Interpreting MS Digby 86 :A Trilingual Book from Thirteenth-Century Worcestershire - Manuscript Culture in the British Isles

Interpreting MS Digby 86

Interpreting MS Digby 86 :A Trilingual Book from Thirteenth-Century Worcestershire - Manuscript Culture in the British Isles

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Published: 19 July, 2019
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Description

A range of approaches (literary, historical, art-historical, codicological) to this mysterious but hugely significant manuscript. Extravagantly heterogeneous in its contents, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86 is an utterly singular production. On its last folio, the scribe signs off with a self-portrait - a cartoonishly-drawn male head wearing a close-fitted hood - and an inscription: "scripsi librum in anno et iii mensibus" (I wrote the book in a year and three months). His fifteen months' labour resulted in one of the most important miscellanies to survive from medieval England: a trilingual marvel of a compilation, with quirky combinations of content that range from religion, to science, to literature of a decidedly secular cast. It holds medical recipes, charms, prayers, prognostications, magic tricks, pious doctrine, a liturgical calendar, religious songs, lively debates, poetry on love and death, proverbs, fables, fabliaux, scurrilous games, and gender-based diatribes. That Digby is from the thirteenth century adds to its appeal, for English literary remnants from before 1300 are all too rare. Scholars on both sides of the vernacular divide, French and English, are deeply intrigued by it. Many of its texts are found nowhere else: for example, the French Arthurian Lay of the Horn, the English fabliau Dame Sirith and the beast fable Fox and Wolf, and the French Strife between Two Ladies (a candid debate on feminine politics). The interpretationsoffered in this volume of its contents, presentation, and ownership, show that there is much to discover in Digby's lively record of the social and spiritual pastimes of a book-owning gentry family. SUSANNA FEIN is Professor of English at Kent State University. CONTRIBUTORS: Maureen Boulton, Neil Cartlidge, Marilyn Corrie, Susanna Fein, Marjorie Harrington, John Hines, Jennifer Jahner, Melissa Julian-Jones, Jenni Nuttall, David Raybin, Delbert Russell, J.D. Sargan, Sheri Smith
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Type Book
ISBN13 9781903153901
ISBN10 1903153905
Number Of Pages 330
Item Weight 670 g
Publisher / Reseller York Medieval Press
Format hardback
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Media Reviews

MS Digby 86 is indeed a remarkable manuscript, and this volume of essays, part of the York University 'Manuscript Culture in the British Isles' series, is an ideal way to start assessing its variety and importance. * WORCESTERSHIRE RECORDER *
The sheer breadth of the battery of approaches assembled is alone enough to recommend the book, especially to younger scholars acquainting themselves with the various aspects of manuscript study in the heterogenous world of thirteenth-century Britain. * COMITATUS *
With this volume, we have a valuable and important survey of the diverse and numerous contents of Digby 86 and are now able to see more fully its better-known items-Dame Sirith, the Fox and the Wolf, and Ragemon le Bon- in their literary and material contexts. * MODERN PHILOLOGY *

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Author's Bio

Jenni Nuttall is Lecturer in English at Exeter College, University of Oxford. She has written books on Lancastrian literature and Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, as well as articles on Middle English literary language and poetic forms. JOHN HINES is Professor of Archaeology at Cardiff University. MAUREEN BOULTON Professor of French, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Notre Dame. NEIL CARTLIDGE is Professor in the Department of English Studies at the University of Durham, UK.

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