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Full Description
Seminal investigations into the most important aspects of medieval Scots texts, with a particular focus on editing and manuscript context.
This rich selection from the writings of Priscilla Bawcutt, the major scholar of Older Scots literature, both honours her achievement and provides authoritative guidance to all involved in the pleasures and challenges of medieval and early modern Scottish studies.
The first five chapters, including a hitherto unpublished paper, gather her insights into how to examine, contextualize, and edit early poetic texts. Among her discussions are those on the importance of explanatory notes, the usefulness of fragments, the demands of transcription, and the need for objectivity when identifying supposed influences, date, or author. Bawcutt draws on a variety of texts, including Dunbar's "elrich fantasyis", Rolland's Court of Venus, and metrical Scottish charms to illustrate these aspects of editing. Two central chapters then give balance and coherence to the complex evidence of change in literary activities and tastes in early Scotland. First, an analytical survey of manuscript miscellanies, noting their diversity in size, condition, arrangement, copyists, owners, and purposes, offers many different ways to approach these compilations. Secondly, Bawcutt's study of one particular miscellany, the great five-part Bannatyne Manuscript, provides new information on the sources and authors of the many texts it contains and the diversity of their literary and cultural connections. Five further chapters combine textual and bibliographical studies with contextual explorations, into personal libraries, habits of reading, annotators, and book circulation within family groups, across borders, or over time. Among these illuminating essays are those on Gavin Douglas's imaginary library, and the influential first printed edition of his Eneados, both of increasing interest alongside the new edition of his translation.
A full bibliography of Priscilla Bawcutt's publications is also included.
Contents
Foreword
Nicola Royan and Rhiannon Purdie
Acknowledgements
Editor's note
Abbreviations
Introduction: 'Restoring the authour's works to their integrity'
Janet Hadley Williams
Arts of Editing
1.'Let us now be told no more of the dull duty of an editor!'
2.Source-Hunting: Some 'Reulis and Cautelis'
3.Elrich Fantasyis in Dunbar and Other Poets
4.'Mankit and Mutillait': The Text of John Rolland's The Court of Venus
5.'Holy Words for Healing': Some Early Scottish Charms and their Ancient Religious Roots
Contexts, Contents
6.Manuscript Miscellanies in Scotland from the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Century
7.The Contents of the Bannatyne Manuscript: New Sources and Analogues
Annotators, Owners, Compilers
8.The 'Library' of Gavin Douglas
9.The Commonplace Book of John Maxwell
10.The Boston Public Library Manuscript of John Lydgate's Siege of Thebes:
Its Scottish Owners and Inscriptions
11.Lord William Howard of Naworth (1563-1640): Antiquary, Book Collector, and Owner of the Scottish Devotional Manuscript British Library, Arundel 285
12.Gavin Douglas's Eneados: The 1553 Edition and its Early Owners
and Readers
Priscilla Bawcutt: Publications
Elspeth Yeo, A. S. G. Edwards, Janet Hadley Williams
Priscilla J. Bawcutt 1931-2021
Alasdair A. MacDonald
Index of Manuscripts
General Index
Tabula in Memoriam
