Deciphering the Manuscript Page: The "Mise-en-Page" of Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve Manuscripts.
- Author/Editor
- Nafde, Aditi.
- Title
- Deciphering the Manuscript Page: The "Mise-en-Page" of Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve Manuscripts.
- Published
- Nafde, Aditi. Deciphering the Manuscript Page: The "Mise-en-Page" of Chaucer, Gower, and Hoccleve Manuscripts. D.Phil Dissertation. University of Oxford, 2012. viii, 268 pp.; 11 illus. Dissertation Abstracts International C73.08 and C81.07(E). Fully accessible at https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:b2c67783-b797-494a-b792-368c14d1fe49. Abstract available via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
- Review
- From Nafde's abstract: This thesis "offers close analysis of the 'mise-en-page' of the manuscripts of three central authors: Chaucer’s, Gower’s, and Hoccleve’s manuscripts [which] were . . . 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 . . . , analysing the layout of seventy-six manuscripts [twenty-six of Gower's Confessio Amantis], including borders, initials, paraphs, rubrics, running titles, speaker markers, glosses and notes, [and arguing] 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 [one of 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. . . . Focussing on the 'mise-en-page,' this thesis . . . mount[s] 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."
- Date
- 2012
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Confessio Amantis