'The Culture of Scribal Attribution in Middle English Manuscript Studies'

“中世纪英语手稿研究中的抄写归因文化”

• 批准号: 2459935
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: King's College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2020 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2459935
• 关键词: Culture; Scribal; Attribution; Middle; English

Among the major developments in medieval English literary studies over the past generation has been an explosion of scribal attributions, that is, the identification of the scribes who copied the manuscripts of Geoffrey Chaucer, William Langland, and John Gower. Before 1978, few Middle English scholars beyond the small realm of paleography exhibited much interest in these manuscripts save insofar as they contained the poets' ipsissima verba. In that year, two distinguished scholars published what has been called 'the essay that started a field' (1), which, among other things, showed that the scribe of the most important manuscripts of the Canterbury Tales had been hired, along with four other scribes, including the poet and Privy Seal clerk Thomas Hoccleve, to write out a copy of Gower's Confessio Amantis. Since then, the field has witnessed an explosion of scribal attributions, most famously that of one Adam Pynkhurst as 'Chaucer's scribe'. The impact has extended far beyond the confines of paleography; in 2018 appeared an essay in a cutting-edge theory journal placing Pynkhurst in 'queer environments' (2). If Doyle's and Parkes's essay has "implications that would make Middle English manuscript studies mandatory for the larger literary world" (Kerby-Fulton, xv), and if Adam Pynkhurst has fully entered the mainstream of literary studies, that is in large part because scribal attribution has been assumed to rest on facts. That is far from the case, as Lawrence Warner's 2018 book Chaucer's Scribes has shown (3). But even Prof. Warner, who will supervise my dissertation, in effect takes things back to where they were before Pynkhurst achieved his prominence. What is urgently needed is a stock-take of the phenomenon of scribal attribution in Middle English studies. My dissertation will provide just that. It has three goals: to study the culture of scribal attribution, that is, the theoretical underpinnings of its methodologies and broader acceptance; to overcome the limitations that have been looming over the field via the proposal of new methodologies, in particular with regard to graphetic evidence (on which topic I have already published (4)); and to produce a new, historically and theoretically responsible account both of late medieval English literary culture and twenty-first century medieval literary studies. It is no good building an image of the queerness of Chaucer's scribe if he was not Chaucer's scribe; and it is no good simply accepting or rejecting his identification and leaving the matter there. Such issues demonstrate the limitations in methodologies used for identifying scribes, on which my thesis will aim to improve. This study will primarily impact Middle English Manuscript studies but has a wider impact: on queer studies, but also animal studies, the Digital Humanities, and the basics of teaching Chaucer in the classroom. The stakes are very high. As demonstrated by the Pinkhurst controversy, among the palaeographer's tasks is in distinguishing between instances of handwriting that look very similar. The biggest challenge, which my thesis will work toward overcoming, is understanding how a scribe may change his handwriting practices and not confuse this internal variability for the work of a different scribe. Further work needs to be done to better understand the factors that motivated a scribe to change his handwriting practices. In the bulk of my dissertation, I will be looking at the handwriting of five prominent scribes who have written in various languages and across different texts with the hope of shedding light on how their handwriting practices may vary according to these factors.

在过去的一代人中，中世纪英语文学研究的主要发展之一是抄写员归属的爆炸性增长，也就是说，抄写杰弗里·乔叟，威廉·朗兰德和约翰·高尔手稿的抄写员的身份。在1978年之前，除了古文字学的小领域之外，很少有中古英语学者对这些手稿表现出很大的兴趣，除非它们包含了诗人的自证之词。在那一年，两位杰出的学者发表了被称为“开创一个领域的论文”（1），其中，除其他事项外，表明坎特伯雷故事集最重要手稿的抄写员被雇用，沿着还有其他四名抄写员，包括诗人和掌玺大臣托马斯霍克利夫，写了一份高尔的Confesio Amantis。从那时起，这个领域见证了抄写员的爆炸式增长，最著名的是亚当·平克赫斯特（Adam Pynkhurst）作为“乔叟的抄写员”。这种影响已经远远超出了古地理学的范围; 2018年，一篇前沿理论期刊上的文章将Pynkhurst置于“奇怪的环境”中。如果道尔和帕克斯的论文具有“使中世纪英语手稿研究成为更大文学世界的强制性研究的含义”（Kerby-Fulton，xv），如果亚当·品克赫斯特已经完全进入文学研究的主流，这在很大程度上是因为抄写员的归属被认为是基于事实的。事实远非如此，正如劳伦斯·华纳（Lawrence Warner）2018年的书《乔叟的抄写员》（Chaucer's Scribes）所显示的那样（3）。但是，即使是将指导我的论文的华纳教授，实际上也把事情带回了平克赫斯特成名之前的状态。我们迫切需要对中古英语研究中的抄写归因现象进行梳理。我的论文将提供这一点。它有三个目标：研究抄写员归因文化，即其方法的理论基础和更广泛的接受;通过提出新的方法克服该领域的局限性，特别是在书写证据方面（关于这个问题，我已经发表了（4））;并对中世纪晚期英国文学文化和21世纪世纪的中世纪文学研究进行新的、历史的和理论的负责任的解释。如果乔叟的抄写员不是乔叟的抄写员，那么建立乔叟的抄写员的奇怪形象是没有好处的;简单地接受或拒绝他的身份并将问题留在那里也是没有好处的。这些问题表明了用于识别抄写员的方法的局限性，我的论文将致力于改进。这项研究将主要影响中古英语Mandarin pt研究，但有更广泛的影响：对酷儿研究，但也动物研究，数字人文，以及在课堂上教乔叟的基础知识。风险非常高。正如平克赫斯特争议所表明的那样，古文字学家的任务之一是区分看起来非常相似的笔迹。最大的挑战，我的论文将努力克服，是理解一个抄写员如何改变他的笔迹实践，而不是混淆这种内部变异的工作，不同的抄写员。需要做进一步的工作，以更好地了解促使抄写员改变他的笔迹练习的因素。在我的大部分论文中，我将研究五位著名抄写员的笔迹，他们用各种语言和不同的文本写作，希望阐明他们的笔迹实践如何根据这些因素而变化。