Linguistic Features of Some Fifteenth-Century Middle English Manuscripts.
- Author/Editor
- Smith, Jeremy J.
- Title
- Linguistic Features of Some Fifteenth-Century Middle English Manuscripts.
- Published
- Smith, Jeremy J. "Linguistic Features of Some Fifteenth-Century Middle English Manuscripts." In Derek Pearsall, ed. Manuscripts and Readers in Fifteenth-Century England (York: York Medieval Press, 1983). Pp. 104-12.
- Review
- Smith's primary focus is the language of London, British Library MS Harley 7334--a "Canterbury Tales"--but by way of getting to that, he extends the argument of Doyle and Parkes, regarding the five scribes of Cambridge, Trinity College R. 3. 2, by pursuing especially their Scribe D. "The trouble with D," he notes, "is that the forms he uses to replace Gowerian features and the features he retains from Gower do not . . . form any consistent dialectal picture" (108). Smith explains this by positing that "the nature of the scribe's repertoire is changing under the influence of the manuscripts he is copying" (109)--i.e., Scribe D (who probably came from North Worcestershire [110]), because he copied more Gower manuscripts than anything else, was most influenced by forms natural to Gower, "localised to two smallish areas of South West Suffolk and North West Kent" (107). Smith shows the evolution of Scribe D's spelling by comparing the chronological development of "Gowerian" forms in four manuscripts: Oxford, Corpus Christi College B. 67, London, British Library, Egerton 1991, Oxford, Bodleian Library 294, and Bodleian Fairfax 3 (100).] [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 42.2]
- Date
- 1983
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Language and Word Studies