A commentary, study, and diplomatic reprint of the Pierpont Morgan Library MS (M4) of John Lydgate's "Siege of Thebes"
Item
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Title
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A commentary, study, and diplomatic reprint of the Pierpont Morgan Library MS (M4) of John Lydgate's "Siege of Thebes"
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Identifier
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AAI9986394
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identifier
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9986394
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Creator
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Wilson, Robert Justin.
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Contributor
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Adviser: William Emmet Coleman
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Date
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2000
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Literature, Medieval | Literature, English
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Abstract
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John Lydgate was the most prolific poet of the fifteenth century. His works were also the most copied in manuscript form of any other fifteenth-century English poet. Hence, the previously unedited manuscript (M4) of Lydgate's poem The Siege of Thebes, located at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, deserves study as a means to understanding the late Middle Ages. The manuscript was not included in the 1911, 1930 E.E.T.S. critical edition of the poem by Axel Erdmann and Eilert Ekwall. Although the manuscript may not provide emendations to a future critical edition, an examination of the practices of the scribe and the production and reception of the manuscript provide a greater understanding of the book in the fifteenth century at the eve of moveable type. Moreover, the same scribe transcribed the poem in Cambridge UL, Pepys MS 2011 (P), which I studied on microfilm. The dissertation contextualizes the poem by investigating M4's physical construction, its provenance, the poem's placement in the manuscript among other poems in both M4 and P, the ordinatio established by the scribe and illuminator, the order in which the two manuscripts were copied (M4 probably first), the dialect of the scribe, the placement of M4 in the stemma, and the various editions in print and electronic form in which the poem has appeared. The dissertation confirms recent scholarship concerning secular manuscript production in the first half of the fifteenth century: namely, the scribe was the central figure in its production, versus a commercial scriptorium with a well-organized machinery of proofreaders, rubricators, illuminators, and binders. A diplomatic reprint of M4's The Siege of Thebes and its rubrics, a collation against the base text of Erdmann and Eckwall's critical edition, and detailed notes on the manuscript are included.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
