Performing Manuscript Culture : Poetry, Materiality, and Authorship in Thomas Hoccleve’s 'Regement of Princes'

This study conceives of Thomas Hoccleve’s __Regement of Princes__ (1410-1413) as an essentially performative text, one that expresses its awareness of the manuscript culture in which it is so firmly rooted. The openness of manuscripts is a recurring subject in the __Regement__ and is not only expressed through mere descriptions of, but through complex references to this manuscript context. Performances of manuscript culture manifest themselves in several aspects of the text. The first is the narrator persona, and especially the question of how persona and text are intertwined. The second is the constantly recurring interpretation of quotes from authoritative sources that pervades the __Regement__. This urge to interpret is expressed both in the tradition of adding marginal glosses and in the process of subjecting the text to an exegetical reading. The third aspect is the relation between text and images in the __Regement’s__ manuscripts, which shows how mediality is performed and how the manuscript context is made the focus of this performance. In this monograph, all of these aspects are studied in a mindset that combines the concept of performativity with the postulations of Material Philology. Acknowledgments Contents Abbreviations 1 Introduction: the Regement of Princes as a Manuscript Fiction 1.1 The Regement of Princes and its Manuscripts 1.2 A Poet’s Rehabilitation? 1.3 Material Philology Meets Performativity 1.4 Tracing Performances of Manuscript Culture 2 “Hoccleve, fadir myn, men clepen me”: Textual Biography in the Regement of Princes Thomas Hoccleve, “Scoller of Geoffrey Chaucer” 2.1 Interwoven Biographies 2.2 The Death of the Narrator: Thomas Hoccleve’s Dissolution into his Text 2.3 The Old Man – a Young Narrator, a Potential Future, and a Personified Textual Function 3 “That text I undirstonde thus alwey”: Glosinge in the Regement of Princes On Authority 3.1 Case Study I: Marginal Glosses and their Relation to the Main Text 3.1.1 Marginal Glosses in the Regement of Princes 3.1.2 Reading Blyth’s and Furnivall’s Regements 3.1.4 Reading the Regement in 15th-Century Witnesses 3.1.5 Commenting on a Culture of Glossing 3.2 Case Study II: Interpreting Authorities 3.2.1 Glossing and Debating Female Maistrie 3.2.2 Alisoun Revisited 3.2.3 Circularity and the Limits of Exegesis 3.2.4 Political Implications of the Practice of Glosinge 4 “Of his persone, I have heere his liknesse Do make”: Mediality and Conceptions of Authorship in the Regement of Princes Some Thoughts on the Concepts ‘Text’ and ‘Image’ The Manuscripts of the Regement as Canvas 4.1 The Textual Construction Workers: Visualising the Manuscript Context 4.2 Chaucer Pointing at the Regement: A Number of Pictorial Variants 4.3 A Portrait of the Author as ... 4.3.1 ... Clerkly Chaucer 4.3.2 ... Courtly Hoccleve 4.3.3 The Presentation Picture in Arundel 38 4.3.4 The Presentation Picture in Royal 17 D. vi 4.3.5 The Regement’s Cultural Programme of Depicting Authorship 4.4 On Authorship 5 Conclusions Works Cited Primary Sources Secondary Sources Images Indices Index of Names Index of Manuscripts The series in German medieval studies includes central topics of current research debates in medieval studies and provides a place for groundbreaking research in the subject literature. The series is intended to give international and young researchers/research teams the possibility to effectively present innovative surveys and discussions to the scientific community. The series sees itself as a 'young' research forum with a high standard of quality and is therefore also open to excellent degree theses, should they enhance the series Elisabeth Kempf. Based On The Author's Thesis (doctoral)--freie Universität, Berlin, 2014. Includes Bibliographical References (pages 186-197) And Indexes.