This thesis examines the production of the Middle English poetic manuscript. It analyses the mise-en-page of manuscripts created during a crucial period for book production, immediately after 1400, when there was a sudden explosion in the production of vernacular manuscripts of literary texts, when the demand for books increased, and the commercial book trade swiftly followed. It offers a close analysis of the mise-en-page of the manuscripts of three central authors: Chaucer’s, Gower’s, and Hoccleve’s manuscripts were at the heart of this sudden flourishing and were, crucially, produced when scribal methods for creating the literary page were still unformed. Previous studies have focused on the localised readings produced by single scribes, manuscripts, or authors, offering a limited examination of broader trends. This study offers a wider comparison: where individual studies offer localised analysis, the multi-textuality of this thesis offers broader perceptions of book production and of scribal responses to the new literary texts being produced. In analysing the layout of seventy-six manuscripts, including borders, initials, paraphs, rubrics, running titles, speaker markers, glosses and notes, this thesis argues that scribes were deeply concerned with creating a manuscript page specifically to showcase texts of poetry. The introduction outlines current scholarship on mise-en-page and defines the scribe as one who offers an individual response to the text on the page within the context of the inherited, commercial, and practical practices of layout. The three analytical chapters address the placement of the features of mise-en-page in each of the seventy-six manuscripts, each chapter offering three contrasting manuscript situations. Chapter 1 analyses the manuscripts of Chaucer, who left no plan for the look of his page, causing scribes to make decisions on layout that illuminate fifteenth-century scribal responses to literature. These are then compared to the manuscripts of Gower in Chapter 2, directly or indirectly supervised by the poet, which display rigorous uniformity in their layout. This chapter argues that scribes responded in much the same way, despite the strict control over meaning. Chapter 3 focuses on Hoccleve’s autograph manuscripts which are unique in demonstrating authorial control over layout. This chapter compares the autograph to the non-autograph manuscripts to argue that scribal responses differed from authorial intentions. Each of the three chapters analyses the development of mise-en-page specifically for literary texts. Focussing on the mise-en-page, this thesis is able to compare across a range of texts, manuscripts, scribes, and authors to mount a substantial challenge to current perceptions that poetic manuscripts were laid out in order to assist readers’ understanding of the meaning of the texts they contain. Instead, it argues that though there was a concern with representing the nuances of poetic meaning, often scribal responses to poetry were bound up with presenting poetic form.

This dissertation examines the ideological role and adaptation of the mythical British past (derived from Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae) in chronicles of England written in Anglo-Norman, Latin, and English from the twelfth to the fifteenth century, in terms of the shaping of English history during this time. I argue that the past is an important lens through which we can read the imagined geographies (Albion, Britain and England) and ‘imagined communities’ (the British and English), to use Benedict Anderson’s term, constructed by historical texts. I consider how British history was carefully re-shaped and combined with chronologically conflicting accounts of early English history (derived from Bede) to create a continuous view of the English past, one in which the British kings are made English or ‘of England’. Specifically, I examine the connections between geography and genealogy, which I argue become inextricably linked in relation to mythical British history from the thirteenth century onwards. From that point on, British kings are increasingly shown to be the founders and builders of England, rather than Britain, and are integrated into genealogies of England’s contemporary kings. I argue that short chronicles written in Latin and Anglo-Norman during the thirteenth century evidence a confidence that the ancient Britons were perceived as English, and equally a strong sense of Englishness. These texts, I contend, anticipate the combination of British and English histories that scholars find in the lengthier and better-known Brut histories written in the early fourteenth century. For the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, my study takes account of the Albina myth, the story of the mothers of Albion’s giants (their arrival in Albion before Brutus’s legendary conquest of the land). There has been a surge of scholarship about the Albina myth in recent years. My analysis of hitherto unknown accounts of the tale, which appear in some fifteenth-century genealogical rolls, leads me to challenge current interpretations of the story as a myth of foundation and as apparently problematic for British and English history. My discussion culminates with an analysis of some copies of the prose Brut chronicle (c. 1300) – the most popular secular, vernacular text in later medieval England, but it is seldom studied – and of some fifteenth-century genealogies of England’s kings. In both cases, I am concerned with presentations of the passage of dominion from British to English rulership in the texts and manuscripts in question. My preliminary investigation of the genealogies aims to draw attention to this very under-explored genre. In all, my study shows that the mythical British past was a site of adaptation and change in historical and genealogical texts written in England throughout the high and later Middle Ages. It also reveals short chronicles, prose Brut texts and manuscripts, and royal genealogies to have great potential future research.

This dissertation aims at providing a new critical edition of the fictitious Letters of the Courtesans attributed to Alciphron (late 2nd or early 3rd century AD). The first part of the introduction begins with a brief survey of the problematic dating and identification of Alciphron, followed by a general overview of the epistolary genre and the letters of Alciphron. The main part of the introduction deals with the manuscript tradition. Eighteen manuscripts, which contain some or all of the Letters of the Courtesans, are described and the relationship between them is analyzed based on complete collations of all the manuscripts. The conclusion, which is illustrated by a stemma codicum, is that there are four primary manuscripts from which the other fourteen manuscripts derive: Vaticanus gr. 1461, Laurentianus gr. 59.5, Parisinus gr. 3021 and Parisinus gr. 3050. The introduction concludes with a brief chapter on the previous editions, a table illustrating the selection and order of the letters in the manuscripts and editions, and an outline of the editorial principles. The guiding principle for the constitution of the text has been to use conjectural emendation sparingly and to try to preserve the text of the primary manuscripts wherever possible. The critical apparatus has been divided into a main apparatus below the text, which reports variant readings from the primary manuscripts and a small selection of conjectures, and two appendices which report scribal conjectures from the secondary manuscripts and conjectures by modern scholars with bibliographical references. A third appendix has also been added which lists all conjectures adopted into the  text. The parallel translation, which is accompanied by brief explanatory notes on names and places, is literal and serves as a complement to the commentary, which primarily deals with matters of textual criticism. In the commentary problematic passages are discussed, especially where an emendation has been adopted or where the present edition differs from previous editions. After the three appendices the dissertation ends with a bibliography.

We propose a novel approach for analyzing scribal behavior quantitatively using information about the handwriting of characters. To implement this approach, we develop a computational framework that recovers this information and decomposes the characters into primitives (called strokes) to create a hierarchically structured representation. We then propose a number of intuitive metrics quantifying various facets of scribal behavior, which are derived from the recovered information and character structure. We further propose the use of techniques modeling the generation of handwriting to directly study the changes in writing behavior. We then present a case study in which we use our framework and metrics to analyze the development of four major Indic scripts. We show that our framework and metrics coupled with appropriate statistical methods can provide great insight into scribal behavior by discovering specific trends and phenomena with quantitative methods. We also illustrate the use of handwriting modeling techniques in this context to study the divergence of the Brahmi script into two daughter scripts. We conduct a user study with domain experts to evaluate our framework and salient results from the case study, and we elaborate on the results of this evaluation. Finally, we present our conclusions and discuss the limitations of our research along with future work that needs to be done.

The opposition against Gustavus III (1746–1792) had limited access to the printing press, but managed to spread a variety of political pamphlets through clandestine manuscripts. The main purpose of the dissertation is to analyse this communication and thereby enhance our understanding of the political culture of the period. The manuscript published oppositional works against Gustavus III have hitherto been little explored. With source material consisting of 120 manuscript libels, this study makes use of three interrelated methodological perspectives: media analysis, rhetorical analysis and analysis of ideas. The combination of media studies and classical rhetoric is inspired by the works of Peter Burke. Questions of production, distribution and consumption frame the discussions. The libels – published anonymously for fear of persecution – were spread through what Harold Love calls “user publication”. This means that many readers contributed to their distribution and through the act of copying also functioned as co-authors. The majority of the libels originated among the estate of the nobility and their political allies. The authors were often accomplished writers, skilfully using a variety of rhetorical strategies to interest and entertain their readers. When viewed in an international context, the Swedish material is revealed as relatively conservative. The arguments in the Swedish works were generally founded on established and traditional values and ideas, and treated Monarchy and Lutheran Christianity as given institutions which stood unquestioned. In comparison to French libels against royalty, Swedes were also more reluctant to use sexual slander. One explanation for this conservatism is that the authors were aiming for a wide audience, and therefore strove to ground their arguments in common values. Another explanation can be found in the fact that many of the works originated within the noble classes: a privileged group which had much to gain from the preservation of traditional social structures.

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This dissertation contains a study of the multitext manuscript Codex Holmiensis D 3 based in Material Philology and its focus on the material conditions underlying manuscripts. The aim of the investigation is to describe D 3 in order to increase understanding of its material conditions including content and circumstance of copying, as well as its use and purpose. D 3 contains 14 text works in different genres, for example romances, chronicles, and edifying works. The paper manuscript in the format of a holster book has been dated through its watermarks to around 1487/1488. It was written for the noblewoman Elin Gustavsdotter (Sture). An older manuscript, Codex Holmiensis D 4a, has previously been identified as the exemplar of D 3. These manuscripts are very similar as regards language and content. However, it is shown here that D 4a could not have been the model for D 3 in the case of the romance Flores och Blanzeflor; nor can the manuscript as a whole be a copy of D 4a. There are few traces of use in D 3, but the first work, Herr Ivan Lejonriddaren, has several concluding texts before its final closing. These concluding texts suggest that parts of the work were being read while the rest was being copied. There are also dual quire signatures in this work, implying that the quires were in disarray, possibly because they were in use when the signatures were added. The purpose of D 3 was to educate and provide examples of good and bad behaviour for the nobility. Moreover, there is an owner-epilogue which also stresses courtly ideals and can be linked to the concept of exemplary behaviour. The contents can also be ordered thematically, with first a Carolingian connection, followed by one connected with Ireland and finally one focused on the Christian community. Codicological breaks divide the manuscript into two parts, which leads to the assumption of at least two common exemplars for D 3 and D 4a. An emphasis on the materiality of the manuscript reveals it to be not so much an unwieldy collection of unrelated text witnesses as a book created for a certain person and her time. / <p>Felaktigt ISBN i den tryckta versionen: 978-91-506-2618-6</p>

This dissertation engages with the production and use in late medieval England (c.1200–c.1500) of manuscript codices copied, in whole or in part, on offcuts: cheap, low-quality parchment scraps created as a byproduct of parchment manufacturing. After presenting a method for identifying offcuts, it explores the material through statistical techniques and case studies. Applying this mixed methodology to a corpus of 140 offcut-bearing production units spread across 75 handwritten books, it delineates a range of manuscript production stages, examining the sociocultural contexts of books recruiting offcuts as writing support. The dissertation pursues this study in four chapters. Opening with a terminological discussion, chapter one describes medieval parchment-making, clarifying how offcut traits arose during manufacture, distinguishing offcuts from similar types of parchment, and describing medieval uses for offcuts. Chapter two discusses quantitative codicology, justifying the mixed quantitative–qualitative approach, then delineates its dual-stage methodology: (i) establishing offcut diagnostic traits via linear regression analysis; (ii) assembling the corpus and analyzing it via a descriptive statistical lens. It finishes with an overview of the analysis’ main findings, noting that the corpus is dominated by Fachliteratur; lacking in texts often regarded as ‘popular’ (e.g., vernacular romances); and largely copied for personal consultation in professional, educational, or domestic contexts. Chapters three and four take up the primary subcorpora—one comprising common law books; another, miscellaneous, but chiefly theological and medical, provisionally sorted based on the medieval division of disciplines, quadrivium and trivium—engaging each via descriptive statistical overviews and case studies of representative books: London, British Library, Harley MS 912, Harley MS 1261, Harley MS 6644; Oxford, Bodleian Library, MSS Ashmole 1378, Digby 2, Digby 24. / Graduate / 2023-09-09