Visible English: Graphic Culture, Scribal Practice, and Identity, c. 700-1550.
- Author/Editor
- Scase, Wendy.
- Title
- Visible English: Graphic Culture, Scribal Practice, and Identity, c. 700-1550.
- Published
- Scase, Wendy. Visible English: Graphic Culture, Scribal Practice, and Identity, c. 700-1550. Turnhout: Brepols, 2022.
- Review
- Scase "investigates the question of whether and in what ways visible language contributed to identity formation in the past by making a case study of visible English c. 700-1500, when literate practice was predominantly in Latin and all texts were--save for the final few decades--produced individually by hand" (3-4). By "visible language" she means writing, and her conclusion is that indeed writing helped shape English identities, albeit not uniformly. Gower enters by way of manuscripts of the "Confessio Amantis," which provide important instances of a discernible and unique scribal practice--literatim copying. As Scase notes, "I have dealt with the so-called literatim scribes of John Gower's 'Confessio Amantis' elsewhere, and I will therefore simply summarise that work here" (314). [For the discussion she mentions, see "John Gower's Scribes and Literatim Copying," In Martha Driver, Derek Pearsall, and R. F. Yeager, eds. John Gower in Manuscripts and Early Printed Books. Publications of the John Gower Society, no. 14. Rochester, NY: Brewer, 2020. Pp. 13-31.] "The so-called literatim scribes of the 'Confessio'," she contends, "modified the practice of the scribes of accentual verse in order to maintain the strict syllable count and iambic metre of Gower's lines rather than out of respect for Gower's idiosyncratic dialect as has been previously suggested" (314). This group of scribes included "Scribe Delta," who worked on Trevisa's translation of Higden's "Polychronicon," the so-called "Trevisa-Gower scribe" who copied Tokyo, Senshu UL, 1, (and whose hand is also discernible in Oxford, Bodleian Library, Bodley 902 [347]), and Scribe D, "now thought by many to be John Marchaunt" (346), of the London Guildhall, which may have been "a centre for this activity" (347). Scribes Delta and D have very similar hands, and were perhaps in competition, the former specializing in "Polychronicon" MSS and the latter in "Confessio"s (347). Possibly as well these scribes "facilitated exchange and cross-fertilisation between these projects" (348). [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.1]
- Date
- 2022
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Confessio Amantis