{"id":135,"date":"2016-07-03T19:16:17","date_gmt":"2016-07-03T19:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/?p=135"},"modified":"2022-06-27T12:35:58","modified_gmt":"2022-06-27T16:35:58","slug":"margaret-connolly-raluca-radulescu-eds-insular-books-vernacular-manuscript-miscellanies-in-late-medieval-britain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/2016\/07\/03\/margaret-connolly-raluca-radulescu-eds-insular-books-vernacular-manuscript-miscellanies-in-late-medieval-britain\/","title":{"rendered":"Margaret Connolly and Raluca Radulescu, eds. Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain"},"content":{"rendered":"

Margaret Connolly and Raluca Radulescu, eds. Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in<\/em> Late Medieval Britain<\/em><\/a>. Oxford: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2015. xviii, 330p., colour ill. ISBN 9780197265833. US $155.00 (hardback).<\/p>\n

Margaret Connolly and Raluca Radulescu\u2019s edited collection Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in<\/em> Late Medieval Britain <\/em>contains a number\u00a0of essays that emerged from a conference on this subject held in London at the British Academy in June 2012. As stated on its website, the conference\u2019s objective was to \u201cbring a new and multidisciplinary focus to the late medieval miscellany, a little-investigated and poorly understood type of manuscript\u201d (<www.britac.ac.uk\/events\/2012\/insular_books_vernacular_misc_in_late_med_britain.cfm>). The resulting book\u2019s principal foci are to outline \u201cthe main issues for those unfamiliar with this particular aspect of medieval studies\u201d (xiii) and to suggest \u201csome directions that might fruitfully be taken up by future researchers\u201d (xiv). In other words, Insular Books <\/em>concentrates on identification, by defining the complex term miscellany <\/em>in the context of late medieval Britain, and on methodology, by considering the diverse ways in which miscellanies can be critically analysed.<\/p>\n

The broad definition of miscellany <\/em>advanced in Insular Books <\/em>is \u201cessentially a multi-text manuscript, made up of mixed contents\u201d (1). The scholars who have contributed to this collection start from this premise to examine the production of miscellany manuscripts, \u201cpointing to cultural practices established in Wales and Scotland and particular regions of England (with their distinct linguistic and cultural traditions)\u201d (1). They focus on case studies of single manuscripts or manuscripts of a \u201cmore physically composite nature, made of discrete elements\u201d (1), and apply comparative approaches to either individual manuscripts or manuscripts \u201cin which particular types of text are housed\u201d (11).<\/p>\n

The editors recognise that Insular Books <\/em>is itself a miscellany and \u201cencourage readers to approach [the] essays both sequentially and selectively\u201d (xiv); nevertheless, the essays appear to be grouped according to specific boundaries, specifically linguistic, methodological, geographic and chronological. Marianne Ailes and Phillipa Hardman\u2019s \u201cTexts in Conversation: Charlemagne Epics and Romances in Insular Plural-text Codices,\u201d Keith Busby\u2019s \u201cMultilingualism, the Harley Scribe, and Johannes Jacobi,\u201d Susanna Fein\u2019s \u201cLiterary Scribes: The Harley Scribe and Robert Thornton as Case Studies\u201d and Ad Putter\u2019s \u201cThe Organisation of Multilingual Miscellanies: The Contrasting Fortunes of Middle English Lyrics and Romances\u201d offer multilingual intertextuality as their commonality. Wendy Scase\u2019s \u201cJohn Northwood\u2019s Miscellany Revisited,\u201d Raluca Radulescu\u2019s \u201cVying for Attention: The Contents of Dublin, Trinity College, MS 432\u201d and Andrew Taylor\u2019s \u201cThe Chivalric Miscellany: Classifying John Paston\u2019s \u2018Grete Booke\u2019\u201d feature case studies on individual manuscripts and explore the socio-cultural circumstances influencing their compilation and dissemination. Carol M. Meale, in \u201cAmateur Book Production and the Miscellany in Late Medieval East Anglia: Tanner 407 and Beinecke 365,\u201d presents East Anglia as a backdrop to compare two manuscripts; she examines their accretive structures and how they document \u201cthe individual in relation to the community, particularly with reference to religious devotion and practice\u201d (167). Ceridwen Lloyd-Morgan\u2019s \u201cWriting Without Borders: Multilingual Content in Welsh Miscellanies from Wales, the Marches and Beyond\u201d and Dafydd Johnston\u2019s \u201cWelsh Bardic Miscellanies\u201d examine Welsh prose and poetry respectively; and Emily Wingfield\u2019s \u201cLancelot of the Laik <\/em>and the Literary Manuscript Miscellany in 15th- and 16th-century Scotland\u201d addresses the \u201clamented lack of scholarship on Scottish literary manuscript miscellanies\u201d (209). Deborah Young\u2019s \u201cEntertainment Networks, Reading Communities, and the Early Tudor Anthology: Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Rawlinson C. 813\u201d and William Marx\u2019s \u201cAberystwyth, National Library of Wales, MS Peniarth 12: The Development of Bilingual Miscellany\u2014Welsh and English\u201d study community in Tudor England: the first, how entertainment networks facilitate the transmission of ideas; and the second, how the manuscript\u2019s compilation was \u201cdriven by a sense of contemporary need\u201d (262). And, lastly, Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards\u2019s \u201cTowards a Taxonomy of Middle English Manuscript Assemblages\u201d and Margaret Connolly\u2019s \u201cThe Whole Book and the Whole Picture: Editions and Facsimiles of Medieval Miscellanies and Their Influence\u201d present a whole-book perspective to consider closely the taxonomy and accessibility of late medieval miscellanies respectively.<\/p>\n

The editors of this collection unquestionably realise their primary objectives through their multidisciplinary approach and their inclusion of scholars whose expertise enables readers to obtain insight into the complex nature of vernacular manuscript miscellanies in general and their contents more specifically. Their descriptions of manuscripts, such as Tanner 407 and Beinecke 365 by Meale, are vivid and engaging, and numerous secondary sources in footnotes encourage readers to conduct further independent research. However, the devil manifests often in the abundance of detail \u2014 that is, the effort to understand the physical and socio-cultural conditions of a manuscript\u2019s production is at times overshadowed by the thorough cataloguing of content.<\/p>\n

Jocelyn Hargrave
\nMonash University<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Margaret Connolly and Raluca Radulescu, eds. Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain. Oxford: Published for the British Academy by Oxford University Press, 2015. xviii, 330p., colour ill. ISBN 9780197265833. US $155.00 (hardback). Margaret Connolly and Raluca Radulescu\u2019s edited collection Insular Books: Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain contains a number\u00a0of essays […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1888],"tags":[1930,1938],"class_list":["post-135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","tag-europe","tag-manuscript-culture"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=135"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2506,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/135\/revisions\/2506"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sharpweb.org\/sharpnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}