This thesis constitutes an investigation into the depiction of dreams in imagery accompanying the late-medieval manuscripts and printed editions of the Roman de la Rose. It reflects on the changing approaches to depicting dreams during the 250 years of the Rose’s popularity in central France, as well as discussing the historical theoretical understanding of the concept of dreams, and its expression in a specific Rose context. It examines the representation of dreams in a number of Rose manuscripts – in particular their prominent dreamer incipits – alongside other relevant miniatures of both a secular and religious nature. Furthermore, the alteration of trends for depicting the dream space in Rose manuscripts during the fifteenth century are also considered, as well as a case-study of the luxurious Valencia manuscript, which contains a variety of dream subjects. This is followed by a discussion of the methodology of manuscript production in the medieval period, gleaned from a number of extant Roses. This chapter underscores the important role played by artistic originality and intention in the processes of manuscript making – addressing the ‘artistic vision’ indicated in the title of this thesis. An outline of the printed editions of the Rose and their resurrection of earlier tropes of dream depiction is also included. Finally, the appendix contains a Catalogue of the Rose manuscripts studied in preparation for and throughout the production of the thesis.

Much recent scholarship celebrates the early modern period for its development of broader public political engagement through printed media and coffeehouse culture. It is the argument of this study that the formation in England under Charles II of a public sphere may be shown to have followed a reassessment of political discourse that began at Westminster during the troubled reign of that king’s father, Charles I. The narrative of parliament’s growth in this era from an “event to an institution,” as one historian describes it, tells of more than opposition to the King on the battlefields of the English Civil War. Parliament-work in the early years of England’s revolutionary decade also set new expectations for rhetorical deliberation as a means of directing policy in the House of Commons. The ideals of discursive politics that were voiced in the Short Parliament (May 1640), and more fully put into practice in the opening session of the Long Parliament (November 1640), were soon also accepted by politically-minded authors and readers outside Westminster. Prose controversy published in print and political poetry that circulated in manuscript both demonstrate that the burgeoning culture of debate outside parliament could still issue “in a parliamentary way.” Such promotion of productive textual engagements eventually constituted a wider, notional assembly, whose participants – citizen readers – were as much a product of deliberate education and fashioning as they were of the “conjuring,” “interpellation,” or “summoning” that recent scholarly vocabulary suggests. Following the spirit of reform in the English parliament, and subsequently developing through the years of partisan political writing that followed, public opinion, like the Commons, established itself in this era as an institution in its own right. These public and private assemblies disseminated the unprecedented amount of parliamentary writing and record-keeping that distinguishes the period under review, and this rich archive provides the literary and historical context for this study.

This dissertation provides the first full-scale musicological study of Stuttgart 95, a thirteenth-century song book, formerly thought to be from the abbey of Weingarten. Upon further examination, it is clear that rather than a single unified corpus of Latin songs, the musical portions are composed of three separate layers. Furthermore, I argue that these layers were best understood as separate entities. This delineation between writing campaigns indicates that the original musical project likely constitutes a mostly intact collection, with only one or two folios missing from the beginning of the codex. Moreover, the song repertoire in the first layer is partially comprised of addenda entered into other Engelberg liturgical manuscripts, mainly at the close of the twelfth and beginning of the thirteenth century, shortly before the manufacture of Stuttgart 95. I focus, in particular, on the first layer of its musical corpora, arguing that the earliest stratum in this composite manuscript points to the double cloister of Engelberg as a likely provenance. As a collection of addenda, it demonstrates that musicians in Engelberg actively collected pieces that addressed Mary, the community’s patrona. I first discuss the consistent use of majuscule and rubrication to visually highlight the name of Mary amidst its surrounding text. Furthermore, I demonstrate that Mary along with each of these additional saints had liturgical ties to the double house of Engelberg; Mary was the monastery’s patrona, and the additional figures were either especially venerated at Engelberg or were the namesakes for dedicated altars or chapels in joint community’s churches.

Much recent scholarship celebrates the early modern period for its development of broader public political engagement through printed media and coffeehouse culture. It is the argument of this study that the formation in England under Charles II of a public sphere may be shown to have followed a reassessment of political discourse that began at Westminster during the troubled reign of that king’s father, Charles I. The narrative of parliament’s growth in this era from an “event to an institution,” as one historian describes it, tells of more than opposition to the King on the battlefields of the English Civil War. Parliament-work in the early years of England’s revolutionary decade also set new expectations for rhetorical deliberation as a means of directing policy in the House of Commons. The ideals of discursive politics that were voiced in the Short Parliament (May 1640), and more fully put into practice in the opening session of the Long Parliament (November 1640), were soon also accepted by politically-minded authors and readers outside Westminster. Prose controversy published in print and political poetry that circulated in manuscript both demonstrate that the burgeoning culture of debate outside parliament could still issue “in a parliamentary way.” Such promotion of productive textual engagements eventually constituted a wider, notional assembly, whose participants – citizen readers – were as much a product of deliberate education and fashioning as they were of the “conjuring,” “interpellation,” or “summoning” that recent scholarly vocabulary suggests. Following the spirit of reform in the English parliament, and subsequently developing through the years of partisan political writing that followed, public opinion, like the Commons, established itself in this era as an institution in its own right. These public and private assemblies disseminated the unprecedented amount of parliamentary writing and record-keeping that distinguishes the period under review, and this rich archive provides the literary and historical context for this study.

No description available.

This thesis responds to a lack of information regarding reading practice in literature in early Middle English. Here, reading is often used as a metaphorical or symbolic act - representing piety, devotional practice, or intellectualism - but how reading took place, how users engaged with books, is rarely figured. Other seams of evidence are therefore needed to access the reading process. The corpus of manuscripts on which I focus consists of thirty-three multilingual books containing English, Latin, and French produced in England between 1066 and c. 1300. Using this corpus, and inspired by the work of Leah Price, Juliet Fleming, Kathryn Rudy, and others, I seek to test the boundaries of what has previously been considered permissible evidence for reading, thereby adjusting and expanding current conceptions of the range of activities and practices high medieval book use entailed. The thesis begins with a case study of some important readers: scribes. In chapter one, using the seven surviving copies of Poema Morale as a corpus I read against current critical considerations of variance in manuscript transmission as a sign of 'scribal authorship' in order to establish practices of scribal reading. Chapters two and three go on to demonstrate how these 'scribal readers' prefigured a work's use as they copied, particularly when they chose to introduce or exclude textual apparatus in the form of titles, capitals, or paraph marks. The final part of the thesis examines the retrospective evidence of use left by readers who marked and altered their books to determine the extent to which readers conformed to the practices imagined by manuscript producers. As a whole, then, the thesis showcases the variegated nature of reading practice - from critical analysis to nugatory scanning - and the alternative uses for books in English in this period. It shows that vernacular reading was a work of 'embodied intellectual labour' that benefitted from the material form of the book, and that engagement and manipulation of this form was not just tolerated, but expected, and perhaps actively encouraged.

In the 1930s, Oregon State University received an impressive oversized manuscript, now known as "The Gradual," as part of a large donation of books. Not much was known about this manuscript. It does not have documentation attached from the time of its acquisition, nor had any methodical study been undertaken regarding the manuscript. This thesis examines the OSU Gradual, aiming to provide research tools for the identification of musical manuscripts of unknown or unclear provenance that could be useful to conservators, archivists, and librarians, irrespective of musical training. It is conceived as a "rough guide" for working situations where there is no dedicated manuscript specialist, in particular, a fulltime Latin paleographer or a chant scholar overseeing a massive collection. Instead, its "how-to" nature addresses curators and catalogers managing smaller manuscript collections as generalists, offering an interdisciplinary approach both beneficial and suitable to the aims of this study.

Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS. 278 is an early-fourteenth-century trilingual manuscript of the Psalms from Norwich Cathedral Priory, an urban cathedral church staffed by Benedictine monks. This manuscript is notable because it contains one of six Middle English Metrical Psalters, the earliest Middle English translation of the Psalms, as well as a full Anglo-Norman Oxford Psalter, the most popular French translation of the Psalms in late medieval England. While the Middle English Metrical Psalter is a remarkable and understudied text in and of itself, the Metrical Psalter of CCC 278 is even more interesting because of its monastic provenance and innovative layout. This thesis explores the questions of why a monastic institution would produce a manuscript of two complete, prominently displayed, vernacular Psalters with only highly abbreviated Latin textual references; what sociolinguistic and political forces drove the production of this innovative manuscript; and how the Middle English Metrical Psalter in particular was read, and by whom. Because there are no annotations, colophon, prologue or external documentation to provide clues to either the intended or actual use of the manuscript by the Priory monks, this thesis undertakes a detailed historicization and contextualization of the book in its urban, religious, linguistic and social settings. In addition, the lenses of community, mediation, and authority are applied, leading to the conclusion that CCC 278 and its Middle English Metrical Psalter were likely used by the monks to reach out to Norwich’s élite laity in order to form a mixed reading community around the book—a reading community controlled by the Priory.

As a scholar, Tolkien spent a great deal of time working from manuscripts. Likewise, as a storyteller, in The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien creates a narrative persona who bases his story on his compilation and translation of ancient manuscripts. This persona operates within his story’s narrative frame as an analogue for Tolkien’s own work with manuscripts. Readers have long sought for Tolkien’s sources. The mythologies of medieval Northern Europe have been especially beneficial in helping us understand the influences on Tolkien. No study, however, currently exists that pursues the “manuscript sources” used by Tolkien’s narrative persona. But a reading that attempts to pursue these sources may also prove beneficial. Just as Tolkien inserts himself, in the form of his narrative persona, into the framework of Middle-earth, so also is the reader invited to read The Lord of the Rings from within this same framework. Tolkien wanted to his story to be read from inside Middle-earth as an artifact of history. This study will propose that—by simulating the kinds of phenomena around which a modern compiler of medieval manuscripts and stories has to work: fragmented manuscripts, lacunae, dittography, palimpsests, and variable texts—Tolkien has successfully distressed his story in such a way that it has gained the atmosphere of an ageing legend. The argument of this thesis is that Tolkien’s imitation of classical and medieval manuscript realities is even ambitious enough to suggest that Tolkien’s narrative persona has culled his story from the manuscripts of at least three major literary traditions, each of which is distinct in its interests, concerns, iconographies, historiographies, and themes. In addition to revealing where and how Tolkien has distressed his narrative, this study will also seek to identify what portions of the narrative belong to which of the three major traditions and tease out the implications of the interactions between them. / Thesis (DLitt)--University of Pretoria, 2015. / English / DLitt / Unrestricted

No description available.