On Scriptae: Correlating Spelling and Script in Late Middle English.
- Author/Editor
- Smith, Jeremy.
- Title
- On Scriptae: Correlating Spelling and Script in Late Middle English.
- Published
- Smith, Jeremy. "On Scriptae: Correlating Spelling and Script in Late Middle English." Revista Canaria de Estudios Ingleses 80 (2020): 13–27.
- Review
- Smith states as his goal in the essay "to bring paleography and book history into the realm of linguistic enquiry, as part of a reimagined philology." He builds upon Michael Samuels' 1963 argument that an "incipient standard English" could be discovered in a sequence of late Middle English spelling-patterns, of which Samuels identified several "types." Smith points to "types" other than those cited by Samuels, in copies of John Gower's "Confessio Amantis" and Nicholas Love's "Mirror of the Life of Christ." He argues that manuscripts containing these and other similar texts, which were also transmitted in distinctive forms of handwriting and in like codicological contexts, were products of identifiable communities of practice, and that the correlation of spelling and handwriting such manuscripts manifest represent "expressive" usages, characteristic of particular kinds of discourse. These unique usages Smith labels "scriptae," noting that they seem to "function as markers of difference and belonging, and be involved in the creation of identities at different levels of social organisation" (quoting Mark Sebba [2009]). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society eJGN 41.2.]
- Date
- 2020
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Language and Word Studies