Chaucer's Scribe.
- Author/Editor
- Mooney, Linne R.
- Title
- Chaucer's Scribe.
- Published
- Speculum 81 (2006): 97-138.
- Review
- Long acknowledged for its impact on the study of medieval English scribes, Mooney's essay proclaims Adam Pinkhurst to be "Chaucer's scribe," the addressee of the poet's "Adam Scriveyn," and, as copyist of the Hengwrt and Ellesmere manuscripts of "The Canterbury Tales," the same person as Scribe B of Ian Doyle and Malcolm Parkes' venerable discussion (1978) of the five scribes (A through E) of the "Confessio Amantis" manuscript, Cambridge, Trinity College, MS R.3.2. Mooney sketches a possible biography for Pinkhurst, based in considerable part on the evidence of his hand in records of the Guildhall, arguing that the scribe had lengthy association with Chaucer and a close working relationship, with implications for the text and dating of several of Chaucer's works. Since publication of the essay, scholars have debated details of Mooney's argument and her methodology, but her account of Chaucer and "his scribe" has become the prevailing orthodoxy of Chaucer studies and has had huge impact on late-medieval English paleography and manuscript study. This is not the place to evaluate that orthodoxy, but I do think it worthwhile--even fifteen years after the publication of this essay--to note that at least one of Mooney's suggestions beyond the identification of Scribe B as Pinkhurst has implications for Gower studies. Specifically, she suggests that Scribe D, working with and supervising Scribe B (Pinkhurst), Scribe E (Thomas Hoccleve), and "two other London scribes" (A and C) to produce Trinity MS R.3.2 after Gower's death, did so "to preserve a reliable exemplar?" (122; question mark in original). She adds that "[w]e thus see these trusted scribes [Pinkhurst and Scribe D] continuing after the authors' [Chaucer's and Gower's] deaths to exercise control over the quality of exemplars distributed for further dissemination of Middle English texts" (122-23)--anticipating aspects of Mooney's later study (with Estelle Stubbs), "The Scribes and the City" (2013), where Scribe D is identified tentatively as John Marchaunt. [MA. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 40.2.]
- Date
- 2006
- Gower Subjects
- Manuscripts and Textual Studies
Confessio Amantis