The purpose of this thesis is to provide a detailed study of the texts and manuscripts of the Middle English Guy of Warwick, such as is not presently available. The agenda of this investigation is essentially interdisciplinary. Each chapter considers a different set of evidence (literary, historical, manuscript and linguistic). In addition to which, this study benefits from the opportunities offered by new media, incorporating the results of exhaustive and highly accurate computer-enabled searches of a range of late medieval texts. Through this approach it has been possible to integrate and identify links between different areas of research in a way which has been crucial to dispelling various myths and misconceptions which have, in the past, dominated the critical perception of Guy of Warwick. This thesis encourages a view which emphasises the complexity of the textual tradition of Guy of Warwick and rejects past assumptions which over simplify the circumstances of its production and circulation. Chapter 1 considers the place of Guy of Warwick in late medieval literature and culture, assembling the evidence for sources, relations, transmission and reception. This chapter emphasises the protean nature of the romance, its adaptation and regeneration for different contexts and the evidence for a range of responses. Chapter 2 provides, for the first time, a comprehensive account of all of the Guy of Warwick manuscripts, including full codicological descriptions and giving special consideration to the presentation of Guy of Warwick in each. By combining this codicological data with the linguistic findings of Chapter 3, it has here been possible to review and reject a number of theories, most notably concerning the Auchinleck MS, which misinterpret the significance of the manuscript presentation of Guy of Warwick. Chapter 3 uses linguistic data to clarify the relationship between the manuscript texts and the different versions of Guy of Warwick. Traditional dialect analysis is combined with computer-enabled searches to provide detailed information which establishes the origin and circulation of the texts and their literary and stylistic affiliations, including evidence which rejects the traditional Warwickshire origin for the A-version. The thesis is supplemented on CD ROM by new, accurate transcriptions of all the complete texts of Guy of Warwick and a review of Zupitza's 1875-91 edition, including a list of errors.

The Middle English lyric, “Sir John Doth Play,” narrated in the female voice clearly depicts rape by a male authority figure and the narrator’s distress over her unplanned pregnancy, yet has been repeatedly interpreted and introduced by critics as a love song portraying the interaction of a seductive village priest and a gullible maiden. As such, the lyric provides a unique perspective on the patriarchal nature of the twentieth century and the value of critically re-examining literature rather than canonizing accepted interpretations of literary work.

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.

This thesis investigates the relations between romance and texts of religious instruction in England between c.1170–c.1330, taking as its principal textual corpus the exceptionally rich literary traditions of insular French romance and religious writing that subsist during this period. It argues that romance is a mode which engages closely with religious and ethical questions from a very early stage, and demonstrates the discourses of opposition in which both kinds of text participate throughout the period. The thesis offers substantial readings of a number of neglected insular French religious texts of the thirteenth century, including Robert Grosseteste's Chasteau d'Amour, John of Howden's Rossignos, and Robert of Gretham's Miroir, alongside new readings of romances such as Gui de Warewic and Ipomedon. This juxtaposition of romance narrative and religious instruction sheds new light onto both kinds of text: romance emerges as a mode with deep-rooted didactic qualities; insular French religious literature is shown to be intensely concerned with the need to compete with romance’s entertaining appeal in literary culture. This oppositional discourse profoundly affects the form of instructional writing and romance alike. The discussion of the interactions between insular French romance and instructional literature presented here also serves as a new pre-history of Middle English romance. The final chapter of the thesis offers several new readings of texts from the Auchinleck manuscript, including the canonical romance Sir Orfeo and the neglected, puzzling Speculum Gy de Warewyk. These readings demonstrate that fourteenthcentury romance intelligently adapts the material it inherits from Francophone literature to a new cultural situation. In these acts of reformation, Middle English romance reveals itself as a discursive space capable of accommodating a wide range of ethical and ideological affiliations; the complex negotiations between romance and instructional literature in the preceding centuries are an important cultural condition for this widening of possibilities.