instances of inscription. Medieval religious teaching was very familiar with ideas of inscription: the connections between official Christian teachings about the place of Christ in the heart, for example, appropriate and use ideas about inscription which also occur within a whole range of popular affective literatures of this period alongside Gesta and other exemplary stories.85 Gesta stories use the device of inscription and its possibilities for emphasising elements of moral meaning in various ways in different stories; different versions of the same story also emphasise inscription to varying degrees. The story of the bloody shirt in Wynkyn’s version, for example, uses a popular-sounding doggerel ditty, not dissimilar to the ditties on the fruit-trenchers, to add emphasis to the meaning of the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 117

21/05/2012 10:15:07

118

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

bloody shirt. Stories 25 and 39 seem to draw on the sorts of wall paintings such as dooms and other scenes which were found on many parish church walls before their mass destruction during the Reformation period. This makes a connection with the poem commenting on the condition of the world, ‘Earth out of Earth’, which is found in the Middle English Miscellany examined in Chapter 5 as well as, formerly, on the wall of the Chapel of the Trinity in Stratford-upon-Avon.86 Pre-Reformation readers probably had a fairly fluid perception of the connections between texts on walls and texts in books, perhaps particularly where moral, didactic and religious text is concerned. Stories 25 and 39 also seem to rehearse or mimic a process of reading and marking inscribed texts of moral import within their stories. In each case, a character within the tale is described as studying or reading the ‘superscriptions’ placed on the wall. This element of the plot has the potential to be appreciated, reflexively, by the reader and therefore constitutes another example of what I would describe as the playfulness of Gesta stories. More on meritory works Story 42 in Wynkyn’s version is also concerned with the performance of meritory works as is story 25 and this is also told through a narrative about a child although the plot is very different from that of story 25. Story 42 is virtuosic in its playfulness not only with the ways that symbols and signs may be used to make and obfuscate meaning but with the Gesta form itself.87 It is the story of an emperor who becomes lost during a hunting trip and stays, without admitting who he is, with a forester and his wife who delivers a baby during the night. During the night the emperor has three dreams each one involving a voice which tells him three times firstly to take, secondly to yield and finally to flee, because a child had been born that night who would become emperor. Believing the prophecy to refer to the new child of the forester he arranges, having noted the child’s distinguishing features, that he will care for the baby in order that he can have the child killed. The soldiers who collect the baby are unable to perform the murder so they leave him in a tree and take the heart of a pig as proof of the deed. An earl who has no children finds the child, takes him back to his wife who pretends to give birth to him and they bring him up. At a feast with the emperor when the child is fifteen, the emperor discovers what has happened. He arranges for the boy to take letters to his wife; these tell her to kill the bearer of the letters. On the way the boy stays with a knight who looks at the letters and skilfully rubs out the words and replaces them with a command that the boy should

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 118

21/05/2012 10:15:07

Plate 1  CCAL H/L-3-4, ‘The Canterbury prayer book’, fol. 66v.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 1

21/05/2012 10:16:11

Plate 2  NLW Peniarth 394D, p. 118.

Plate 3  NLW Peniarth 394D, p. 116.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 2

21/05/2012 10:16:12

Plate 4  NLW Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 12r.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 3

21/05/2012 10:16:12

Plate 5  NLW Brogyntyn 2.1, fol. 79v ‘Erthe upon erthe’.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 4

21/05/2012 10:16:13

Making meaning from moral reading

119

be married to the only daughter of the emperor. This is done and they beget a child by the time the emperor returns. The story ends with the reconciliation of the emperor and the boy who later becomes emperor himself, thereby fulfilling the prophecy. The story has a variety of morals. The first moral proposes that the emperor is Herod and the second one takes a broader view proposing that the emperor is a sinner. For the Herod version of the moral the forester’s house is holy church, the forester is Joseph, husband of Mary, the soldiers sent to collect the child are the magi, and the earl who found the child is the Holy Spirit. For the sinner version of the moral the forest is the world, and the forester’s house is the house of God. The emperor’s dream is taken to signify people sleeping in church and not observing the works of mercy, and, therefore, Wynkyn’s version tells the reader: they ought to dread the voices which I have rehearsed: by the first ‘take’ that may be understood the great benefit that he gave thee when he put in thee a soul made at his own similitude. The second ‘take’ is understood the son of the father of heaven which was born of the blessed & holy Virgin Mary. By the third ‘take’ is understood the same son of God which died upon the cross. By the first ‘yield’ is to be understood that we ought to yield our soul unto almighty God as clean & as fair as he gave it unto us after the washing of our baptism. By the second ‘yield’ is for to understand that we ought daily to yield honour and worship and love unto god. By the third ‘yield’ is understood that we yield to him true confession, contrition, satisfaction. The first ‘flee’ betokeneth sin that we should flee. The second betokeneth the world that we should flee for the great falsehood and temptations that is therein. The third ‘flee’ betokeneth everlasting pain which we ought to flee through meritory works by the which we may come then rather to everlasting joy. Unto the which bring us our lord. Amen.

The use of the three sets of three in this story seems to be a playful use of the conventions of the Gesta genre in which everything is already imbued with Christian symbolism for which the number 3 is always important. The three lots of three therefore seem to add emphasis to the symbolic significance and biblical resonance of the moral. Each of the nine words (spoken three times in each of the three dreams) is unpacked in the moralisation to provide a very comprehensive set of meanings. To suggest that this is playful is not to imply that the meanings are being trivialised but rather that there is a reflexive pleasure in the way that the Gesta genre tends to work with a hyperbole of symbol-making. A similar though perhaps less artful celebration of what is possible with symbolism

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 119

21/05/2012 10:15:07

120 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 is found in the twenty-fifth story, with its reference to the palfray of good life, and in story 31, with its explication of the meanings of the serpent which are cited earlier in this chapter. Story 42 is particularly playful in its treatment of the letters which the emperor gives to the boy to take to his wife. Letters are always interesting in this sort of narrative, which is so much concerned with using intertextual reference, such as Bible text, to confirm and authorise highly significant meanings. Letters are, in a sense, at once intertextual additions to the narrative because they bring pieces of text to the story whilst also being embedded parts of the story’s structure. Story 42’s letters are first mentioned without much elaboration other than information about their contents: Anon the Emperor let writ letters whereof the intent was this: that the Empress should take the bearer of these letters & let him be drawn at an horse’s tail & after that she should let him be hanged until he were dead.88

The reader first discovers something about the material condition of the letters with the description of them as sealed and then a second detail when the story describes the boy putting them in a box to keep them safe on his journey. The letters are clearly highly significant, not only because of what we know they contain and because textual messages are often key to the moral of these stories but because of their sudden centrality to the narrative and the description of their safe-keeping within it. When the boy stops to rest with the knight, the reader at once experiences the temptation of the knight to read the letters and also has a superior position to him in knowing already what the letters say. The first temptation for the knight is simply to open the box, however, before he even knows that there are letters contained within which are highly significant for the narrative to proceed. When he succumbs to the temptation the story provides a second version of what the letters say, simply that the empress should put the bearer of them to death. This summarised version of the narrative’s previous description of the letters’ contents almost gives the effect of the knight reading them hastily. The response of the knight, removing the original text and writing his own instruction in its place, seems to undermine much of the power of text through this genre:89 and anon the knight scraped away that writing and wrote in the same paper a letter saying these words: ‘Upon pain of death I command thee that thou take the young squire, bearer of these letters, and let wed him without any delay unto my daughter and yours with all the honour and solemnity that

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 120

21/05/2012 10:15:07

Making meaning from moral reading 121 ye can’ … when the knight had thus written, he closed the letters subtlely and put them in the box again.90

Of course, when the emperor eventually returns to the empress and the family to find the boy as his son-in-law he challenges his wife to explain why she disobeyed his letters and she produces them as evidence – once again the power of the written word is restored – saying: ‘In witness whereof, lo here is your seal & your letters with your own seal’.91 The story ends shortly after this with the emperor swearing an oath, ‘O Lord Jesus it is great folly to strive against thine ordinance’, and he accepts his son-in-law, who subsequently reigns as emperor. There are two questions, surely, which the reader anticipates being answered by the moral: Who is the knight that opens the letters? and What do the letters represent? For the reader of the Wynkyn version of the story, his or her expectations at finding the answers to these questions are disappointed despite the double moral of this story. Neither the knight nor the letters is mentioned in either of Wynkyn’s morals. Only one textual reference is made and this is to the role of the Gospel of Matthew in telling the story of Herod, mentioned only in the Herod moral. This cannot be connected to the letters without some serious symbolic somersaulting. The readers of the Harley and Additional manuscripts are left less in the lurch, as both knight and letters are given a meaning. Harley has: But the knight that openeth the letters be they that writeth the vii works of mercy to holy church, that the doghter, scilicet [that is to say] the soul y- washed by confession, be given in matrimony to the child Christ.92

The reference to the popular textual tradition of the seven works of mercy just about persists in the Wynkyn version in the mention of ‘meritory works’ as part of the meaning of the third command to flee. This reference is also present in the much extended morals of the manuscript versions. The use of the letters as a symbolic device is particularly playful in the Wynkyn version of story 42 as, despite its apparent centrality and the poignancy of the changing of a piece of narrative-altering writing which is subsequently used as evidence for the resolution of the story, all trace of it and the knight are lost from the moral. This may be accident or design, a pragmatic choice about the amount of printed space this story has already taken, a faithful reproduction of a different manuscript version which has chosen this shortcut, or a decision by Wynkyn to remove the explicit references to the seven works of mercy. Whichever it is, the reader is left with an unresolved element of the moral that he or she might very reasonably have expected to be made clear by the end of the moralisation.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 121

21/05/2012 10:15:07

122 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 The Harley and Additional manuscript versions also contain much more detail in other elements of the moralisation of this story in that they continue after the end of the explanation for the three lots of ‘flee’ with an additional discussion of the moral meaning of voices heard in the heart of a sinner (such as the emperor). Harley’s version is as follows: The first voice shall be in the day of doom for it shall be said to thee, ‘I give to thee day for to wake in and I give to thee night for to rest in. The earth shall say against the sinners, “I bear thee, I nourish thee, I feed thee, I cloth thee, I glad thee and with diverse kinds of beasts I fill thy store”. The water shall say against him, “I cleanse all thy filths, I bring forth diverse kinds of fishes for thy sustenance”. The air shall speak and say, “I give to thee thy life and send to thee the blasts and diverse kinds of birds to thy need”’. And thus shall the voice threaten him and reprove him. And the world shall say, ‘Lo! How he loved thee that made me for thee and not for thee but for himself take benignity, yield charity’. The fire shall say ‘Of me thou haddest great solace and help and but thou serve well thy maker of me thou shalt be burnt’. Water shall say, ‘I gave to thee drink and refreshing against the heat and but thou serve well thy creature of me thou shall be drowned’. And hell shall say ‘of me thou shalt be swallowed’, but the wretch when he heareth all these voices in his heart will not amend his life and will, but in all that he may, slay the child by custom of sinful works. But the knight that openeth the letters …93

This excursion describes what the elements water, air, fire and earth along with hell have to say to the sinner at the day of doom. It seems to resonate with the elemental mood of the biblical book of Revelation but also perhaps connects with some popular myths of the ways the elements might speak to the damned at the mouth of hell. Whatever its source and reference points this additional element of the moral seems to impress on the reader the significance of the voice – either prophetic, as in the ‘yield’, ‘flee’ and ‘take’ examples, or warning, as in these elemental examples. This additional set of warning voices seems to assert the idea, given in the Wynkyn version and in others, that the Christian should not sleep in the church but should ‘dread’ the voices of authority which he or she hears. For the individual reader of a collection of Gesta stories such as Wykyn’s in the privacy of his or her own home, the explicit references to the intrusion of a prophetic or warning voice into the reading experience might encourage him or her to re-imagine this story in the context of a church service with the fierce voice of a preacher issuing forth. Or the voices might act to enable the reader to reminisce about stern educational or religious occasions. In any case, the insistence and persistence of significant voices

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 122

21/05/2012 10:15:08

Making meaning from moral reading 123 throughout this story certainly seems to bring a distinctly oral element to the silent reading experience.94 Stories with contemporary social relevance A number of the stories seem to deal with issues that clearly have relevance to contemporary society whilst also persisting with the very Christian framework for their moralisations. These stories emphasise different possibilities for readers’ understandings of their meanings which relate more clearly to daily life and social concerns. All Gesta stories are capable of encouraging reflection on issues of contemporary society at some level, but some make this element of their meaning more emphatic.95 Particular interests amongst these social stories are status mobility and social change, which are both legitimate concerns for readers in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.96 Connections between literacy or owning reading matter and social advancement or the emulation of higher-status groups are often proposed, although the nature of the connections remain problematic. Non-high-status readers engaging with stories about social advancement in this era, when the circulation of manuscripts and then printed texts was spreading and perhaps enabling new access to literate communication, are, of course, interesting. Stories addressing issues of social mobility97 In my previous published study of Gesta Romanorum I discussed very briefly one particular story in the context of contemporary social morality. This is the story of Emperor Donatus (story 38 in Wynkyn’s version), which concerns a tyrant who took items from three statues: a ring (poor people’s goods) from the first, a beard (purchased goods) from the second, and a mantle (honour) from the third. The tyrant (representing the social group of petty officials such as middlemen, tax collectors or bailiffs) is condemned to death because he has used inappropriate power to, in effect, disturb the social order. The tyrant justifies himself in a way which seems to damn the role of these petty officials: he says that the poor-people statue offered him the ring, implying that this social group would not expect to keep their property; that in taking the beard from the purchased-goods statue the tyrant believed he returned it to a more appropriate state equivalent to his father’s, implying that the petty official has a role in maintaining the status quo and stopping any social mobility; and that he stripped the wise-man statue of his mantle because he knew he did not need this item of clothing, implying that the petty official-type

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 123

21/05/2012 10:15:08

124 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 will jealously take the honour away from the wise man by asserting that he is ignorant of what is necessary. The message of the Donatus story seems to be open to two main and connected understandings. One interpretation is that although the tyrant (petty official type) tries to prevent social mobility on behalf of those in power, this will eventually be punished by God (the emperor). Or, alternatively, the story may be understood to represent and affirm a natural order of things during earthly life. This meaning would seem to encourage readers who consider themselves to belong to the groups that are punished by the tyrant (the poor, the socially mobile purchasers of goods, the wise) to put up with this during their lives because eventually these wrongs will be righted in the afterlife. Either way, the story seems to present an opportunity for the airing of discontent about worldly conditions with particular reference to opportunities for social mobility and the reward for wisdom (education?) over rank, even if it does not encourage open rebellion against them. It is helpful to examine some other stories from the Wynkyn collection which also appear to address issues of social mobility to put the Donatus story’s meanings into a broader context. I take as my examples here stories 31, 36, 37 and 12. Story 31 is one of the longer narratives. It seems to tell two stories, each of which might form their own moral universe. The first part of the story is about a poor man who is promoted by an emperor and then becomes too proud and literally falls into one of the holes that he has ordered to be made in the forest. Three ‘venomous creatures’ (a lion, an ape and a serpent) fall in with him. A moral for this is clearly of the ‘pride comes before a fall’ variety. The second part involves a poor man called Gye (he customarily gathers sticks from the forest in order to scrape a living) who rescues the steward and the venomous beasts from the pit. It involves the steward’s refusal to honour his promise of a reward to Gye instead beating and wounding him severely, and then the three gifts which the three venomous beasts present to the poor man in the woods which enable him to rise to riches. If the reader did not already realise, the narrative makes it quite clear that whereas the first poor man who is socially promoted is bad, the second poor man’s social mobility is good. He is so good, indeed, that he wishes to ascertain that the goods given to him are rightfully his. Of the ‘merchandise’ brought to Gye by the lion we read that: This Gye obtained these fardels and found great riches therein wherefore he made to do proclaim in diverse churches if any man had lost such goods, but there was none that challenged them. And when Gye saw this he took the goods and bought therewith house and land and so he was made rich.98

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 124

21/05/2012 10:15:08

Making meaning from moral reading 125 Gye, who becomes Sir Gye, also receives help from the ape, who collects great amounts of wood for him, and the serpent, who gives him a magic stone which (he discovers from a stone expert named Peter) has three virtues that the owner will have: joy without sorrow, plenty without default, and light without darkness. And it has a fourth virtue (nicely disrupting the familiar pattern of using sets of three for symbolic meanings) which is that it cannot be sold for less than it is worth. The stone then takes the narrative onto its next stage because the emperor hears of its powers and wishes to buy it. Gye tries to sell it (after the emperor threatens him with banishment from the kingdom and his kin) but it returns to him. At which point the narrative cleverly retells the story through Gye’s explanation of how he rescued the steward from the pit. On hearing this, the steward is questioned about his actions but he is rendered dumb and cannot speak. The emperor exclaims: O wretched creature unreasonable beasts as the lion, the ape, and the serpent rewarded him for his good deed and thou which art a reasonable man hast beaten him almost to death that saved thee and drew thee out of the pit.99

The steward is condemned to death and his goods are given to Sir Gye, whose new wealth and status become confirmed when he takes up the role of steward. In so far as Story 36 makes reference to social mobility it does so in a very negative light: a poor man – who offers his services to the emperor, is promoted to the level of knight and then becomes excessively proud – represents the devil. After he is disinherited and banished, this proud knight invites some of the emperor’s people to a feast and poisons them. As is often the case, the moral takes the reader’s attention away from any contemporary social resonances to a much more biblically focused schema. The poisoned people represent Adam and Eve. They are fed five poisoned meals, which represent the awakening of the five bodily wits, and it takes the son of the emperor (Christ) to rescue the people using the well of life which he gained by being born of the Virgin Mary. Being next to story 36, story 37’s references to social status are interesting. This is the story of the two sons of the emperor, one of whom marries a ‘common woman of the bordell’ and therefore puts himself in a position of downward social mobility whilst increasing the status of the woman. He is exiled because of this and they have a child and then become sick, at which point the father kindly takes them back and nourishes the child. The other son is angry, saying to his father: ‘my

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 125

21/05/2012 10:15:08

126 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 brother which begat this child hath done thee great injury when that he wedded the common woman against thy will and commandment’.100 This son is disinherited by the emperor because of his envious refusal to accept the return of the other son. In this story’s moral it is this envious son who represents the devil and the son who makes the low marriage represents Adam, who is first of all banished and then reconciled. Although it is separate from the little group of stories I have so far been considering in this section, story 12 seems to address an issue of contemporary relevance. It does this through its consideration of a changing world and links this with family structure over generations rather than with social mobility. It is the story of Focus the Smith. He refuses to obey the emperor’s law that every person should obey the day (of the week) of his own nativity. The emperor realises that some people are not obeying the law and he asks a clerk named Virgil to ‘make some craft’ which would show who was disobeying. Virgil makes a statue which is set in the middle of Rome with this ability. Focus becomes worried that the statue will accuse him so he goes to it and threatens it: I make a vow to God if ever thou accuse me I shall break thine head.101

The next day the image speaks to the messengers who come to check for news from the statue saying, ‘lift up your eyes and behold what is written in my forehead’.102 They look up and see the following inscription (another example of this device): ‘Times be changed and men be worse & worse for who will say the truth shall have his head broken’. ‘Therefore go ye forth unto your lord and tell him all that ye have read and seen.’103

The statue tells the messengers that it was Focus the Smith who made the threat. Focus is taken before the emperor and challenged. He defends himself well in terms of the ways that he apportions out his 8d per day that he earns for ‘great labour’, saying that he yields 2d, lends 2d, leases 2d and spends 2d. The emperor asks for more details and Focus explains that he yields 2d for his father in his old age as this is the amount he used to give him as a child; he lends 2d to his own son in the hope that he will follow the convention when he too is old; he leases 2d to his wife, who is difficult if she doesn’t get that; he spends 2d on his own sustenance. The emperor considers this a wise answer and not long after when the emperor dies Focus becomes the emperor because of his wisdom in spending his 8d. This is an odd story, even by Gesta standards, but it interestingly mixes ideas of social responsibility (over generations) with the concept of change

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 126

21/05/2012 10:15:08

Making meaning from moral reading 127 in the idea of the world changing for the worse as promulgated by the statue. There are similarities here with story 38, the three statues, as the tyrant refers to generations of a family in his justification for the removal of the beard from the second statue in order to return it to the condition of its father. This represents the prevention by the petty official of upward social mobility through the purchasing of goods. The moral of the Focus story fits awkwardly with the narrative and moves the theme away from the contemporary social issues (that the reader might have in mind when reading the story) to a more biblically based analysis of alms deeds and good works. In Wynkyn, the moral proposes that the emperor is Jesus, who ordained the Sabbath, and that Virgil is the Holy Ghost, who sets up a preacher to show virtues and vices. The preacher (statue) bemoans the conditions of the day when he may not criticise laypeople for not obeying the covenant and in order that he does not have his head broken he must be armed with good works by way of example. Focus the Smith, nevertheless, represents every Christian man who ‘daily should work meritory works’.104 The money he pays represents, firstly, the honour and love paid to God the father; secondly, the goodwill and meritory works loaned to Jesus the son of God; thirdly, the flesh’s unlawful love and consent of sins; fourthly, penance and perseverance (the money he spent on himself). Interestingly, Harley and Additional manuscript versions spend more time on this moral explaining certain confusing issues a little more, and they also have two morals. The first moral in the manuscript versions, which is the same as the moral taken by Wynkyn, begins rather playfully in the Harley version with the question: ‘Good men, who is this Emperor? Hope we this is our lord Jesus Christ’.105 The Harley and Additional versions also elaborate the theme of the world having changed with: Times be changed from worse to worse; Homines Deteriantur, This is to say, ‘Men be changed or be made worse’. How so? For in time before they were devout, blessed, and meek, and now they have no devotion, and be cruel, and wicked and haveth no soul; and therefore he that will say sooth now, may be shent, and have a broken head.106

The manuscript versions also help to clarify the explanation of the money Focus gives to his wife. The Harley version asks another of its questions ‘How so?’ to this element of the meaning, and adds: ‘Thy wife is thy flesh, that thou might not leave. The 2d is delectation and consenting that thou hast to sin. And so the flesh is ever contrary to the spirit and ready to do evil’.107 The other choice for the moralisation which is found in

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 127

21/05/2012 10:15:08

128 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 Harley begins by asserting that the Emperor is the devil. This is markedly different from the first moral and exemplifies the potential for flexibility within the apparently tight structures of these stories. The remainder of the second moral is almost exactly the same as the first, however, except in the explanation of Focus’s actions, which in many ways seems to make more sense with regard to his contravention of the emperor’s law that he ‘is each good Christian man that turneth not to the instigation of the devil but that turneth and standeth with Christ’.108 This little group of stories (31, 36, 37, 38) which make reference to issues of social mobility, together with the individual example of story 12, demonstrate some of the possibilities for a reader to draw direct contemporary relevance from Gesta stories. The group also demonstrates the diverse ways in which one such social subject is handled in this collection, even across a small number of consecutive stories. Despite the ever present fundamental approach to Christian morality found in these as in all tales, at no point is there a sustained promulgation of one view about the effects of social mobility on the individual’s life or their chances in the afterlife. Indeed, story 31 seems to revel in showing two opposite scenarios: the poor man whose promotion causes him to ruin his life through pride and the good man whose promotion through good deeds enables him to gain riches. Perhaps in this story lies some clue to a prevailing theme throughout this group and other Gesta stories, which is the importance of good deeds or meritory works. In story 31, the first poor man does not actually earn his rise to status whereas the second poor man, Gye, gains his reward through the good deeds he commits in rescuing the first poor man from his own pit of pride. A reader might be happy to take away this message which very much merges the Christian life with the active life of good works. If he or she takes the expectation of a similar scenario into story 37 then some confusion may arise, as this story seems to examine the consequences of upward and downward social mobility with regard to exclusion and inclusion from the family or kin group. Story 12 also develops some issues concerning social responsibility and the role of the family in this alongside a rather bleak look at the changing nature of the world. Although it makes its moral more explicitly relevant to Christian doctrine, the resonances of these social and intergenerational issues make connections with a similar theme in story 38. The reader of the Gesta Romanorum is once again given licence to look for and find specific themes – this time of contemporary social relevance – and once again enabled or forced to understand these themes from no single perspective.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 128

21/05/2012 10:15:08

Making meaning from moral reading 129 Conclusion Gesta Romanorum stories are highly stylised, repetitive and formulaic; they are clever, referential, employ playful narrative tropes and encourage readers to engage with a set of fundamental doctrines through a range of fluidly construed symbols. By using some detailed examples from single stories and groups of stories, this chapter shows some of the strategies used in the construction of the tales and the impact of these strategies on reading experience. The chapter demonstrates that one method for analysing reading experience is to examine how elements of (this) writing’s structuring, its story telling and its modes of constructing symbolic meaning may be used to assess the impact on the reader’s process of making meaning. In particular, I explored the ways that symbolic meaning is constructed in individual stories. I have shown how symbolic meaning is created, sometimes exuberantly, from the set of characters found in each formulaically structured story and the ways that this symbol-making is used to comply with a fairly rigid doctrinal framework. However, I have also demonstrated some instances where symbol-making becomes less rigid. This sometimes occurs within one story when questions are left unanswered about the symbolic meaning of a specific character who seems to be important. More obviously, and perhaps more interesting for the broader applicability of this analysis, I have shown how when considering a collection of tales (such as that printed by Wynkyn de Worde) there are frequent inconsistencies – between stories – in how a character is used symbolically. Although this is a pragmatic issue, there being relatively few types of character shared between a lot of different types of story, this situation also presents an interesting scenario for the reader. The reader of Gesta Romanorum is at once engaging with a set of fundamental doctrines whilst also experiencing multiplicity and fluidity through the various possible symbolic meanings for each type of character used across several narratives. While this keeps the element of surprise in what might be deemed rather repetitive stories, it also requires the reader to have a rather sophisticated view of symbolic meaning: no meanings are fixed. This situation must encourage the reader towards reflection on meaning and may lead him or her into puzzlement. It must encourage a reading process which involves always looking for possible meanings and for generalisable concepts and fundamentals. The Christian framework naturally exploits the search for fundamentals, but the images used by Wynkyn de Worde also, though in a different way, seem to

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 129

21/05/2012 10:15:08

130 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 encourage the reader into interpretations which use abstraction and conceptualisation. The stories use motifs from popular traditions of Christian teaching such as the writing on the heart and seven works of mercy themes. They also use methods of emphasising meaning, such as inscription, that are embedded into fifteenth- and sixteenth-century readers’ understandings of how to attribute symbolic value more broadly in their lives. While Gesta and other exempla may seem to impose strict fundamentals of doctrine onto the popular readership, then, they also employ what I have shown to be modes of comprehension in popular use. The extent of the evidence for the use of inscription in these stories, as in other collections, such as the Alphabet Tales and other moral exempla, not only supports my claim for the significance of inscription but also provides evidence for an important part of the reader’s process of making meaning in this and other forms of narrative. Notes 1 I am grateful to Dr Helen Wicker for her comments on an earlier draft of this chapter. 2 I refer to Gesta Romanorum as a genre, but see E. Allen, False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 3 for the suggestion that because exemplary narratives are ubiquitous in medieval literature they might not be considered a genre. 3 Anon, Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn de Worde: London, c. 1510), STC (2nd ed.) 212863, Early English Books Online (EEBO), St John’s College (University of Cambridge) Library, 1 February 2008 http://eebo.chadwyck. com/search/full_rec?SOURCE=pgthumbs.cfg&ACTION=ByID&ID=239 79484&FILE=../session/1211804637_14751&SEARCHSCREEN=CITATI ONS&SEARCHCONFIG=var_spell.cfg&DISPLAY=AUTHOR, story 19 (p. 31). I have numbered the tales consecutively from 1 to 43 and paginated them according to A4 pages printed from EEBO. Unless it is specific elements of the medieval language which are being considered, spellings and punctuation in all long quotations from the Gesta Romanorum in this chapter are modernised to ease the experience of reading them. 4 Full details of this text are given in note 3 above. 5 See, for example, A. Gelley (ed.), Unruly Examples: On the Rhetoric of Exemplarity (Stanford, CA: Standford University Press, 1995). Of passing relevance to this study is the essay by D. Boyarin, ‘Take the bible for example: Midrash as literary theory’, pp. 27–47 because of its consideration of the bible, and A. Gelley ‘The pragmatics of exemplary narrative’,

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 130

21/05/2012 10:15:08

Making meaning from moral reading 131 pp. 142–61 because it attempts to encompass medieval exempla in its historical sweep, both in Unruly Examples. 6 For useful summaries of classical approaches to narratology (including the background to Russian Formalism and structuralist narratology) see, for example, D. Herman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 13–16. See also Susan J. Wolfson and Marshall Brown (eds), Modern Language Quarterly 61/1 (2000), Special Edition: ‘Reading the Form’, , particularly S.J. Wolfson’s introductory article, ‘Reading for form’, pp. 1–16; see p. 9 on the value of formalism. See also L. Scanlon, Narrative Authority and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 28, on his aim to move away from ‘the modern predisposition to separate narrative form entirely from ideological function’. Although see the recent claims from the field of cultural studies which caution against viewing narrative as having an inherent value beyond its context. M. Bal, ‘Afterword: On the use of narratology for cultural analysis’, in Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 2nd edn (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 1997), pp. 220–4, p. 223. 7 An example of this loss of acuity is found in A. Gelley, ‘The pragmatics of exemplary narrative’, pp. 144–5, in his assessment of the medieval fable’s unequivocal orientation towards a moral point, compared to the ‘problematization of the exemplum’ in the Renaissance text. 8 This approach seems to have been stimulated by the work of Frederic C. Tubach with his proposal of a shift from closed or static to open or dynamic modes of moralising. See, for example, F.C. Tubach, ‘Exempla in the decline’, Traditio, 18 (1962), pp. 407–17. For a useful historiography of these approaches see Allen, False Fables, pp. 8–11. See also Scanlon, Narrative, Authority and Power, p. 54, who posits an alternative historical transition, but nevertheless a rather reductive one, from clerical to lay modes of exemplarity. 9 D. Aers, ‘A whisper in the ear of early modernists; or, reflections on literary critics writing the “history of the subject”’, in D. Aers (ed.), Culture and History 1350–1650: Essays on English Communities, Identities and Writing (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992). 10 See Scanlon, Narrative, Authority and Power, p. 54, for example, who posits the transition of clerical to lay modes of exemplarity as an alternative to the medieval to humanist model. This is still, nevertheless, a rather reductive model. 11 Allen, False Fables, p. 17. Although seeming contrary to this position Allen also states that texts like The Book of the Knight of the Tower also ‘express a pervasive cultural anxiety about the dangers of attracting and engaging readers in the narrative process of moral decision’ (p. 30). 12 H. Wicker, ‘Opprobrious language and the development of the vernacular in fifteenth-century England’ (PhD thesis, University of Kent, 2007), Chapter 1, pp. 27–8.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 131

21/05/2012 10:15:08

132 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 13 A seminal essay on this subject remains N. Watson, ‘Censorship and cultural change in late medieval England: Vernacular theology, the Oxford translation debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum, 70 (1995), 857–9; see also Allen, False Fables, p. 13. 14 Scanlon, Narrative, Authority and Power, p. 5. 15 Scanlon, Narrative, Authority and Power, p. 4. 16 The stories lend themselves to comparative analysis across the surviving versions and they would benefit from a large-scale project making use of modern tools for linguistic data analysis. 17 For seminal theoretical work on the distinctions between the ‘real’ and the ‘fictitious’ or ‘implied’ reader see W. Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). With reference to moral tales and the ‘embedded reader’ see Allen, False Fables, pp. 18–19. See Chapter 1 of this volume for a further discussion of the implied reader. 18 S. J. Herrtage (ed.), The Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum. Formerly edited by Sir Frederic Madden for the Roxburghe Club and now re-edited from the Mss. in British Museum (Harl. 7333 & Addit. 9066) and University Library of Cambridge (Kk.1.6), edited and with introduction notes and glossary, Early English Text Society, ES 33 (London: Oxford University Press, 1879, repr. 1962). 19 British Library, Harleian MS 7333. See M.C. Seymour, A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts, 2 vols (1995–97), vol. 1 (Aldershot: Scolar Press 1995), p. 21. 20 British Library, Additional MS 9066. 21 Gloucester Cathedral Library, MSS 22, 22 ADD and 42 (the Gesta stories are found in MS 22). See K.I. Sandred (ed.), A Middle English Version of the Gesta Romanorum Edited from Gloucester Cathedral Manuscript 22, Studia Anglistica Upsalensia, 8 (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1971). 22 Cambridge University Library, MS Kk.1.6, fols 148r, 179v. See A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, 5 vols, vol. 3 (1980) (Munich: Kraus Reprint, 1979–80), pp. 563–5. 23 Balliol College (Oxford), MS 354. See R. Dyboski (ed.), Songs, Carols and Other Miscellaneous Poems from Balliol 354, Richard Hill’s Commonplace Book, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 101 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner & Co., 1907). 24 St John’s College (Cambridge), MS A.II.18. There is also a later sixteenthcentury version of a small number of Gesta tales which have been interestingly turned into ballads. This is Certain Selected Histories for Christian Recreations with their Several Moralizations, 1576, STC 21118. I hope to examine this in a subsequent study. 25 Seymour, A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts, vol. 2, p. 21. On Shirley’s connection with the circulation of miscellanies, see C.M. Meale, ‘“gode men / wiues maydnes and alle men”: Romance and its audiences’, in C.M. Meale

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 132

21/05/2012 10:15:08

Making meaning from moral reading 133 (ed.), Readings in Medieval English Romance (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 209–25, p. 218. 26 E. Salter, Cultural Creativity in the Early English Renaissance: Popular Culture in Town and Country c. 1450–1560 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 144, 154. See G.M. Draper, ‘“There hath not bene any gramar scole kepte, preacher maytened or pore people releved, other then … by the same chauntreye”: Educational provision and piety in Kent, c. 1400–1640’, in R.G.A. Lutton and E. Salter (eds), Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences, c. 1400–1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 84, 90. 27 Gloucester Cathedral Library, MS 22, p. 473. 28 On the appropriation of popular motifs by clerical culture ‘as a way of penetrating popular beliefs’ see Wicker, ‘Opprobrious language’, Chapter 1, p. 11. 29 National Library of Wales, MS NLW 18951c. 30 See M.W. Driver, The Image in Print: Book Production in Late Medieval England and its Sources (London: British Library, 2004), p. 82. 31 See Driver, Image in Print, p. 114 on the role of woodcuts, especially in title pages, as sales devices and as an aid in organising the printing and ordering process. 32 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 9, p. 12; story 10, p. 13; story 11, p. 15. 33 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 9, p. 12. 34 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 28, p. 42. 35 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 10, p. 13. 36 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 11, p. 15; story 15, p. 23. 37 On the reuse of woodcut images with particular reference to the Everyman figure in de Worde’s Gesta Romanorum see Driver, Image in Print, p. 62. 38 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 25, p. 37; story 33, p. 58. 39 On the pragmatics of woodcut use see Driver, Image in Print, passim and e.g. pp. 61–2. 40 See Driver, Image in Print, p. 27, and pp. 33–75 for a case study tracing the reappearance of one woodcut image in different contexts, exploring how this might alter readings of specific texts (and images) over a period of sixty years. 41 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 36, p. 63. 42 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 11, p. 17. 43 Herrtage (ed.), Gesta Romanorum, p. 25: ‘As whenne he saide Quacumque hora inde comederitis, eritis sicut dii, This is to sey, In what hour that ye etyn of this frute ye shall be as goddis.’ 44 Herrtage (ed.), Gesta Romanorum, p. 25. See also Sandred (ed.), A Middle English Version of the Gesta Romanorum, p. 51: Gloucester provides the saying ‘With sweat of thy face shalt though eat thy bread’ in English only. 45 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 39, p. 67. It is not found in the Harley version of the story. The other version given in Herrtage (Cambridge

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 133

21/05/2012 10:15:08

134 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 manuscript) does not have the moral in its usual way. The story does not occur in Gloucester. 46 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 31, p. 49. 47 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 42, pp. 80–1. This is discussed in more detail later in the chapter. 48 This is Cambridge University Library, MS Kk.1.6. 49 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 31, p. 49. See also Allen, False Fables, p. 6 on the related issue of characters which show the reader the way through a narrative. 50 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 23, p. 39. 51 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 31, p. 52. 52 See, for example, D. de Coppet (ed.), Understanding Rituals, European Association of Social Anthropologists (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), and D. Parkin, ‘Ritual as spatial direction and bodily division’, in the Coppet (ed.) volume, pp. 11–25, p. 23. 53 This is discussed in Chapter 1. See also, Parkin, ‘Ritual as spatial direction, p. 23. 54 On exuberant performance see Parkin, ‘Ritual as spatial direction’, p. 15. 55 J. Fabian, Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1996), p. 15. 56 For an excellent detailed analysis of inscription in relation to the appearance of holy words on characters’ bodies in The Alphabet Tales, see Wicker, ‘Oprobrious language’, Chapter 1, pp. 12–14. See also Allen, False Fables, p. 17 for a mention of this using Scanlon’s idea of the narrative enactment of authority as an effort to ‘“inscribe” what right action feels like’, under the influence of Mary Carruthers’ work on the physiological and psychological experiences of reading and memorising. See M.J. Carruthers, The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 57 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 32, pp. 53–7. 58 D. Thompson (ed.), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 9th edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). 59 F. Barth, Process and Form in Social Life: Selected Essays of Frederik Barth, Vol. 1 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), pp. 198–227; H. Vermeulen and C. Govers (eds), The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond ‘Ethnic Groups and Boundaries’ (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1994). 60 For a useful digest of these points see P. Kamuf (ed.), A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), pp. 18–19 on Husserl, and pp. 59–111 on Derrida’s lecture ‘Signature, event, context’. 61 Kamuf (ed.), Derrida Reader, p. 19. 62 Salter, Cultural Creativity, Chapter 4, pp. 75–91. 63 Besides those listed here, see also Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, vol. iii (1867), pp. 447–8, and 2nd series, vol. x (1885), pp. 207– 16.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 134

21/05/2012 10:15:08

Making meaning from moral reading 135 64 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 1st series, vol. 2 (1845), pp. 164–5. 65 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, vol. 12 (1888), pp. 201–2. 66 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, vol. 1 (1860), pp. 269–70. 67 Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries, 2nd series, vol. 2 (1862), pp. 89–93. 68 A. Way, ‘Illustrations of domestic customs during the Middle Ages: Ornamental fruit-trenchers with posies’, The Archaeological Journal, 3 (1846), pp. 333–9. 69 Way, ‘Illustrations of domestic customs’, p. 337. 70 Way, ‘Illustrations of domestic customs’, p. 334. 71 Herrtage (ed.), Gesta Romanorum, pp. 23–6. 72 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 11, p. 16. 73 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 11, p. 16. 74 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 11, p. 16. 75 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 11, p. 16. 76 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 11, p. 16. 77 This embellishment is not found in Add., Harley or Gloucester versions, see Herrtage (ed.), Gesta Romanorum, p. 24; Sandred (ed.), A Middle English Version of the Gesta Romanorum, p. 50. 78 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 39, p. 66. 79 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 39, p. 67. 80 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 39, p. 67. 81 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 25, p. 38. 82 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 25, p 39. 83 Discussing the numbered didactic series of Christian instruction as ‘predictable programmes of religious instruction’ in the fifteenth century with reference particularly to one manuscript’s religious texts see, J. Thompson, ‘Religious texts in Lincoln, Cathedral Library, Ms 91’, in A.J. Minnis (ed.), Late Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission, Essays in Honour of A.I. Doyle (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 169–87, p. 177. 84 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 25, p. 39. 85 See, for example, numerous examples in C. Brown (ed.), Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939); M. Day (ed.), The Wheatley Manuscript: A Collection of Middle English Verse and Prose Contained in a MS. Now in the British Museum Add. Mss. 39574, Early English Text Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1921, repr. 1971), especially pp. 1–6 ‘Jesu that hast me dere bought’. 86 This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5 with reference to NLW, MS Brogyntyn 2.1. See H.M.R. Murray, The Middle English Poem, Erthe upon Erthe, printed from Twenty-four Manuscripts, Edited with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, Edited with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, Early English Text Society, Original Series 141 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1911), p. xii. 87 On the combination of ‘verbal artistry’ with ‘moral reading’ in Chaucer’s ‘The Clerk’s Tale’ see Allen, False Fables, pp. 23–4. I am unsure whether

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 135

21/05/2012 10:15:08

136 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 to compare a ‘virtuosic’ Gesta story with a tale written by Chaucer is to compare like with like. 88 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 42, p. 80. 89 For another instance where writing and the ‘dematerialisation’ of it forms an important element in a moral story see Wicker, ‘Opprobrious language’, Chapter 1, p. 16, which refers to tale 205 in The Alphabet of Tales. 90 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 42, p. 80. 91 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 42, p. 81. 92 Herrtage (ed.), Gesta Romanorum, p. 219. 93 Herrtage (ed.), Gesta Romanorum, p. 218–19. 94 In Chapter 5, I consider listening in more detail. 95 See also Allen, False Fables, p. 6 for the idea, capable of oversimplification, that ‘[e]xemplary texts imply that narratives correspond to readers’ lived existence, so that an exemplary moral is reiterated, or re-enacted, by live audiences’. 96 On the subject of ‘social mobility’, see, for example, W.G. Hoskins, The Age of Plunder: The England of Henry VIII 1500–1547 (London and New York: Longman, 1976), pp. 63–4, 67, 230 on engrossment and its problems; S.J. Payling, ‘Social mobility, demographic change, and landed society in late medieval England’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 45/1, pp. 51–73, p. 70 for the connections between social mobility and the black death. On the agrarian context see I. Kershaw, ‘The great famine and agrarian crisis in England 1315–1322’, Past and Present, 59/3, pp. 3–50; on urban and rural decline and success in the fifteenth century see J. Hatcher, ‘The great slump of the mid-fifteenth century’, in R.H. Britnell and J. Hatcher (eds), Progress and Problems in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Edward Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 237–72. 97 There appears to be a cluster of such stories in Wynkyn’s version (c. 1510) around stories 31, 36, 37 and 38. 98 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 31, p. 50. 99 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 31, p. 50. 100 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 37, p. 65. 101 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 12, p. 17. 102 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 12, p. 17. 103 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 12, p. 17. 104 Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn, c. 1510), story 12, p. 18. 105 Herrtage (ed.), Gesta Romanorum, p. 30. 106 Herrtage (ed.), Gesta Romanorum, p. 31. This is the Harley version. 107 Herrtage (ed.), Gesta Romanorum, p. 32. 108 Herrtage (ed.), Gesta Romanorum, p. 33.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 136

21/05/2012 10:15:08

4

Practical texts: husbandry and carving Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

Practical texts: husbandry and carving

This chapter is concerned with practical manuals. There were numerous texts of practical advice available to a wide spectrum of readers across the period 1400–1600. These covered a range of subjects providing information on matters such as how to hunt, for example The book of hawking; how to farm including the management of arable land, stock and orchards, such as The crafte of graffynge and plantynge; specific animals and their illnesses, such as The proprytees and medycynes for hors; how and what to cook for particular occasions and status groups, such as The book of kervynge. All of these were printed and reprinted between the last decade of the fifteenth century and the first decades of the seventeenth century. The popularity of these books is suggested by the number and variety of titles in print from the late fifteenth century as well as in manuscripts dating from the fifteenth century and earlier.1 It is difficult to generalise about the audiences for practical manuals, although there is a tendency and a temptation to suggest that they were addressed towards the gentle and those aspiring to gentility. George Keiser describes their audiences as ‘the English landholding classes and those responsible to them’.2 He connects this with the widespread and developing connections between record keeping and land management which Michael Clanchy convincingly argued had its rise in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.3 Another often made suggestion about audience is that those practical guides considered to be ‘conduct books’ were specifically of interest to merchants. Elizabeth Allen proposes: ‘[A]s merchants gained increasing access to wealth and status, conduct books reflected social aspirations, becoming part of the material trappings of gentility’.4 This idea of merchant aspiration is plausible but seems not to provide an answer either about how merchants’ reading practices relate to being aspirant or about the possibly wider popular audiences for these types of books.5 With reference to the conduct manual known as Russell’s Book

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 137

21/05/2012 10:15:08

138 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 of Nurture, Jonathan Nichols describes the ‘general tendency to introduce technical language’ as ‘an attempt to raise the novice courtier’s level of refinement’.6 Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry was described by H.S. Bennett as an ‘admirably practical’ text and an ‘invaluable handbook’ for the farmer. Suggestive of its popularity, he notes the number of print runs the volume went through: seven before 1560 with four more editions by 1598.7 These suggestions about audience and circulation, then, provide an unsatisfactorily generalised and partial sense of the experiences of reading practical manuals. However, they remain useful in that they confirm the popularity of this range of books across this period. In this chapter, my intention is to take a small selection from the range in order to understand more about the experiences of reading practical manuals. The texts that form the focus of this chapter are: the husbandry treatise attributed, probably incorrectly, to Robert Grosseteste (a translation from the French treatise produced by Walter of Henley in the thirteenth century); The Boke of Kervynge (printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1513); and John Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry, printed by various printers and in various versions between 1530 and 1590. The Boke of Kervyng is a short text concerned with the ways that different game should be prepared and carved, and when in the year and how it should be served. It is concerned with social status and table manners, and frequently uses the technique of listing. The husbandry treatise attributed to Bishop Grosseteste contains sixteen to seventeen chapters specifically concerned with agricultural practice from the measurement of land through to ploughing, planting, uses of fertiliser, livestock husbandry and keeping accounts, and finally, in some versions, a section on woodland and orchards.8 Fitzherbert’s treatise contains similar material to Grosseteste although this is much extended, alongside material which seems to be drawn from other agricultural manuals such as a section about horse husbandry. This treatise also contains information about spiritual husbandry. The rationale for this selection of practical manuals begins from the juxtaposition of two of the texts (Grosseteste and Boke of Kervyng) within one manuscript in the National Library of Wales, Peniarth 394D. I discuss this manuscript’s contents, whilst also giving particular consideration to the evidence provided by annotation.9 I move from this to a series of comparative analyses, beginning by comparing other versions of the two practical texts found in the Peniarth manuscript and proceeding to compare the mid- to late sixteenth-century treatise known as John Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry with the Grosseteste on which much of it was based. This discussion focuses primarily on layout and the aesthetics

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 138

21/05/2012 10:15:08

Practical texts: husbandry and carving 139 of the page.10 In the final sections of the chapter, I turn to the contents and literary styles of these treatises with particular reference to the Grosseteste and the Fitzherbert, in order to see how these aspects provide more evidence for how practical texts may have been used and read, and by whom. The chapter is of necessity quite detailed as it is concerned with the evidence for reading that these details of similarity and difference between texts and versions show. The concluding section summarises the main findings of this detailed analysis National Library of Wales Peniarth 394D Description The manuscript NLW Peniarth 394D shares many typical features of the numerous practical manuscripts which survive. It contains six different texts, four of which may easily be categorised as ‘practical’. These are: a portion from the treatise on husbandry attributed to Bishop Grosseteste, a section of miscellaneous cookery recipes, a copy of The Good Book of Kervynge and Servis, and a collection of medical recipes.11 There are two other items in this manuscript as it now survives: a fragment of a tract concerning the war between England and France and A Metrical Story of Saint Gregory.12 The order of the manuscript is therefore as follows: 1 A fragment of a tract on the war between France and England, pp. 1–10 2 A portion of The Tretice of housboudry that Master Grosthed mad the which was Bischope of Lyncolne, pp. 11–32 3 A Metrical Story of Saint Gregory and his Mother, pp. 33–40 4 Miscellaneous cookery recipes pp. 41–90 and 119–20 5 A good book off Kervynge and Servis unto a Prince, pp. 93–118 6 Medical Recipes, pp. 121–13213

The book which forms Peniarth 394D has a modern binding. There is every reason to believe that the six items bound between these modern covers did not always constitute one book. The four different hands attest to this: hand A is responsible for the first two items and also Item 5, hand B is responsible for only the short story of St Gregory, hand C produced the miscellaneous cookery recipes, and hand D wrote the medical recipes. This is a very common situation with these kinds of manuscripts and may sometimes present some problems for the analysis of reading experience which should not be overlooked. For example, given the proposition that pre-modern reading experience is influenced by the combination of items

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 139

21/05/2012 10:15:08

140 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 in a single binding, or that the juxtaposition of particular texts gives some specific information about a compiler’s, patron’s or reader’s understanding of what texts fit together, then it is disingenuous to ignore the fact that a set of items in a modern binding may never have existed together before the moment at which rebinding took place, which may be some centuries afterwards. Annotation as evidence for the contents of a pre-modern book Luckily, sometimes, and this is the case with Peniarth 394D, there is further internal evidence which helps to confirm that certain of the items in the book did co-exist for the pre-modern reader. Most often the type of evidence which is capable of this kind of confirmation is annotation. For 394D, annotations concerning an ongoing dispute about ownership confirm that some of its texts formed one book from the late sixteenth century. This appears on pages written by both hand A and hand C, no annotations of this kind appear on pages written by hand B and hand D.14 This strongly indicates that there was a book existing in the sixteenth century which contained the two practical treatises (on husbandry and carving) as well as the tract about the war between England and France and the cookery recipes. The book may well have contained more than this, probably more of the tract and perhaps other items too. This evidence does not prove that the St Gregory story and the medical recipes were not bound with the book at this point but it tends to suggest this. And, indeed, for the case of the St Gregory, the annotation evidence seems to confirm what the very distinctively different pages of this text also indicate. The ongoing annotated dispute about the ownership of the book containing items 1, 2, 4, and 5 appears to be between a Hugh Ap Owen and a Moses Lewis. The annotations are largely written from the perspective of Hugh Ap Owen; him claiming ownership of the book and that Moses Lewis is a ‘knave and a double knave’.15 The first set of references to the dispute during the treatise on husbandry is found in the end margin of the eleventh chapter of Grosseteste, sideways on to the direction of the official text. And just two pages later, at the twelfth chapter of Grosseteste and at the same position and direction on the page, a very similar annotation is found, with the same somewhat insistent tone.16 Both of these sets of annotations are written in what looks like the same self-consciously ornate style with quite florid capital letters that make the most of the serifs. The other party in the dispute also has his say. He takes advantage, along with Hugh Ap Owen, whose name is written

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 140

21/05/2012 10:15:08

Practical texts: husbandry and carving

141

on the page several times, of the largely blank page which forms the end of the first section of cooking recipes. The main annotation about the dispute is as follows: Moses Lewis is the true owner of this booke god make him a good man amen Gulliver Seavors, William Boolkley, Thomas Boolkley and hugh ap owen ap hugh with many other good fellowes the which I cannot name them17

The hand writing this fairly long annotation also appears to add another, a rhyming couplet, on a different subject: A man without mercie of mercie shall miss but he shall mercie that mercifull is18

Also on this page, what appears to be the hand of the Hugh Ap Owen annotator has written the date 1590 at the end of the last sentence of this section of culinary recipes. This is very useful as it suggests a date for the set of annotations, thereby indicating that the several manuscript items over which this dispute raged were bound together in 1590. It is not only the annotations concerning the dispute about ownership which provide evidence for the existence of a pre-modern book amongst the pages of this manuscript. On that last page of the culinary recipes (item 4 in the manuscript), which contains the several entries about the ownership dispute, there is another small addition in what looks like a sixteenth-century hand which reads ‘un lace that’. This seems to have no place on this page, as is very often the case with annotations.19 However, it copies a phrase which occurs at the beginning of the Book of Kervynge (item 5 in the manuscript) in a list of terminology. This is headed ‘Termes of a Kerver’ in Wynkyn de Worde’s 1513 edition, though the list is not given a heading in the Peniarth manuscript. This list gives terms for the preparation of different fish, fowl and game. In the Peniarth manuscript, it occupies single columns of the first two pages of the item. This takes the form of a list with items such as ‘Spoyle that Henne’, ‘Frusshe that Checkyn’, ‘Dismembre that Heron’, ‘Wyng that Quail’, ‘Mince that Plover’ and so on. The full phrase is ‘Unlace that Cony’ and in the Peniarth manuscript it occurs on the first page of this text, between ‘unbrace that mallarde’ and ‘dismember that heronn’. It is noticeable that what seems like the same annotator has also added an annotation in the margin next to ‘unlace that cony’ in the official text which reads ‘In nomine die amen’ (sic). This has a very florid letter I. Just above that

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 141

21/05/2012 10:15:08

142 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 another marginal annotation reads ‘In oulde authors I have often redd’. Possibly the same annotator has also added another two of this list of terms to the opening page of The Book of Kervynge, at the end of the list which forms the official text written on that page. These are: ‘thye that wodcoke/ border that pasty’. This is a copy of the two last terms listed in the official text on this page, but reversed in order. This evidence clearly indicates that items 4 and 5 were being read together at the time of those annotations. There are other annotations in the Peniarth 394D manuscript beyond those already discussed. Indeed, some pages of this manuscript are littered with a variety of comments, couplets, scribbles, drawings and ditties. This is not uncommon, particularly perhaps on the rather workaday manuscripts such as Peniarth. In this case, as with others like it, the practical nature of the texts might also give a certain amount of licence to readers to make additions. Some pages from 394D serve to provide a good example of the range and variety of annotations found in this book (see plate 2). On the final two pages of the Book of Kervyng, for example, there is a whole collection of different annotations, largely from the later sixteenth century, some possibly from the early seventeenth century (see plate 3).20 The official text of these pages is concerned with the definitions of different ‘estates’, secular and clerical (from king and archbishop to squire and yeoman), and the rank order of each and how they might be treated and placed at a feast. Firstly, the general impression of these pages is that much of the available ‘blank’ space has been used by a number of different annotators.21 After a short glance it is also clear that the written annotations are of different lengths and types, and that the direction of the official text does not guide the direction of all the annotated items: the entries in the bottom margin, for example, are either sideways on to the official text or upside down. Several of the annotations on page 118 are concerned with the same issue, which is drafts from what sounds like a letter addressed to ‘my lovinge unkull’. These appear to be in a hand from the very late sixteenth to seventeenth centuries, possibly the same hand which claims the ownership of the book to be with ‘William Williams’ on an earlier page.22 Other annotations on these two folios seem to stand alone: the ever popular writing of individuals’ names on the page is present in both. Of course, names of owners and individuals claiming ownership have a particular resonance in this manuscript, given the ownership dispute. Indeed, there is an entry in Latin which mirrors one of the Hugh Ap Owen versus Moses Lewis exchanges from earlier in the book.23 This

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 142

21/05/2012 10:15:08

Practical texts: husbandry and carving 143 time, however, it is William Williams who claims ownership of the book, the annotator naming a Hugh Owen as a witness to this fact. Just above the William Williams claim to ownership, and in the same hand, there is another short entry which aids considerably with dating the annotator as follows: We greete you well and will you in her majesty’s name to come and appeare before us in the

A date of somewhere between 1558 and 1603 may be assumed here. There are two pieces of annotation which look as if they use the form of a poetic ditty, a popular form of annotation as William Sherman has also described.24 With its devotional theme, one of these entries belongs with one of the most popular categories of this kind of annotation: O lord in thee is all my trust geve care unto my wofull crie25

The other poetic entry may also be part of the draft letter mentioned above. All these entries do at least seem to be in the same hand: to my matters as foloweth that is to say firste and foremoste I wold that you could do so much26

This is fairly long by comparison to other annotations of the poetic variety and it is interesting to speculate on the extent to which the available space has influenced its format. However, as I have discussed in Chapter 1 in relation to the ‘psychology of annotation’, the connections between the space on the written page, how it is pragmatically employed, and the perception of what is appropriate are very close. In other words, the most pragmatic use of the space at the side of the margin on this page seems to be to write the annotation in short lines and with a sideways orientation to the official text, but this may also be what the annotator deemed an appropriate, perhaps ideal, form for the annotation. Both of the poetic annotations as well as those connected with the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 143

21/05/2012 10:15:09

144 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 draft letter are not connected directly with the manuscript’s official content. They might be deemed, therefore, to use a provocative phrase, ‘non-meaningful annotations’. Here again the issue arises of the extent to which all annotations may be considered part of the reading process. Clearly, annotations such as these do not engage directly and in detail with the official text on which they are written.27 Their apparently ‘irrelevant’ nature serves as a useful reminder that, in this popular context, readers were not necessarily making marks on the page which they intended to be studied, 500 years later, as highly significant inscriptions of a specific view or reader response. That said, these are not actually irrelevant inscriptions as they are most definite engagements of the reader with the page and therefore with the text and perhaps therefore also with the other annotators as part of the community of readers. It is difficult to characterise the nature of the annotators’ engagements with the official text in these examples. However, as I have said, there are some ­continuations and/or repetitions of the theme of ownership, which does confirm this book as being something which was perceived to be worth claiming. These types of annotations provide some further evidence about perceptions of the aesthetics of a page. Both of the pages discussed in more detail have ample amounts of space not required by the official text because of the parts of that text (often a chapter or section ending or beginning) which they contain. The opportunistic nature of the annotators in using these ample spaces is also, I would suggest, representative of an important element in how the page and the reading process is experienced. ‘Blank’ space was not, it seems, perceived to be an essential part of the visual aesthetic of a book. Rather, the readers of this manuscript, as with many others, seem to have considered these spaces as places which may or even should be used for all manner of entries.28 An annotation on these two pages that could be directly connected to the Book of Kervynge is the drawing of a bird on p. 118. The bird sketch might be a representation of one of the birds which the book gives instructions about carving, or it might be a generic bird to go with the whole list. It also appears on an earlier page (p. 115) in a slightly less decorated form. Each version carries a sprig in its beak which makes them seem much more like a bird doodle than an illustration. They might, alternatively, be a rough version of a ‘rebus’, where an individual uses a picture which either phonetically or symbolically relates to his or her surname.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 144

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving

145

Annotation and provenance The annotations on this manuscript do help to ascribe a Welsh provenance for the manuscript, at least from the later sixteenth century. The repeated references to Hugh Ap Owen form one clear example, reference to the Buckley family (Boolkley) as witnesses to the ownership dispute also indicates some connections with a gentry family in North Wales and Cheshire. The annotation of ‘John Rychard/ John Rychard ap Rees/ John Ap Rychered ap Rees’ over three lines at an end margin and upside down to the direction of the official text is also another confirmation of Welsh readership.29 This is possibly late sixteenth century, although the very self-consciously decorative style seems to be imitating a sort of grand charter hand. The addition of a small Welsh proverbial saying: ‘Pob Llawenwalch/ a Bryn Uwyalch’ (Every spirited hawk gets its blackbird) in the right-hand margin, sideways on, in the second half of the chapter of Grosseteste which is about sheep is further confirmation of a Welsh readership.30 This Welsh annotation looks very similar to the hand in which the Moses Lewis / Hugh Ap Owen annotations are written. Comparative analyses In the following paragraphs I make a selection of comparisons. Firstly, I compare different versions, both manuscript and print, of the Grosseteste and Book of Kervyng texts that are found in Peniarth 394D. Secondly, I make comparisons between Grosseteste and John Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry, a later husbandry text that was influenced by Grosseteste and the text from which it was translated, Walter of Henley’s Le Dite de Hosebondrie.31 I focus on a range of themes, here, according to the evidence which the various comparisons provide. Sometimes I concentrate more on issues of layout; at other times I concentrate on comparing the contents of different versions, sometimes both. In all cases, the underlying reason for conducting comparative analysis is to uncover the evidence that this method provides for further understanding reading practice and experience. Comparison of manuscripts containing the treatise on husbandry attributed to Grosseteste A comparative perspective often provides further useful evidence about perceptions of particular texts, and groups of texts at or near the time that they were copied. British Library Manuscript Sloane 686 and Trinity College Cambridge 0.1.13 both provide some useful comparisons

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 145

21/05/2012 10:15:09

146 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 with Peniarth 394D. Both of these manuscripts have been identified by Dorothea Oschinsky to be the other two surviving representatives of the English translation of Walter of Henley’s treatise ‘wrongly attributed to Robert Grosseteste, bishop of Lincoln’.32 British Library Sloane 686 Sloane 686 is a modest book of approximately A5 size. The binding appears to contain three books written in a similarly modest style but in different hands and not showing any signs of having existed together prior to the time of the present binding, which is probably nineteenth century. The manuscript is written on paper of varying colour and quality. The first book of Sloane 686 contains the Grosseteste husbandry treatise, which appears to be complete. The index to the Grosseteste husbandry on the first two pages of the text lists seventeen chapters in all, as does the page of contents in Peniarth 394D. The seventeenth of these is a version of a treatise concerned with planting and grafting trees and vines. In the Sloane manuscript, this text continues on straight after the Grosseteste treatise about half way down a recto page (paginations are given in a later hand).33 In the Peniarth manuscript the seventeenth chapter is lost although the explicit to the end of the husbandry section (at the end of chapter XVI) clearly states that the manuscript is intended to go on, as it reads: Explicit housbandry Incipit plantynge and Graffinge off alman off trees & vynys34

The second book of Sloane 686 contains the treatise on (fruit) trees which begins with the incipit ‘Hec sunt capitula tractatus Godfridi super palladium’. The chapter headings indicate that the book is all about various forms of fruit tree.35 The third book is short and is written in what seems to be a different, neater, hand from the first book. The incipit describes this book as ‘Incipit Tractatus Nichi Bollard Nuper Monach Westm’.36 The fourth book begins abruptly, with a chapter heading ‘To know how a colt shal preve in wexyng of height’.37 This is written in another new hand, and runs through to the end of the manuscript (except for one fly leaf).38 The start of this treatise appears to be lost. Quire gathering numbers at the bottom right-hand side of the recto sides of the pages show that the part which survives here begins with gathering D and continues through to gathering F. The end flyleaf, which is preserved as a fragment, has some

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 146

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving 147 pen scribbles and the remains of a few lines of Latin and English writing possibly concerned with some accounts. All the indices and pages of contents seem to be contemporary to the manuscript’s various texts. The index pages of both the second and the third books are paginated in a hand contemporary to the manuscript and to the indices. Each has paginations beginning with p. 1, strongly indicating that each of these books was perceived to stand alone, rather than being part of the same manuscript. The itemisation of the treatise on planting and grafting in the index to the Grosseteste husbandry treatise, by contrast, clearly indicates that these two texts were perceived to belong together at the time the index was prepared. The sixteenth chapter of the Grosseteste is described as the chapter that ‘tellithe off acompte & off avewe off ye baylis throughe of ye yere’. The seventeenth chapter is described as the chapter that ‘tellithe howe ye shall graffee & plante all treis & vynys off all faites’.39 Additional evidence for this manuscript’s existence as a set of different texts before it was bound together as one is found in the dirty appearance of the initial pages of several of the texts. This shows not only that they were separate but that they also did not have outside covers for some part of their lives: the first page of contents of the Grosseteste, for example, is very grubby. Trinity College Cambridge 0.1.1340 This is a small manuscript (about A5 size) rebound probably in the nineteenth century and given the title ‘Recipes &c’ at that time. The manuscript, as it is currently bound, clearly contains a number of different books. For the main part, these books look as if they are roughly contemporary to the late fifteenth and first half of the sixteenth centuries. There are also a few pages which look as if they come from an earlier period (these are probably present in the manuscript as accidents of binding and/or rebinding) and there are some pages which look as if they are mainly populated by a later writer (possibly mid seventeenth century). The manuscript is paper throughout, although of various different kinds and qualities, and there are a number of different hands of official text, which partly correspond with the various books that this manuscript’s binding now houses. The pages are numbered by folio. There is a prevailing sense of this manuscript being full of ‘practical’ texts, and so it is clear to see why it would be described as ‘Recipes &c’ on the modern binding. The manuscript is not entirely made up of recipes, however. Oschinsky describes the book as also containing ‘miscellaneous items, such as medical receipts, notes on zodiacal and planetary influences, etc’.41 The

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 147

21/05/2012 10:15:09

148 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 rough edges of two of the outer sides of the manuscript quite clearly show the different books which are bound into it and indicate that the manuscript was not severely trimmed at the time all the various texts were put into this binding. This is always useful if marginal annotations are of interest. Only the top edge of the manuscript seems to have been trimmed to an even length, and this is borne out by the very scant margins at the tops of a number of the pages. Annotation evidence could well have been lost from here. The Husbandry treatise appears in the middle of one of the originally separate booklets, roughly in the middle of the manuscript. This booklet seems to begin with a contents page which is concerned with medical issues.42 This is ordered alphabetically in a neat hand, running up to at least folio 175 which is actually far too many pages for the section of the booklet which is bound into this manuscript. Beginning at the very end of folio 175r, and possibly in the same neat hand of the page of contents that opens the booklet, there begins a set of lists which concern ailments, the relation of parts of the body to the signs of the zodiac and the properties of the planets (most of this is in Latin).43 The Boke of Husbondrye begins at the top of the following verso side (fol. 176v). It is unlikely that it is written by the scribe of the previous planetary texts as it is so much messier. The Husbandry begins with the usual Incipit and contents page for this text.44 This is the tretyse of husbondrye Grosthed made the whiche was byshoppe of Lyncolme he translate this boke owt of ffrance into Inglishe the begynnyng of this boke techeth all manner men for to governe the landes tenementes And there demaynes ordynately to rule. There begynnyng the chepytoures And the tabill according to the same.

The list of chapters is very comparable to those found in Peniarth 394D and Sloane 686, although there are sixteen chapters in all (rather than the seventeen found in the other manuscripts). The seventeenth chapter about trees and vines is therefore not included here. There is very little space between the chapters, and, as with other manuscripts, headings are used to distinguish the start of a new chapter. These are centred and worded as in other versions with: ‘The Nth Chapiture’. There is no space left other than the line it takes to write the title of the chapter. This makes the treatise all look very tightly packed, and increases the difficulty of reading the rather spidery hand. There are hardly any markings onto this text to aid reading except for on one page where there are little tiny squiggles

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 148

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving 149 like paragraph marks in the margin.45 Although the hand is difficult to read, there are few crossings out—this makes the almost full line with a ‘strikethrough’ in the middle of one page stand out.46 The way that this treatise has been copied into this booklet does provide a distinctive piece of evidence for the experience of reading and using this treatise. A certain amount of description is needed in order to explain this, but to begin with it is important to identify the scribe of this treatise as belonging to the ‘scribe–reader’ category which I discuss in the first chapter. ‘Scribe–readers’ provide a particular kind of evidence for reading, because the issues, processes, or ‘mistakes’ in which they are involved, as writers and users of a manuscript, are particularly visible in the official text of the manuscript. The husbandry treatise in Trinity College 0.1.13 begins, unsurprisingly, immediately below the table of contents. However, surprisingly, it breaks off at the end of this page, only twelve lines into the first chapter, ending with the phrase ‘dispend it nott for yf’.47 The treatise is not resumed until eleven pages later.48 A note to this effect, possibly in the scribe’s hand, ‘vid: fol: 188’ is given at the end of its first page with a little squared grid design which acts as an asterisk. When the treatise resumes, it begins with the title ‘More of the boke of husbondrye’ with ‘your store of cattel dye or yf’.49 It then runs continuously through to chapter 15, but this chapter ends abruptly two-thirds of the way down a page with ‘and he by and sell by wheight beware of’.50 A similar little note (without the grid design) next to this says ‘finis vid 106b’, but the page ‘106b’ seems no longer to be in the manuscript as it is presently bound and so the end of the treatise is lost. A closer look at the manuscript yields more information about the process this scribe–reader has undertaken: Husbandry first breaks off abruptly right at the end of a recto page.51 A new set of texts begins at the top of the following page.52 These are recipes, written in a very rough hand possibly by the same scribe as for Husbandry. They are largely medical and written in a culinary form using a variety of food ingredients for each illness. They have a standard format which involves a centred heading plus a short recipe of three to four lines. There are two recipes in the distinctive Husbandry hand, followed by another recipe in a similar but smaller hand. This finishes abruptly at the end of this page although clearly was intended to go, or did once go, onto another page as there is a catchword. However, on the following folio, which is a verso page (177v), there is a very neat hand with wide margins providing the end part of a text in Latin.53 This neat text finishes with an Explicit about three-quarters of the way down

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 149

21/05/2012 10:15:09

150 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 this page, and, underneath it, the same hand that wrote the last recipes on the previous (recto) page begins again with a heading ‘ffor to breke the stone’. This is another short recipe and seems to be finished in the three lines plus a half-line for which there is space to write. Beginning at the top of the following recto page (178r) and taking about half of the page there is a set of zodiacal names, planet names and the signs which go with these in a different, more spaced-out hand which is moderately neat, but not expert. Below this, the recipe/Husbandry hand begins some more recipes concerning how to use various kinds of worms. This goes up to the end of that (recto) page.54 On the following verso and recto pages the main body of the page is taken up with the spaced-out hand doing various diagrams to do with the zodiacal and monthly calendar.55 All around these, however, the recipe/Husbandry hand continues to write recipes; this includes down the sides of the page at right angles to the direction of the official text and then also at the bottom of this page in the same direction as the official text. From the following verso page (179v), for a number of pages, the recipe hand continues and now fills pages which must have been blank at the time of writing with recipes in the same style.56 This finishes half way down, at which point the husbandry treatise resumes. When the recipes resume after chapter 15 breaks off, the layout is just the same as above.57 Some clues about where the paper has been found for this booklet occur later on in the section which has Husbandry and the recipes: here there are some remnants of an administrative text concerned with various accounts and legal matters and the management of estates in various counties of England.58 The text on these pages is very much more spaced out. The manuscript evidence I have described seems to indicate that the scribe–reader has borrowed space from a booklet which already had other text(s) in it. He seems to have found a relatively large stretch of blank pages for the middle portion of the husbandry text. The recipes seem to have been copied in a more ad hoc way. Further proof of this is found in the varying colours of the ink used for the recipes compared to the apparently even colour of the ink in which Husbandry is written. Although the copying of Husbandry appears to have been more planned than the recipes, it has not been seamlessly executed as shown by the gaps in the text, and indeed the recipes seem to have caused one of these abrupt breaks in the copying. This suggests that the whole process of copying the husbandry treatise and the recipes into the available (borrowed) space of this booklet has not been rigorously planned.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 150

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving

151

Evidence for the aesthetics of the page Despite the pressure on space, it is interesting to observe the commitment of the scribe–reader of Trinity Husbandry to the appearance of this text. Viewed in comparison to Peniarth and Sloane, there are similar conventions of layout and ordering in operation. For example, the Trinity scribe reproduces the table of contents that provides the long descriptive chapter headings, and uses the simple, centralised, ‘nth chapter’ headings to distinguish between chapters during the text. It might have taken much less space to have omitted the page of contents and provided a shortened descriptive chapter heading before each new section begins. Another noticeable correspondence between Trinity, Peniarth and Sloane manuscripts is the proximity to Husbandry of a treatise on trees. For Sloane and Peniarth, this is included as the seventeenth chapter of Husbandry but in Trinity the subject of trees is treated as a different treatise, written by the same scribe–reader, with a new heading ‘Galfridus super Palladium de Agricultura Angifficatum’.59 The table of contents for this treatise lasts for the recto and verso page. This ends with the Explicit to the table and the Incipit of the main text one under the other. There is also a sign which is a circle with a cross drawn across it that acts as an asterisk. One might expect the treatise proper to follow on the following recto page (fol. 214r). In fact, the treatise is ‘interrupted’ by a different entry, which is actually an index for a collection of medical recipes that lasts for three folios (214r, 214v and 215r), ending with only a few entries on the final page. Proof that this is not a mistake in ordering at the time of rebinding is found in the position at which the Palladius treatise resumes—on the verso folio backing the end of the index (fol. 215v). This is signalled by a repeat of the ‘asterisk’. The Palladius treatise then runs continuously through until its end thirteen pages later, half way down the page (fol. 222r). There are also various recipes, in the same format and in the same hand, interspersed throughout this section and taking any available space (for example, on the final page of the index [fol. 215r] and continuing after the end of Palladius [end of fol. 221r to end of fol. 222v] to what seems to be the end of this booklet. Once again, the scribe–reader seems to have been squeezing the copy into a space which is already interrupted by various other texts, and yet seems determined to keep to the conventional layout, for such practical treatises, of having an extended table of contents. Comparing manuscript and printed versions of practical texts The practical texts discussed in this chapter provide ample opportunity for making comparisons between manuscript versions and printed versions

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 151

21/05/2012 10:15:09

152

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

of what is ostensibly the same text. Useful evidence for the popularity of this genre of reading matter is found in the extent to which practical texts were printed across the period c. 1500–1600 (and beyond).60 The existence of these versions of practical texts of course also provides excellent opportunity to make comparative analyses across manuscript and printed versions as well as comparisons between printed versions of different dates. In the following paragraphs, I explore some of these possibilities with the purpose of showing how such comparisons may be used to understand more about reading practice and experience. Size A glance at some of the surviving printed texts, in comparison with the manuscripts, indicates that the printed texts were made available as much smaller volumes. The manuscript versions vary from about A5 size to about A4 size. Copies of the 1533, 1552, 1556 and 1568 editions of Fitzherbert’s Husbandry are all similarly sized and very small volumes, less than the size of my hands, and able to easily fit into a pocket.61 Comparing two versions of The Boke of Kervynge A comparison between the version of The Boke of Kervynge found in Peniarth 394D and that found in Wynkyn de Worde’s 1513 edition shows the close similarity between these two texts and also demonstrates the ways that the aesthetics of page layout and decoration may be preserved across manuscript and printed texts.62 It is very likely that the manuscript version was copied from the printed text in this instance; evidence of both similarity and difference help to confirm this. The manuscript copyist has missed out some sections from the Wynkyn text. Some of these omissions help to prove that the manuscript was copied from the printed texts and they also indicate how the copyist has made choices about omissions. The whole of the folio sig Avi r is missing, for example. This comprises the end section of the carving of flesh and a short section on sauces. At the top of p. 101 in the manuscript, the copyist ends his section on carving with the sentence: ‘A cony lay him … dishe’. This corresponds exactly with the end of Wynkyn’s sig Av v. The copyist continues at the top of p. 101 with an explicit for the previous (unfinished) section with ‘Here endith the kervying of ffleshe’.63 The manuscript follows this immediately with the incipit for the next page, which is ‘Also here begynnythe the servic from Ester unto pentecoste’.64 This corresponds with the section beginning in Wynkyn’s text at the top of sig Avi v; Wynkyn calls this ‘Easter to Whisunday’ (the short section

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 152

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving

153

concerned with sauces occurring, in Wynkyn, between the end of the section on carving flesh and the beginning of the section on service on sig A vi r is therefore omitted entirely). The service section of sig A vi r is then very similar in the two versions. This indicates that there was not a missing page from the Wynkyn pamphlet used by the copyist, as this would have meant the loss of both Avi r and v, but instead that the copyist omitted one folio in its entirety, perhaps to conserve space or because he was not particularly interested in the end of the section on carving (which is about mincing) and the short section on sauces for fowls. There are also some differences in terminology between the two versions of the text. After this section on service the following part of the text is the set of short entries which run through the carving terms that were given as a list at the beginning of the text (‘Lyft that swanne/ Sauce that capon/ Spoyle that henne’ and so on). This time each term has a sentence describing what should be done with each beast. ‘Sauce that Capon’, for example, gives: Take up a capon & lyfte up the ryght legge and the ryght wynge & so araye forth & laye hym in the plater as he sholde flee & serve your soverayne & knowe well that capons or chekyns ben arayed after one sauce the chekyns shall be sauced with grene sauce or vergyus.65

For this section, the manuscript and Wynkyn versions have exactly the same order, but with one or two changes of word and terminology: the manuscript has ‘Mynce that quail’ whereas Wynkyn has ‘Wynge that quail’. The manuscript is inconsistent here as it has ‘Wyng that quail’ in the opening list of terms. It is interesting, given the manuscript annotator’s interest in the Cony earlier on, that the manuscript omits the more detailed instruction which is found in Wynkyn under the heading from the list of ‘Unlace that Cony’. The copyist here seems to be choosing some of his own terminology and in so doing introducing some inconsistencies of terminology not found in the Wynkyn print. The copyist has also altered some of the titles in the following section, which refers to feasting customs for specific times of year, by using different words for those times. The manuscript has ‘the service from mydsomer unto mighelmas’, for example, whereas Wynkyn has ‘St john the Baptiste unto myghelmasse’.66 Another set of changes in terminology is found in the hierarchically organised ‘list of estates’ section, which is the final item of the text. This begins with the Pope (‘The estate of a Pope hath no pere’) and runs through to the category which includes the Master of the Chancery,

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 153

21/05/2012 10:15:09

154 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 worshipful preachers of pardon, clerks, priests, worshipful merchants and gentlemen (all who may sit at the squire’s table).67 The manuscript version misses out emperor and has king twice instead, the first time giving ‘The estate of Kyng is next’ as is given for emperor, which comes second after the pope in the Wynkyn version. Earl, which comes after marques and before viscount in Wynkyn’s list, is also missing from the manuscript. Earl is included later on in the manuscript list, where the various seating possibilities are discussed, which tends to suggest that the omission of it from the hierarchical list was an oversight, not a deliberate exclusion of this category. A comparison of the visual layout of the pages in the two versions reveals an interesting attempt by the copyist to maintain a strongly similar aesthetic. The manuscript copyist has made very clear delineations between the different sections and has chosen a decorative scheme to surround incipits and explicits using a repeated, simple but effective pattern of a line with small marks and dots (this can be seen on the illustrated page [p. 118; see plate 2], which shows the final explicit to the text). Although this is not the same decorative feature as used in the printed version, it has an effect similar to the separated headings with paragraph marks. There are also some differences in layout between the two versions, which seem to indicate the copyist’s determination to maintain the use of these headings even when the printed version has apparently mistakenly buried a heading in the body of the text. In the section following the short entries beginning ‘Sauce that Capon’, there follows a paragraph about sauces at the top of the following page in the manuscript (following the end of the text for ‘Thye that woodcocke’ at the top of Wynkyn sig B iir).68 In the manuscript, this is made more emphatic by being given a new heading ‘Here endith the service from ester unto pentecoste/ Here begynnythe the servis from pentecoste unto midsomer’.69 In the Wynkyn version, by contrast, this heading has become rather lost by being added onto the end of the woodcock section. The copyist therefore appears to be making some choices about how to head up his version of the text, and in this instance almost correcting a mistake made by the Wynkyn print. One final difference between the two versions is the presence of an illustrative woodcut in the Wynkyn text and the absence of an illustration in the manuscript version. Like many woodcuts, this illustration is generic and represents a group of people of different estates (the king with his crown clearly being in the middle) at a table having a feast and being served a platter of food. There is what looks like a jester and another table of guests who seem to be of lower status just visible at

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 154

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving

155

the front of the image. The woodcut clearly represents feasting, hierarchy and service in a way very appropriate to the text. It provides a reader with an opening image for the contents of the text which is not available to the reader of the manuscript version. Comparison of Grosseteste manuscripts with Wynkyn de Worde’s Book of Housbandry The Grosseteste treatise was printed in 1508 by Wynkyn de Worde. It is one of those early printed books which seem to aim to copy the style of the manuscript versions of this text. The manuscripts are characterised by a plain business-like style with limited decoration and the use of a page of contents. However, to say that these texts are characterised by a very limited use of decoration does not mean that they lack decorative flourishes. The printed edition takes the opportunity offered by the empty lines in the contents page, for example, to give some decoration in the form of scroll designs. The chapter sections are also clearly delineated by providing spaces between the end of one chapter and the start of another; a centred heading at the start of each chapter indicating the chapter number, a good sized paragraph mark, and an enlarged capital letter at the beginning of the first paragraph. The larger sort of these capitals occupies the space of five lines of the main text and is decorated with a face or a creature; the smaller capitals occupy two lines of writing and are less decorative. All of these features serve a practical purpose in that they make it relatively easy to find specific chapters, but they also do this in a decorative manner which seems to emulate manuscript style. The manuscript version of the Grosseteste text in the Peniarth manuscript 394D similarly takes the opportunity offered by the empty half lines of the contents page to add some decoration. In this case, decoration takes the form of very simple (almost half-hearted) single pen-stroke waved lines (two or three depending on how much space there is on the line). The opening letter of each chapter (which is a T for The Nth Chapitur) is enlarged and decorated with partial colouring. The main part of the text is very plain but does very clearly delineate the different chapters by providing very ample space between the sections and a centred heading. These headings give the number of the chapter in the form ‘The Nth Chapitur’, not the full rendition of the subject matter as found in the contents page. Each chapter begins with a considerably enlarged initial letter which is three lines in height and which is partly coloured in, in black ink. The explicit is delineated very clearly with the same design as is found later in the manuscript for the incipits and explicits of The

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 155

21/05/2012 10:15:09

156 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 Book of Kervynge. The title of the book ‘housbondry book’ is also marked out with the same style as the incipits and explicits in this manuscript. Interestingly, on a number of pages early in the text it is as if a reader has decided there is insufficient decoration as there are repeated versions of a large decorative knot line-drawing in the margins. There is one part of the Wynkyn edition of the Grosseteste which does stand out as different from the manuscript versions, and this is the woodcut which is found at the beginning of the text. This depicts two men standing amongst a plantation of trees. One of the men is holding an axe swung above his shoulders and from the nick in the tree near him it is clear that he is in the process of chopping it down. The other man’s axe is resting against the tree. There are two deer in the foreground of the picture, one stag and one doe. The land looks as if it had been terraced, or at least it is clearly shown to have contours which may either be intended to signify cultivation or a naturally hilly landscape.70 This woodcut might be used for any number of printed texts concerned with practical manuals about agriculture, landscape or hunting, or indeed any number of fictional texts. But what is interesting, in terms of reading experience, is that the printer has decided that it is a good idea to have an image at the beginning of this text. It is possible to assume that this is a decision arising from calculations based on sales: a text which begins with a picture is more likely to sell. And, as Martha Driver has explored, Wynkyn de Worde was a ‘pioneer of the title page’ from his early prints of c. 1493.71 It has been proposed that the change in the packaging of a text brought about by a title page such as this had a significant impact on the perception of the knowledge contained therein because the book becomes a container of information in a new way.72 This idea, I think, assumes too radical a distinction between the cultures of print and manuscript, however. But what the title page does seem to do is to allude to a peaceful pastoral scene, perhaps an idealised scene of wood chopping with deer looking on, and this might be particularly attractive to a reader. The idyllic quality of this image might, significantly, also point to the role of this printed text as a practical manual for readers who may not actually be engaged in the practice of husbandry, and in this sense the book does become a container of knowledge and perhaps even experience.73 This manual may therefore have had, and perhaps been pitched at, an audience that is buying into a world of textually transmitted knowledge as well, possibly, as an imagined process of practical endeavour.74

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 156

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving

157

Analysis of content For the remainder of the chapter, my discussion of practical texts is much more focused on the contents of the texts, and the types of evidence that contents may provide for the nature and experience of reading. Comparison between Grosseteste and Fitzherbert Evidence for the continued popularity of the practical husbandry manual in the style of Walter of Henley’s text is found in the existence of texts produced later than the translation attributed to Robert Grosseteste. These texts seem to engage with a number of similar themes. Three such writers identified by Oschinsky are James Bellot, John or Anthony Fitzherbert and John Smyth.75 Oschinsky suggests that John Smyth, Steward of the Hundred of Berkely, born in 1567, was the last to take a ‘practical interest’ in Walter (the Grosseteste text) but also that he was the ‘first to approach this text as an economic historian’.76 There is not space to investigate John Smyth’s work in detail here, although it would be interesting to explore the significance of Smyth’s perspective as an ‘economic historian’ for readers of his text. Bellot’s treatise is considered very briefly below. The Fitzherbert treatise provides ample material for this chapter and it is considered in the following paragraphs. A comparison between Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry and the Grosseteste treatise opens up a collection of issues pertaining to reading experience. For this comparison, I will be using the versions of Fitzherbert from 1523–62 as there was a significant change in the treatise in subsequent versions.77 There are strong enough connections between Fitzherbert and the Walter of Henley group of texts to indicate that Fitzherbert was aware of the contents of these. It seems likely that he would have been most familiar with the translated Walter (the Grosseteste text). Oschinsky draws attention to one main comparison, which is that there is a significant difference between their attitudes towards the advantages of ox or horse teams for the plough. She proposes that, whereas Walter is ‘influenced by considerations of the unreliable work performed by manorial labour’, Fitzherbert makes a decision about which is best according to the pasture available.78 Whatever the significance of this difference, there is evidence to suggest that matters concerning ploughing were considered a priority by some of the early printers: the two surviving imprints of Fitzherbert which begin with a woodcut image both use the depiction of the same ploughing scene. This shows a man driving a plough of two oxen over furrowed ground together with what appears to

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 157

21/05/2012 10:15:09

158

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

be another man holding a crook. He appears to be directing this towards some sheep across the field from where the ploughing activity is taking place in the foreground of the woodcut.79 The contents of the Grosseteste and Fitzherbert treatises have some marked similarities. The Fitzherbert is also much longer and provides extended chapters on each of the issues covered in Grosseteste. Fitzherbert also provides numerous chapters on different aspects of husbandry not found in Grosseteste but found in other manuals circulating at the time such as The proprytees and medycynes for hors, printed in 1497 and 1502.80 It is the first part of the Fitzherbert which seems to be using the Grosseteste as its model. In the sixteen or seventeen chapters of the surviving Grosseteste manuscripts and in the Wynkyn de Worde print, the themes covered are as follows: the measurement of land (chapters one and two) ploughing (chapters three and four) fallowing and sowing (chapters five to seven) uses of fertiliser (chapters eight and nine) livestock – cows, sheep, pigs, poultry (chapters ten to fourteen) selling and accounting (chapters fifteen and sixteen) grafting and planting of trees (chapter seventeen)81

In Fitzherbert, the themes of ploughing, fallowing and sowing, fertilising, and livestock management are covered in the first fifty-one pages, in over 120 sections, each with a heading, though not a chapter number. Each of the themes is therefore somewhat embellished in comparison with the Grosseteste. Some of the main additions found in Fitzherbert come about from the greater variety of crops that is described as well as the much extended consideration of livestock management, which provides detailed information about illnesses and how to treat them. The chapters on accounting which incorporate advice on the management of a bailiff that are found in Grosseteste are not found in Fitzherbert in the same manner. There are, however, some sections later in the Fitzherbert which deal with the matter of keeping account of household expenditure. These appear in the second half of the treatise, where the tone changes from a concern with the very practical matters of husbandry to a much more moralised, sometimes philosophical, discourse that considers the nature of richness and the relationships between social status and lifestyle.82 In this part of the Fitzherbert there are also sections considering the role of the ‘huswife’, and some specifically spiritual advice concerning prayer and alms giving. Some hints at this moralised tone are

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 158

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving

159

also found in the first half of Fitzherbert, for example with ‘The Sede of Discrecyon’ which appears after ‘How to sow bothe peas & beanes’ and before ‘How all maner of corne shulde be sowen’.83 Sheep and Horses Sheep are considered central to husbandry by Fitzherbert. At the opening of his section ‘On Shepe’, he states: Because that sheep in my opinion is the most profitablest cattle that any man can have therefore I purpose to speak first of sheep84

The sheep information lasts for six pages and covers topics such as when the ewes should be put to the ram; how to wean lambs; how to herd and separate a flock; how to mix a basic medicinal compound; various illnesses such as blindness, rot and foot worm; and how to shear and wash.85 Although both the Fitzherbert and the Grosseteste sections on sheep are all about the same animal, there is relatively little correspondence between the two. Grosseteste tends to have a rather suspicious tone with reference to those individuals employed in the management of an estate. This emerges several times in the section on sheep, beginning in the opening sentences of this chapter where the text warns the reader to check that the shepherd is not ‘irous’ with the sheep. Evidence for this behaviour would be in seeing the sheep run away from the shepherd. This tone occurs again at the end of the chapter where the subject of shearing is covered: Grosseteste advises the reader to ensure that a tally is kept of any wool that is taken during the year by the shepherd and that this is added to the total amount of sheared fleece. He also warns the reader to be wary of receiving any fleeces of sheep that have died in the murrain. Unsurprisingly, both texts have a section on shearing. Both treatises advise that the sheep and the fleece should be marked with a distinctive sign for identification. But, in relation to this point, Fitzherbert’s advice is more positive than Grosseteste’s. Unlike Grosseteste, Fitzherbert does not mention the possibility of having wool stolen, instead stating that the wool should be wound carefully on a ‘wole winder’ as this ‘will do much good in the sale of the same’.86 Both texts give similar advice about the ill effects of wet ground and indigestible grass, and both indicate that the flesh of sheep grazing on this kind of ground will ‘rot’. The symptoms for this rotting are described similarly by reference to the colour of the flesh: Grosseteste says that the flesh will wax white and then yellow and then the sheep will rot; Fitzherbert’s more detailed description (in a special

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 159

21/05/2012 10:15:09

160 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 section designated ‘To knowe a Rotten Shepe’) gives information about how to check the colour of a sheep’s eye, and the quality and colour of the skin and wool while it is alive and then about the liver and contents of the gut when it is dead.87 Following the sections in Fitzherbert that relate very clearly to the contents of Grosseteste, there are two main sections which relate to two other treatises. Firstly, a treatise known as The Proprytees and Medycynes for Hors seems to have been very influential on about twelve pages and, secondly, a treatise called The Planting and Grafting of Trees seems to have influenced about six pages.88 A planting and grafting treatise is copied into the fifteenth-century Middle English miscellany Brogyntyn 2.1, which is a reminder that these practical manuals were sometimes located in amongst a whole range of other kinds of texts such as prayers and stories.89 With reference to the horse treatise, many similar themes are covered by Fitzherbert, including the opening ‘properties of horses’ section. Here, a list of the horse’s properties that relate to other creatures is given. Fitzherbert has ‘liiii’ properties: two of a man, two of a badger, four of a lion, nine each of ox, hare, fox and ass, and ten of a woman. The Proprytees and Medycynes has fifteen properties (three each of man, woman, ox, hare and ass). Fitzherbert’s ‘The Ten Properties of a Woman’, which is the last in the list immediately after the ass, brings a little wit into the treatise: The first is to be merry of cheer; the second to be well paced; the third to have a broad forehead; the fourth to have broad buttocks; the fifth to be hard of word; the sixth to be easy to leap upon; the vii to be good at long journeys; the viii to be well standing under a man; the ix to be always busy with the mouth; the x ever to be chewing on the bridle.

The two properties that a horse has of a man, by contrast, are firstly to have a proud heart and secondly to be bold and hearty. Another strong similarity between Fitzherbert and the Proprytees and Medycynes is the section on horse diseases. Many of the same ailments are listed in the two treatises: ‘ringbone’, ‘malaunder’, ‘lampas’, ‘glaundres’ and so on. What distinguishes between the two treatises is that Fitzherbert provides a descriptive overview of the illness whereas the horse treatise provides a treatment. The first ailment in Fitzherbert’s list, for example, is ‘The Lampas’, which is described in the following way: In the mouth is the Lampas and is a thick scurvey full of blood hanging over his teeth above that he may not eat.90

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 160

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving

161

The same ailment in the Propertees and Medycynes is chapter 57, the 35th item of the 48 ailment chapters, is given as follows: The lampas is a malady that groweth as it were an almond in the pallet of the mouth even by his forehead and it letteth [stops] him to eat. Take therefore a lance and let him blood on either side the seam in the mouth a little within the lampas and smite softly that the hole pass not the deepness of barley corn. And then take an iron and make it crooked and red hot and as thin as a knife’s blade and put it within the lampas and draw it out and then anoint it with fresh butter and it shall be hole.91

Interestingly, the Fitzherbert treatise does not include the rhyming ‘Prologue of the Medycynes’ as found in Proprytees and Medycynes. This is an interesting omission given its Fitzherbert-like references to the morality of circulating such a text: And therfore all tho that thy wyll werke Be he preste or be he clerke Let hym take it for no fable For it wyll hele all that is curable For they have been prove for certayne sothe Therefore to teche hym he was ryght lothe But when he laye in greate mournynge Out of his herte he gaaf in wrytynge For whome ye shall bothe bydde and pray To save his soule he that best may.92

With reference to the tree treatises, the Fitzherbert contains a number of issues concerning the grafting of various fruit trees which are also found in the grafting and planting treatise and in the chapter which appears at the end of the Walter of Henley text in several versions. Fitzherbert begins: ‘It is necessary profitable and also a pleasure for husbands to have pears … and apples of diverse sorts’.93 The order and emphasis of Fitzherbert’s discussion differ from Walter. Fitzherbert omits a consideration of types of vines, focusing more on grafting, and he also includes information about, and descriptions of, the kinds of tools needed, such as a grafting knife and grafting saw.94 Evidence for intended audiences/readers The Author’s prologue to Fitzherbert is interesting in the way that it introduces the text as being concerned with social orders. The prologue states an authority for the knowledge about these orders which is ‘The Booke of the Moralytes of the Chesse’. The reader is informed that the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 161

21/05/2012 10:15:09

162 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 Booke of Chess shows all the different degrees (six of them: King, Queen, Bishops, Knights, Judges, Yeomen), their work and their occupations, and what they ought to do. Fitzherbert goes on to say that every degree of person should know this book so that he or she may know what is his, or her, role. He also states that there would be too much to write if he went through all of the categories. Finally, he informs the reader: And in so moch the yoman in the sayde moralytees & game of the chesse be set before to labour, defend, and meynteyne all the other hyer estates, the whiche yomen represent the comyn people, as husbandes and labourers. Therefore I propose to speke fyrst of husbandry.

What this preface appears to be stating, therefore, is that the book is specifically addressed to issues of importance for these ‘comyn people’. The final sentence, ‘Therefore I propose to speke fyrst of husbandry’ makes something of a jump from labour to husbandry, and in so doing it seems to equate the two. The preface to the reader of another practical treatise, James Bellot’s The Boke of Thrift, also provides a nice piece of evidence for the perception of husbandry manuals as popular. This is addressed, as many such prefaces are, to a patron (or at least – rhetorically speaking – to a potential patron). In this case, the patron figure is the Right Honourable Sir Francis Walsingham, Knight, Chancellor of Lancaster. The preface opens by introducing how Bellot came across the text. He was shown it by a friend in an ‘old booke of parchment, in a written hand’. This old book is described as ‘entreating of sundry matters and in sundry languages’. Within this, the author claims to have come across a ‘little Treatise of husbandrye and ploughing, written in old French’. Having struggled with reading it he states that: finding it a worke right worthie to be put in the handes of the publike (because it entreateth of publike affaires) I thought good, yea most reasonable, to commit it first into your lerned ha’ds, to the end that under the protection of your authoritie, it might walke in great safetie. Therefore, I beseech your honour most humbly, to receive it acceptably, & to looke on it with so bountifull an eye, that it may be the bolder to shew itself not only in English through all this Realme but also in other languages throughout all inhabited countries.95

Of course it is important to remember (as I discussed in the first chapter) that the ‘preface to the reader’ is a very slippery form of evidence which cannot be taken at face value. Nevertheless, these aspects of a text are valuable pieces of evidence which often give some insights into

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 162

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving 163 contemporary perceptions of texts and their potential, imagined, or intended readers. Seen in those terms, Bellot’s and Fitzherbert’s prefaces help to confirm a general perception of the popularity and popular significance of this type of practical literature. Bellot’s preface seeks to emphasise the importance of circulating these types of text; Fitzherbert’s preface particularly highlights his sense of the husbandry text as being for people of that middling rank. Later on in Fitzherbert, under the heading ‘A shorte information for a yong gentyleman that entendeth to thryve’ this treatise provides a nice insight into at least one author’s views on how this sort of book may be used and read.96 He goes on to say that he advises the said gentleman to ‘get a copy’ of this book and to ‘rede it from the begynnyng to the endyng, wherby he may perceive the chapyters and contentes in the same’. Fitzherbert suggests that by ‘oft redyng’ the reader will become perfect in his knowledge of what needs to be done in all seasons.97 The treatise also goes on to advise that ‘yonge gentylman accordynge to the season of the yere, rede to his sevauntes what chapyter he wyll’.98 Literate farming practices Fitzherbert’s treatise also provides information about one view of literate farming practices, in the chapter entitled ‘A short information for a young gentleman that intendeth to thrive’.99 This should be seen as an imagined view, operating in the same slightly idealised situation of the whole treatise, rather than as evidence of definite practices by real husbandmen of the sixteenth century. The chapter describes a practice of checking the farm or estate which involves keeping a written record. The husbandman should rise early in the morning and: go about his closes, pastures, feldes, & specially by the hedges, & to have in his purse a paire of tables, & whan he seeth any thing that wold be amended, to wryte it in his tables, as & he fynd any horses, mares, beestes, shepe, swine, or geese in his pastures, that be not his owne.100

There follows a list of things he should take note of such as whether there is standing water in his field, any problems with his hedges, how his servants are ploughing, how his shepherds are caring for the sheep, whether the fences are in good order ‘for a man always wandering or going about somewhat findeth or seeith that is amiss and would be amended’.101 Fitzherbert continues to show how his literate practice of farm management enables the husbandman to keep the estate workers informed. He assures the reader of the value of this practice in

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 163

21/05/2012 10:15:09

164 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 characteristic form by informing the reader that he himself used this technique. And so soon as he seeth any suche defautes, than let him take out his tabvles and wryte the defautes. And whan he cometh home to diner, souper, or at night, than let hym call his bayly or his heed servaunt, and to shewe hym the defautes, that they may be shortly amended. And whan it is amended than let hym put it out of his tables. For this used I to do x or xii yeres and more, and thus let hym use dayly, and in shorte space he shall sette moche thynges in good ordre, but dayly it wyll have mendyng. And yf he canne not wryte, let hym nycke the defautes upon a stycke, and to shewe his bayly, as I sayde before.

The final sentence here interestingly comments on an alternative method of making a record in the event that the husbandman cannot write. This may refer to the possibility that the husbandman reader can read but not write, or it may indicate that the practical information in this treatise is intended not only for the practitioner but also for the literate individual who wishes to know about a husbandman’s practices in general. Still on the theme of the literacy of the husbandman, Fitzherbert’s treatise is capable of including a mildly amusing rhyming ditty about farming practices. The version printed by Thomas Berthelet in 1548, for example, has ‘A lesson made in Englysshe verses to teche a gentylmane servaunt to say at every tyme whan he taketh his horse for his remembraunce, that he shall not forgette his gere in his inne behynde him’, which runs as follows: Purse, bagger, cloke, night cap, kerchief shoyng horne, boget, and shoes, spere, male, hode, halter, sadelcloth, spores hatte, with thy horse combe, bowe, arowes, sworde, bukler, horne, leisshe, gloves, string, and thy bracer. Penne, paper, inke, parche ment, reedwaxe, pommes, bokes, thou remember. Penknyfe, combe, thymble, nedle, threde, poynt, leest that thy gurth breake. Bodkyn, knyfe, lingel, gyve thy horse meet. Se he be shoed well. Make mery, synge and thou can, take hede to thy gere that thou lose none.102

The style of the manuals For both Grosseteste and Fitzherbert, despite the difference in mood concerning suspicion about estate workers, the general tone of the sections

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 164

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving

165

devoted to livestock and arable farming is similar. It is informative, practical, and quite detailed. The later more spiritual and moral sections of Fitzherbert’s treatise seem to have a different style of writing which employs proverbs and sayings to a much greater degree. Whatever its source, this part also marks a reasonably sharp contrast with the tone and the style of the previous sections of the treatise. The more moral tone of the latter part of Fitzherbert begins gradually with a section on the role of a wife.103 This is both practical and moral. The wife section gives way to a more general discussion on matters of household management that includes advice on how to keep within the household budget, how rich people spend and waste their money and finally a set of more explicitly religious chapters concerning God’s commandments and how to pray in various situations. In the three sections specifically directed at the work of the wife – ‘A lesson for the wyfe’,104 ‘What thynges the wyfe is bounden of ryght to do’105 and ‘What warkes a wyfe shuld do in generall’106 – there is frequent reference to a biblically based moralised position about the responsibilities of a wife to her husband. There is also the matter of keeping the devil at bay by keeping busy. The list of requirements for a wife’s duties certainly seems to leave no opportunity for idle hands what with her role in providing food and clothing for her family, her care for the poultry, and her role in helping her husband with some of the heavy manual labour. She must also ‘go or ryde to the market to sell buter, chese, mylke, egges, chekyns, capons, hennes, pygges, gees and al maner of cornes. Also also to bye al maner of necessary thynges belongyng to housholde, and to make a true rekenynge and a compte to her husbande what she hath receyved, and what she hath payed.’107 Apart from the skills required for household management, there seems in this last matter of buying and selling to be a clear suggestion that some sort of accounting system is required. The treatise goes on, at this point, to instruct that just as the wife is responsible for showing her husband the details of her transactions, so the husband should also show his wife any records from his own buying and selling because if one deceives the other he or she deceives himself or herself.108 This opens the way for a short digression by Fitzherbert on the fact that there are many ways in which wives and husbands may deceive each other. He chooses not to specify these because, just as the Book of the Knight of the Tower demonstrates, he might reveal some ‘more subtle’ points to each party than ‘eyther of them knewe of before’.109 In the pages following the instructions to the wife which are concerned

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 165

21/05/2012 10:15:09

166 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 with household management (‘To keep measure in spendng’, ‘To eate within thy tether’), the treatise seems to be directed towards households which are not rich.110 This is emphasised by the subject of the following sections, which discuss how ‘men of hye degree’ keep measure, with reference to three particular concerns: ‘Prodigality in outrageous and costly array’; ‘Delicious meats and drinks’, and ‘Outrageous play and game’.111 Of course, while Fitzherbert may be intending to make a distinction between the modest husbandman to whom his treatise on household management is addressed and the much wealthier sort, it may also be part of the framework of his moralising discourse against wasteful practices and habits. This latter possibility seems especially likely given the subject matter of the sections following these, and their Gospel-based concern with the distinctions between spiritual and temporal riches. Nevertheless, there are persistent elements in this section of Fitzherbert’s work which appear to be making a self-conscious effort to address a modest degree of husbandman or gentleman reader. Proverbial style An interesting element in Fitzherbert’s treatise is his use of proverbs to confirm his points. These are generally given in Latin and English and often described as lessons learned at grammar school. They occur much more in the second half of the treatise (the household management and spiritual sections), rather than in the first half where the more agricultural Grosseteste material is placed. Passages such as this from the ‘Short information to a gentleman’ are characteristic: Gutta cavat lapidem non vised sepe cadendo: Sic homo sit sapience non vi, sed sepe legendo. A droppe of water perseth a stone, not al onely by his owne strength, but by his often fallyng. Ryght so a man shal be made wise, not al onely by hym selfe but by his ofte redyng.112

Certainly for one reader, the annotator of the British Library copy of the edition printed by John Wayland in 1556, many of the proverbial sayings were deemed worthy of a marginal mark.113 This reader is not an exuberant annotator by any means, inscribing a small cross or division sign in the margin in about twenty places during the treatise, and a set of numbers 1–3 once, next to the ‘three principal causes’ why land fallowed in the winter is made worse.114 One of the annotated sayings, for example, is in the section ‘A Short Lesson for a Husband’: At gramer scole I lerned a verse and that is this. Sanat, sanctificater dictat

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 166

21/05/2012 10:15:09

Practical texts: husbandry and carving 167 surgere mane. That is to saye, erly rising maketh a man hole in body, holler in soule, & rich in goodes.115

The interest of this reader in the proverbial clauses notwithstanding, it would be a mistake to imply that this is all he annotates. A double page which has the unusually high number of three marks, for example, indicates some of the variety of themes which are marked in this copy by what seems to be the same annotator. The first is against ‘[A]n ewe goeth with an lambe xx wekes’;116 the second mark is against ‘[I]t is a comen saying that the lambe shal not rotte as long as it sowketh, excepte the dame want meat’;117 the third mark, just below this, is against ‘[I]t is tyme to wayne [wean] their lambes when they be xvi wekes old or xviii at the farthest’.118 This combination of passages telling old sayings and passages providing particularly factual or numerical information seems to be what most interests the annotator of this book. Fitzherbert uses a mixture of philosophical and biblical authorities to impress the importance of keeping within one’s means. For example, his grammar school wisdom includes: ‘Qui plus expendit, quam rerum copia tendit. Non admiretur si pauperrate gravetur, He that doth more expend than his goodes wyll extende, mervayle it shall not be, thou he be greved with poverty.’119 This is juxtaposed in the following lines with a saying of Saint Paul: ‘Iuxta facultates faciendi sunt sumptus, ne longi temporis victum brevis hora consumat. That is to say, after thy faculty or thy honour make thyne expences less thou spend in short space that thyng, that tho shuldest live by longe’.120 Fitzherbert adds two interesting additional points to his recitation of the St Paul saying, both of which, in different ways, are concerned with issues of status and the application of his treatise. Firstly, he states that this saying applies to ‘every manne from the hyest degree to the lowest’; secondly, he makes an interesting comment about literacy: ‘but bycause this texte of saynte paule is in latyn, and husbandes commynly can but lytell latyn, I fere lest they can not understande it. And though it were declared ones or twyse to them that they wolde forgette it, wherfore I shall shewe to them a texte in englysshe, and that they maye well understande, and that is this, eate within thy tedure [tether].121 This ends the section ‘To keep measure in spending’, the next section being headed ‘To keep within thy tether’. Fitzherbert’s comments about the literacy of his readers and so the need to translate this biblical idea into English are particularly interesting given that his usual practice is to translate the numerous ‘verses’ which he uses throughout the treatise. It seems, in this instance, that what he means by

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 167

21/05/2012 10:15:09

168 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 ‘shewing’ this text to the reader not literate in Latin is that he will ‘prove’ the saying using a set of examples. These are provided in the chapter which follows, under the heading of ‘To eate within thy tether’.122 This chapter proceeds to give the example of tethering a horse so that it does not stray into a neighbour’s land, and also that care should be taken that the horse cannot break its tether thereby straying onto other men’s land. If either of these situations occurs, the horse will be taken to a pound, the owner will be taken before a court, and he will need to pay to have his horse released. Similarly, the chapter goes on, if a man overstretch his tether causing him to beg or borrow, or if he break his tether and run riot with other people’s possessions, then he shall come into poverty. The nature of practical advice As part of his proverbialising style, Fitzherbert also makes some interesting comments about the relationships between practice and experience. He claims himself to be giving out practical advice on the basis of experience rather than merely on a theoretical set of knowledge. This seems like a sort of empiricism. On the particular matter of reading and experience he gives: for a yonge husband that hath not the experyence of husbandry to take a good remembraunce and credence ther unto, for there is an olde sayeing, but of what auctorite I can not tell. Quod melior est practica rusticorn, q scietia philosophorii. It is better the practice of knowledge of an husband well proved, than the scyence or connyng of a philosopher not proved, for there is nothyng touchyng husbandry & other profytes conteyned in this present booke, but I have had the experience therof, & proved the same.123

Despite his frequent recourse to the philosophers and other authorities for his proverbs, then, Fitzherbert seems above all to champion advice based on practical experience. His inability to remember the authority for this saying seems quite witty in this context. Conclusion Because of the continued popularity of husbandry treatises through to the end of the sixteenth century and into the seventeenth, it would also be possible to make comparisons across this longer chronological period. The two husbandry treatises by Thomas Tusser, for example (A hundred points of good husbandrie, and Five hundred points of good husbandrie), which were printed across a century from the early 1570s present the possibility for a

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 168

21/05/2012 10:15:10

Practical texts: husbandry and carving 169 very interesting comparative study. Tusser’s works are set out as a series of short entries which are often in rhyme, presenting what H.S. Bennett described as the ‘outstanding work’ of husbandry advice with its ‘gossipy common sense practical appeal’.124 Bartholomewe Dowe’s A dairie booke for good huswives, printed in 1588, might also usefully be compared with Fitzherbert, perhaps particularly with the sections on how a wife should behave.125 Further comparative work on later editions of some of the husbandry treatises discussed in this chapter, such as The Boke of Kervynge, would also add to the assessment of reading here. The evidence explored in this case study provides a set of findings about reading experience based on detailed examination of one group of practical texts. All of these issues might usefully be pursued using other types of practical text and different versions of the texts discussed here. The first section of the chapter is concerned largely with detailed description and comparative analysis of specific manuscripts and early printed books. As I state in the introduction to the chapter, the rationale for the texts being examined begins from the contents of one manuscript housed in the National Library of Wales, Peniarth 394D, which contains two practical treatises, the Grosseteste and The Boke of Kervyng. In order to use this manuscript as evidence for the experience of reading these texts together, it is important to confirm that they did indeed exist together prior to modern rebinding. I do this using annotation evidence. I then proceed to explore how the annotation evidence shows some of the ways that readers have engaged with this text. I make particular reference to the importance of ‘non-meaningful’ annotation, suggesting that the sequence about ownership seems to stress the perceived value of this book to some sixteenth century readers and that the ‘non-meaningful’ annotations also demonstrate the significant role of ‘blank’ pages for readers to signal their involvement with a community. The inclusion here of rhyming ditties alongside the interest of several annotators in the poetry – like the list of carving terms in the Boke of Kervyng – seems to confirm sixteenth-century readers’ appreciation of such short quips and summaries. Annotations also indicate the provenance of the book, giving it a Welsh readership from the sixteenth century. The chapter proceeds with a set of comparative analyses. It begins with a comparison of the three surviving manuscripts containing the English Grosseteste husbandry treatise. Through this comparison it is possible to gain access to a prevailing attitude to that text as part of a broader discourse on agricultural and pastoral management. The examination of one scribe reader’s version of Grosseteste (the Trinity manuscript)

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 169

21/05/2012 10:15:10

170 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 provides particularly useful evidence (when juxtaposed with the other two manuscripts) for the reader’s perception of the importance of visual layout. This is signalled through the prioritisation of the layout of this text and the inclusion of a lengthy page of contents despite the difficulties presented by the lack of space in this book. The following two sets of analyses each compare a manuscript version of a practical text (using Peniarth 394D) with an early printed version. This is a particularly interesting comparison because the Peniarth manuscript is, in part at least, copied from printed text. The omissions made by the Peniarth scribe–reader indicate that he was making choices about the elements of the text that he wanted to copy. Some of the ‘mistakes’, or changes in terminology, made by this scribe also indicate that he was not slavishly copying the exempla. Yet, despite these creative freedoms, the scribe–reader’s maintenance of the layout and decorative features found in the printed exempla indicate a clear sense of the importance of the visual appearance of the text. This may be a decision based not only on the aesthetic of the text but also on an acknowledgement of the usefulness of certain features of the layout for reading, such as the clearly delineated headings. The comparison between Peniarth’s version of the Grosseteste treatise and the early printed version tends to confirm the suggestions about the scribe–reader’s perception that the layout of the text was very significant. This evidence is an important indication that the visual was understood, by readers, as a highly significant element of reading experience. The woodcuts found in both these early printed texts suggest a perception by the printer that this will improve the saleability of the text. The woodcut of the Grosseteste also particularly seems to invoke an idealised or imagined pastoral world, indicating a possible market for these texts made up of readers who were not actually engaged in the practical matters of husbandry. The second section of this chapter is concerned more with evidence that the contents of practical texts may provide for reading experience and practice, and it focuses particularly on the Grosseteste treatise and on Fitzherbert’s printed Book of Hudsbandry. The comparison of the contents of the two texts shows the extensions to Grosseteste made by Fitzherbert; often using other material found in separate manuscripts and early printed texts. These alterations and additions indicate a sixteenthcentury perception that readers might be interested in a more detailed and compendious collection of practical advice. Evidence for the intended audiences, using the preface to readers found in Fitzherbert’s treatise and also another treatise, James Bellot’s Book of Thrift, gives some useful

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 170

21/05/2012 10:15:10

Practical texts: husbandry and carving 171 evidence for the perception of these books as being valuable to the common person or the general public. Fitzherbert’s additional instructions about who should buy and read his treatise indicate that part of its intention or marketing strategy was that it should be an educational manual for the young husbandman or gentleman. Fitzherbert’s treatise also makes some interesting suggestions about the literacy of the people using his manual, implying that they may be able to read although not write, and his translation into English of frequently used Latin phrases suggests a market of readers whose Latin may be shaky. The inclusion by Fitzherbert of a very moral section in the second half of his treatise implies a readership beyond those interested in a ‘how to’ guide for agricultural issues. I suggest that Fitzherbert’s use of a proverbial style (employing Latin and English) signals this text’s subscription to an intentionally popular form of literature. This is something which Thomas Tusser’s later treatise, which I do not discuss at length here, expands upon. Fitzherbert’s inclusion of the moralising material, alongside the use of the popular proverbialising form, points to a reading experience which is associated with other types of literature, such as moral or devotional text. This may also be associated with a protestantising of attitudes to agriculture, although it should be noted that some of the specifically religious content (such as instructions for the wife to cross herself) seem to maintain a rather Catholic tone until the altered versions of the 1560s. Both the Fitzherbert and the early printed Grosseteste, then, signal a readership beyond those wishing to practise husbandry. The reference to an ideal world in Grosseteste’s woodcut seems to cater for a non-practising readership, which is different from the moralising tone found in Fitzherbert. Finally, Fitzherbert’s statements about his own qualifications for commentary on agricultural matters show an interesting perception that advice should be based on practical experience rather than theoretical knowledge. Through this set of worked examples, I have sought to demonstrate some ways in which the evidence of manuscript and printed book gives access to reading practice and experience. A recurring issue, here, is the perception of fifteenth- and sixteenth-century readers (through the evidence of scribe–readers) that the visual impact of the text was a crucial element in reading experience. This is an assumption that we might make in general. This chapter provides some clear material evidence for this assumption.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 171

21/05/2012 10:15:10

172 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 Notes 1 G. Keiser, ‘Practical books for the gentleman’, in L. Hellinga and J.B. Trapp (eds), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol 3: 1400–1557 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 470–94, pp. 471–2. For a detailed consideration of manuscripts connected with the Walter tradition, see, D. Oschinsky, Walter of Henley and Other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). 2 Keiser, ‘Practical books’, p. 472. 3 Keiser, ‘Practical books’, p. 472. The seminal work by Michael Clanchy is M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). 4 E. Allen, False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 27. 5 For a consideration of aspiration and emulation see chapter 1. 6 J. Nicholls, The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtesy Books and the Gawain-Poet (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1985), p. 15. 7 H.S. Bennett, English Books and Readers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), vol. 2, pp. 190–1. 8 On the inclusion of two separate treatises on trees (both based on Palladius) in husbandry manuals, See Bennett, English Books and Readers, vol. 1, pp. 111–13. 9 For a key work on annotation see W.H. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). 10 The term ‘aesthetics of the page’ is discussed in chapter 1. 11 NLW, Peniarth MS 394D. The treatise attributed to Grosseteste occupies pp. 11–32; the miscellaneous cookery recipes, pp. 41–90, and 119–20; the Anon, The Boke of Kervynge (probably copied from Wynkyn de Worde, 1513, STC 3290), pp. 93–118; the medical recipes, pp. 121–32. 12 NLW, Peniarth MS 394D. These items occupy pp. 1–10 and 33–9 respectively. 13 This information is taken from the Handlist of Medieval Manuscripts kept in the NLW Manuscript Room. 14 The annotations occur on pp. 11, 15–17, 23, 25, 46, 90, 93, 110, 114–16, 118. 15 On rhyming ownership annotations see Sherman, Used Books, p. 17. 16 NLW, Peniarth 394D, p. 23, 25. A few further practices of these names are found in the right-hand-side margin of this page. 17 NLW, Peniarth 394D, p. 90. See also, Sherman, Used Books, pp. 17–20. 18 NLW, Peniarth 394D, p. 90. 19 On evidence for extensive reading – that is, cross-referencing provided by annotation – see Sherman, Used Books, p. 18. His examplef is somewhat different as it refers to reading across different books.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 172

21/05/2012 10:15:10

Practical texts: husbandry and carving 173 20 NLW, Peniarth 394D, pp. 116 and 118. 21 See Sherman, Used Books, pp. 15, 17 for a similar use of the term ‘blank’ (i.e. pages with no official text that may become cluttered with annotations). 22 NLW, Peniarth 394D, p. 116. 23 NLW, Peniarth 394D, p. 116. 24 Sherman, Used Books, e.g. pp. 5–17, and on rhyming religious annotations see pp. 80–3; see also my examples in chapter 2. 25 NLW, Peniarth 394D, p. 118. 26 NLW, Peniarth 394D, p. 118. 27 Asking the question of whether or not such annotations should be counted as useful, see Sherman, Used Books, pp. 15, 23. 28 Also investigating annotation evidence in an essay published after this chapter was written is J. Scott Warren, ‘Reading graffiti in the Early Modern book’, Huntington Library Quarterly 73/3 (2010), pp. 363–81, p. 369 showing a similarly festooned page; p. 379 on the role of annotations in everyday ‘sociability’. 29 NLW, Peniarth 394D, p. 17. 30 NLW, Peniarth 394D, chapter 13. Thanks to Dr Damian Walford-Davies for helping with this saying. 31 E. Lamond (ed.), Walter of Henley’s Husbandry Together with an Anonymous Husbandry, Seneschaucie and Robert Grossetestes’s Rules (London, New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1890), p. 2. 32 Oschinsky, Walter, p. 37. 33 BL, MS Sloane 686, fols 1–18v. 34 NLW, MS Peniarth 394D, p. 30. 35 BL, MS Sloane 686, fols 19r–40v (ends half way down the page). 36 BL, MS Sloane 686, fols 41r–48v (ends about two-thirds down the page). 37 BL, MS Sloane 686, fols 49r–76v. 38 BL, MS Sloane 686, flyleaf, fol. 77v. 39 BL, MS Sloane 686, fol. 1v (faites should be ‘sorts’ but sic ‘faite’). 40 See Oschinsky, Walter, pp. 37, 50. 41 Oschinsky, Walter, p. 37. 42 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fols 173r–175r. 43 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, a short section running up until the end of fol. 177r. 44 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fols 176v and 177r. 45 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 192v (during chapter 11). 46 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 193v. 47 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 177r. 48 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 188v. 49 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, this is half way down fol. 188v. 50 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 193v. 51 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 177r. 52 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 178r.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 173

21/05/2012 10:15:10

174

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

53 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 177v. 54 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 178r. 55 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 178v and 179r. 56 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 179v until half way down fol. 188v. 57 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 193v. 58 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, e.g. fol. 202r. On the first third of the page, there is a very neat hand which writes a summary of manorial accounts in Latin. The remaining two-thirds of this page is taken up with the same recipe hand with two recipes for curing ‘collicke’. Fols 204r to 205v look as though they have some text on from a different occasion, and this looks like various summaries of account and administrative details concerning various counties in England. 59 Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13, fol. 213r. On the inclusion of two separate treatises on trees (both based on Palladius) in husbandry manuals, See Bennett, English Books and Readers, vol. 1, pp. 111–13. 60 Keiser, ‘Practical books’, pp. 470–1. 61 These are: British Library C 123.i 23 (1533, STC 10994); 969.a.32 (1552, 109997); 969.a.51 (1556, STC 11000); C.27 a 23 (1568, STC 11003). BL, 969.a.51 is mentioned in Keiser, ‘Practical books’, p. 493. I did not test the fit of these British Library volumes into a pocket. 62 This is NLW, Peniarth 394D and Anon., The Boke of Kervynge (Wynkyn de Worde, 1513), STC 3290. 63 NLW, Peniarth 394D has crossed out ‘here the svic fro mydsom to myshelmas’. 64 NLW, Peniarth 394D, p. 101. Crossed out under here is ‘mychellmase unto christemase’. 65 Wynkyn, Boke of Kervynge, sig B i r. 66 NLW, Peniarth 394D, p. 108; Wynkyn, Boke of Kervynge, sig B ii v. 67 Wynkyn, Boke of Kervynge, sig B v v ff. 68 NLW, Peniarth MS 394D, p. 107. 69 NLW, Peniarth MS 394D, p. 107. 70 This woodcut is also described in M.W. Driver, The Image in Print: Book Production in Late Medieval England and its Sources (London: British Library, 2004), pp. 100–1. 71 Driver, Image in Print, p. 82. 72 Driver, Image in Print, p. 106 (citing Walter Ong). 73 See B. Cormack and C. Mazzio (eds), Book Use, Book Theory, 1500–1700 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Library, 2005), pp. 79–93 on a range of ‘how to’ books and the related discussion of the connections between experience and experiment in these texts (most of which are drawn from later than 1560 in this instance). 74 See Oschinsky, Walter, p. 142 for the suggestion that the preservation of the practical information in the earlier translations implies the use of

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 174

21/05/2012 10:15:10

Practical texts: husbandry and carving 175 the texts for practical purposes, in contrast to the interests of the later sixteenth-century copiers such as Lambard whose interest, she suggests, was antiquarian rather than practical. 75 Oschinsky, Walter, pp. 142–3. 76 Oschinsky, Walter, p. 144. 77 I hope to make a study of these changes in a subsequent publication. 78 Oschinsky, Walter, p. 143. 79 These are found in the copy produced by Pynson in 1532, STC 10994 and the copy produced by Trevereys in 1530, STC 10995. 80 See Keiser, ‘Practical books’, pp. 471, 489. 81 But see Oschinsky, Walter, p. 142, where chapter 17 is viewed as an addition. 82 This is also discussed in Keiser, ‘Practical books’, pp. 472–4. 83 J. Fitzherbert, Here begynneth a newe tracte or treatyse moost profytable for all husbandmen and very frutefull for all other persons to rede (Imprinted at London: In fletestrete by Rycharde Pynson printer vnto the kynges noble grace. With priuilege to hym graunted by our sayd souerayne lorde the kynge, [1523?]) STC 10994, sig M ii v is where the page of contents refers to the sections on fols 6–7 of the treatise. 84 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 20r (modernised spelling). 85 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fols 65r–66v. 86 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 24r; see Lamond, Walter of Henley’s Husbandry, p. 57 for chapter 13 of the Grosseteste treatise. Wynkyn, Book of Husbandry (Grosseteste), STC 25007, sig B 2 v. 87 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fols 24r–25r. 88 See, for example, Anon., The crafte of graffynge & plantynge of trees (Wynkyn de Worde, 1518), STC 5953; also see Wynkyn’s version of Walter of Henley’s treatise, STC 25007 which also has a chapter entitled ‘Planting of Trees and of Vines’. 89 NLW, MS Brogyntyn 2.1 is discussed more fully in chapter 5. 90 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC10994, fol. 22r. 91 Anon., Here Begynneth the Proprytees and Medycynes for Hors, STC 204393, sig B vi r. 92 Anon., Proprytees and Medycynes for Hors, Sig A vii r (chapter xxi). 93 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC10994, fol. 44r. 94 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 44v. 95 James Bellot, The Booke of Thrift, containing a perfite order, and right method for profite land, and othe things belonging to Husbandry (London: John Wolfe, 1589), A2v–3r (STC 25007.3). 96 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 44v. 97 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 46v; Keiser, ‘Practical books’, p. 494. 98 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 46v.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 175

21/05/2012 10:15:10

176

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

99 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fols 46r–47v. 100 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fols 46v–47r. 101 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 47r. 102 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10999, fol. 65r. 103 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fols 47v–50v. 104 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 48r. 105 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 48v. 106 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fols 48v–50v. 107 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 50r. 108 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 50v. 109 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 50v. 110 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fols 50v–53r. 111 In Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, this subject occupies fols 71v–74r (spellings modernised). 112 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 46v. 113 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 11000, BL 969.a.51. 114 BL, 969.a.51, fol. xir. This is mentioned in Keiser, ‘Practical books’, p. 493. 115 BL 969.a.51, fol. xlixr. 116 BL 969.a.51, fol. xixv. 117 BL 969.a.,51, fol. xxr. 118 BL 969.a.51, fol. xxr. 119 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fols 50v–51r. 120 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 51r. 121 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 51r. 122 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 51r (modernised spelling). 123 Fitzherbert, newe tracte … for … husbandsmen, STC 10994, fol. 63v. 124 Bennett, English Books and Readers, vol. 2, p. 191. 125 B.  Dowe, A dairie booke for good huswives (STC 23703). See L.  Hunter, ‘Books for daily life: Household, husbandry, behaviour’, in M. Bell, J. Barnard and D.F. McKenzie (eds), The Cambridge History of the Book, vol. 4: 1557–1695 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 514–32, pp. 520–1.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 176

21/05/2012 10:15:10

5

Fictional literature: Gawain in a Middle English miscellany  1

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

Fictional literature: Gawain

The purpose of this chapter is to examine the nature of some popular fictional literature with the intention of understanding more about reading experience. There is a lot of popular fiction to choose from.2 In order to provide a focus for the chapter, I am taking the set of surviving stories centred on one of the knights of King Arthur’s round table: Gawain. I use the surviving Gawain stories to address a set of issues concerning the evidence they provide for reading experience and how it can be used. Many of the issues addressed may be applied to a wide range of popular fictions. In the first part of the chapter I describe the Gawain stories and assess some general points concerning the various versions, their similarities and differences. I then consider the matter of their popularity, and some important issues about the relationships between a popular story and its form, with specific reference to ideas of orality and literacy. In the second part, I present a manuscript case study which addresses specific issues of how the evidence for reading practice and experience may be elucidated for one version of the story. The Gawain stories The most famous Gawain story today is the late fourteenth-century alliterative poem in a northern dialect Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. This has recently been brought again to popular attention by the modernised version produced by the poet Simon Armitage.3 The production of this modern version confirms a sustained interest in Gawain even in the twenty-first century, and it seems to have encouraged renewed interest in other already existing reworkings, translations, and alternative modes of producing this story.4 Indeed, the surge of interest in Gawain will probably increase the popular perception that ‘Gawain’ means Gawain and the Green Knight. However, this Gawain is just one version

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 177

21/05/2012 10:15:10

178 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 of the story amongst a set of other stories all of which take the eponymous hero as their central topic. And these other stories, too, have attracted some modern reworking and modernisation.5 I will not consider Gawain and the Green Knight in detail in this chapter as it is probably the only Gawain story for which the attribution of ‘popular’ is problematic for the period c. 1400–1600.6 Indeed, it has been suggested that this most ‘subtle, learned and enjoyable’ story did not exercise any significant influence over the majority of the other surviving Gawain stories, which may be defined more easily as popular literature.7 Gawain stories survive from the period roughly 1400–1650 in three different forms: within medieval manuscripts, in early printed books, and in one book of seventeenth-century copies of what might be assumed to be medieval texts. The stories which survive are: Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle, The Carle of Carlisle, The Wedding of Gawain, Dame Ragnelle and The Marriage of Sir Gawain, The Avowyng of Arthur, The Awntyrs of Arthur, The Knightly Tale of Gologras and Gawain, The Greene Knight, The Turke and Sir Gawain, The Jeaste of Sir Gawain, King Arthur and King Cornwall.8 They survive in various numbers of versions which are in various forms. The two Carle stories, for example, survive in one version each: Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle in a fifteenth-century miscellany and Carle of Carlisle in the seventeenth-century compilation known as the Percy Folio Manuscript.9 The two wedding stories survive in one version each, Ragnelle being in an early sixteenth-century manuscript compilation and Marriage being in the same seventeenth-century compilation as Carle. Avowyng exists in only one version of the mid- to late fifteenth century; Awntyrs exists in four distinct versions, each of which is fifteenth century. Gologras and Gawain exists in one printed version, dated 1508. The Green Knight, The Turke and Cornwall all exist in the same seventeenth-century compilation mentioned above. Jeaste exists in one sixteenth-century manuscript (dated 1564), which is a compilation of romances probably copied from printed texts, as a whole printed text (dated 1528) and finally as a fragment of a printed text. The manuscript case study in the second half of this chapter is based on The Carle of Carlisle which is found in a Middle English miscellany housed in the National Library of Wales.10 Characteristics of the Gawain stories It is useful to provide some background to the group of Gawain stories as a whole before considering their popularity in more detail. In his very useful introduction to the TEAMS edition of this collection of stories, Thomas Hahn explains that there is a unity to the Gawain group because

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 178

21/05/2012 10:15:10

Fictional literature: Gawain 179 of their shared interest in: ‘chivalry, Arthurian legend, prowess in combat, personal love, intrigue, encounters with the marvellous, and the decisive resolution of every real or potential conflict’. He summarises the general qualities of these stories and their general applicability to the medieval audience, seductively, as follows: The narratives unfold through traditional plots and reiterated motifs, glorify a popular hero whom everyone knew, and eventuate in happy endings which bring the characters within the story to terms with one another, and which reconcile the audience outside the story to the structures and ideals epitomized by a ‘chivalric’ (or hierarchically ordered) society.11

The group of stories does indeed revolve around the hero, Gawain. They involve him in adventures in his role as a knight at the round table of King Arthur. Ragnelle, for example, is about a quest which involves answering the riddle question ‘What do women want most?’ and the ‘loathly lady’ who knows the answer and whom Gawain has to marry to fulfil various conditions. This is a plot type found in other stories such as ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales. Jeaste also centres on women’s role in the power dynamics of our chivalric male heroes but in a different way. Here it is just one unnamed woman who provides the reason for the story, which consists of a set of battles between Gawain and her male relatives on account of the fact that he has stolen her from them. Jeaste is separate from the other Gawain stories in that it is not set in the landscape of the north west of England (the Carlisle area) as the others are. Awntyrs has a two-part structure with the first part involving the ghostly apparition of Guinevere’s mother to Guinevere and Gawain. The ghost blames her terrible state on her fleshly sins while she was alive. This takes a popular medieval trope seen in other stories such as the Trentall of St Gregory.12 The second half of the tale is concerned with a scene of chivalric fighting between Gawain and an intruder, which forms a standard episode in most Gawain stories. Turke and Gologras are each, in different ways, about the intrusion of an outsider into the court of King Arthur and a set of tests and bargains which follow this. Carle is also about intrusion in some ways and about bargaining too. It is concerned with the need of the hunting party consisting of Gawain, Kay and Baldwin for hospitality when they are in the region of Carlisle. There are more details of this story in the case study of Brogyntyn MS 2.1, below. Whilst the Gawain stories have a unity, then, they also have very different tones and address different issues of entertainment, moral didacticism, spirituality and politics. Awntyrs, for example, has an intense

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 179

21/05/2012 10:15:10

180 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 spirituality which pulls together and also sets up disunity between what for some critics seem like two halves of its ‘dyptych’ structure. A different emphasis in Ragnelle is explored in Julia Boffey and Carol Meale’s detailed discussion of the early sixteenth-century manuscript in which the earlier version of this story is placed. Here, they identify the theme of ‘love and the status of women’ as being particularly significant in the Ragnelle story as it appears in the manuscript alongside Dido from Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women and Sir Landevale. These form two of the other five texts accompanying Ragnelle in the third booklet of that manuscript.13 The issue of popularity The stories that are considered in this chapter, then, are the ‘popular’ versions. As in any situation, how the term popular is defined is at best fascinating and at worst deeply problematic.14 The popularity of chivalric romance stories amongst those medieval and early modern people who were not involved with the trappings of gentry or aristocratic knightly life presents some interesting issues concerning the connections between readers’ imaginative worlds and their real world, as well as the business of aspiration or emulation and how this works.15 However, in relation to chivalric tales such as the Gawain stories, there are some particular points to raise. The manuscript evidence for numbers of the surviving chivalric romances including the Gawain stories described by Hahn as ‘in no way deluxe, but at best serviceable, and sometimes downright shabby’, points to a production intended not for the consumption of the great households but for the more ordinary, sometimes the reasonably wealthy merchant household but also those below that level of status and wealth.16 The existence of multiple versions of some texts (such as Awntyrs) from the fifteenth century and other manuscript versions from the sixteenth century as well as the late copies in the seventeenth century Percy Folio help to confirm a reasonably broad circulation.17 It should be noted, however, that this survival evidence for Gawain and for any individual romance texts is modest compared to some other kinds of text. Many hundreds of manuscripts containing devotional works including lyrics, prayers and practical books for services survive, for example, and the many manuscripts of the travel and fictive work Mandeville’s Travels in its various European languages puts into perspective the survival of romance texts and the conclusions which might be drawn about popularity from manuscript survival.18 There is, nevertheless, material evidence to suggest

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 180

21/05/2012 10:15:10

Fictional literature: Gawain

181

that early romance prints were treated as a popular read: H.S. Bennett commented on the survival of a ‘leaf or two’ or ‘a few tattered pages’ of a number of these texts on account of the rough treatment they received from their ‘enthusiastic readers’.19 And, albeit a scattered and sometimes fragmentary collection of evidence, romance as a genre does provide important access to popular reading.20 The survival of printed copies always helps to provide evidence for the continued popularity of medieval texts across that threshold of manuscript to print, and there are certainly plenty of early prints of stories which come under the heading of ‘romance’ or ‘chivalric tale’.21 Many of these seem to be in prose rather than verse, like Caxton’s Le Morte Darthur, printed 1485. The preface to this text provides some clues about this businessman’s perception of the market for the stories associated with the court of King Arthur although, as with any preface to a reader, this kind of rhetoric should not be taken at face value.22 Caxton states that ‘many noble and dyvers gentylmen of thys royame of Englond camen and demaunded me many and oftymes wherfore that I have not do made and enprynte the noble hystorye of the Saynt Greal and of the moost renomed Crysten kyng … Kyng Arthur’.23 Bennett remarked on the significant market in romance literature for Caxton and Wynkyn de Worde during the very early period of English printing in the very late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries and noted the later reprints of some of these texts by W. Copland between 1548 and 1557.24 By the mid-sixteenth century, romances such as Sir Eglamour or Robert the Devil were retailing, according to Oxford bookseller John Dorne’s accounts, at around 3d. Other books which might be more akin in length and style to the Gawain stories, such as a rhyming version of Robin Hood, might cost less, being priced in this account at 2d.25 The copyists of the Percy Folio manuscript and the Douce manuscript of Jeaste, who might both justifiably be described as post-medieval, must have found something in the Gawain stories which was of lasting interest. The seventeenth-century versions are probably more aptly considered to provide evidence for some sort of antiquarian interest in this subject. For the Percy scribe, Gillian Rogers suggests ‘an addict of popular sensational literature’.26 But for the Douce copyist and illustrator, there seems to be a level of enthusiasm about the story which confirms his interest in it as a reader of entertainment, possibly with the intention of passing this on to his children.27 Medieval printed romance, it seems, maintained a significant degree of popularity into the second half of the sixteenth century, and beyond.28

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 181

21/05/2012 10:15:10

182 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 When considering popular literature and its readers there does seem, on the surface at least, to be an uneasy disjunction between the courtly and aristocratic themes of romance literature and the mundane happenings in the life of the reader.29 This might lead to uncertainty about whether literatures set in courtly or chivalric environments could ever be popular. However, as Carol Meale astutely pointed out, the interest of merchants in collecting and reading romances ‘does not imply a simple form of literary and social aspiration, whereby they wished to emulate the tastes of those in a different position within the social hierarchy’.30 In the light of current approaches to the dynamics of production and consumption which give readers more space to find their own meanings from within a text, rather than be dominated by one meaning intended at the point of production, there seems to be potential for chivalric romances to be understood as texts which do not enforce the hierarchical domination of the aristocracy or gentry.31 This is perhaps particularly possible given that the stories emphasise the ‘absurdities, inequalities, and contradictions of a feudal order or chivalric ideals’.32 It might be that the hyperbolic and fantastical nature of these stories, as well as the inherent criticisms of chivalry which many plots contain, actually open up a ready space for more subversive readings which might enable readers below the traditionally chivalric levels of society to gain a greater sense of their own position or identity.33 Certainly, critical views about romance and other kinds of popular literature, such as those expressed by Abraham Holland in the early seventeenth century, seem to point to some kind of fear about the power of this kind of literature and its effects on the masses.34 References to collective reading and performance are often important in these stories and it has been suggested that these references may relate to an actual situation of oral performance and that there may be interesting interactions between written text and orally produced stories.35 Some current scholarship understands the tropes of oral delivery (such as the ‘Listen to me’ openings) found in numerous popular romances as potentially sophisticated manipulations of generic conventions, for entertainment or the eliciting of pleasure from the audience.36 However, the ‘popular or at least non-literary’ character of the Gawain romances is also sometimes viewed more negatively in comparison with the webs of literary allusion a writer such as Chaucer weaves into his narratives with the expectation that his readers will be able to follow them.37 This attitude to the nature of popular literature and its connection with literariness is linked with a particular idea of the relationships between the oral and the literate which harks back to an unfortunately progressive model: oral

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 182

21/05/2012 10:15:10

Fictional literature: Gawain 183 is simple; literate is more sophisticated.38 This view persists despite recent debates about popular romance which tend to refute such a duality as an over-simplification.39 Discussions of the popularity of the Gawain stories often emphasise their connections with oral performance. The shorter versions of the Gawain story are often described as texts which were made popular as stories for listeners in contrast to the ‘more sophisticated and literary’ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.40 Hahn imagines these more oral versions being performed in ‘boisterous’ recitations by performance artists who knew how to play the audience with their gestures, voices, and melodramatic telling. The metre of the surviving popular Gawain texts is often understood directly to relate to a single situation of textual reception.41 Even within this general emphasis on orality and listening in the definition of the popular, some of the stories are considered to be less oral than others in terms of their form, structure and metre. Awntyrs and Gologras, for example, tend to be described as much more literary and showing a subtlety of writerly intent which makes them ‘self conscious’ works of ‘artifice’ that ‘push traditional, oral poetic traits to the point of hyper-development’.42 According to A.C. Spearing, the uneasily fitting double ‘dialogic’ structure of the Awntyrs produces no single moral meaning but rather a place for readers to construct their own moral from a set of choices.43 Awntyrs starts to seem more visual than oral or literate in these terms, but the implication is that it is relatively sophisticated in terms of its literary structure. The extent of the orality in the various Gawain stories is an important element in the evidence for how they may have been read in general, although it seems too easy to draw conclusions which categorise literature as being either oral or literate in origins. Awntyrs has been described as occupying a very interesting position between oral and literate, native and Latin, for example, and Hahn suggests that this ‘poem’s sources, its subtlety of structure and thought, and the complexity of its verse forms make it almost certain that Awntyrs was a written, rather than an oral, composition’.44 The tendency towards seeing a separation between oral and literate forms of composition should not be confused with any such separations with regard to reading: Hahn proposes that the literate and oral influences co-exist within Awntyrs in a ‘transitional phase’. However, these issues of composition must be distinguished from matters of reading, otherwise there is a danger of overlooking the complex process of medieval (silent) reading which involved extensive ‘oralisation’.45 Similarly, I think it is a mistake to equate the directness of a rhyming

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 183

21/05/2012 10:15:10

184 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 scheme in a ballad version such as Ragnelle, Turke or Jeaste as particularly related to oral delivery, even if they seem to lend themselves (or derive from) versions used and intended for oral performance.46 Because of their tail rhyme form, both Turke and Jeaste are viewed as being for oral recitation. Turke has been described, for example, as being ‘not simply intelligible but boisterously engaging’.47 There seems to be a temptation, then, for recent scholars to imply a connection between the popular often apparently oral metre and the (poor) quality of the work. Ragnelle’s form has also come in for some fairly cutting comments about its quality as a piece of literature: in her careful analysis of the Percy manuscript, for example, Gillian Rogers describes the earlier version of the Ragnelle story as an ‘endearingly amateurish six-line tail-rhyme version’.48 Writerly sophistication is also sometimes used to form contrasts between the simple text intended for oral delivery and the polished works intended more particularly for reading or for a more experienced audience: Ragnelle’s version of the ‘What do women most desire’ trope is sometimes contrasted with the more polished literary renditions of Chaucer and Gower, for example, by drawing attention to the quality of the manipulation of the genre by some writers and the simple popularity of retaining tropes from folklore in other versions.49 Ralph Hanna begins his consideration of Awntyrs with claims for its superiority over Carle (the Brogyntyn version) and other romances on account of its writerly sophistication.50 The verbal density of the work of the Gawain-poet responsible for Gawain and the alliterative Green Knight is celebrated in a way which would contrast it to the more doggerelised renditions discussed in this chapter.51 It is not just the apparently oral metre which is considered the key to the popularity of these stories but also their style of description as well as their use of repetition. Hahn writes: the relentless emphasis on surface description of clothing, accessories, armor, weapons, and other details demonstrate the public and social nature of these poems’ reception. Just as the words of these tales try to present a vivid picture to listeners who can’t review the text, so the words in the tales emphasize the importance of seeing and being seen; the array of synonyms for face, look, demeanor, appearance (which cannot be matched in the modern English glosses) helps convey the importance of direct contact and public self- presentation in the honor/shame culture of knighthood that the romances purport to describe.52

This way of understanding the Gawain texts affirms a sense of the connected spheres of the surface description and clarity of sign and symbol in the literature with an equally clear set of meanings in the public

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 184

21/05/2012 10:15:10

Fictional literature: Gawain 185 rituals of behaviour which make up the community of listeners. Again regarding Awntyrs, Hahn has this sense with: The decorated qualities of Awntyrs ask to be understood as a cultural event for listeners and readers already stocked with phrases and themes. In its place between literate and oral traditions, its surface is its substance, and performance – whether religious ritual, chivalric courtesy and prowess, or poetic composition – is a crucial part of its meaning.53

Distinct from this sense of the oral public performance, I wish to explore the popular experience of these literatures as written texts. The orality of the stories cannot be denied and indeed it is surely appropriate to make connections between the oral form with its repetitions, expectations, and rituals and their popularity.54 It is necessary, however, to unpack what is meant by ‘ritual’ (as in the ‘clear set of meanings in the public rituals of behaviour which make up the community of listeners’ quoted above) in order to proceed with understanding the nature of the reading experience of these texts. The neat notion of the relationships between ritual and the public sphere of listening or reading seems to me to make a conflation between the rhetoric of tidy endings and clear signs characteristic of the chivalric fiction on the one hand and the more muddy business of the reception process of the listener on the other. Whether or not the meanings and rituals within the romances are all neat and tidy (and some, as in Awntyrs, are less tidy than others), it is necessary to realise that the experience of making meaning from these tidy stories is not necessarily neat and straightforward. I would suggest that there is no such thing as clear sets of meaning in these ‘public rituals of behaviour’. This means there is no such thing as a clear set of responses by the ‘community of listeners’. This is because of the complex business of reception. By this I mean the intertextual processes which are involved with reception such as the reader’s engagement with the muddy world of symbolic meanings in his or her everyday life and his or her own practice of reading and making meaning. I discuss this matter of the tangled states involved with making meaning and its connections with the activity of repeated readings in Chapter 1, and it also occurs again in Chapter 3 in relation to moral reading. Textuality in popular Gawain stories Another element in understanding the literate experience of reading one of the Gawain stories involves considering the extent to which they belong within a literate sphere more generally. The Gawain stories may

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 185

21/05/2012 10:15:10

186 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 lack the sort of textual cross- referencing of Chaucerian stories although recent research indicates that the authors of some Gawain stories, such as Ragnelle, may have self-consciously engaged in intertextual referencing to other Gawain and romance traditions.55 However, Gawain stories also have other ways of drawing on textuality both at the level of plot and at the different level of intertextual reference. In terms of plot, Ragnelle provides a good example with its incorporation of textual matters directly into its framework: Arthur and Gawain each use a notebook as they each go off on the quest set by the knight who challenged Arthur to find what women most want: ‘And evere wheras ye mete owther man or woman, in faye, Ask of theym whate thay therto saye, And I shalle also ryde anoder waye And enquere of every man and woman and gett whatt I may Of every man and womans answere; And in a boke I shalle theym wryte.’ ‘I graunt’, sayd the Kyng as tyte; ‘Ytt is welle advysed, Gawen the good, Evyn by the Holy Rood.’ [ll. 185–93] Syr Gawen had goten answerys so many That had made a boke greatt, wytterly. To the courte he cam agayn. By that was the Kyng comyn with hys boke, And eyther on others pamplett dyd loke. [207–11]

This is quite a nice play on the textuality of Chaucer’s version of the story in ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’. For Chaucer, it is the Wife’s prologue which provides the immense range of textual references and then the ‘loathly lady’ story really plays out the issues of power, written authorities and subversion which the Wife’s prologue presents.56 The role of textuality is quite different in Ragnelle, taking as it does an odd place in the unfolding of the plot: despite being jammed full of answers, the books which the two figures use to write down their ideas are, in the end, useless: The Kyng pullyd oute bokes twayne: ‘Syr, ther is myne answer, I dare sayn; For somme wolle help att nede.’ Syr Gromer lokyd on theym everychon: ‘Nay, nay, Sir Kyng, thou artt butt a dead man; Therfor nowe shalt thou blede.’ [ll. 449–54]57

It is in fact the (oral) report of the loathly lady to Arthur at the very last minute before he has to return to the dangerous knight, Sir Gromer,

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 186

21/05/2012 10:15:10

Fictional literature: Gawain 187 which provides him with the answer. Indeed, as with Chaucer’s version, this enables the crucial element in the plot: the loathly lady’s bargain of the knight’s hand in marriage in return for her valuable information. I suggested that these stories are also quite literate in their ‘intertextual referencing’. This is the case in a number of different ways but, basically, I refer here to the extent to which being textual in other spheres of life might impact on a medieval reader’s experience of a Gawain story. In Awntyrs, for example, the intensity of the religious impact on the reader is enhanced by the use of language which directly parallels many affective devotional lyrics that were circulating during the period. A good example of this is found in the dialogue between the ghost (Guinevere’s mother) and Guinevere. When Guinevere promises to offer masses to ease the plight of her ghost mother, she also wants to know what has caused her torment. The ghost informs Guinevere that the cause was pride (which includes, by implication, worldly things as well as sexual acts). The language used by the ghost in her reply and by Guinevere displays all the intensity of affective lyrics from the period.58 The following stanza serves to show this, with the ghost opening the dialogue and Guinevere following: ‘To blisse bring the[e] the Barne that bought the[e]on Rode That was crucifiged on Croys and crowned with thorne. As thou was cristened and crisomed with candel and code, Folowed in fontestone on frely byforne – Mary the mighti, myldest of mode, Of whom the blisful barne in Bedlem was borne, Lene me grace that I may grete the with gode And mynge the with matens and Masses on morne.’ ‘To mende us with Masses, grete myster hit were. For Him that rest on the Rode, Gyf fast of thi goode To folke that failen the fode While thou art here.’ [ll. 222–34]59

The following stanzas from one of the devotional lyrics in the same Lincoln manuscript which contains a version of Awntyrs, for example, have some similar elements, and a similar tone of plaint: Swete Jhesu that for me was borne. Thou here my prayers loude and stille ffor paynes that me ere laide beforne fful ofte I syghe and wepis my fylle, ffull ofte haf I bene forswourne

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 187

21/05/2012 10:15:10

188 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 When I hafe wroghte agaynes thi will Thou late me never be forlorne. [ll. 21–8] I pray the Lady meke and mylde that thou pray for my misdede ffor the luffe of that ilke childe that thou saghe one the rude blede. Evire and ay haf I bene wylde, My synfull saule es ever in drede, Mercy lade meke and mylde Thou helpe me ever at all my nede. [ll. 37–44]60

Readers’ experiences of these lyrics may well have been predominantly through orality (through saying the words in prayer, for example) but nevertheless lyric was often transmitted through text. Indeed, the space in which the lyric and other affective devotions sit, at the interface between reading and speaking, emphasises the point about the immense intersection between the oral and the literate, and it is interesting that this Gawain story identifies itself with this popular textual tradition.61 Manuscript case studies The following case study explores ways that reading experience might be uncovered by using particular facets of manuscript evidence. It explores the manuscript context of Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle in the small ‘Middle English miscellany’ housed in the National Library of Wales, known as Brogyntyn 2.1 (or Porkington 10) (see plate 4).62 Firstly, working from a published codicological discussion of the manuscript and its scribes I explore how this informs an analysis of the reading experience of using this book. Secondly, I propose some themes and patterns which appear to shape the book and therefore the manuscript context of Carle. This case study certainly does not exhaust the possibilities for analysing evidence for reading practices in the Gawain group.63 One other very interesting case study, for example, results from examining the texts of Jeaste: there is a manuscript copy (1564) and a printed text (1528) of Jeaste.64 The manuscript copy is illustrated possibly as part of a version made for young readers. Examination of how the illustrations construct their pictorial narratives, the context of the Gawain story amongst the other texts in this manuscript, and the comparison between this story and the (earlier) printed version all provide very useful evidence for understanding more about reading practice and experience through comparative analysis.65 A further possible case study involves a study

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 188

21/05/2012 10:15:10

Fictional literature: Gawain 189 of Awntyrs with particular reference to its use of popular religious language and motifs which also occur in other stories such as the tale of St Gregory’s mother.66 The story itself has a spiritual message, doled out by the ghostly apparition of Guinevere’s mother, which concerns the vanity of worldly goods and the need to perform alms deeds during life.67 Individual characters also use some very interesting language, which has a strong resonance with the popular culture of affective devotion. Both of these issues would have an impact on readers through the familiarity of the religious language and its intense significance, calling on them to examine their own moral standing in matters of worldly goods, vanity, and alms deeds.68 This religious emphasis may be understood more fully in connection with the manuscript context of at least one version, the Lincoln Cathedral manuscript (Thornton miscellany), which contains a number of short devotional lyrics and longer religious pieces such as saints’ lives. An example of one such lyric is given above (on pages 187–8). A case study of The Carle of Carlisle in Brogyntyn 2.1 The diminutive Middle English ‘miscellany’ catalogued as Brogyntyn 2.1 (and still often known as Porkington 10) is housed in the National Library of Wales and contains the single surviving version of Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle.69 Carle, which has been described as one of the ‘distinctly popular’ romances, is written in tail rhyme (with some irregularities) and is about the small hunting party of Gawain, Baldwin and Kay who have set out from the court of King Arthur located in Cardiff, finding themselves in Carlisle and in need of hospitality.70 Their host, the Carle of Carlisle, puts the party through a set of tests. ‘Carl’ is a word generally used pejoratively to refer to someone of lower status (like ‘churl’, a vulgar word for peasant) or someone of rough behaviour. The story therefore immediately sets up tensions between the courtliness and chivalric prowess of the Gawain party, and the potential vulgarity of the Carle’s household and behaviour. The tests mirror some of the elements found in Gawain and the Green Knight and other Gawain stories such as Ragnelle particularly with reference to Gawain being tested by the lady (ladies) of the household: there is a ‘bed temptation’ scene where Gawain must restrain himself from advancing on the Carle’s naked wife. The hunting party scrape through the tests with Gawain doing particularly well. The tests are all important not only for the party to prove their chivalric prowess but also for the release of the Carle from his long-standing practice of having to kill any guests. Once the spell is broken, it is clear that the Carle is in fact a

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 189

21/05/2012 10:15:10

190 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 true and courteous knight and his own household ultimately mirrors the courtliness and nobility of Arthur’s (rather as the household of Bertilak in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight functions as a mirror image of Arthur’s court). Gawain is married to the daughter of the Carle, which helps to prove the nobility of the Carle’s household. In the other surviving version of the story (found in the later Percy Folio manuscript), there is a dramatic episode near the end of the story in which the Carle requests that Gawain chops off his head in order to release the host from a spell. This scenario has been dubbed ‘disenchantment by decapitation’ and occurs also in a slightly different guise in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight.71 This dramatic part of the bargaining is missing from the version of Carle in the Brogyntyn manuscript in favour of what seems on the surface the much milder promise by the Carle not to continue in his ways.72 This difference is interesting in relation to the manuscript context of the Brogyntyn Carle, as I hope to demonstrate below. Codicology and the evidence for reading Reader annotations indicate that Brogyntyn 2.1 was owned in Wales from the sixteenth century and read by various individuals during this time.73 References to the court of Arthur at Cardiff in Carle might have had particular appeal, then, for these readers. In his detailed discussion of the codicology and scribes of this little book, Daniel Huws notes that there had already, by 1996, been five lists of contents printed for the manuscript dating from 1837 and that he therefore saw no reason to repeat this exercise. Items from the book also have a long history of extraction, being found in various of those very valuable nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collections.74 Huws also provides a very useful ‘simplified list’ in his table ‘Collation, contents and scribes’.75 The purpose of Huws’ list is not so much to show the contents of the manuscript but to present findings about the various scribes who were involved in its production. It nevertheless very usefully displays the range of texts included in the manuscript. Discounting quire 1, as there is significant evidence to assume this was separate until a later rebinding, the range of texts might be described as a classic middle English miscellany including chivalric romance (Carle), practical texts (The Grafting of Trees, The Craft of Lymnynge), medical texts, short stories (The Friar and the Boy), religious texts including saints’ lives, devotional lyrics (Ave regina caelorum) and carols (‘By a chapel as I came’).76 In his discussion of the makeup of the book and the sixteen scribal hands, Huws makes a convincing case for the role of two scribes as this

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 190

21/05/2012 10:15:11

Fictional literature: Gawain

191

miscellany’s ‘architects’,77 particularly one of these, named ‘Scribe O’, who ‘was evidently the organizer and tidier-up’.78 The purpose of his essay is to explore those codicological issues and not, as he clearly states, to comment on the texts, or indeed therefore to analyse the ways this manuscript may have been experienced by a medieval reader.79 My purpose here, then, is to assess how and in what ways this sort of detailed codicological assessment of such a book might help with an understanding of reading experience. A codicological analysis is a very valuable first step in beginning to understand which bits of a manuscript ever existed as a book for the medieval reader. However, for analysing reading experience, there are some different priorities. For example, useful issues to examine for the analysis of reading experience are: which texts were chosen to belong together and why, and what was the impact of this on the reader’s experience of using the book? Any texts or sections added later should not be counted as part of the medieval reader’s perception of the book. Books kept separate during the medieval period and bound together in a later period (often in the nineteenth century) should not be considered to provide evidence for types of texts kept together by medieval readers. A codicologically based analysis, such as that presented by Huws, provides an excellent foothold for beginning to examine this manuscript. So, I would firstly like to consider his analysis in order to move towards a manuscript-based assessment of reading experience. Huws’ consideration of the activities of the sixteen different scribes posits which writer copied each text according to a palaeographically based identification of different hands. I would like to present a slightly different scenario based on my examination of the manuscript, firstly in its digital facsimile and then, to confirm my findings (because ultimately the digital facsimile is one remove too great away from the details of the evidence provided by the real object), using the actual object. My tentative suggestion is that there are fewer scribes at work in Brogyntyn 2.1 than sixteen. I base this on a consideration of ‘production aesthetics’ rather than on style of hand, wishing to suggest that a number of different hands have been reproduced, some better than others, by a smaller number of scribes. By ‘production aesthetics’ I mean a set of distinctive facets in the style of decoration and layout which involve – in this instance – a dusting with red ink around initial letters, the use of an enlarged rubricated initial letter and sometimes the use of a spiky serif on the upright strokes of letters at the tops of pages. Discounting the first quire, I suggest that the manuscript represents a not uncommon situation in which one (possibly two) scribe–reader(s) has

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 191

21/05/2012 10:15:11

192 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 or have built a miscellany around a small core of texts in separate booklets. I identify three core booklets as follows: i. Two practical texts On Grafting (fols 27r–33r) and The Craft of Lymnyng (fol. 33r–52v) ii. A saint’s life The Life of St Catherine (fols 91r–129r) iii. A moral story The Friar and the Boy (fols 139r–150r).

According to Huws, booklets ii and iii are written by the same scribe (identified as Q); booklet i is probably written by a different scribe (identified as L), although there are some marked similarities of ‘production aesthetic’ between L and Q.80 The majority of the remainder of the book, I would suggest, is written by one or possibly two scribes (identified as J and O by Huws) whom I identify not only by the hands but by the persistent features of their ‘production aesthetic’ as I define it above. Huws’ thesis about the role of the J/O scribe(s) as ‘shapers’ of the book seems more strongly the case if the manuscript is understood as I propose here. The texts added by J and O around the three core booklets, either in an ad hoc way or systematically, make a collection of generally short pieces which represent the ‘personal taste’ of this J/O figure.81 The watermark evidence presented by Huws also fits with this theory of a scribe–reader shaping a miscellany around a core of three booklets and also with his own theory that (much of) the book was produced over a fairly short period of time.82 J’s use of paper, in quire 17, that has the same watermark (W8) as that used by Q for the Life of St Catherine fits with the idea that ‘J’ was adding to a text written in the first place by Q but with some spare pages to fill. The use, by ‘O’, of paper with the same watermark (W7) as Q uses for The Friar and the Boy similarly fits with the same idea that O was using the same (substantial) bundle of paper that belonged with the Friar text. O’s use of W7 for quires 10 and 11 might also represent the same opportunistic use of spare bundles of paper. If L and Q (producers of the three core booklets) were writing from the same source of professional production, then this would account for watermarks 2 through to 8. The watermark for the Carle of Carlisle is not identifiable. The majority of Carle is written by the hand identified as ‘J’. Huws identifies another scribe as the finisher of this text (‘K’) but, tentatively, I suggest that, although there are a few slight differences, the same scribe continues to the end of Carle. This text ends at the end of a quire, thereby lacking any absolute structural relation to the rest of the manuscript. Carle is the only long text written by the J/O scribe–writer

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 192

21/05/2012 10:15:11

Fictional literature: Gawain 193 and exhibits the same ‘production aesthetic’ as the rest of the texts added by J/O to the three core booklets. Perhaps Carle was a separate booklet at one stage, to which J/O added the remainder of the manuscript with his or their own additions. I have said that part of the ‘production aesthetic’ of the J/O scribe is the use of the exuberant upright stroke on the top line of a page into the top margin. This is one of the very distinctive characteristics which provide evidence that these two letters of the alphabet correspond with one writer. When the hand identified as ‘O’ returns at the end of the Life of St Catherine of Alexandria (fol. 129r), with ‘Parody on medical cures’, it is clear that a new hand has begun. However, there are no exuberant stalks until the top of the following page (fol. 129v), where these resume. Over the following few pages, it is very difficult to see the difference between the ‘O’ hand of the medical parody and the ‘J’ hand of the Stacyons and Good wyf, especially with regard to the use by both J and O of the upright strokes. The identified transition from ‘O’ to ‘J’ between the end of the extracts from The Boke of St Albans and the beginning of ‘The Cock in the North’ (fol. 192r) is also problematic. There does indeed seem to be a change in style, but it is difficult to see why the ‘J’ who begins with ‘The Cock in the North’ is the ‘J’ of Carle. Indeed, the Carle hand looks much more like the O of this page with its exuberant uprights. This J of ‘The Cock in the North’ could also be the ‘L’ of the two short texts which fill the end of the quire after Lymnynge is completed (fols 53v–58). The evidence of watermarks and production aesthetics points, I suggest, to the existence of one scribe, J/O, whose style of writing sometimes varies. The exuberant upright strokes remain one of the most consistent distinguishing features of this hand, but this is not always present, partly because the scribe only uses this feature at the top line of a page (texts which begin half way down a page therefore do not have the distinctive upright strokes at their start). However, the J/O hand is also very capable of adopting a slightly different style. Good Wyf is one example of this with the adoption of a rubricated paragraph mark at the start of each couplet, perhaps because the scribe is copying this from his exemplum. In this text there is also a marked reduction in the size of the top upright strokes.83 The possibility that J/O uses the uprights to varying degrees also provides a different way of understanding who wrote the short section of ‘medical receipts’ in the eleventh quire (90r–90v). This is identified as being a sandwich of two hands ‘O,I,O’.84 However, the main distinctive feature about the page identified as I’s work seems to be the lack of the exuberant tall stalks at the up strokes on the top line of writing. It is possible that

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 193

21/05/2012 10:15:11

194 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 this ‘I’ is the same J/O hand writing in the mode of ‘The Cock in the North’. There is further evidence for the abilities of J/O to change hands whilst seeming to keep the same aesthetic. Towards the end of the book, in quire 25, the macaronic text ‘Dear son, leave thy weeping’ is written in two different hands (see figure 4).85 The lyric is written in blocks of Latin and English, with three lines of Latin and four lines of English. It is concerned with the plight of Mary, at the birth of Jesus, looking into the future about the sights she will endure as he is crucified. Characteristically of these lyrics it is quite complex in terms of voice. The English sections which seem to tell the emotive narrative of Mary’s devotion to her child and her future suffering are written in three voices: a narrator, Mary and Jesus. The Latin sections provide the liturgical context. The Latin text is written in a distinctly and self-consciously angular style; the English text is written in a style which looks very like the work of the two scribes that have previously been identified as J and O. The visual aesthetic is similar to other parts of the manuscript written by the scribe–reader(s), with the dusting of rubrication down the first letters in the lines, and the use of a rubricated capital at the start of a section (in this case, more fully rubricated letters are used, them being at the beginning of each new stanza rather than simply at the beginning of the text or chapter).86 The scribe’s use of uprights is interesting here too. The text opens at the top of a new page with the first section in Latin, but there are no exuberant uprights used. This angular (Latin) hand does not seem to accommodate that aspect of J/O’s style. However, when the text goes over onto the next page of the manuscript during one of the English sections, the distinctive spiky uprights are employed for the first line in the characteristic manner. The way ‘Dear son leave thy weeping’ has been reproduced may also point to a particular choice made by the scribe to change the text. Carleton Brown notes that the other three manuscripts to contain a version of the text simply have the English elements of the text, as a devotional lyric.87 Examination of Brogyntyn 2.1’s contents On further close examination of the grouping of the texts in Brogyntyn, there are various patterns which help with understanding more about the ways the book has been shaped by the J/O scribe–reader. This therefore gives valuable insight into the personal choices of this scribe.88 In the following paragraphs I explore some of the thematic groupings and some of the particular literary forms which seem to have a special place in this book. As I hope to show, however, discovery of the existence of some

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 194

21/05/2012 10:15:11

Figure 4  NLW Brogyntyn 2.1, fol. 201r ‘Dear son leave thy weeping’.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 195

21/05/2012 10:15:11

196 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 patterns in the compilation choices which inform this book does not provide one single key (or one ‘unifying controlling intelligence’) that has the power to unlock the meaning, purpose or readership of this Middle English miscellany.89 Orality in Brogyntyn 2.1 It is noticeable how many of the texts are ostensibly concerned with an oral delivery, in other words beginning with a rhetorical trope which harks back to minstrel format. Carle begins like this with ‘Lystonnyth, lordyngs, a lyttyll stonde’.90 If texts which begin with a very similar formula to the Carle’s and texts which begin with variations on the ‘As I was walking … I heard’ trope are counted up then there are ten texts beginning in this way. If to this are added those texts which are in a dialogue or complaint form then there are at least thirteen texts which seem to emphasise an oral discourse; added to this there is ‘Ever say well’, which is all about speech. If the hands identified usefully by Huws are compared with the texts which seem to emphasise orality, then it becomes apparent that a very large proportion of these texts are written by ‘O’, one of the texts (The Friar and the Boy) is written by Q, two texts are identified as J’s hand (‘Mercy and righteousness’ and The Marchand) and two are identified as in L’s hand (‘Dialogue with a bird’ and ‘Tale of ten wives’). These last two texts are possibly in the hand of the J/O scribe that I discuss above. They are appended to the end of the two practical texts (Grafting and Lymnynge), which I suggest form a ready-written portion of the book. The interest in the oral seems striking and might point to a particular personal preference by the scribe–reader J/O (between ten and twelve of the thirteen oral texts were written by this hand). The texts are not, however, marked in a way which is particularly associated with oral performance, perhaps indicating that this book is not specifically intended for public recitation.91 In addition to these texts which refer – rhetorically – to oral delivery, there is also a collection of ‘carols’ towards the end of the manuscript. Although these do not mention speaking or listening, and they are copied without musical notations, their form is reminiscent of a performative delivery (singing out loud or in the reader’s head). The texts which emphasise an oral mode cover a range of themes from the chivalric adventure of Carle through quite humorous moral stories and devotional meditations on life and the world. This confluence of themes and purposes (entertainment, instruction, meditation) in stories of this style might act to mediate the meanings of each of them, and indeed this may in part have been the intention of the compiler. In other words, Carle

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 196

21/05/2012 10:15:11

Fictional literature: Gawain 197 might be experienced by a reader more in terms of its moral lessons when read from this manuscript than it might otherwise have been if viewed in isolation. Vanities of the world Clustering of texts belonging to a particular theme or form (like the carols) is another feature of the manuscript which starts to come to light on closer inspection of the texts. For example, the series of items copied between the end of quire 7 and the end of quire 10 seem to have a definite ‘worldliness’ or ‘vanities of the world’ theme. There is a coincidence, here, between some of the texts emphasising orality and this thematic group. Quires 7 and 8 demonstrate this well: there are two short texts (‘Dialogue with a bird’, ‘Tale of ten wives’) added to the end of the treatise on limning which begins quire 7 and then a following three texts forming quire 8, the last of which (‘Vision of Philbert’) is longer and takes up quire 9 too. ‘The dialogue with a bird’ is a short tale of just over 130 lines told by a narrator who comes upon a bird in a forest and wishes to provide it with a new cage. The cage is described in great detail as being made of all manner of jewels and precious fabrics. The short moralising section at the end of the dialogue suggests that the bird is the Virgin Mary who should be housed in the cage of man—if he can make a good enough cage. ‘The dialogue’ begins in the following way: Lovely lordynges, ladys lyke Wyves and maydens ryallyke So worthy undere wede, And alle, lystynes to my talkynge. [ll. 1–4]92

The following ‘Tale of ten wives’ also begins with a similar ‘listen to me’ formula.93 The pair of texts following ‘Tale of ten wives’ (‘When I slepe’, and ‘An old man’s lament’) begin quire 8 and consider matters of time as well as the world. Each emphasises orality.94 ‘When I slepe’ is an address to God which begins ‘Lord, how schalle I me complayne, unto myne owne lady dere’.95 It runs through a whole set of elements in the man’s life, night and day, which cause him pain (on account of his love for the woman) and the preventative measures he takes because of his fear, expressed in the repeated refrain, that ‘whenne I slepe I may not wake’. It is quite an amusing tale with its references to the ways he is wasting away on account of her and is described in The Index of Middle English Verse as a ‘burlesque song’.96 However, in the midst of these prayers to the Virgin, it

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 197

21/05/2012 10:15:11

198 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 might also be construed as a prayer about devotion to the heavenly lady rather than to an earthly subject. Its companion, ‘An old man’s lament’ is framed around an old man speaking to the narrator (he comes across the old man ‘undure an holt uppone an hylle’) about the way life has passed by.97 It refers to the parts of a man’s life (childhood, youth, young man, old man and so on) as parts of the twenty-four hours of day followed by night. The old man describes how he was dubbed a knight at midday and crowned a king at nones but that this rise to riches and wealth means nothing in the face of old age by the time of evensong. The repeated refrain is ‘This world is but a vanity’, which is repeated finally at the end of the poem when the narrator, who has listened to this complaint, speaks again directly to the reader.98 It is a sombre message. The next text, ‘Vision of Philbert’ connects thematically with these issues of the world and the temporality of life, as it is one of the genre known as a body/soul debate. It does not have a particular emphasis on orality other than that it begins, in this unique English translation, as a prayer.99 And the final text in quire 10, ‘Complaint of a hare’, also comments on matters of temporality, ostensibly from the perspective of a hare whose complaint is about how much she is hunted. This text also emphasises orality, being another in the ‘overhearing’ trope and beginning: By a forrest as I gane fare Walkyng al myselvene alone I h[e]ard a mornyng of an haare Rouffully schew madde here mone. [ll. 1–4]100

Its innocent subject matter belies a more political tone, as the hare’s main complaint is against one social group; she says, ‘Of alle the mene that beth alyve/ I am moost behold to gentyl-men’ (ll. 67–8).101 This has resonances with more overtly political complaint poetry in which the peasant complains of being hunted by the middleman as ‘hound hunts hare’.102 In the particular manuscript context of Brogyntyn 2.1, though, it is the mortality of the creature which seems to come to the fore, rather than the political undertones of her plight. ‘Erthe upon Erthe’ ‘Erthe upon Erthe’ (see plate 5), which begins after the end of Philbert (before the complaint of the hare) near the start of quire 10, also continues with the same theme of the transitory nature of worldly wealth and the certainty of death, and it does this with an opening which uses the rhetorical trope of appealing to its audience with a shout: ‘Lo! Worldly

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 198

21/05/2012 10:15:11

Fictional literature: Gawain 199 Folkus, though this processe of dethe/ Be not swetene, synke not in youre mynde.’103 This gives it a certain claim to orality even if it is not as clear as those texts which begin with the ‘listen’ trope. Its form is regular, being in fourteen stanzas, twelve of which have six lines with a distinctive short line in the fifth; the opening two stanzas being different, with a seven-line form. Except for the first two stanzas, there is a repeated opening refrain which uses the ‘earth upon earth’ phrase or some reference to this matter.104 In her edition of twenty-four versions of ‘Erthe upon Erthe’, Murray proposes that the ‘two stanzas in rime royal on the Process of Dethe which immediately precede Erthe upon Erthe in the Porkington MS are transcribed as a separate poem, and if not separate, would rather belong to the preceding text’.105 The manuscript provides contrary evidence to this, as the Philbert text clearly closes at the end of the preceding page with ‘Amen, Amen’ squeezed onto the final ruled line. The ‘Lo!’ of the first line of the ‘preface’ to ‘Erthe upon Erthe’ is decorated in the more ornate of the several styles used in the Brogyntyn manuscript with an enlarged letter with red and green flourishes, marking it as a definite start to a new text. The first stanza which begins with the phrase ‘Earth upon earth’, stanza 3 (which is given as stanza 1 by Murray) does also have a rubricated initial ‘E’ but there is no other evidence for any intention to mark this out as a new text.106 These two preceding stanzas found in Brogyntyn may therefore be understood as an introduction to the poem which the scribe of this manuscript has chosen to copy in from an exemplum or made up himself. ‘Earth upon earth’ is a classic ‘wheel of fortune’ text which seems to have been a very popular theme in fifteenth-century poetry.107 Indeed, the popularity of this text itself is clear given that it now survives in this ‘B version’ in fifteen manuscripts as well as, at one time, on a church wall as a ‘mural inscription’.108 The poem gives a strong message to the reader: Erth upon erth, take tent to my stevyne; Whyl thou levys, fulfyle the werkys of mercy vii. [stanza 11, ll. 1–2]

Otherwise, ‘Thow moue wend of this world an unreydy waye’ (stanza 12, line 2). As such, its message it certainly didactic, asserts a central element in the Christian doctrine about the kind of behaviour required to attain salvation, and seems quite far away from the chivalric derring-do of Carle. It is nevertheless very much connected to Carle by being part of this sequence of dialogic texts, ‘Erthe upon Erthe’ being a dialogue with the reader.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 199

21/05/2012 10:15:11

200 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 In its preface to ‘Erthe upon Erthe’, the Brogyntyn version takes a very interesting attitude to the reader which in some ways usefully ­problematises the idea of the emphasis on orality. The second stanza reads: Of what estate ye bem young or old That redyth uppon this dredful storrye, As in a myrroure here ye may be-holde The ferful ende of al youre joye and glorie Therefore this mater redus us to youre memorie Ye that syttyth now hye uppon the whele Thynke uppon youre end, and alle schal be wele. [stanza 2, ll. 1–7]109

Firstly, in this stanza, the text claims itself to be like a mirror, something which the reader may look into and see her reflection for the whole of her life (from the past to the future). Secondly, in the same stanza, the text commands that the reader should memorise what she reads here. Presumably here the instruction to commit this to memory is of the ‘read mark and inwardly digest’ variety. The ninth stanza adds to this notion with its reference to an intertexual process required by the reader: Erth uppon erth, me thinkyth the ful blynd That on erth ryches to setal thi mynd In the gospel wryttyen exampul I fynd With skyle The commandmentus of God wold he not fulfyle.110

Others of these oral texts also provide some nice references to reading. ‘Old man’s lament’ takes education as one of the phases in a man’s life which, in this case, the old man looks back upon with regret. At ‘underday’ he went to school, he says, but he made his schoolmaster angry because ‘To lerne good I was fulle rowthe/ I thogt one play and jollyte’ (ll. 37–8).111 ‘Ever say well’ The focus on matters of speech in one text from quire 19, ‘Ever say well’ (see figure 5), seems to emphasise very strongly the interest of the J/O compiler in matters relating to orality.112 ‘Ever say well’ is a poem of eighty lines, not separated into stanzas in the Brogyntyn manuscript, but with a regular repeating refrain at the end of each group of eight lines which is, or is similar to, ‘Ever say well, or hold thee still’.113 It is an advice text which takes the subject of the power of speech in various social situations. The poem runs through a set of situations and issues concerning how to speak, when to speak, when to keep quiet, and the ills that might come

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 200

21/05/2012 10:15:11

Figure 5  NLW Brogyntyn 2.1, fol. 150r ‘Ever say well’.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 201

21/05/2012 10:15:11

202 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 from speaking inappropriately. Its main piece of advice is ‘Say well or keep thy word in store/ For speech was never so well aspayd/ Nor never so many lyves lost/ Through words that have been mis-said’.114 The text advises that it is not always sensible to speak the truth and it might be better to stay quiet; be careful who you sit by at church or at the market as what you say might get reported if overheard and evil tongues can do much damage; say of your neighbour what you would wish him to say of you; be careful because people who are enemies today may be friends tomorrow; be careful of idle words; speech is a special gift so it should be used carefully; at judgement day God will do the talking and you will have to be quiet. In several places the text makes interesting conceptual connections between the spoken word and writing. The traditional warning about idle words, for example, draws attention to the other-worldly writing on a bill that comes about from these spare words: Say welle and thynke one youth and eld Frow God may nothing be hyde nore loke But think one the rekenyng that thou schalt yeld Off every ydylle word that thou has spoke Les and more hold and brouk They schalle be wryttyne in a bylle Lest God one the wylle be awroke Evyre say wylle oore hold the stylle. [ll. 49–56]115

The poem also opens interestingly with a reference to writing, as the narrator reports that he saw the warning text (it isn’t clear whether this means the whole poem or just the ‘Ever say well’ refrain) inscribed on a wall in a ‘royal hall, where lords and ladies were bid to sit’.116 A loufly letter one a walle This word ys in my hert i-knyt To lern this lessone who soo hath wylle When evyre thou goo stont or sytt Evyre say wylle or hold the styll. [ll. 3–8]117

Here is a further example of the potent use of inscription, as also discussed in relation to the Gesta Romanorum stories, in Chapter 3. Conclusions about thematic organisation The emphasis on orality present in this section of the manuscript points to significant personal interest in this issue by the scribe–reader and compiler of the book. It does not unlock a single dominant purpose or reading

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 202

21/05/2012 10:15:11

Fictional literature: Gawain 203 experience, but shows one aspect of the interests of the compiler. I have demonstrated, above, how sometimes the matter of the oral is reflected directly with reference to speech and speaking, and other times reference to orality is a condition of the form of a particular text. In terms of reader experience, it is plausible to consider as connected these different levels at which orality is explored and used. It seems to me that, in this collection of texts, orality is also a subject for play especially where references to the act of reading or the written text are woven into texts which either use orality in their form or discuss it as a subject (as with speech). It is always useful to bear in mind the integration of the different levels at which such a subject is considered when seeking to understand how ‘play’ takes place and what the games are. The references to the text written on the wall and the supernatural bill of idle speech in ‘Ever say well’ are each hard at work causing the reader to make conceptual shifts between writing and speaking. This fits well in amongst the group of texts apparently intended for an oralised mode of performance. The concept-shifts between writing and speaking already present in this group of ‘listen to my story’ texts are enhanced by the direct concerns of ‘Ever say well’ with speech, and the scribe–reader seems to be invited to engage (or has invited himself to engage) in more play with these concepts through the references to writing and speaking in the poem about speech. The notion of the text as a mirror for the reader to see the results of his or her worldly vanity in ‘Erthe upon Erthe’, in close proximity to the instruction that this text should be remembered, plays with another set of issues surrounding the process of reading. Here, although there is a ‘listen’ trope at the beginning of the Brogyntyn version’s preface, the emphasis appears to be more on the connections between memory and reading, with the idea of the mirror thrown in. Coming as it does, however, amongst the cluster of texts which pretend to be for oral performance, the very materially challenging issues surrounding the need to shun worldly vanity are somehow intensified, not only through the text’s own reference to the non-material business of remembering, but even more by the position in the manuscript of the written text ‘Erthe upon Erthe’ next to texts ostensibly for speaking and hearing. Placing here ‘Erthe to Erthe’ with its complicated set of issues concerning materiality also modulates the reader’s experience of how to read the texts pretending to oral delivery. The combination of distinct emphases in Brogyntyn – orality, the clusters on worldliness, the carol – point to a set of issues which have shaped the manuscript. Personal choice seems significant in this: if there

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 203

21/05/2012 10:15:11

204 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 is a J/O scribe–reader, then it seems that he (they) have an interest in these types of text and have shaped the manuscript to include these, choosing to finish off quires with particular sequences of text that relate to one specific theme. The set of worldliness texts, for example, from the end of quire 5 to the end of quire 7 seems to show this method of grouping themed texts. However, it would be a reductive conclusion to surmise that the whole book is grouped and themed in this rather coherent sort of way. Some of the texts seem to have a very limited relationship with their neighbours: the relationships between The Friar and the Boy, ‘Ever say Well’ and the two love letters do not resonate. The first two texts are intent on moralising, although they do this in very different ways: the Friar is a funny story about a boy who gains power from gifts given to him by the friar. He can make his nasty stepmother fart when she looks angrily at him, and with a magic pipe he can make everyone (including the friar) dance as if they are possessed. Its moral comes at the end with the dual warning that stepmothers should love their stepsons and children should obey their parents, but it demonstrates this through a bawdy tale. The moralising tone of ‘Ever say well’, as discussed above, is much more serious and about fairly different matters, although both do touch on the decorum of behaviour in particular situations. The love texts which follow are not really connected, thematically, to either of the preceding two. Of course, some of the connections made by a scribe–reader are not necessarily ‘right’ in terms of what might be perceived as the dominant meanings or themes of a set of texts. And herein there is an interesting issue about the extent to which a reader’s (or scribe–reader’s) perception may define what a text is about, or what it means, and therefore for a scribe–reader the choices about where each text fits within a compilation and next to what. Added to this there is also the pragmatic matter of where the text will physically fit when leftover space at the ends of other texts is being used up. Misreadings An interesting situation which seems to point to serious or playful misconstrual arises in Brogyntyn with the juxtaposition of the item described by Huws as ‘texts occuring in Dame Juliana Berners’s Boke of Saint Albans’, which finishes quire 23 and begins quire 24, and ‘The Cock in the North’, which continues quire 24.118 The texts from Boke of Saint Albans which J/O chose to copy into the manuscript seem to be largely those described in the facsimile edition by William Blades as ‘such common household aphorisms or popular rhymes as came easily to the memory, or were at

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 204

21/05/2012 10:15:11

Fictional literature: Gawain 205 hand in some other book’.119 Here the editor exhibits the early twentiethcentury scholar’s particularly supercilious attitude to the medieval. The Boke of Saint Albans, which is a printed collection dated 1486, consists of four treatises as ‘books’ of: ‘hawking’, ‘hunting’, ‘coat-armour’ and fourthly ‘blazing of arms’.120 As the titles suggest, the collection is concerned with all manner of practical matters forming necessary knowledge for the aristocrat, gentry, and perhaps also the aspirant townsman or yeoman. This printed set comes from a range of manuscript sources, largely of the fifteenth century. Some of its contents are connected to some of the very earliest prints like the version of Lydgate’s ‘Horse, Sheep and Goat’ printed by Caxton in 1476/7, which has various lists of terms, including carving terms, appended to the end of this moral tale.121 Twelve items have been extracted from this set of treatises in Brogyntyn, as follows:122   1 Collective terms   2 Precepts   3 Terms of resting/mating   4 Carving terms   5 Four things every wise man should dread   6 Conditions and properties of a good horse   7 Beasts of venery and the chase   8 Names of dogs   9 Explanation of hunting terms 10 Names of hawks and their owners 11 The different ages of a hawk 12 Diseases of hawks and their remedies.

It is clear from this list of titles that the extracts are focused on a number of different kinds of animal, how they may be used and described in particular situations, and (particularly with hawks) what social groups are associated with them. It is interesting to mention, then, the following text, ‘The Cock in the North’, which is a political prophecy in the group associated with the Scottish-based Thomas of Erceldoune prophecies surviving in various fifteenth-century manuscripts. It is concerned with conflict and factions within the British Isles and describes people ‘in terms of animals and birds’.123 It has lines such as: ‘When the cock in the north has build his nest’ and ‘[The] egle & antelop schall boldly abyde’.124 It has been proposed that the prophecy refers to Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, who was the brother of Henry V. Gloucester was an

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 205

21/05/2012 10:15:11

206 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 opponent of the Duke of Suffolk and the Beaufort interest at Henry VI’s court, thereby associating the poem with the events of Cade’s rebellion in 1450.125 Given the Welsh connections of this manuscript, and the several other manuscripts of Welsh provenance which contain it, the prophecy may also be fruitfully understood in terms of the Glyndw ˆ r rebellion of 1402.126 The dragon mentioned in the lines, ‘A dredeful dragon shal dres hym out of his den/ To helpe the lion with al his myghte’, would then represent Glyndw ˆ r.127 There is no simple fixity to the meanings of prophetic texts like this. They are, therefore, available for a variety of re-workings for a range of specific political contexts, often having routes in ancient traditions. In ‘The Cock in the North’ there are two references to dead men speaking, for example, which are probably drawn from older traditions of Cadwallader and Arthur. The days of King Arthur are also mentioned near the beginning of the text: ‘Then shall the lion be lowsyde the boldest & the best/ That ever was seyn in bretayn sence Artors daye’.128 The Brogyntyn manuscript’s placing of ‘The Cock in the North’ next to the lists of animal-related terminology provides an example of the type of intriguing juxtaposition of texts that is within the scope of a manuscript miscellany.129 This example might have been intended as a playful juxtaposition, it might be a mis-construal of meanings, or it might be a pragmatic decision about how best to fill a space with the texts that the compiler had available and wished to use. Whichever scenario best fits this example, once it is set down within the manuscript the possibility is there for the reader to imagine or create his or her own connections between the animal references and the matters of chivalric law which structurally underpin both items. Of course, just because they are placed together in the book does not mean that the reader is forced to read these texts in tandem or make connections between them to the exclusion of other texts within the book. This would be to misunderstand the nature of reading practices in this period, as I have discussed in Chapter 1. There are numerous connections a reader may choose to make between, for example, the chivalric environment of the information about hunting and hawking and the chivalric setting and framework of Carle; the Arthurian references in ‘The Cock in the North’ and the Arthurian setting of Carle. But at the same time it is clear that, once noticed by the scribe–reader or the subsequent readers of this book in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the resonances between the Boke of Saint Albans and ‘The Cock in the North’ do cause the texts to mediate each other’s meanings.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 206

21/05/2012 10:15:12

Fictional literature: Gawain 207 Comparative evidence There is not space, here, to provide an exhaustive discussion on the coincidence of contents between Brogyntyn and other manuscripts. This is an important factor, though, in building up a picture of reading practices. This comparative evidence can reveal patterns of manuscript type in relation to specific texts, for example if one text recurs in a devotional miscellany. Comparisons can also show an apparent lack of such patterning, for example, if a text occurs in a deluxe monastic production and a scruffy commonplace book. Both types of evidence provide a little more information about who is reading which texts, when, and alongside what. A brief examination of the other manuscripts that contain Brogyntyn texts reveals a couple of patterns. Firstly, it appears that while Brogyntyn has the only surviving copies of a number of texts (this does not mean that they never existed in other manuscripts), it also shares a set of texts with a small pool of now rather well-known manuscripts including the sixteenth-century townsman’s compilation Balliol College (Oxford) 354 (known as Richard Hill’s Commonplace Book130); a fifteenth-century collection preserving many of the medieval romances in unique copies, Cambridge University Library, MS Ff.2.38; one of the fifteenth-century compilations by the townsman Robert Thornton, Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91.131 ‘Erthe upon Erthe’ offers real potential for a comparative manuscript case study given that it survives in over thirty versions.132 A full examination of the manuscript contexts of just this poem could provide a very fruitful case study which would certainly help with the process of uncovering more information about reading habits. This would involve going beyond a comparison of the versions found in each manuscript in order to explore and compare the position of the text within a number of manuscripts, the nature and quality of each manuscript, the varying layouts of the text and so on.133 Comparison with just one manuscript, Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91 (Thornton Miscellany), indicates one of the significant pieces of evidence about personal choice which may be gleaned from such comparisons. Lincoln’s version of the poem has only 21 lines, making it quite a lot shorter than the Brogyntyn version. It is also reproduced in a different format which does not make clear divisions between stanzas. Nevertheless it is, in effect, a version of the same poem and its stress on the idea of worldliness through the repeated ‘Earth’ refrain is clear, although this is in the slightly different form of ‘earth out of’ rather than Brogyntyn’s

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 207

21/05/2012 10:15:12

208 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 ‘earth upon’ earth. Lincoln starts with the line ‘Erthe owte of erthe: is wondirly wroughte’ which corresponds with the first line of the third stanza in Brogyntyn.134 Of course, Lincoln 91 also contains one of the Gawain stories, Awntyrs, which makes possible some tentative suggestions about the place of the chivalric romances amongst the more sombre and trenchant moral lessons offered by poems such as ‘Erthe upon Erthe’. There has been a question mark over the first two stanzas in the Brogyntyn manuscript. As noted above, they are in a different form from the remaining twelve, and they do not have the ‘Earth’ refrain which is repeated throughout the rest of the poem. As I have said, the opening two stanzas in the Brogyntyn manuscript stress the ‘read, mark and digest’ element in the reading process. Comparative analysis shows that this poem clearly seems to have lent itself to prefatory material as a number of the other editions also add some lines or stanzas by way of introduction to the theme.135 Whether the two stanzas forming the preface to Brogyntyn’s version were the invention of the J/O scribe or he copied it from another version like this, the inclusion of these two irregular opening stanzas seems to be another piece of evidence for J/O’s interest in texts which begin in a performative mode. Conclusions about Brogyntyn’s evidence for reading Carle In this examination of the Brogyntyn manuscript, I have shown the existence of a set of emphases such as the orality and worldliness themes, which seem to indicate a particular interest in these subjects by one, or possibly two, scribe–reader(s). Texts with these emphases are often clustered together in groups. I have also shown that there is no one prevailing set of themes in this ‘miscellany’, exploring some of the pragmatic reasons for this using codicological evidence. I have proposed that, aside from the thematic clusterings, there are some texts which do not fit with their neighbours or indeed seem at odds with them and that this may sometimes be because of misconstrual, by the scribe–reader, about the intended meaning of a text and it might also be for practical reasons, which indicates that the scribe–reader was not intent on making the whole book thematically coherent. The high frequency of texts which emphasise orality, either in their style as with the ‘listen’ trope or in their subject matter as with ‘Ever say well’, is particularly noticeable and seems to constitute an important issue for understanding the scribe–reader’s aims, and subsequent readers’ experiences of the book. The ‘listen’ trope may hark back to a situation in which texts were delivered by one performer to a listening audience. I discussed this issue

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 208

21/05/2012 10:15:12

Fictional literature: Gawain 209 of orality and its perceived connections with popularity in the first section of the chapter. Here I suggested that it is overly reductive to assume direct relationships between orality of form and popularity, just as it is overly reductive to consider oral performance as being full of simple meanings, boisterously delivered to simple folk dumbly following rituals. These reductive connections between simple stories and listening audiences have also caused scholars to conflate the neat simplicity of a fairy-tale plot with the process a listener or reader goes through whilst making meaning from the story, thereby making the process of making meaning also simple. Making meaning when listening to a text is not simple. Whilst listening is not simplicity to reading’s complexity, then, it is important to stress that when ‘oral’ texts (especially in this concentration) are written into a small ‘miscellany’, then those issues of listening and performance have also been transformed into a situation of more private, perhaps silent, reading. The Brogyntyn manuscript could have been used as a book for reading aloud perhaps to a family, but it is also very likely that it was used by individual readers whereby the orality is transposed into a conceptual process in the reader’s performative experience of using the book. Any harkening back to a minstrel-style situation of listening and performing starts to seem highly self-conscious and stylised. The manuscript case study sets out to examine the experience of reading the Carle but much of the study is devoted to the other texts in the Brogyntyn manuscript. This is not an accident and is a significant point in understanding more about the nature of manuscript evidence for reading specific texts: the context in which the particular text is found is of crucial importance. The very well-known texts, such as those from the Arthurian canon, are affected by their neighbouring texts even if these are short anonymous unknowns. Nevertheless, I have shown how Carle might resonate particularly with an Arthurian theme suggested by the prophetic text, ‘The Cock in the North’, even if the purpose of this prophecy has been somewhat misconstrued by the scribe–reader. More significantly, perhaps, it is clear that Carle fits very well amongst the texts emphasising orality as it, too, begins with the ‘listen’ trope: ‘Lystonnyth, lordyngs, a lyttyll stonde’.136 This is interesting in that Carle provides one more piece of evidence for the emphasis of this theme in the book. But this interest in orality also seems to explain a mystery in the plot of Carle, perhaps answering the question: why has the dramatic transformative beheading scene reminiscent of other Gawain stories and present in the other surviving version (Percy Folio) of the story been removed in favour of a spoken oath and a promise?

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 209

21/05/2012 10:15:12

210 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 The Percy version of this poem has a dramatic decapitation scene near the end of the story which frees the Carle from some necromancy performed on him forty years earlier. This spell caused him to kill all visitors until someone from the court of King Arthur would arrive to free him from the spell by decapitating him. The Carle demands the ­decapitation from Gawain as follows: ‘Looke thou doe as I thee saine, And therof be not adread. But shortly smite of my head: For if thou wilt not doe itt tyte For ssooth thy head I will ofsmyte.’ To the Carle said Sir Gawaine, ‘Sir, your bidding shall be done.’ He stroke the head the body froe [ll. 390–7]137

This is a scene which has resonances with other Gawain stories like Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, which opens with a decapitation challenge made by the green knight to Arthur and his court and which forms the foundation for Gawain’s quest throughout that story. The Brogyntyn version does not have the decapitation scene. Instead, the Carle explains that he made a vow twenty years previously to slay anyone who visited and did not do as he asked. Gawain, it seems, is the first visitor who has done what the Carle wished (presumably with regard to the tests he set). The Carle therefore does not ask for the dramatic transformation produced by decapitation in order to free him from a spell. Instead he proposes to reward Gawain for the redemption he has brought (the wording of this line gives a pleasing echo with Christian notions of the redemption of man ‘dearly bought’ by Christ’s sacrifice).138 The redemption was needed in the first place not because of an externally imposed piece of necromancy (as in the Percy version) but because of what was clearly a very powerful ‘vow’ made by the Carle himself. We do not discover what drove him to make this vow. The Brogyntyn Carle swears that he will ‘forsake’ his wicked practices by welcoming visitors instead of killing them, and he promises to make a chantry for all ‘these souls’ (presumably of those he has previously slain and perhaps also for Gawain and his party): ‘Hit is twenti wynter gon,’ sayde the Karle, ‘nowe That God I maked a vowe, Therfore I was fulle sad: Ther schulde never man logge in my wonys [dwelling] But he scholde be slayne, iwys, But he did as I hym bad.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 210

21/05/2012 10:15:12

Fictional literature: Gawain

211

But he wolde do my byddynge bowne [quickly], He schulde be slayne and layde adowne, Whedir he were lorde or lad. Fonde I never, Gawen, none but the[e]. Nowe Gode of hevyn yelde hit the[e]; Therfore I am fulle glade. ‘He yelde [reward] the[e]’, sayde the Carle, ‘that the[e] dere boughte [redeemed], For al my bale [misery] to blysse is broughte Throughe helpe of Mary quene.’ He lade Gawen ynto a wilsome wonys [desolate dwelling], There as lay ten fodir [cartloads] of dede menn bonys. Al yn blode, as I wene, Ther hynge many a blody serke [shirt], And eche of heme a dyvers marke [heraldic design]. Grete doole hit was to sene. ‘This slowe [slew] I, Gawen, and my helpis [helpers], I, and also my foure whelpis. For sothe, as I the say, Nowe wulle I forsake my wyckyd lawys [customs]; Ther schall no mo men her[e] be slawe, iwys, As ferthforthe as I may. Gawen, for the love of the[e] Al schal be welcome to me That comythe here by this way. And for alle these sowlys, I undirtake, A chauntery here wul I lete make, Ten prestis syngynge til domysday.’ [ll. 517–49]139

In the context of this manuscript with its emphasis on orality and its connected interest in the power of speech (particularly explored in ‘Ever say well’), the replacement of a dramatic beheading with some orally delivered vows is appropriate. The Brogyntyn manuscript encourages a perception in the reader that speech and orality are significantly powerful. The replacement of a dramatic beheading scene by speech-acts starts, then, to make more sense. For the reader, encouraged to think about orality and speech (and their power) throughout the manuscript, the oaths made by the Carle are important, powerful and meaningful. The highly significant and symbolic transformative process performed usually by the beheading is experienced by the reader of Brogyntyn in just such a resonant way through the act of speaking.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 211

21/05/2012 10:15:12

212 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 Conclusion This chapter focuses on the Gawain stories as its example of popular fictional literature. I also take the opportunity offered by one manuscript miscellany, Brogyntyn 2.1, to explore the kind of evidence that one specific manuscript can provide for the experience of reading one fictional story. In particular I suggest that the interwoven emphases on orality and worldly morality in the Brogyntyn manuscript affect a reader’s experience of The Carle of Carlisle. The fact that this verison of the Carle specifically emphasises the power of orality seems to connect with this prevailing theme in the manuscript and, I suggest, this may reflect a particular set of interests for one (possibly two) scribes who had a significant role in shaping this compilation. The theme of orality (and its connections with literacy) has a strong presence throughout this chapter. My discussion of orality in the first half of the chapter is steered towards a necessary reconceptualisation of the relationships between orality, literacy, simplicity and ritual. I propose the need to move away from the assumption that orality of form in popular literature (ballad, doggerel and so on) implies simplicity in comprehension process or reading experience. I discuss this in the context of a misapprehension that the ostensibly neat fairy-tale plots of fictional stories automatically involve a simple process of reception. I suggest that it is a mistake to assume that making meaning from apparently simple oral stories is a straightforward process and, similarly, that the occasions of oral performance that these stories cite were not simple rituals bringing a community of listeners together in a homogeneous moment of interpretation. It is more appropriate to understand these occasions as experiences of tangled meanings rather than moments of communal agreement. Occasions of oral performance, therefore, involve ruptures in understanding and perhaps conflicts of view albeit within the set of culturally possible interpretations for that moment. In the context of this insistence on the need to embrace complexity (in the reception of popular oralised stories) in line with a very post-structural sense of ritual experience, the finding of a strongly prevailing theme of orality in the Brogyntyn manuscript might seem too simple and overly structured. I did not expect to find this pattern when I began to explore the manuscript. I certainly did not envisage that the Brogyntyn manuscript’s use of an oral promise in its version of the Carle, which is more powerful than the violence of beheading, would have such resonance in this particular manuscript context. That said, it is also important to

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 212

21/05/2012 10:15:12

Fictional literature: Gawain 213 remember that there are many other themes and emphases within the Brogyntyn manuscript and another reader of the twenty-first century may well find these, just as other fifteenth-century readers may have done. Also, as I propose in my discussion of mis-readings, it is useful to remember that choices about what went into this compilation and where texts were placed may have revolved around some unconventional senses (or mis-readings) of what the prevailing meaning of a particular text might be, as well as the practical matter of using the available space. Altogether, although its focus is on one collection of fictional stories (the Gawain group), the issues raised in this chapter – such as the ways that meaning is made from apparently simple stories, the significance of orality and ritual, and the reception of chivalric ideas by various social groups – all have implications for a broader range of fictional texts. Similarly, the manuscript case study demonstrates a set of ways that the evidence provided by a compilation or miscellany (the juxtaposition of texts within a compilation, thematic clusters, the interests of individual scribes and scribe–readers) all may be used more generally to learn more about the ways that meaning is construed and about the nature of the reading experience. Notes 1 Parts of this chapter were given as research papers to the York Centre for Medieval Studies ‘Household Group’ and to the Bangor and Aberystwyth Universities Institute of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. I have tried to incorporate the many useful suggestions and queries made at these two occasions. 2 For a recent consideration of a range of understudied popular romances, for example, see N. McDonald, Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). 3 S. Armitage, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London: Faber and Faber, 2007 [Hardcover], repr. in paperback, 2008). 4 See also, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. J.R.R. Tolkein, with Pearl and Sir Orfeo, Audiobook, read by T. Jones (London: Harper Collins, 2007). Armitage’s version is also available as an audiobook, read by Armitage and published by Faber and Faber in 2008. See also the adaptation for children reprinted before the current surge: M. Morpurgo (and M. Foreman, illustrator), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London: Walker Books, 2005). 5 Some of these, including Iris Murdoch’s Novel The Green Knight (London: Penguin, 1994) and some musical adaptations such as the opera by Harrison Birtwistle with its libretto by David Harsent, are discussed in B. Windeatt, ‘Sir Gawain at the fin de siecle: Novel and opera’, in D. Brewer and J. Gibson

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 213

21/05/2012 10:15:12

214

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

(eds), A Companion to the Gawain Poet, Arthurian Studies 38 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 373–83. Film adaptations of Gawain are discussed in the following chapter in this companion: D.J. Williams, ‘Sir Gawain in films’, pp. 385–92. See also, J. Margrave, The Gawain Quest: A Medieval Mystery (London: Goldenford Publishers, 2007) and various children’s tales such as G. Morris, Sir Gawain, his Squire and his Lady (London: Kingfisher Books, 2006). 6 W.R.J. Barron, English Medieval Romance (New York: Longman, 1987), pp. 166–76 on the sophistication (p. 167) of this text but also its possible popularity (pp. 166–7). 7 T. Hahn, ‘General introduction’, in T. Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine: Eleven Romances and Tales (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995). The version used for references in this chapter is that available online (unpaginated) at www.lib.rochester.edu/CAMELOT/teams/tmsmenu.htm. 8 These texts have been usefully printed in the collection edited by Thomas Hahn, see Sir Gawaine, and the provenance of each story is described in the introduction to each text. In the printed edition, page references are as follows: Carle, see pp. 83–4, 374; for the Ragnelle stories, see pp. 44, 360; for Avowing, see pp. 116–17; on the Percy Folio stories, see pp. 173–4, 311, 338, 421; for the printed versions of Gologras, see p. 232; for Jeaste, see p. 395. For a description of all the Gawain stories amongst Arthurian texts more generally, see W.R.J. Barron (ed.), The Arthur of the English: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval English Life and Literature (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999): in the category ‘Chivalric romances’ (pp. 113–96), are Awnytyrs (pp. 150–5, ed. R. Allen) and Gologros and Gawane (pp. 155–64, ed. M. Mills). In the category ‘Folk romance’ (ed. G. Rogers, pp. 197–224) are The Grene Knight (pp. 199–201, ed. D Speed), The Turke and Gawain (pp. 201–3, ed. D. Griffith), The Carle of Carlisle and Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle (pp. 204–7, ed. G. Rogers), The Wedding of Dame Ragnelle and The Marriage of Dame Ragnelle (pp. 207–10, ed. J. Withrington) and Avowyng (pp. 211–15, ed. G. Rogers). For a brief description of Gawain stories see also Barron, English Medieval Romance, pp. 158–76. 9 This is British Library, Additional MS 27879 (The Percy Folio). For a description of the manuscript see G. Rogers ‘ The Percy folio’, part of M. Mills and G. Rogers, ‘The manuscripts of popular romance’, in R. Radulescu and C.J. Rushton (eds), A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2009), pp. 49–66, pp. 57–66. 10 This is National Library of Wales (NLW), Brogyntyn MS 2.1. The existence of two Carle stories is mentioned but not elaborated on in B. Windeatt, ‘The fifteenth-century Arthur’, in E. Archibald and A. Putter (eds), The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 84–102, p. 86; and also see Barron, English Medieval Romance, p. 159. 11 Hahn, ‘General introduction’, in Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 214

21/05/2012 10:15:12

Fictional literature: Gawain

215

12 See C. Horstmann (and F.J. Furnivall), The Minor Poems of the Vernon Manuscript, Part 1, Early English Text Society, Original Series 98 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1892). 13 The manuscript is Oxford Bodleian 11951 (formerly known as Rawlinson C86); see J. Boffey and C.M. Meale, ‘Selecting the text: Rawlinson C86 and some other books for London readers’, in F. Riddy (ed.), Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts: Essays Celebrating the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 143–69, p. 169. 14 Issues of popularity are discussed in relation to the definition of ‘popular culture’ in Chapter 1. On the problems of characterising medieval popular romance see, R. Radulescu and C.J. Rushton ‘Introduction’ in Radulescu and Rushton (eds), Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, pp. 4–7, and p. 7 for a proposed definition of popular English romance as English or Anglo-Norman texts which ‘show a predominant concern with narrative at the expense of symbolic meaning’. 15 These concepts are discussed in Chapter 1 of this volume. The evidence for a popular readership of chivalric tales in the seventeenth century is considered in M. Spufford, Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Methuen, 1981), e.g. p. 51. For a modern analogue to the issues of aspiration and reading, see the consideration Janice Radway gives to the popularity of romance literatures: J.A. Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, Questions for Feminism Series (London: Verso, 1987). 16 On ‘the mercantile concern with romance’, for example, see C.M. Meale, ‘“gode men / wiues maydnes and alle men”: Romance and its audiences’, in C.M. Meale (ed.), Readings in Medieval English Romance (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 209–25, especially pp. 219–20; also, Hahn, ‘General introduction’, in Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine; N. McDonald ‘A polemical introduction’, in McDonald, Pulp Fictions, pp. 1–21, p. 2 and on issues of popular and elite see the essay in this volume by Felicity Riddy, ‘Temporary virginity and the everyday body: Le Bone Florence of Rome and bourgeois self-making’, pp. 197–216, p. 199 on categories and assumptions. 17 Other evidence for the popularity of Gawain is found in a book list of the well-known letter writing family, the Pastons, and also in dramatic performances at royal courts from Edward I to Elizabeth I; see Hahn, ‘General introduction’, in Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine; on evidence for the circulation of other romances amongst individuals below the level of gentry, see also Meale, ‘“gode men / wiues maydnes and alle men”’, p. 217. 18 R. Tzanaki, Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences: A Study on the Reception of the Book of Sir John Mandeville (1371–1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), p. 1: ‘The huge number of surviving manuscripts – around three hundred – and early editions across Europe attest to its importance.’ But, on the popularity of the romance genre, see also McDonald, ‘Polemical introduction’, in Pulp Fictions, pp. 2ff. On the relatively small numbers of romance manuscripts

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 215

21/05/2012 10:15:12

216

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

that survive see also Radulescu and Rushton, ‘Introduction’, in Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, p. 6. 19 See H.S. Bennett, English Books and Readers, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), vol. 1, p. 149. 20 See, Meale, ‘“gode men / wiues maydnes and alle men”’, p. 209. 21 Bennett, English Books and Readers, vol. 1, Appendix 1, ‘Publications of Wynkyn de Worde’, pp. 242–76. Early printings of chivalric romances include: Bevis of Hampton (1500), Troylus and Cresyde (1517), Sir Degore (1515?), Sir Eglamoure (1500), Ipomedon (1522), Sir Isumbras (1530?), Sir Torrant of Portugal (after 1509), Guy of Warwick (1500) and Le Morte Darthur (1498). On Wynkyn de Worde’s contribution to romance literature, see p. 191. 22 E. Vinaver (ed.), Malory: Works, 2nd edn. (Oxford, New York, Toronto, Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1971), pp. xiii–xv. 23 Vinaver (ed.), Malory, ‘Caxton’s preface’, p. xiii. 24 Bennett, English Books and Readers, vol 1, pp. 149–51. See also N.F. Blake, William Caxton and English Literary Culture (London: The Hambledon Press, 1991), especially chapters 14, 16, 17, 18. 25 Bennett, English Books and Readers, vol. 1, p. 231. 26 G.  Rogers, ‘The Percy Folio manuscript revisited’, in M.  Mills, J.  Fellows and C.M. Meale (eds), Romance in Medieval England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 39–64, p. 62. 27 This is Bodleian Library (Oxford), MS 21835 (Douce 261). On the attractiveness of popular romance to children and young readers see, for example, P. Hardman, Popular romances and young readers’, in Radulescu and Rushton (eds), Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, pp. 150–64. 28 Several anthologies were printed during the sixteenth century, see Bennett, English Books and Readers, vol. 2, pp. 249–50; on the continued popularity of sometimes shortened versions of these stories see also Spufford, Small Books, pp. 50, 51: for example, on the ‘diminutive neo-chivalric Arthurian knight’ Tom Thumb, see p. 59; on Guy of Warwick, see p. 94. 29 See, Riddy, ‘Temporary virginity’, pp. 199ff. 30 Meale, ‘“gode men / wiues maydnes and alle men”’, p. 220. 31 On the ‘moments of inscription’ which define how a text may be read in a particular situation see, for example, N. Mason Bradbury, Writing Aloud: Storytelling in Medieval Literature (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998) pp. 20–1. See also the discussion of inscription in Chapter 3 of this volume. 32 Hahn, ‘General introduction’, in Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine. 33 For a consideration of the ways that Arthurian ideals have been questioned, including the possibility of subversive readings see, for example, E. Archibald, ‘Questioning Arthurian ideals’, in Archibald and Putter (eds) Companion to Arthurian Legend, pp. 139–53, and see p. 147 on some failures of Gawain.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 216

21/05/2012 10:15:12

Fictional literature: Gawain

217

34 See T. Watt, Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 39. 35 On the interactions of actual oral tradition with references to orality and the minstrel tradition in popular romance stories, and for a considered view of the interactions of actual oral tradition with references to orality in romance stories, see also A. Putter, ‘Introduction’, in A. Putter and J. Gilbert (eds), The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance (London: Longman, 2000), pp. 1–38, pp. 7–11. See also K. Reichl, ‘Orality and performance’, in Radulescu and Rushton (eds), Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, pp. 132–49, pp. 133–5, which tends to take the ‘listen to me’ prefaces at face value whilst also arguing for a complex view of this. On the difference between orality and aurality (the former taken to mean unwritten text and the latter taken to mean written texts used for speaking and listening by groups of ‘readers’) see J. Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), e.g. pp. 27–32. 36 McDonald, ‘Polemical introduction’, p. 14. 37 On the minstrel instinct of one adapter of the Gawain and the Green Knight story (The Grene Knight), see Barron, English Medieval Romance, p. 166. Also see Hahn, ‘General introduction’, in Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine, n. 38. For similar prejudice against other popular literatures see, for example, McDonald, ‘Polemical introduction’, p. 2 and Putter, ‘Introduction’, in Putter and Gilbert (eds), Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance, pp. 19–20. 38 For a useful essay refuting this simple progressive model in general, see J. Fabian, ‘Keep listening: Ethnography and reading’, in J. Boyarin (ed.), The Ethnography of Reading (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 80–97. 39 On the recent debates surrounding concepts of elite and popular in romance see, for example, R. Radulescu, ‘Genre and classification’, in Radulescu and Rushton (eds), Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, pp. 31–48, pp. 31–2; for a discussion of the ‘crude’ qualities of medieval popular romance see A. Putter ‘Sir Percyvell of Gales’, in McDonald (ed.), Pulp Fictions, pp. 171–96, p. 192. 40 G. Rogers, ‘The Grene Knight’, in Brewer and Gibson (eds), Companion to the Gawain Poet, pp. 365–72, p. 370, referring here to ‘The Grene Knight’ in the Percy manuscript. On the problematic use of the concept ‘sophisticated’ in opposition to the concept ‘popular’ see R. Field, ‘Popular romance: The material and the problems’, in Radulescu and Rushton (eds), Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, pp. 9–30, p. 12. Noting the similarities between Gawain and the Green Knight and stories from the European tradition and thereby indicating that the Gawain poet was part of a broader writerly tradition at this time see, A. Putter, Sir Gawain and

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 217

21/05/2012 10:15:12

218

Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), p. 140. 41 Hahn, ‘General introduction’, in Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine, n. 39. 42 Hahn, ‘General introduction’, in Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine. 43 A.C. Spearing, ‘The Awntyrs off Arthure’, in B.S. Levy and P.E. Szarmach, The Alliterative Tradition in the Fourteenth Century (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981), pp. 183–202. p. 190. On the intended audience and the interactions between their knowledge and the meaning of the story, see also R. Allen, ‘The Awntyrs off Arthure: Jests and jousts’, in J. Fellows, R. Field, G. Rogers and J. Weiss (eds), Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Narrative presented to Maldwyn Mills (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), pp. 129–42, pp. 138–9. 44 Hahn, ‘Introduction to Awyntyrs off Arthur’, in Hahn (ed), Sir Gawaine. 45 On silent reading see G. Cavallo and R. Chartier, A History of Reading in the West (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1997). I have discussed the significance of ‘oralisation’ in popular reading in E. Salter, ‘“The Dayes Moralised”: Reconstructing devotional reading, c. 1450–1560’, in R.G.A. Lutton and E. Salter (eds), Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences, c. 1400–1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 145–62, pp. 154ff. 46 On the self-conscious skill with which tropes of orality are manipulated in Ragnelle see, for example, R.A. Davis, ‘More evidence for intertextuality and humorous intent in The Weddynge of Gawen and Dame Ragnell ’, The Chaucer Review 35/4 (2001), pp. 430–9, p. 431. 47 Hahn, ‘Introduction to The Turke and Sir Gawain’, in Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine. 48 Rogers, ‘Percy folio manuscript’, p. 55. For a recent review of negative (and positive) assessments of this story, see Davis, ‘More evidence for intertextuality’, p. 430. 49 See, for example, Barron, English Medieval Romance, p. 160 for the celebration of Gawain’s loyalty to Arthur as an element of popular romance; and Archibald, ‘Questioning Arthurian ideals’, p. 148 on Chaucer’s subversion of the romance tradition. 50 R. Hanna, ‘The Awntyrs of Arthur: An interpretation’, Modern Language Quarterly, 31 (1970), pp. 275–97, p. 276. 51 See S. Stanbury, ‘The Gawain-poet’, in L. Scanlon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 139–51, p. 142. 52 Hahn, ‘General introduction’, in Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine. 53 Hahn, ‘Introduction to The Awyntyrs off Arthur’, in Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine. 54 For a set of questions about the implications of orality in relation to performance, writing, reading and listening see, Reichl, ‘Orality and performance’, pp. 133, 144. 55 Davis, ‘More evidence for intertextuality’, p. 431.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 218

21/05/2012 10:15:12

Fictional literature: Gawain

219

56 On connections between Ragnelle and Chaucer’s ‘Wife of Bath’, see S.H.A. Shepherd, ‘The Weddynge of Sir Gawen and Dame Ragnell’, in Fellows, Field, Rogers and Weiss (eds), Romance Reading on the Book, pp.  112–28, pp.  117–21, here citing work by P.J.C. Field and John Withrington. On the humour created through excess by the Ragnelle poet in comparison to the spare description of Chaucer’s version, see Davis, ‘More evidence for intertextuality’, pp. 432–6. 57 The text is taken from the version printed as The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnelle, in Hahn (ed.), Sir Gawaine. On the humorous elements of this in contrast to the violence found in other Gawain stories including Carle, see Davis, ‘More evidence for intertextuality’, p. 436. Davis describes the violent role of Gawain in Carle and so must be referring to the Percy version not the Brogyntyn version. 58 Hanna, ‘The Awntyrs off Arthure: An interpretation’, p. 290: Despite her use of this affective language, however, Hanna persists that Guinevere fails to comprehend the ghost’s message about Christian behaviour and this ultimately leads to the downfall of the round table. 59 Hahn, ‘The Awyntyrs off Arthur’, ll. 222–34. 60 Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91, fol. 211v, untitled in the manuscript but called ‘Hymn to the Trinity, the Virgin, and Jesus’ in the facsimile edition: D.S. Brewer and A.E.B. Owen (eds), The Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral Ms. 91), Introductions by D.S. Brewer & A.E.B. Owen (London: The Scolar Press, 1975) p. xix; the same poem is entitled ‘Hymn to Jesus Christ and the Virgin’ as printed in G.G. Perry (ed.), Religious Pieces in Prose and Verse Edited from Robert Thornton’s MS (Cir 1440), Early English Text Society, Original Series vol. 26 (London: N. Trubner & Co., 1867), pp. 73–8. 61 See Davis, ‘More evidence for intertextuality’, p. 437, on the tradition of prayers in these stories and for the proposition that long prayers might be used to add humour to the text. 62 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1. This is available in digital facsimile at www. llgc.org.uk/index.php?id=amiddleenglishmiscellanybro. On the problem of calling this manuscript a miscellany, see D. Huws, ‘Ms Porkington 10 and its scribes’, in Fellows, Field, Rogers and Weiss (eds), Romance Reading on the Book, pp. 188–207, p. 199. A similar case study of the manuscript context of the sixteenth-century Ragnelle text (found in Oxford Bodleian 11951, formerly Rawlinson C86) would be possible, particularly by looking at the five texts which exist alongside the Gawain story in the booklet structure as identified by Carol Meale and Julia Boffey in their essay ‘Selecting the text’, in order to explore the evidence this provides for reading experience. On the evidence provided by juxtaposed texts in a miscellany, see also J. Thompson, ‘Popular reading tastes in Middle English religious and didactic literature’, in J. Simons (ed.), From Medieval to Medievalism, ‘Insights’ series (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 82–100, p. 94.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 219

21/05/2012 10:15:12

220 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 63 These studies outlined very briefly here will be expanded for a future publication. 64 Barron, English Medieval Romance, p. 166 gives a brief mention of a late fifteenth-century tail-rhyme romance of Jeaste. 65 Bodleian Library (Oxford), MS 21835 (Douce 261), Jeaste is copied alongside Sir Eglamour and Sir Isumbras; the printed text to which I refer is The Jest of Sir Gawaine (London: John Butler, 1528) STC 11691. This is not mentioned in Hahn, Sir Gawaine. 66 Horstmann, Minor Poems of the Vernon Manuscript. 67 See, for example, Hanna, ‘The Awntyrs off Arthure: An interpretation’; A.C. Spearing Medieval To Renaissance in English Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), pp. 121–42. 68 For a brief discussion of the intersections between popular religion and romance literature, see E. Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1992), pp. 69–71. 69 Barron, English Medieval Romance, p. 159, for a brief mention of Carle. 70 See, Windeatt, ‘The fifteenth-century Arthur’, p. 86. On the popularity of tail rhyme romances see A. Putter, ‘The metres and stanza forms of popular romance’, in Radulescu and Rushton (eds), Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, pp. 111–31, pp. 121–6. Although note that Putter’s proposal that most surviving tail rhymes are ‘garbled’ (p. 127) belies the popularity of the form with scribes. 71 On the concept of ‘disenchantment by decapitation’, see G.L. Kittredge, A Study of Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and London: Oxford University Press, 1916), p. 88; see also, E. Brewer (ed.), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Sources and Analogues, second edn (Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 1992), pp. 18–59. On the celtic sources for the ‘exchange of blows’ trope see, for example, P. Sims-Williams, Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), p. 243. 72 For a discussion of the beheading scene in the Carle stories which dismisses the lack of a beheading scene in the Brogyntyn text as a textual variant see, A. Buchanan, ‘The Irish framework of Gawain and the Green Knight’, Papers of the Modern Language Association, 47/2 (1932), pp. 315–38, pp. 331–2. 73 Huws, ‘Porkington 10’, pp. 204–5. 74 See, for example, C.  Brown (ed.), Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939); and with particular reference to Brogyntyn 2.1 see, J.O. Halliwell (ed.), Early English Miscellanies in PROSE AND VERSE Selected from an Inedited Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (London, The Warton Club, 1855). 75 Huws, ‘Porkington 10’, p. 189; pp. 190–1 for the list. Huws also offers a very useful summary of previous work on this book. 76 Huws, ‘Porkington 10’, p. 199: Huws takes issue with the definition of

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 220

21/05/2012 10:15:12

Fictional literature: Gawain 221 the book as a miscellany because of its connotations with a haphazard patchwork of production which he seeks to disprove, see also Meale, ‘“gode men / wiues maydnes and alle men”’, p. 220. 77 Huws, ‘Porkington 10’, p. 189. 78 Huws, ‘Porkington 10’, p. 198. 79 Huws, ‘Porkington 10’, p. 189: ‘What follows has little to say of the texts, most of which are in print’. 80 Huws, ‘Porkington 10’, p. 190. 81 Huws, ‘Porkington 10’, p. 198. 82 Huws, ‘Porkington 10’, p. 202. 83 See, particularly, NLW Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fols 137v –138r. 84 Huws, ‘Porkington 10’, p. 190. 85 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fols 201r to 202r. 86 The text beginning quire 25 Timor mortis conturbat me which is identified as in the hand of scribe R looks very similar to the self-consciously ‘different’ hand used by ‘O’ for the Latin parts of ‘Dear son’, and these texts may also therefore be by the same hand. Huws, ‘Porkington’, p. 190. 87 See Brown, Religious Lyrics, pp. 1–2, 293–4. 88 On evidence for a specific set of interests for one manuscript compiler See C.M. Meale, ‘The compiler as work: John Colyns and BL MS Harley 2252’, in D. Pearsall (ed.), Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 82–103. On London as a principle interest see p. 100. 89 For a discussion of the erroneous nature of studies which seek to impose organising principles on miscellanies, see D. Pearsall, ‘The whole book: Late medieval English manuscript miscellanies and their modern interpreters’, in J. Thompson and S. Kelly (eds), Imagining the Book: Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 17–29, p. 17, 20, 21–2, 29; and for discussion of Fein’s work on Harley 2253 and the possibilities of some thematic organisation, see p. 27. 90 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 12r, line 1. On the possibly self-conscious connections made between this and the story of Dame Ragnelle see, for example, Davis, ‘More evidence for intertextuality’, p. 431. 91 On manuscript marks for oral performance and their absence in books intended for private or family reading see, for example, Putter, ‘Sir Percyvell of Gales’, pp. 180–1. 92 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fols 53r–56r. 93 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 56v. 94 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fols 59v ff. 95 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 21, fol. 59v. 96 C. Brown and R.H. Robbins, The Index of Middle English Verse [IMEV] (New York: Columbia University Press for the Index Society, 1943), IMEV 1957. 97 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 61r.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 221

21/05/2012 10:15:12

222 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 98 NLW, Brogyntn MS 2.1, fol. 63r. The poem ends here. 99 See, Brown and Robbins, Index of Middle English Verse: the main text is IMEV 3330; the two-stanza text identified here as an ‘Epilogue’ is IMEV 1932. Both are printed in Halliwell, Early English Miscellanies, pp. 12–39; the Epilogue is printed in H.M.R Murray (ed.), The Middle English Poem Erthe upon Erthe, Printed from Twenty-four Manuscripts, Edited with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, Early English Text Society, Original Series 141 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1911), p. 38. 100 NLW, Brogyntyn 2.1, fol. 81v. This is printed in Halliwell, Early English Miscellanies, p. 43. 101 This is printed in Halliwell, Early English Miscellanies, p. 45. 102 See, for example, the complaint poem given the title ‘The Song of the Husbandman’, in R.H. Robbins, Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959), pp. 7–8. This poem is found in British Library, Harley MS 2253; see N.R. Ker (ed.), Facsimile of British Museum MS Harley 2253 (London: Oxford University Press for The Early English Text Society, 1965). 103 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fols 79v ff. 104 Nine stanzas begin ‘Earth upon earth’, and three begin with some reference to this, but the opening two do not. 105 Murray, Erthe upon Erthe, ‘Introduction’, pp. xxiii, 38. 106 Murray, Erthe upon Erthe, pp. 24–6. 107 There are numerous references to the wheel of fortune in, for example, Brown (ed.), Religious Lyrics. 108 Brown and Robbins, Index of Middle English Verse, IMEV 704. For other variants, all surviving in various manuscripts, see IMEV 703, 705, 3939, 3940, and 3985. 109 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 79v, printed in Halliwell (ed.), Early English Miscellanies, p. 40. 110 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fols 80v–81r, printed in Halliwell (ed.), Early English Miscellanies, p. 41. 111 NLW, MS Brogyntyn 2.1, fol. 62v, l. 33, printed in Halliwell (ed.), Early English Miscellanies, p. 10. 112 NLW, Brogyntyn MS, fols 150r–152r. This is printed in Halliwell (ed.), Early English Miscellanies, pp. 62–5. 113 Variants include ‘Yet say well, or hold thee still’ and ‘Therefore say well, or hold thee still’. 114 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 150r, ll. 9–12, modernised here for clarity. 115 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fols 151r–v. 116 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 150r, ll. 1–2, modernised in this quotation. 117 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 150r. 118 NLW Brogyntyn MS 2.1: extracts from The Boke of St Albans begin part way down fol. 184r and end part way down fol. 192r; ‘Cock of the North’ begins on fol. 192r and ends part way down fol. 193v.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 222

21/05/2012 10:15:12

Fictional literature: Gawain 223 119 W.  Blades (ed.), The Boke of Saint Albans by Dame Juliana Berners containing Treatises on Hawking, Hunting and Cote Armour: Printed at Saint Albans by the Schoolmaster in 1486 Reproduced in Facsimile, with an Introduction by William Blades (London: Elliot Stock, 1905), p. 21. 120 See R. Hands, ‘Juliana Berners and the Boke of Saint Albans’, Review of English Studies, New Series, 18/72 (1967), pp. 373–86, p. 374. 121 Hands, ‘Juliana Berners’, pp. 378–9; p. 386 for the itemised contents of this text. The list of carving terms is very similar to the one found in Wynkyn de Worde’s Book of Kervynge, discussed in Chapter 4. 122 This list is taken from Hands, ‘Juliana Berners’, p. 385. 123 L.A.  Coote, Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England, York Medieval Press (London: Boydell and Brewer, 2000), pp. 198–9. 124 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 192r, l. 1 and l. 17 respectively. 125 Coote, Prophecy and Public Affairs, p. 199. 126 Robbins (ed.), Historical Poems, p. 310. 127 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 192r, ll. 9–10. 128 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 192r, ll. 7–8. 129 See Coote, Prophecy and Public Affairs, p. 200. Given the connections Coote draws between the boar which goes to the Holy Land at the end of the ‘Cock in the North’ and the ‘Baltasar Cador’ prophecies, it is also interesting that the text which follows ‘The Cock’ in Brogyntyn 2.1 is identified by Huws as a satirical letter to Baltasar (Huws, ‘MS Porkington 10’, p. 191). 130 This is Balliol College (Oxford) MS 354. It also contains a story from the Gesta Romanorum (see Chapter 3). 131 Cambridge University Library, MS F.f.2.38; Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91. 132 See, Brown and Robbins, Index of Middle English Verse, IMEV 703, 704, 705, 3939, 3940, 3985. 133 For a descriptive comparison of a selection of versions, see Murray, Erthe upon Erthe. 134 Lincoln Cathedral, MS 91, fol. 279r. I am working from the facsimile edition, Brewer and Owen (eds), The Thornton Manuscript, fol. 279v. 135 See Murray, Erthe upon Erthe, ‘Introduction’, p. xxiv. Oxford Balliol 354, for example, has an eight-line Latin stanza on the ‘Dance of Death’ theme as its preface. 136 NLW, Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fol. 12r, line 1. 137 This is based on the edition printed in Hahn (ed.), ‘The Carle of Carlisle’. 138 Hahn (ed.), ‘Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle’, l. 529. 139 NLW. Brogyntyn MS 2.1, fols 23r–v. I have used the text from the edition printed in Hahn (ed.), ‘Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle’.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 223

21/05/2012 10:15:12

6

Conclusion Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600

Conclusion

This book uses four case study chapters to explore evidence for reading practice and experience c. 1400–1600. I focus on the nature of the evidence and attempt to propose a new method for assessing practice and experience. The novelty of the method is that it is based on detailed considerations of the material artefact of manuscript and printed book, rather than prioritising the additional evidence of reader annotation or marginalia (although these are not ignored on the occasions that they are present). I explain my method, the various terminologies I use, and the ideas which underpin the method, in the first chapter. The book is thematic, taking four types or categories of text as its organising principle: religious, moral, practical, fictional. As with any categories, and categories of literature are no exception, as soon as they are made they need to be unmade, but this structure seems a good place to start. Each chapter investigates specific aspects of reading practice and experience according to the chosen evidence and each has its own conclusion relating to the particularities of those findings. The focus of my study of reading is on vernacular reading matter, in English in this instance, even though many of the texts had Latin precursors or versions in circulation at the same time, and although there was also macaronic and bilingual writing readily available. A Middle English Miscellany forms the focus of Chapter 5 and it is the English texts which are explored although there are also some macaronic items in here. The English translation of the treatise on husbandry, attributed to Robert Grosseteste, alongside other tracts written in English are examined in Chapter 4’s consideration of practical texts. The English translations of the moral stories known as Gesta Romanorum form the focus of Chapter 3. English liturgical and devotional books form the focus of Chapter 2, although here the uses of vernacular and of Latin are particularly resonant.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 224

21/05/2012 10:15:12

Conclusion 225 The nature and role of vernacularity was an issue of importance across the two centuries covered by this book. The significance of vernacular writing is a particularly important issue in Chapter 2’s consideration of religious literature because these two centuries mark one of the iconic transitions of medieval and early modern studies, the Reformation, and a major theme in this is the role and uses of Latin and the vernaculars. Issues revolving around the uses of vernacular and Latin text that are examined in Chapter 2 include the possibility that the practice and experience of learning to read with basic catechetical writings may have involved a significant element of Latin reading. And, in a comparison of the differences between a prayer book of c. 1450 and a prayer book of c. 1558, I also question whether an entirely English book (c. 1558) that contains no illustrations is easier to read than an illustrated prayer book (c. 1450) that contains some English instructions with the majority of the text being in Latin. There remain many questions to ask about the extents to which Latin and English were used by experienced and inexperienced readers, and these questions apply to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries as well as to the preceding few centuries which experienced and reacted to major incentives towards vernacular literate practice in, for example, popular religion and legal matters.1 John Fitzherbert’s husbandry treatise (printed between c. 1518 and 1600) makes some interesting suggestions about the literacy of the people using his manual, implying that they may be able to read although not write, and his translation into English of frequently used Latin phrases suggests a market of readers whose Latin may have been shaky. Other examples seem to indicate that Latin might be the most familiar language for the new reader with English reading following later.2 The case studies in this book concentrate on specific examples that I have chosen from a great many possibilities.3 The different findings of the four case study chapters demonstrate the variety of possibilities there are for investigating reading practice and experience, and they also demonstrate the fact that there were many different factors affecting the process of reading. Within the bounds of what is culturally and contextually appropriate, we know that readers are capable of a wide range of responses to the ‘same’ text.4 The response to that same text by one particular reader is also likely to vary at different moments or across time. And all readers, from the scholar to the beginner, are capable of deliberate and accidental misconstrual, misunderstanding, or reading against the grain, although all these readings can still only ever be within a range that is contextually and culturally appropriate, however innovative or creative the reading is.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 225

21/05/2012 10:15:12

226 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 The evidence that I discuss in this book, based largely on the artefact of manuscript and printed book as it is, attempts to propose some possibilities for the kinds of readings that a specific text or book may have evoked, and the experiences and practices that this involved for readers during the period c. 1400–1600. This has involved detailed examination of specific books, manuscripts, texts, items. These readings are genuine attempts to excavate the reading practices and experiences of people from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. These readings are also, of course, prone to the constraints and latitudes of any other reader’s response, past or present, and the findings are subject to the usual issues of archival survival, partiality, and material loss. A theme at the heart of this book is the evidence that the material item of manuscript and printed book can provide for reading practice and experience. Page layout including the interactions of different kinds or colours of script and of picture and writing are important visual aspects of the material evidence. These are often not separable from issues of literary form and voice (poetry, prose, gloss, instruction) and of language (English and Latin in the examples chosen here). In Chapter 2, for example, the case study of one prayer book focuses on the ways that the book itself constructs a desired reading order through its uses of red, black and blue script, of Latin and English, of instructional tones and of captions for narrative images.5 While this is the construction of an ideal reading pattern and a reader may stray from that, the book demonstrates the ways that the layout of a book such as this encourages the reader in certain ways of making meaning. These ways of making meaning include, for example, how to understand the ancient biblical past in terms of contemporary situations, how to use short visual and textual captions as mnemonics for longer narratives, and how to incorporate the intertextual references of other books and other experiences into the reading process. In Chapters 3 and 4, the issue of the juxtaposition of images with writing is explored in the context of early printed texts. In both examples, the generic nature of the image is probably connected with the practicalities and economics of supplying woodcut images whereby printers would reuse the same image for various different texts.6 But the abstract relationship between image and text also provides insights into reading practice. In Chapter 3, for example, one of the early printed versions of the Gesta Romanorum stories is illustrated with a woodcut image of a built structure something like a tower with windows at first-floor level, buttresses around the ground floor and crenellations at the top.7 Against this structure lean two ladders, one on each side of the structure, with

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 226

21/05/2012 10:15:12

Conclusion 227 each ladder having a person climbing up it. This woodcut provides evidence for the ways that the reader of an early sixteenth-century version of Gesta Romanorum stories was required to conceptualise key symbolic representations from the image. The story is about two cities; one, which is full of pain and torment, has an easy entrance route and the other, which is full of treasure, is difficult to enter. The moral of the story takes the classic Christian trope of making the choice between the narrow and the wide path in order to gain access to heaven. The reader is required to gain a set of abstract information from the image, such as ‘cityness’ portrayed by the single built structure, and the concept of entrances as represented by the two ladders. The details of the image are wrong (there are two cities in the story each with one entrance) but the image does represent key elements which inform the symbolism of the story. In Chapter 4, the woodcut image of the husbandry treatise juxtaposed against the whole text in its position as a frontispiece (itself a significant issue in the history of early printed books) appears to encourage a certain idealising mood, which perhaps adds to the evidence that advice and practical manuals were intended not only for the practitioner of farming, horse medicine or tree pruning but also for the reader who wished to travel there in his or her imagination.8 The matter of the manuscript and the manuscript context are key issues in the analysis of reading fiction in Chapter 5. There are no illustrative images in the Middle English Miscellany (NLW MS Brogyntyn 2.1) which forms a key focus for this chapter, so that element in the production of meaning cannot be prioritised here. The significance of the juxtaposition of particular texts within one book is, however, a very useful kind of evidence for understanding more about reading practice and experience. The focus of Chapter 5 is, in part, on the ways that popular stories from Arthurian Literature may have been read and, for the detailed exploration of this manuscript, that means focusing on the story of Sir Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle. But the whole chapter is not about Gawain because a key purpose is to demonstrate the ways that the contents of one manuscript might inform out understandings of reading experience. In this instance, the Gawain story seems to have specific resonances with the theme of orality which occurs in a number of the other texts in this manuscript. It is possible, therefore, that the particular emphasis on the power of speech in the version of Gawain and the Carle of Carlisle copied into this manuscript is part of a broader interest of one or two scribes in issues concerning oral culture, listening, performing and reading aloud. The scribe who wrote this version of the Gawain story may himself have

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 227

21/05/2012 10:15:12

228 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 made the significant alteration to the plot of this story as part of a process of creating thematic unity or emphasis within this book. I suggest that this scribe might be considered a ‘scribe–reader’ – that is, a writer who is producing his (her) own version of a text relatively unconstrained by formal requirements, probably for his (her) own consumption.9 Another possible attempt thematically to organise or group the texts of the Brogyntyn manuscript demonstrates the possibilities for creative reading (or mis-reading): next to the extracts relating to the Book of St Albans (which focus on practical advice for the gentleman and matters concerning stock and on pursuits such as hawking and hunting) is placed the version of the prophetic text known as ‘The Cock in the North’, which also mentions numerous kinds of animals, specifically because of their heraldic significance. The Brogyntyn manuscript’s placing of ‘The Cock in the North’ next to the lists of animal-related terminology from the Book of St Albans provides an example of the type of intriguing juxtaposition of texts that is within the scope of a manuscript containing a range of short and longer texts. This example might have been intended as a playful juxtaposition, it might be a misconstrual of meanings, or it might be a pragmatic decision about how best to fill a space with the texts that this compiler had available and wished to use. Misconstruals are good pieces of evidence for how a scribe or ‘scribe– reader’ may have been reading or understanding a text, and this can be quite different from what may generally and appropriately be understood as its intentions or meanings. Scribe–readers are not always responsible for alterations and mistakes, however. The Trinity College husbandry text discussed in Chapter 4 gives evidence of a scribe–reader working hard to maintain a layout which, as comparative evidence shows, we might describe as being part of the aesthetic of that particular kind of text.10 The copyist of the printed Boke of Kervyng, by comparison, makes some ‘mistakes’ which suggest that he is making choices as he proceeds with his manuscript version of this printed text rather than simply slavishly copying the printed version. Another example of evidence which seems to stray from the actual purpose or point of the reading matter is the annotation which is apparently unconnected to the text to which it is added. Readers’ inscriptions such as these, for which I use the intentionally provocative term ‘non-meaningful annotations’, provide interesting evidence for how readers used their books, as I describe in Chapter 4.11 I explain in the first chapter that I do not prioritise annotation as evidence for reading practice and experience partly because I wish to explore and demonstrate the ample evidence for reading

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 228

21/05/2012 10:15:13

Conclusion 229 within the texts themselves. In Chapter 4, however, I explore the ways that ‘non-meaningful’ annotations in a manuscript compilation of practical texts give some insight into perceptions of the aesthetics of the page as well as providing information about the owners of this book at particular dates and the manuscript’s provenance.12 The use of ‘blank’ pages for a range of annotations, many of which are apparently unconnected with the subject of the book, does indicate that readers in the sixteenth and seventeenth century did not valorise the blankness of blank pages in their books. The inclusion of some rhyming ditties in the annotation also provides some further evidence for the significance of rhyming, proverbialised, or doggerel forms in the experience and enjoyment of popular writing and reading.13 ‘Non-meaningful’ annotations such as these act as a useful reminder that annotators did not necessarily intend what they wrote on the pages of their books to be interpreted as significant or lasting views on the text or their world view. That said, I should stress that annotation and marginalia are indeed a useful source of evidence for how readers used their books.14 A major issue with regard to the material culture of reading in the two centuries c. 1400–1600 is the issue of the transition from manuscript to print, a transition which might be understood as one of the major revolutions in textual culture.15 As the ordering of this conclusion indicates, this transition is not in itself a major focus for this book although the period 1400–1600 was a transitional phase in the uses of manuscript and printed matter. That both forms of text were in circulation provides very useful evidence for reading because it is often possible to compare manuscript and printed versions of ‘the same’ text which may well have been in use at the same time. I do this in Chapter 4, for example, in the comparison of a selection of practical manuals. These examples include a manuscript text of The Boke of Kervyng most possibly copied from the early printed text of this name.16 This reversal of the usual from-manuscript-to-print evidence adds a nice possibility for understanding more about what a scribe–reader perceived to be important elements in the layout of a husbandry text. While the evidence examined in this book indicates that there were no sudden revolutions in how to read because of printing and no sudden differences in the possibilities for making meaning, the comparative evidence of the two materially different forms of text is useful for building up a picture of reader perceptions and practices.17 And, these particular two centuries offer special opportunities for the consideration of both manuscript and printed evidence. The fuzziness of the transition from manuscript to print (its lack

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 229

21/05/2012 10:15:13

230 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 – therefore – of a revolutionising moment, and the continuities of practice and meaning across the manuscript-to-print divide that this lack indicates) provides a useful perspective in this present era of digital media. There has been much excitement about the whole new experience of using computer-generated text, the fluidities of hypertext, about being digital.18 And it has become commonplace to add a reflection of the digital into a consideration of reading, perhaps because pre-modern studies can augment the discussions of different textual forms and their technologies, thereby helping to move away from crude assumptions that technological change causes a sudden and inherent change in practice or understanding.19 It would be exciting to have more dialogue between the study of reading experiences across these transitions: from manuscript to digital. I hope that that this book may also contribute to that conversation about transition and continuity.20 Understanding continuity and discontinuity is a key theme running throughout the book. In Chapter 2 this is necessarily focused on an exploration of the ways that the massive ideological shifts of Reformation impacted on reading practice and experience. There is strong evidence to suggest that, certainly up to c. 1580, there are significant continuities in the kinds of religious text that are being read in popular culture. Key continuities include certain elements of style such as the continued importance of proverbial forms and of doggerel rhymes. My main discussion of the significance of proverbial writing is in relation to religious literature (Chapter 2). But John Fitzherbert’s Book of Husbandry (discussed in Chapter 4) also uses a proverbial style (employing Latin and English) which seems to signal this text’s subscription to an intentionally popular form of literature. And this is something which Thomas Tusser’s later treatise, which I do not discuss at length, expands. Fitzherbert’s inclusion of the moralising material, alongside the use of the popular proverbialising form, points to a reading experience which is associated with popular religious literature. Other continuities in religious reading matter include specific types of prayer such as those which emphasise the bodily senses. In the discussion of the moral sections found in Fitzherbert’s practical manual, there is also evidence of continuities in reading matter that guides readers towards ostensibly Catholic modes of daily behaviour. For example, the instruction that the husbandman’s wife should cross herself every morning is found in versions of the manual printed until the 1560s. Continuities of literary form and content across the era of religious reform pose questions about the relationships between ideology and

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 230

21/05/2012 10:15:13

Conclusion 231 practices – in other words, between the Christian ideology (Catholic or Protestant) promulgated by a specific text and the practices being employed to read it. My suggestion is that for the majority of readers, in these early years of reform, continuities in what they actually did with their religious texts, such as continued uses of an ‘oralised’ reading style which revolves around sounding out words (in silence or aloud), are more important than whether or not the text is ‘Catholic’ or ‘Protestant’. The appearance of the same texts in both emphatically Catholic and emphatically Protestant writings also suggests that it is often not useful to ascribe either denomination to specific pieces of writing. Once again, the context of the book in which the item is placed is a significant feature in understanding the likely influences on how it is read and used. In Chapter 4 continuities of layout between different manuscript versions of the same text provide evidence for scribe–readers’ ideas about the characteristic features of a text that should be preserved. Comparison of the Peniarth, Sloane and Trinity versions of The Book of Husbandry reveals that conventions of layout such as the style of the contents page and the headings for each chapter are preserved despite constraints on space in, for example, the Trinity manuscript.21 Similarly, in a comparison between the printed Boke of Kervyng and the copy of this in the Peniarth manuscript, the conventions of early printed decoration around the heading are imitated by the scribe of the Peniarth text. Some of the headings which have become lost in the printed text are also re-emphasised by the Peniarth scribe, indicating that the scribe is not merely making an attempt at an exact copy of the print but also making decisions about style as he proceeds. These types of evidence for the continuity of certain emphases in layout provide insights into the ways that the specific texts were perceived. In this example of practical texts, issues deemed to be important are, for example, descriptive contents pages, numerical chapter headings or decorated incipits and explicits that, despite the relative density of the main text, clearly delineate the start of a new section. Continuity and discontinuity in the ways that symbolism is produced form another significant element in understanding reading practice and experience c. 1400–1600. This is a general issue which relates to fluidity not only in the reader’s practice of construing meanings but also in the ways that texts themselves construct meanings. I explore this issue specifically in relation to the Gesta Romanorum in Chapter 3. These stories make symbolic meanings from a relatively small number of character types and scenarios. The range of different symbolic attributes given to individual characters in the stories included in the Wynkyn version of the

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 231

21/05/2012 10:15:13

232 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 Gesta, for example, indicates the extent to which the pre-modern reader was expected to apply differing symbolic meanings to the same sign in different stories. Gesta Romanorum stories use various devices to construct their symbolic spheres but one device of particular resonance, which returns to the issue of materiality, is inscription. Inscribing material objects with words or images was a culturally resonant way of adding symbolic value to an item in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as I discuss more fully in Chapter 3. Gesta stories frequently use the device of inscription within their narratives in order, perhaps, to provide moments of specific exegesis in an otherwise highly flexible process of construing symbolic meanings. In the chapter I give examples of the way that the stories playfully or artfully use what on the surface seems a very simple device, using very simple sometimes doggerelised inscriptions onto simple objects. Because of the resonance to contemporary readers of inscribing material objects for conceptual purposes, I suggest that this device provides a good example of the ways that a reader may engage reflexively in the process of attributing meaning to a symbolically laden text. This study offers a set of possibilities for understanding more about reading. My interest in this subject stems from early work on the creativity of reading and this book therefore represents the development of a set of ideas about the uses of textuality in popular culture. There are many more case studies which might be investigated using reading matter from the two centuries that form the focus of this book and from earlier or later examples.22 This book is, therefore, one contribution to an ongoing debate. Notes 1 The subject of literacy is discussed in Chapter 1. A seminal work on the rise of literacy and literate practice in England is M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1327, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). 2 See, for example, R. Whitford, A werke for housholders (Imprynted at London, in Southwarke by me Peter Treueris, 1531?), sig B iir–iiv – this version is STC 25422.3 – and other examples discussed in Chapter 2. 3 Case studies are discussed in Chapter 1. The personal process of choosing case studies is also mentioned in H. Brayman Hackel, Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender and Literacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), p 13. 4 See, for example, H.R. Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. T. Bahti (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, 1982), on horizons of expectation.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 232

21/05/2012 10:15:13

Conclusion 233 5 This is Canterbury Cathedral Library, MS H/L-3-4. 6 M.W. Driver, The Image in Print: Book Production in Late Medieval England and its Sources (London: British Library, 2004), p. 82. 7 This is Anon., Gesta Romanorum (Wynkyn de Worde: London, c. 1510), STC (2nd edn) 212863. I consulted this book at the Library of St John’s College, Cambridge. 8 This is The Book of Husbandry (translated from the treatise of Robert Grosseteste) (Wynkyn de Worde: London, 1508), STC 25007. 9 My use of the term ‘scribe–reader’ is explained in Chapter 1. It draws on concepts in J. Fabian, ‘Keep listening: Ethnography and reading’, in J. Boyarin (ed.), The Ethnography of Reading (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 80–97. 10 Trinity College Cambridge MS 0.1.13. 11 ‘Non-meaningful annotation’ is discussed and explained in Chapter 1. For an important recent study of annotation see, for example, W. Sherman, Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). 12 This is NLW MS Peniarth 394D. 13 The use of proverbs in annotation is also discussed in Sherman, Used Books, pp. 17, 80. 14 Witness the significant recent work using annotations evidence e.g. Sherman, Used Books; Brayman Hackel, Reading Material. 15 E. Eisenstein, Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). See also J. Thompson, ‘Popular reading tastes in Middle English religious and didactic literature’, in J. Simons (ed.), From Medieval to Medievalism, ‘Insights’ series (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 82–100, p. 93 for the idea that print brought a ‘sudden’ change in the potential for copying and circulation but that this did not remove the problems of distribution. 16 This is in NLW Peniarth 394D. 17 For the similar challenge to a reading revolution model based on the proposed transition from ‘intensive’ to ‘extensive’ reading during the eighteenth (and nineteenth) century, see R. Darnton, ‘First steps toward a History of Reading’, in R. Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (London: Faber & Faber, 1990), pp. 154–87, p. 156. 18 See, for example, N. Negroponte, Being Digital (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995); P. Delaney and G.P. Landow (eds), Hypermedia and Literary Studies (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1991). Commenting on this in relation to the centrality of the book in western consciousness, see J. Thompson and S. Kelly, ‘Imagined histories of the book: Current paradigms and future directions’, in Thompson and Kelly (eds), Imagining the Books: Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 1–14, pp. 1–2.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 233

21/05/2012 10:15:13

234 Popular reading in English c. 1400–1600 19 For a very useful discussion of the complex relationships between technology, invention, and changes in practice see F. Braudel, The Structure of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century (London: Collins, 1981), pp. 334–5. Braudel explains that technological development is never the only force which overcomes a particular issue or obstacle, rather there is a set of cultural reasons which informs how, when and where the technology becomes useful. For a recent study of pre-modern text which includes reflection on the digital culture of today see, for example, Sherman, Used Books, ‘Afterword’ pp. 179–82. 20 The material text across time forms the subject of a future and developing collaborative project. 21 The manuscripts examined are NLW Peniarth 394D, Trinity College Cambridge O.1.13 and British Library MS Sloane 686. 22 For example, one major case study I hope to conduct in the future is an examination of manuscript evidence for the role and uses of catechetical writings over three centuries c. 1200–1500.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 234

21/05/2012 10:15:13

Bibliography Bibliography

Bibliography

Unpublished primary sources Anon., The Boke of Kervynge (Wynkyn de Worde, 1513), STC 3290, http:// eebo.chadwyck.com. Anon., The crafte of graffynge & plantynge of trees (Wynkyn de Worde, 1518), STC 5953, http://eebo.chadwyck.com. Anon., Gesta Romanorum (London: Wynkyn de Worde, c. 1510), STC (2nd edn) 212863, Early English Books Online, St John’s College (University of Cambridge) Library, http://eebo.chadwyck.com. Anon., Here Begynneth the Proprytees and Medycynes for Hors (Wynkyn de Worde, 1502), STC 204393, http://eebo.chadwyck.com. Balliol College (Oxford), MS 354. British Library, Additional MS 9066. British Library, C. 106.a.24, A Spirituall Counsayle very necessarye for euery persone to haue (London: ?John Mayler, 1540). British Library, C. 110.e.13, An vniforme and Catholyke Prymer in Latin and Englishe (London: John Wayland, 1555), STC 16064. British Library, C 123.i 23 (1533, STC 10994). British Library, 969.a.32 (1552, 109997). British Library, 969.a.51 (1556, STC 11000). British Library, C.27 a 23 (1568, STC 11003). British Library, 969.a.51. British Library, Additional MS 58280. British Library, Harleian MS 7333. British Library, Sloane MS 686. Cambridge University Library, MS Kk.1.6. Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library H/L-4-10 (R 330), The primer in Englishe and Latine (London: Jhon kyngston and Henry Sutton, 1557). Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library H/L-3-4. Day, R., Booke of Christian Prayers (London: John Daye, 1578), STC 6429. Dowe, B., A dairie booke for good huswives (STC 23703), http://eebo. chadwyck.com.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 235

21/05/2012 10:15:13

236 Bibliography Fitzherbert, J., Here begynneth a newe tracte or treatyse moost profytable for all husbandmen and very frutefull for all other persons to rede (Imprinted at London: In fletestrete by Rycharde Pynson printer vnto the kynges noble grace. With priuilege to hym graunted by our sayd souerayne lorde the kynge, [1523?]), http://eebo.chadwyck.com. Gloucester Cathedral Library, MSS 22, 22ADD and 42. NLW, MS Brogyntyn 2.1. NLW, MS.18951c. NLW, MS Peniarth 394D. Prymer in Englyshe and Laten, The (London: Redman, 1537), STC 15998, http://eebo.chadwyck.com. Prymer in Englyshe and in Laten is newly translatyd after the Laten texte, Thys (Rouen: printed by N. le Roux for F. Regnault? in Paris), STC 16008.3, http://eebo.chadwyck.com. Trinity College Cambridge, MS 0.1.13. Whitford, R., A werke for housholders (Imprynted at London, in Southwarke by me Peter Treueris, 1531?), STC 25422.3, http://eebo.chadwyck.com. Whitford, R., A werke for housholders or for them that haue the guydynge or gouernaunce of any company. Gadred and set forth by a professed brother of Syon, Richard Whitforde: and newely corrected [and] prynted agayne with an addicion of polici for housholding, set forth also by the same brother (Imprynted at London: In fletestrete, at the sygne of the George, by me Robert Redman, The yere of our lorde God. M.D.xxxvii. The. viii. daye of Nouember. 1537). STC 25425, http://eebo.chadwyck.com.

Published primary sources Brewer, D.S. and Owen, A.E.B. (eds), The Thornton Manuscript (Lincoln Cathedral Ms. 91), Introductions by D.S. Brewer & A.E.B. Owen (London: The Scolar Press, 1975). Brown, C. (ed.), Religious Lyrics of the XVth Century (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1939). Dyboski, R. (ed.), Songs, Carols and Other Miscellaneous Poems from Balliol 354, Richard Hill’s Commonplace Book, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, 101 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1907). Halliwell, J.O. (ed.), Early English Miscellanies in PROSE AND VERSE Selected from an Inedited Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century (London: The Warton Club, 1855). Herrtage, S.J.H. (ed.), The Early English Versions of the Gesta Romanorum. Formerly edited by Sir Frederic Madden for the Roxburghe Club and now re-edited from the Mss. in British Museum (Harl. 7333 & Addit. 9066) and University Library of Cambridge (Kk.1.6), edited and with introduction

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 236

21/05/2012 10:15:13

Bibliography 237 notes and glossary, Early English Text Society, ES 33 (London: Oxford University Press, 1879, repr. 1962). Horstmann, C.F. (and F.J. Furnivall), The Minor Poems of the Vernon Manuscript, Part 1, Early English Text Society, Original Series 98 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1892). Hoskins, E., Horae Beatae Mariae Virginis: Or Sarum and York Primers, with kindred books, and Primers of the Reformed Roman Use. Together with an introduction (London, New York and Bombay: Longmans, Green & Co., 1901). Ker, N.R. (ed.), Facsimile of British Museum MS Harley 2253 (London: Oxford University Press for The Early English Text Society, 1965). Lamond, E. (ed.), Walter of Henley’s Husbandry Together with an Anonymous Husbandry, Seneschaucie and Robert Grossetestes’s Rules (London and New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1890). Murray, H.M.R., The Middle English Poem, Erthe upon Erthe, printed from Twenty-four Manuscripts, Edited with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, Edited with Introduction, Notes and Glossary, Early English Text Society, Original Series 141 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1911). Perry, G.G. (ed.), Religious Pieces in Prose and Verse Edited from Robert Thornton’s MS (Cir 1440), Early English Text Society, Original Series vol. 26 (London: N. Trubner & Co.), 1867. Robbins, R.H. (ed.), Historical Poems of the XIVth and XVth Centuries (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959). Sandred, K.I. (ed.), A Middle English Version of the Gesta Romanorum Edited from Gloucester Cathedral Manuscript 22, Studia Anglistica Upsalensia 8 (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1971). Scott, K.L. Later Gothic Manuscripts 1390–1490: A Survey of Manuscripts in the British Isles, 2 vols (London: Harvey Miller, 1996). Vinaver, E. (ed.), Malory: Works, 2nd edn (Oxford, New York, Toronto and Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1971).

Secondary sources Adamson, J.W., ‘The extent of literacy in England in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries’, The Library, 4th Series, 10 (1930), pp. 14–26. Aers, D., ‘A whisper in the ear of early modernists; Or, reflections on literary critics writing the “history of the subject”’, in D. Aers (ed.), Cultures and History 1350–1650: Essays on English Communities, Identities and Writing (New York and London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992). Allen, E., False Fables and Exemplary Truth in Later Middle English Literature (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Allen, R., ‘The Awntyrs off Arthure: Jests and jousts’, in J. Fellows, R. Field,

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 237

21/05/2012 10:15:13

238 Bibliography G. Rogers and J. Weiss (eds), Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Narrative presented to Maldwyn Mills (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1996), pp. 129–42. Altick, R.D., The English Common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public 1800–1900 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957). Amselle, J.-L., Mestizo Logics: Anthropology of Identity in Africa and Elsewhere, trans. C. Royal (Stanford, CA: University of Stanford Press, 1998). Anderson, J. and Sauer, E. (eds), Books and Readers in Early Modern England (Material Studies) (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). Anon., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, trans. J.R.R. Tolkein, with Pearl and Sir Orfeo, Audiobook, read by T. Jones (London: Harper Collins, 2007). Archibald, E., ‘Questioning Arthurian ideals’, in E. Archibald and A. Putter (eds), The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 139–53. Archibald, E. and A. Putter (eds), The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Armitage, S., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London: Faber and Faber, 2007 [Hardcover], repr. in paperback, 2008). Bal, M., ‘Afterword: Theses on the use of narratology for cultural analysis’, in Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, 2nd edn (Toronto and London: University of Toronto Press, 1997), pp. 220–4. Barnes, G.L., ‘Laity formation: The role of early English printed primers’, Journal of Religious History, 18/2 (1994), pp. 139–58. Barney, S. (ed.), Annotation and its Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Barron, W.R.J., English Medieval Romance (London: Longman, 1987). Barron, W.R.J. (ed.), The Arthur of the English: The Arthurian Legend in Medieval English Life and Literature (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1999). Barth, F., Process and Form in Social Life: Selected Essays of Frederik Barth, Vol. 1 (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). Baxandall, M., Painting and Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy: A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Bennett, A. (ed.), Readers and Reading (London: Longman, 1995). Bennett, A., The Uncommon Reader (London: Profile, 2007). Bennett, H.S., ‘The production and dissemination of vernacular manuscripts in the fifteenth century’, The Library, 5th Series, 1 (1946–47), pp. 167–78. Bennett, H.S., ‘Printers, authors and readers, 1475–1557’, The Library, 5th series, 4 (1949), pp. 155–65. Bennett, H.S., English Books and Readers, 3 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 238

21/05/2012 10:15:13

Bibliography 239 Besnier, N., Literacy, Emotion, Authority: Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll, Studies in the Social and Cultural Foundations of Language, 17 (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Bestul, T.H., Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996). Biller, P. and A. Hudson (eds), Heresy and Literacy, 1000–1530 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994). Blades, W. (ed.), The Boke of Saint Albans by Dame Juliana Berners containing Treatises on Hawking, Hunting and Cote Armour: Printed at Saint Albans by the Schoolmaster in 1486 Reproduced in Facsimile, with an Introduction by William Blades (London: Elliot Stock, 1905). Blake, N.F., William Caxton and English Literary Culture (London: The Hambledon Press, 1991). Bloch, M., ‘Symbols, song, dance and features of articulation’, in M. Bloch, Ritual, History and Power: Selected Papers in Anthropology, Monographs on Social Anthropology 58 (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: The Athlone Press, 1989), pp. 19–45. Bloch, M.F., ‘Time, narrative and the multiplicity of representations’, in M.F. Bloch (ed.), How We Think They Think: Anthropological Approaches to Cognition, Memory, and Literacy (Oxford: Westview Press, 1998). Boffey, J., ‘Women authors and women’s literacy in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century England’, in C. Meale (ed.), Women & Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 165–75. Boffey, J. and Meale, C.M., ‘Selecting the text: Rawlinson C86 and some other books for London readers’, in F. Riddy (ed.), Regionalism in Late Medieval Manuscripts and Texts: Essays Celebrating the Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1991). Boyarin, D., ‘Take the bible for example: Midrash as literary theory’, in A. Gelley (ed.), Unruly Examples: On the Rhetoric of Exemplarity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 27–47. Braudel, F., The Structure of Everyday Life: The Limits of the Possible, Civilization and Capitalism 15th–18th Century (London: Collins, 1981). Braunstein, P., ‘Toward intimacy: The fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, in G. Duby (ed.), Revelations of the Medieval World, vol. 2 in the series A History of Private Life, 5 vols, gen. eds P. Ariès and G. Duby (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1988). Brayman Hackel, H., Reading Material in Early Modern England: Print, Gender and Literacy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Brewer, E. (ed.), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight: Sources and Analogues, 2nd edn (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1992).

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 239

21/05/2012 10:15:13

240 Bibliography Brewer, J. and R. Porter (eds), Consumption and the World of Goods (London: Routledge, 1993). Britnell, R., ‘Pragmatic literacy in Latin Christendom’, in R. Britnell (ed.), Pragmatic Literacy East and West, 1200–1330 (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 1997). Brown, C. and Robbins, R.H., The Index of Middle English Verse (New York: Columbia University Press for the Index Society, 1943). Brownrigg, L.L. (ed.), Medieval Book Production: Assessing the Evidence, Proceedings of the Second Conference of the Seminar in the History of the Book to 1500, Oxford, July 1988 (Los Altos Hills, CA: AndersonLovelace, 1990). Buchanan, A., ‘The Irish framework of Gawain and the Green Knight’, Papers of the Modern Language Association, 47/2 (1932), pp. 315–38. Burke, P., Popular Culture in Early Modern Europe (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1994). Butcher, A.F., ‘The functions of script in the speech community of a late medieval town, c. 1300–1530’, in A. Walsham and J. Crick (eds), The Uses of Script and Print 1300–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003). Butler, J.P., Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993). Butterworth, C.C., The English Primers (1529–1545): Their Publication in Connection with the English Bible and the Reformation in England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1953). Carruthers, M.J.,The Book of Memory: A Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). Cavallo, G. and Chartier, R. (eds), A History of Reading in the West (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999) Charlton, E., ‘Roll of prayers formerly belonging to Henry VIII when prince’, Archaeologia Aeliana, New Series 2 (1858), pp. 41–5. Chartier, R., ‘Culture as appropriation: Popular cultural uses in Early Modern France’, in S.L. Kaplan (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Berlin, New York and Amsterdam: Moulton Publishers, 1984). Chartier, R., Cultural History: Between Practices and Representations, trans. L.G. Cochrane (Cambridge and Oxford: Polity Press with Basil Blackwell, 1988). Chartier, R. (ed.), Passions of the Renaissance, vol. 3 in the series, A History of Private Life, 5 vols, gen. eds P. Ariès and G. Duby (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1988). Chartier, R., ‘Libraries without walls’, Representations, 42, Special Issue: Future Libraries (1993), pp. 38–52.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 240

21/05/2012 10:15:13

Bibliography 241 Chartier, R., The Order of Books: Readers, Authors, and Libraries in Europe Between the Fourteenth and the Eighteenth Centuries, trans. L. Cochrane (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1994). Chartier, R., On the Edge of the Cliff: History, Language, and Practices (Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997). Chartier, R., ‘Writing the practices’, French Historical Studies, 21/2 (1998), pp. 255–64. Chartier, R., ‘Languages, books and reading from the printed word to the digital text’, Critical Inquiry, 31/1 (2004), pp. 133–52. Chartier, R., Inscription and Erasure: Written Culture from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007). Chartier, R. and E.D. Friedman, ‘The end of the reign of the book’, in Substance, 26/1, Special Issue: Metamorphoses of the Book (1997), pp. 9–11. Chartier, R. and J.A. Gonzalez, ‘Labourers and voyagers: From the text to the reader’, Diacritics, 22/2 (1992), pp. 49–61. Christianson, C.P., ‘A century of the manuscript-book trade in late medieval London’, Medievalia et Humanistica, New Series, 12 (1984), pp. 143–65. Clanchy, M.T., From Memory to Written Record: England 1066–1307, 2nd edn (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992). Clanchy, M.T., ‘Images of ladies with prayerbooks: What do they signify?’, in R Swanson (ed.), The Church and the Book, Studies in Church History, 38 (London: Ecclesiastical History Society, and Boydell and Brewer, 2004). Clanchy, M.T., ‘The ABC reading primer: Was it English or Latin?’, in E.  Salter and H. Wicker (eds), Vernacularity in England and Wales, c. 1350–1550, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Clark Bartlett, A. and T.H. Bestul (eds), Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999). Clifford, J., Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature, and Art (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1988). Clifford, J. and G. Marcus (eds), Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1986). Colclough, S., Reading Experience 1700–1840: An Annotated Register of Sources for the History of Reading in the British Isles (Reading: History of the Book – On Demand Series [HOBODS], University of Reading, 2000). Colclough, S., Consuming Texts: Readers and Reading Communities, 1695–1870 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Coleman, J., Public Reading and the Reading Public in Late Medieval England and France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996).

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 241

21/05/2012 10:15:13

242 Bibliography Collinson, P., The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988). Coote, L.A., Prophecy and Public Affairs in Later Medieval England, York Medieval Press (London: Boydell and Brewer, 2000). Coppet, D. de (ed.), Understanding Rituals, European Association of Social Anthropologists (London and New York: Routledge, 1992). Cormack, B. and C. Mazzio (eds), Book Use, Book Theory, 1500–1700 (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Library, 2005). Cotton, C. (ed.), ‘Churchwardens’ accounts of the parish of St Andrew, Canterbury, part 1 from AD 1485 to AD 1625’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 37 (1917), pp. 181–246. Cowper, J.M. (ed.), ‘Accounts of the churchwardens of St Dunstan’s Canterbury’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 16 (1885), pp. 289–321. Cressy, D., ‘Levels of illiteracy in England, 1530–1730’, Historical Journal, 20 (1977), pp. 1–23. Darnton, R., ‘First steps toward a History of Reading’, in R. Darnton, The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (London: Faber & Faber, 1990), pp. 154–87. Darnton, R., The Kiss of Lamourette: Reflections in Cultural History (London: Faber, 1990). Davis, R.A., ‘More evidence for intertextuality and humorous intent in The Weddynge of Gawen and Dame Ragnell’, The Chaucer Review 35/4 (2001), pp. 430–9. Daybell, J. and P. Hinds (eds), Material Readings of Early Modern Culture: Texts and Social Practices, 1580–1730, Early Modern Literature in History (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). Deanesly, M., ‘Vernacular books in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, Modern Language Review, 15 (1920), pp. 349–58. de Certeau, M., The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. S. Randall (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 165–76. de Hamel, C., Scribes and Illuminators (London: British Museum Press, 1992). Delaney, P. and G.P. Landow (eds), Hypermedia and Literary Studies (Cambridge, MA and London: The MIT Press, 1991). Derrida, J., ‘Signature, événement, contexte’, in Limited Inc., trans. E. Weber (Paris: Galilée, 1990). Dickens, A.C., ‘The early expansion of Protestantism in England, 1520–1558’, in P. Marshall (ed.), The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–1640, Arnold Readers in History (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), pp. 85–116. Dillon, H.A., Proceeding of the Society of Antiquaries (1877). Donovan, C., The de Brailes Hours: Shaping the Book of Hours in ThirteenthCentury Oxford (London: The British Library, 1991).

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 242

21/05/2012 10:15:13

Bibliography 243 Draper, G.M., ‘“There hath not bene any gramar scole kepte, preacher maytened or pore people releved, other then … by the same chauntreye”: Educational provision and piety in Kent, c. 1400–1640’, in R.G.A. Lutton and E. Salter (eds), Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences, c. 1400–1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). Driver, M.W., The Image in Print: Book Production in Late Medieval England and its Sources (London: British Library, 2004). Duby, G. (ed.), Revelations of the Medieval World, vol. 2 in the series A History of Private Life, 5 vols, gen. eds P. Ariès and G. Duby (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1988). Duffy, E., The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400– c. 1580 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1992). Duffy, E., ‘Continuity and divergence in Tudor religion’, in R. Swanson (ed.), Unity and Diversity in the Church, Studies in Church History, 32 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 171–205. Duffy, E., Marking the Hours: English People & their Prayers, 1240–1570 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2006). Dyer, C., Standards of Living in the Later Middle Ages: Social Change in England, c. 1200–1520, 2nd edn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Edwards, A.S.G., ‘The transmission and audience of Osbern Bokenham’s legend of Hooly Wummen’, in A.J. Minnis (ed.), Late Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission, Essays in Honour of A.I. Doyle (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 157–67. Eisenstein, E., Printing Press as an Agent of Change: Communications and Cultural Transformations in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980). Elton, G.R., The Practice of History (London: Collins, 1967). Erler, M.C., ‘The Maner to Lyve Well and the coming of English in Francois Regnault’s primers of the 1520s and 1530s’, The Library, Series 6, (1984), pp. 229–43. Fabian, J., ‘Keep listening: Ethnography and reading’, in J. Boyarin (ed.), The Ethnography of Reading (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1993), pp. 80–97. Fabian, J., Remembering the Present: Painting and Popular History in Zaire (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1996). Fabian, J., Moments of Freedom: Anthropology and Popular Culture (Charlottesville and London: University of Virginia Press, 1998). Fernandez, J.W., ‘Symbolic consensus in a Fang reformative cult’, American Anthropologist, 67 (1965), pp. 26–43. Fish, S., ‘Interpreting the Variorum’, in D. Finklestein and A. McCleery (eds), The Book History Reader (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 450–8.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 243

21/05/2012 10:15:13

244 Bibliography Fleming, J., Graffiti and the Writing Arts of Early Modern England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001) Fox, A., Oral and Literate Culture in England 1500–1700, Oxford Studies in Social History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000). Gallagher, C. and S. Greenblatt, Practising New Historicism (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 2000). Geary, P.J., ‘Oblivion between orality and textuality in the tenth century’, in G. Althoff, J. Fried and P.J. Geary (eds), Medieval Concepts of the Past: Ritual, Memory, Historiography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 111–22. Geertz, C., The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (London: Fontana Press, 1993). Gee, S., ‘Parochial libraries in pre-Reformation England’, in S. Rees Jones (ed.), Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003), pp. 199–222. Gelley, A. (ed.), Unruly Examples: On the Rhetoric of Exemplarity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995). Gelley, A., ‘The pragmatics of exemplary narrative’, in A. Gelley (ed.), Unruly Examples: On the Rhetoric of Exemplarity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1995), pp. 142–61. Gillespie, V., ‘Mystic’s foot: Rolle and affectivity’, in M. Glascoe (ed.), The Medieval Mystical Tradition in England (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1982), pp. 212–20. Gillespie, V., ‘Cura pastoralis in deserts’, in Sergeant (ed.), De Cella in Seculum: Religious Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Gillespie, V., ‘Vernacular books of religion’, in J. Griffiths and D. Pearsall (eds), Book Production and Publishing in Britain 1375–1475 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Ginzburg, C., The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. J. and A. Tredeschi (London and Henley: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981). Ginzburg, C., ‘Microhistory: Two or three things I know about it’, Critical Inquiry, 20/1 (1993), pp. 10–35. Grafton, A. and L. Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth and Sixteenth Century Europe (London: Duckworth, 1986). Green, I., The Christian’s ABC: Catechism and Catechizing in England c 1530–1740 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) Green, I., Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 244

21/05/2012 10:15:13

Bibliography 245 Hadfield, A. and M. Dimmock, Literature and Popular Culture in Early Modern England (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009). Hahn, T. (ed.), Sir Gawaine: Eleven Romances and Tales (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 1995). Haigh, C. (ed.), The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Haigh, C., English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society Under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Hall, D.D., Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1996). Hands, R., ‘Juliana Berners and the Boke of Saint Albans’, Review of English Studies, New Series, 18/72 (1967), pp. 373–86. Hanna, R., ‘The Awntyrs of Arthur: An interpretation’, Modern Language Quarterly, 31 (1970), pp. 275–97. Hanna, R. (ed.), Speculum Vitae: [Vol 1] A Reading Edition, Early English Text Society, 331 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008). Hardman, P., ‘Popular romances and young readers’, in R. Radulescu and C.J. Rushton (eds), A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2009), pp. 150–64. Harthan, J.P., Books of Hours and the Owners (London: Thames and Hudson, 1977). Hatcher, J., ‘The great slump of the mid-fifteenth century’, in R.H. Britnell and J. Hatcher (eds), Progress and Problems in Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Edward Miller (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). Herman, D. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Narrative (Cambridge: Cambridge: University Press, 2007). Hilton, R.H., The English Peasantry in the Later Middle Ages (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). Hilton, R.H., ‘Lords, burgesses and hucksters’, Past and Present, 97 (1982), pp. 3–15. Hoeppner Moran, J.A., The Growth of English Schooling, 1340–1548: Learning, Literacy, and Laicization in Pre-Reformation York Diocese (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985). Hoggart, R., The Uses of Literacy (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957). Hoskins, W.G., The Age of Plunder: The England of Henry VIII 1500–1547 (London and New York: Longman, 1976). Hudson, A., The Premature Reformation: Wycliffite Texts and Lollard History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988). Humphrey, C. and J. Laidlaw, The Archetypal Actions of Ritual: A Theory of Ritual Illustrated by the Jain Rite of Worship (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 245

21/05/2012 10:15:13

246 Bibliography Hunter, L., ‘Books for daily life: Household, husbandry, behaviour’, in M. Bell, J. Barnard and D.F. McKenzie (eds), The Cambridge History of the Book, vol. 4: 1557–1695 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 514–32. Hutchinson, A., ‘Devotional reading in the monastery and in the household’, in M. Sergeant (ed.), De Cella in Seculum: Religious Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Hutton, R., ‘The local impact of the Tudor Reformations’, in C. Haigh (ed.), The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Huws, D., ‘Ms Porkington 10 and its scribes’, in J. Fellows, R. Field, G. Rogers and J. Weiss (eds), Romance Reading on the Book: Essays on Medieval Narrative presented to Maldwyn Mills (Cardiff: University Wales Press, 1996), pp. 188–207. Iser, W., The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978). Jardine, L. A. and Grafton, ‘“Studied for action”: How Gabriel Harvey read his Livy’, Past and Present, 129 (1990), pp. 30–78. Jauss, H.R., Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. T. Bahti (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minneapolis Press, 1982). Johns, A., The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 1998). Johnson, M., Behind the Castle Gate: From Medieval to Renaissance (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). Kamuf, P. (ed.), A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991). Kaplan, S.L. (ed.), Understanding Popular Culture: Europe from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Berlin, New York and Amsterdam: Moulton Publishers, 1984). Keiser, G., ‘ Practical books for the gentleman’, in L. Hellenga and J.B. Trapp (eds), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol 3: 1400–1557 (Cambridge: Camrbidge University Press, 2000), pp. 470–94. Ker, N.R. (ed.), Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, 4 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969–92). Kershaw, I., ‘The great famine and agrarian crisis in England 1315–1322’, Past and Present, 59/3, pp. 3–50. King, R., ‘The Fifteen Oes’, in Clark Bartlett and Bestul (eds), Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999), pp. 107–17. Kittredge, G.L., A Study of Gawain and the Green Knight (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press and London: Oxford University Press, 1916).

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 246

21/05/2012 10:15:13

Bibliography 247 Krug, R., Reading Families: Women’s Literate Practice in Late Medieval England (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2002). Kuczynski, M.P., Prophetic Song: The Psalms as Moral Discourse in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995). Lee, P., Nunneries, Learning, and Spirituality in Late Medieval English Society: The Dominican Priory of Dartford (Woodbridge: York Medieval Press, Boydell & Brewer, 2001). Liep, J. (ed.), Locating Cultural Creativity (London: Pluto Press, 2000). Littlehales, H. (ed.), The Prymer or Lay Folks’ Prayer Book, Early English Text Society, Original Series, 105 and 109 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, and Trubner, 1895, 1897). Loades, D., ‘Books and the English Reformation prior to 1558’, in J.-F.  Gilmont (ed.), The Reformation and the Book, St Andrew’s Studies in Reformation History, trans. K. Maag (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998). Lutton, R., Lollardy and Orthodox Religion in Pre-Reformation England: Reconstructing Piety, The Royal Historical Society (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2006). Lutton, R.S.G. and Salter, E. (eds), Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences, c. 1400–1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). McDonald, N. (ed.), Pulp Fictions of Medieval England: Essays in Popular Romance (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004). Macfarlane, A., The Origins of English Individualism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1978). McKenzie, D.F., Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (London: The British Library, 1986). McSheffry, ‘Heresy, orthodoxy and English vernacular religion 1480–1525’, Past and Present, 186, pp. 47–80. Maltby, J., ‘“By this book”: Parishioners, the prayer book and the established church’, in P. Marshall (ed.), The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–1640, Arnold Readers in History (London: Bloomsbury, 1997), pp. 257–78. Mann, J. and Nolan, M. (eds), The Text in the Community: Essays on Medieval Works, Manuscripts, Authors, and Readers (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). Margrave, J., The Gawain Quest: A Medieval Mystery (London: Goldenford Publishers, 2007). Marks, R., Stained Glass in England during the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 1993). Marshall, P., The Impact of the English Reformation 1500–1640, Arnold Readers in History (London: Bloomsbury, 1997). Marshall, P., ‘Review article, Pieties in Transition’, The Catholic Historical Review, 95/2 (2009): 389–90.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 247

21/05/2012 10:15:13

248 Bibliography Mason Bradbury, N., Writing Aloud: Storytelling in Medieval Literature (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1998). Meale, C.M., ‘The compiler as work: John Colyns and BL MS Harley 2252’, in D. Pearsall (ed.), Manuscript and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England: The Literary Implications of Manuscript Study (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1983), pp. 82–103. Meale, C.M., ‘“…Alle the bokes that I haue of latyn, englisch, and frensch”: Laywomen and their books in late medieval England’, in C.M. Meale, Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Meale, C.M., ‘“gode men / wiues maydnes and alle men”: Romance and its audiences’, in C.M. Meale (ed.), Readings in Medieval English Romance (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 209–25. Middleton, A., ‘The audience and public of Piers Plowman’, in D. Lawton (ed.), Middle English Alliterative Poetry and Its Literary Background: Seven Essays (Woodbridge: D.S. Brewer, 1982). Mills, M., and G. Rogers, ‘The manuscripts of popular romance’, in R. Radulescu and C.J. Rushton (eds), A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2009), pp. 49–66. Minnis, A.J. (ed.), Late Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission, Essays in Honour of A.I. Doyle (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994). Moore, H.L., Space, Text, Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya, 2nd edn (London and New York: Guildford Press, 1996). Morey, J., Book and Verse: A Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2000). Morpurgo, M. (and M. Foreman, illustrator), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (London: Walker Books, 2005). Morris, G., Sir Gawain, his Squire and his Lady (London: Kingfisher Books, 2006). Munslow, A., Deconstructing History (London and New York: Routledge, 2003). Murdoch, I., The Green Knight (London: Penguin, 1994). Moss, A., ‘A merchant’s tales: A London fifteenth-century household miscellany’, Yearbook of English Studies, vol. 33, ‘Medieval and Early Modern Miscellanies and Anthologies’ (2003), pp. 156–69. Nash, S., Between France and Flanders: Manuscript Illumination in Amiens in the Fifteenth Century, The British Library Studies in Medieval Culture (Toronto: The British Library and University of Toronto Press, 1999). Negroponte, N., Being Digital (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1995). Nicholls, J., The Matter of Courtesy: Medieval Courtesy Books and the Gawain-Poet (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1985). Nichols, S.G., ‘On the sociology of medieval manuscript annotation’, in

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 248

21/05/2012 10:15:13

Bibliography 249 S. Barney (ed.), Annotation and its Texts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 41–73. Olson, L. and Kerby-Fulton, K. (eds), Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005). Orme, N., English Schools in the Middle Ages (London: Methuen, 1973). Orme, N., Medieval Children (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2001). Oschinsky, D., Walter of Henley and Other Treatises on Estate Management and Accounting (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971). Palliser, D., ‘Popular reactions to the Reformation during the years of uncertainty, 1530–1570’, in C. Haigh (ed), The English Reformation Revised (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 94–113. Pantin, W.A., ‘Instructions for a devout and literate layman’, in J.J.G.  Alexander and M.T. Gibson (eds), Medieval Learning and Literature, Essays presented to Richard William Hunt (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976). Parkin, D., ‘Ritual as spatial direction and bodily division’, in D. de Coppet (ed.), Understanding Rituals, European Association of Social Anthropologists (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), pp. 11–25. Payling, S.J., ‘Social mobility, demographic change, and landed society in late medieval England’, Economic History Review, 2nd series, 45/1, pp. 51–73. Pearsall, D., ‘The whole book: Late medieval English manuscript miscellanies and their modern interpreters’, in J. Thompson and S. Kelly (eds), Imagining the Book: Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe­ (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 17–29. Petigree, A., ‘Printing and the Reformation: The English exception’, in A. Ryrie and P. Marshall (eds), The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 157–79. Pound, E., ABC of Reading (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1934). Powell, S., ‘The transmission and circulation of The Lay Folks’ Catechism’, in A.J. Minnis (ed.), Late Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission, Essays in Honour of A.I. Doyle (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 67–84. Power, E., Medieval People, first published in 1924 (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1951). Price, L., ‘Reading matter’, PMLA 121/1 (2006), 9–16. Putter, A., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and French Arthurian Romance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995). Putter, A., ‘Sir Percyvell of Gales’, in N. McDonald (ed.), Pulp Fictions of Medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 171–96. Putter, A., ‘The metres and stanza forms of popular romance’, in R. Radulescu

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 249

21/05/2012 10:15:13

250 Bibliography and C.J. Rushton (eds), A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2009), pp. 111–31. Putter, A. and J. Gilbert (eds), The Spirit of Medieval English Popular Romance (London: Longman, 2000). Radulescu, R.L., The Gentry Context for Malory’s Morte Darthur, Arthurian Literature Series 55 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2003). Radulescu, R., and C.J. Rushton (eds), A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2009). Radway, J.A., Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy and Popular Literature, Questions for Feminism Series (London: Verso, 1987). Raven, J., ‘New reading histories, print culture and the identification of change: The case of eighteenth century England’, Social History, 23/3 (1998), pp. 268–87. Razi, Z., ‘Family, land and the village community in later medieval England’, Past and Present, 93 (1981), pp. 3–36. ‘Reading Experience Database, The’, www.open.ac.uk/Arts/RED/redback. htm. Rees Jones, S. (ed.), Learning and Literacy in Medieval England and Abroad (Turnhout: Brepols, 2003). Reichl, K., ‘Orality and performance’, in R.  Radulescu and C.J.  Rushton (eds), A Companion to Medieval Popular Romance, (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2009), pp. 132–49. Rex, R., ‘The friars in the English Reformation’, in A. Ryrie and P. Marshall (eds), The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp 38–59. Richards, E., ‘Writing and silence: Transitions between the active and the contemplative life’, in R.S.G. Lutton and E. Salter (eds), Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences, c. 1400–1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 163–79. Richards, J. and F. Schurink (eds), The Textuality and Materiality of Reading in Early Modern England, Special Issue Huntington Library Quarterly 73/3 (2010). Riddy, F., ‘“Women talking about the things of God”: A late medieval sub-culture’, in C.M. Meale (ed.), Women and Literature in Britain, 1150–1500 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993). Riddy, F., ‘Temporary virginity and the everyday body: Le Bone Florence of Rome and bourgeois self-making’, in N. McDonald (ed.), Pulp Fictions of Medieval England (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), pp. 197–216. Rogers, G., ‘The Percy Folio manuscript revisited’, in M. Mills, J. Fellows and C.M. Meale (eds), Romance in Medieval England (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1991), pp. 39–64.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 250

21/05/2012 10:15:14

Bibliography 251 Rosaldo, M., ‘Things we do with words: Ilongot speech act theory in philosophy’, Language in Society, 11 (1982), pp. 203–37. Rosaldo, R., Culture and Truth: The Remaking of Social Analysis (London: Routledge, 1993). Rose, J., ‘Re-reading the English common reader: A preface to a history of audiences’, in D. Finklestein and A. McCleery (eds), The Book History Reader (London: Routledge, 2002), pp. 324–39. Rosenthal, J.L., ‘Aristocratic cultural patronage and book bequests, 1350–1500’, Bulletin of John Rylands University Library of Manchester, 64 (1982), pp. 522–48. Ryrie, A., ‘Counting sheep, counting shepherds: The problems of allegiance in the English Reformation’, in A. Ryrie and P. Marshall (eds), The Beginnings of English Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), pp. 84–110. Ryrie, A. and P. Marshall (eds), The Beginnings of English Protestantism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). Saenger, P., ‘Books of hours and the reading habits of the later middle ages’, in R. Chartier (ed.), The Culture of Print: Power and the Uses of Print in Early Modern Europe, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989). Saenger, P., Space Between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (Stanford, CA: University of Stanford Press, 1997). Salter, E., Cultural Creativity in the Early English Renaissance: Popular Culture in Town and Country c. 1450–1560 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006). Salter, E., “‘The Dayes Moralised’: Reconstructing devotional reading, c. 1450–1560”, in R.S.G. Lutton and E. Salter (eds), Pieties in Transition: Religious Practices and Experiences, c. 1400–1640 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007), pp. 145–62. Salter, E., ‘What kind of horse is it? Popular devotional reading during the sixteenth century’, in A. Hadfield and M. Dimmock (eds), Literature and Popular Culture in Early Modern England (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2009), pp. 105–20. Salter, E., ‘Evidence for devotional reading in fifteenth century England: A comparative analysis of one English poem in six manuscript contexts’, in E. Salter and H. Wicker (eds), Vernacularity in England and Wales c 1300–1550, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Salter, E. and H. Wicker (eds), Vernacularity in England and Wales c 1300–1550, Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011). Scanlon, L., Narrative Authority and Power: The Medieval Exemplum and the Chaucerian Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 251

21/05/2012 10:15:14

252 Bibliography Scanlon, L. (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). Schechner, R., Performance Studies: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 2002). Schirmer, E., ‘Reading lessons at Syon Abbey: The Myrroure of Oure Ladye and the mandates of vernacular theology’, in L.  Olson and K.  Kerby-Fulton (eds), Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 345–76. Schurink, F., ‘Manuscript, commonplace books, literature and reading in Early Modern England’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 73/3 (2010), pp. 453–69. Scott Warren, J., ‘Reading graffiti in the Early Modern book’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 73/3 (2010), pp. 363–81. Sergeant, M., ‘The transmission by the English Carthusians of some late medieval spiritual writings’, Journal of Ecclesiastical Studies, 27 (1976), pp. 225–40. Sergeant, M. (ed.), De Cella in Seculum: Religious Secular Life and Devotion in Late Medieval England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). Sharpe, K., Reading Revolutions: The Politics of Reading in Early Modern England (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000). Sharpe, K., ‘Uncommonplaces? Sir William Drake’s reading notes’, in S. Alcorn Baron (ed.), The Reader Revealed (Washington, DC: Folger Library, 2001), pp. 58–65. Sherman, W., John Dee and the Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amsherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995). Sherman, W., Used Books: Marking Readers in Renaissance England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Sims-Williams, P., Irish Influence on Medieval Welsh Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Smith, H., ‘“More swete vnto the eare / than holsome for ye mynde”: Embodying Early Modern women’s reading’, Huntington Library Quarterly, 73/3 (2010), pp. 413–32. Sparrow-Simpson, W., ‘Magical roll in the British Museum’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 48 (1892), pp. 38–51. Spearing, A.C., ‘The Awntyrs off Arthure’, in B.S. Levy and P.E. Szarmach, The Alliterative Tradition in the Fourteenth Century (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1981), pp. 183–202. Spearing, A.C., Medieval to Renaissance in English Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985). Spufford, M., Contrasting Communities: English Villages in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Cambridge University Press, 1979).

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 252

21/05/2012 10:15:14

Bibliography 253 Spufford, M., Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in Seventeenth-Century England (London: Methuen, 1981). Spufford, M. (ed.), The World of Rural Dissenters 1520–1725 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Stanbury, S., ‘The Gawain-poet’, in L. Scanlon (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Medieval English Literature 1100–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 139–51. St Clair, W., The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). Stock, B., The Implications of Literacy: Written Language and Models of Interpretation in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1987). Street, B.V., Literacy in Theory and Practice, Cambridge Studies in Oral and Literate Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984). Thompson, J., Robert Thornton and the London Thornton Manuscript: British Library MS. Additional 31042, Manuscript Studies 2, gen. ed. J. Griffiths (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1987). Thompson, J., ‘Popular reading tastes in Middle English religious and didactic literature’, in J. Simons (ed.), From Medieval to Medievalism, ‘Insights’ series (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 82–100, p. 83. Thompson, J., ‘Another look at the religious texts in Lincoln, Cathedral Library, MS 91’, in A.J. Minnis (ed.), Late Medieval Religious Texts and their Transmission, Essays in Honour of A.I. Doyle (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1994), pp. 169–87. Thompson, J. and S. Kelly (eds), Imagining the Book: Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe­(Turnhout: Brepols, 2005). Thompson, J. and S. Kelly, ‘Imagined histories of the book: Current paradigms and future directions’, in J. Thompson and S. Kelly (eds), Imagining the Book: Medieval Texts and Cultures of Northern Europe­(Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 1–14. Towheed, S., R. Crone, and K. Halsey (eds), The History of Reading, Routledge History Readers (London: Routledge, 2010). Trapp, J.B., ‘Literacy, books and readers’, in L. Hellenga and J.B. Trapp (eds), The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol 3: 1400–1557 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 31–43. Tubach, F.C., ‘Exempla in the decline’, Traditio, 18 (1962), pp. 407–17. Tzanaki, R., Mandeville’s Medieval Audiences: A Study on the Reception of the Book of Sir John Mandeville (1371–1550) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003). Vermeulen, H. and C. Govers (eds), The Anthropology of Ethnicity: Beyond ‘Ethnic Groups and Boundaries’ (Amsterdam: Het Spinhuis, 1994). Vovelle, M., Ideologies and Mentalities, trans. E. O’Flaherty (Cambridge: Polity in association with Basil Blackwell, 1990).

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 253

21/05/2012 10:15:14

254 Bibliography Walsham, A., ‘“Domme Preachers”? Post-Reformation English Catholicism and the culture of print’, Past and Present, 168 (2000), pp. 72–123. Walsham, A., ‘Inventing the Lollard past: The afterlife of a medical sermon in early modern England’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 58/4 (2007), pp. 628–55. Watson, N., ‘Censorship and cultural change in late medieval England: Vernacular theology, the Oxford translation debate, and Arundel’s Constitutions of 1409’, Speculum, 70/4 (1995), pp. 822–64. Watt, T., Cheap Print and Popular Piety, 1550–1640, Cambridge Studies in Early Modern British History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Way, A., ‘Illustrations of domestic customs during the Middle Ages: Ornamental fruit-trenchers with posies’, The Archaeological Journal, 3 (1846), pp. 333–9. Weatherill, L., Consumer Behaviour & Material Culture in Britain 1660–1760 (London: Routledge, 1988). Webb, R.K., The British Working-Class Reader 1790–1848 (London: Allen & Unwin, 1955). White, H.C., The Tudor Books of Private Devotion (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1951). Williams, R., Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (London: Fontana, 1983). Williams, D.J., ‘Sir Gawain in films’, in D. Brewer and J. Gibson (eds), A Companion to the Gawain Poet, Arthurian Studies 38 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 385–92. Windeatt, B., ‘Sir Gawain at the fin de siecle: Novel and opera’, in D. Brewer and J. Gibson (eds), A Companion to the Gawain Poet, Arthurian Studies 38 (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), pp. 373–83. Windeatt, B., ‘The fifteenth-century Arthur’, in E. Archibald and A. Putter (eds), The Cambridge Companion to the Arthurian Legend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 84–102. Wogan-Browne, J., N. Watson, A. Taylor and R. Evans (eds), The Idea of the Vernacular: An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory 1280–1520, Exeter Middle English Texts and Studies (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1999). Wolfson, S.J. and M. Brown (eds), Modern Language Quarterly 61/1 (2000), Special Edition: ‘Reading the Form’. Woolf, V., The Common Reader (London: The Hogarth Press, 1948). Zieman, K., ‘Playing doctor: St Birgitta, ritual reading, and ecclesiastical authority’, in L. Olson and K. Kerby-Fulton (eds), Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), pp. 207–334.

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 254

21/05/2012 10:15:14

Bibliography 255 Reference A Catalogue of the Manuscripts Preserved in the Library of the University of Cambridge, 5 vols, vol 3 (1980) (Kraus Reprint: Munich, 1979–80). Seymour, M.C., A Catalogue of Chaucer Manuscripts, 2 vols (1995–97), vol. 1 (Aldershot: Scolar Press, 1995). Thompson, D. (ed.), The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Current English, 9th edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995).

Unpublished Gunning, J., ‘The inward keeping of the self: Affective discourse and the acquisition of virtue in vernacular devotional writing’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Aberystwyth University, 2011). Lee, P., ‘Monastic and secular religion and devotional reading in late medieval Dartford and West Kent’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Kent, 1998). Wicker, H.E., ‘Opprobrious language and the development of the vernacular in fifteenth-century England’ (PhD thesis, University of Kent, 2007).

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 255

21/05/2012 10:15:14

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 256

21/05/2012 10:15:14

Index Index

aesthetics of the page 24–5, 101, 151 of the text 228 affective piety 106 Allen, E. 96, 137 Alphabet Tales 97 Amselle, J-L. 8 Anecdotes 23 Annales School 9 annotation 25–7, 140–4, 228 ‘non-meaningful’ 26, 169, 228, 229 popular 26 Armitage, S. 177 Baxendall, M. 66 Bellot, J., The Boke of Thrift 162 Bennett H.S. 10, 138 Boffey, J. 180 Boke of Kervyng, The 138, 152–5, 169 Book of Common Prayer 56 Book of Husbandry, The 138 Brayman Hackel, H. 10 British Library MS Add. 9066 98 British Library MS Harley 7333 98 British Library MS Sloane 686 146–7 Burke, P. 7 Butterworth, C. 56

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 257

Index

Cambridge University Library Kk.1.6 (Eleanor Hull’s Book) 98 Canterbury Cathedral Library H/L–3–4 49–55 Canterbury Tales, The ‘The Wife of Bath’s Tale’ 179, 186 Carle of Carlisle, The 178, 189–94 case studies 1, 18, 21–3, 225 Caxton, Le Morte Darthur 181 Chartier, R. 3, 4, 12, 24 Chaucer, G. see Canterbury Tales, The Chaucerian tradition 97 Clanchy, M. 13, 137 Clifford, J. 8 codicology 191–3 Collinson, P. 71 community of readers 17, 27 comparative analysis 23–4, 145–56 conduct books 137 continuity 230, 231 creativity 16, 23, 112 culture 7 de Certeau, M. 4 devotional reading 71–8 digital culture 230 discontinuity 230, 231

21/05/2012 10:15:14

258 Index doggerel 78, 113, 229, 230 ‘doggerelised 232 Driver, M 62 Duffy, E 56

inscription 111–13, 232 intertextuality 18, 50, 53, 95, 107, 187 Iser, W. 5, 28

empiricism 19 non-empiricist mode 19–21 entanglement 5 Erler, M. 59 Erthe upon Erthe 198–200, 207 Ever say Well 200, 211 evidence, nature of 19–28 experience, visual 170

juxtaposition of images 226 of texts 227, 228

Fabian, J. 8, 9 Fish, S. 5 Fitzherbert, J. The Book of Husbandry 138 Gawain and the Green Knight 177 Geertz, C. 8 Gesta Romanorum 93, 98–9, 231 Gilbert, J. 11 Ginzburg, C. 22 Green, I. 20–1 Grosseteste, R. 138 Hawking, The Book of 137 Herrtage, S. 98 horizons of expectation 18 horses 159–61 proprytees and medycynes for hors, The 137, 158 Hoskins, E. 57 Housbandry, The Book of 156–7 Hudson, A. 55 identity 15 ideology and practice 231 illustrations, role of 101–6 imagination 98, 227 imaginative overlaying 53

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 258

Keiser, G. 137 learning to read 67, 68 Lincoln Cathedral MS 91 (Thornton Miscellany) 207 ‘listenability’ 100 literacy 13–17, 163–4 events and farming practices 163 popular 67 practices 15 Lollard practice 60–1 McKenzie, D.F. 3, 4 Mandeville’s Travels 180 manuscript as artefact 226 manuscript case studies 188 manuscript to print 229 marginalia 26 Marxism 9 material culture 229 materiality 232 Meale, C. 180–2 meanings multiple and fluid 129 symbolic 107–8, 109–10 Meritory works 118–23 methods 23–8 Microhistory 23–8 Middle English Miscellany 118, 178, 224 misconstrual 225

21/05/2012 10:15:14

Index 259 misreadings 204–6, 213 mistakes 228

proverbial 166, 230 ‘proverbialisation’ 16, 77, 229

narrative structure 95, 96, 108–9 tricks 100 National Library of Wales, MS Brogyntyn 2.1 179, 188–94 National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 394D 138, 139–45, 169 New Historicism 9, 23 Nurture, The Book of 138

reader experience 71–8, 94, 95 reader implied 28 intended 161–3 real 1 reflexive 118 scribe–readers 3, 15, 24, 170, 171, 228–9 reading collective 182 continuities in 73, 76–8 creative 228 and experience 78 history of 3 and learning 67 performance 182 practice and experience 17–18, 78 reformation 71–8 real readers 1 Redman, R. 68 reflexivity 232 Reformation 230 reformation era 55 Reformation reading 71–8 Reformation historiography of 78 Regnault, F. 59 religious literature popular 230 rhyming ditties 169, 229 Romance tradition 186 Rosaldo, R. 8

oral culture 183, 196, 227 ‘oralisations’ 16, 77, 231 oral performance 185 Oxford Bailiol College MS 354 (Richard Hill’s Commonplace Book) 99 page layout 170, 226 people-readers 15, 17 people-writers 15 Percy Folio Manuscript 181 performativity 112–18, 232 playfulness 112–18, 232 popular culture 6–9, 10, 25, 230 popular reading 1, 10, 76–8 popular traditions 121, 130 popularity 78, 180–5 practical literature 163 practice and ideology 231 pragmatic literature 14 prayer books 47 prefaces to the reader 162–3 primers 47, 56 printing 61 Protestantism 56, 57, 58, 60 protestantising attitudes 171

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 259

Scanlon, L. 97 scribe. Mistakes 170 sermons 100 service books 47, 48 Seven Works of Mercy, The 121 sheep farming 159–61

21/05/2012 10:15:14

260 Index Sherman, W. 6, 10, 25 social mobility 123–8 speech, power of 211 Spirituall Counsayle, A 74 Spufford, M. 11 Stock, B 13 symbolic meanings 107–8 technological change 230 textual culture 229 Trinity College Cambridge 0.1.1340 147–50 Tusser, T. A hundred points of good husbandrie 168 Five hundred points of good husbandrie 168

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 260

vernacularity 55–8, 225 vernacular, the 224 vernacular tradition 97 visual layout 152–5 Vitas Patrum 98 Vovelle, M. 21 Walsham, A. 62 White, H. 56 Whitford, R. 68 Wicker, H. 97 wives, advice to 165–6 Wyclifism 60 Wynkyn de Worde 57, 94, 99 Book of Housbandry, The 155–6 Book of Kervynge, The 138

21/05/2012 10:15:14

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 261

21/05/2012 10:15:14

Salter, Popular reading in English.indd 262

21/05/2012 10:15:14