Susanna Fein 
Interpreting MS Digby 86 [PDF ebook] 
A Trilingual Book from Thirteenth-Century Worcestershire

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

Tabela de Conteúdo

Introduction – Susanna Fein

Fellow Travellers with Saint Nicholas – Delbert W. Russell

Anglo-Norman Religious Instruction in MS Digby 86: Echoes of Lateran IV – Maureen Boulton

Latin and Vernacular Prayers in MS Digby 86 – Sheri Smith

Science, Medicine, Prognostication: MS Digby 86 as a Household Almanac – Marjorie Harrington

Literary Therapeutics: Experimental Knowledge in MS Digby 86 – Jennifer Jahner

Petrus Alfonsi, the
Disciplina clericalis, and
Le Romaunz Peres Aunfour of MS Digby 86 – David Raybin

Misogyny in MS Digby 86 – Marilyn Corrie

Gender Trouble? Fabliau and Debate in MS Digby 86 – Neil Cartlidge

The Middle English Poetry of MS Digby 86 – Susanna Fein

MS Digby 86 and Thirteenth-Century Scribal Poetics – Jenni Nuttall

The Scarlet Letter: Experimentation, Design, and Copying Practice in the Coloured Capitals of MS Digby 86 – J. D. Sargan

Below Malvern: MS Digby 86, the Grimhills, and the Underhills in Their Regional and Social Context – John Hines

Below Malvern: MS Digby 86, the Grimhills, and the Underhills in Their Regional and Social Context – Melissa Julian-Jones

Bibliography

Sobre o autor

MAUREEN BOULTON Professor of French, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Notre Dame.