The works of four major fifteenth-century writers re-examined, showing their innovative reconceptualization of Middle English authorship and the manuscript book. Thomas Hoccleve, Margery Kempe, John Audelay and Charles d'Orleans present themselves as the makers not only of their texts, but also of the books that transmitted their writing. This new study argues that they elaborated a "self-publishing pose" with the aim of regaining their audiences' confidence in the face of the compromised social, physical and material conditions they inhabited. Dr Critten shows that while the strategies of self-presentation that these authors develop draw on trends in contemporary literature and book history (such as the proliferation of the "go, litel bok" motif and the increasing popularity of the single-author codex), their approach to writing differs fundamentally from that pursued by their immediate predecessors, Chaucer and Gower, and by their most prominent peer, Lydgate. Rather, in their unusual insistence on their co-identity with their manuscripts, they demonstrate a new awareness of the socially instrumental potential of Middle English writing. RORY G. CRITTEN is a Maitre d'enseignement et de recherche (lecturer) in the English Department at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.
Reviews
Critten adds considerable nuance to established literary-critical positions, and frequently offers fresh insights which no student of Middle English literature should ignore. * MEDIUM AEVUM *
Critten does demonstrate an alert literary intelligence and he offers much sensitive literary analysis * TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT *
[...] a careful, considered book on an important and understudied topic. Critten succeeds in placing manuscript studies at the heart of literary interpretation. Author, Scribe, and Book contributes substantially to this important field of study. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW *
In general Author, Scribe and Book lives up to the promises of its title. As a study of 'late medieval English literature' that incorporates excursions into biography and palaeography and analyses of Latin and French texts, it demonstrates the disconnectedness of fifteenth-century writing, an aspect that literary histories tend to downplay. * PARERGON *
At its core, Author, Scribe, and Book offers inventive and significant readings of these authors' texts and the manuscripts that contain them. * SPECULUM *
The book is well-written, interesting, carefully argued, discriminating in its up-to-date scholarship, and has an interesting main thesis. * JOURNAL OF THE EARLY BOOK SOCIETY *
Critten's study is a most welcome addition to the ever-growing body of scholarly works which consider the authorial voice in Middle English from a variety of angles. His analysis is clear and incisive, and pays close attention to codicological and palaeographical detail * ANGLIA *
Both [Critten's] careful individual renderings of each medieval author's texts and the new theoretical framework for comprehending philosophies of authorship that he elucidates make Author, Scribe, and Book required reading for any scholar of Middle English poetry, of manuscript studies, or of histories of authorship and literary criticism * STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER *



Book Information
ISBN 9781843845058
Author Rory G. Critten
Format Hardback
Page Count 238
Imprint D.S. Brewer
Publisher Boydell & Brewer Ltd