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Posts from the ‘Medieval Literature’ Category

Feb 5

letter-from-richard-III-christies

Richard Speaking

What would Richard III have sounded like?

Curious about how Richard III may have sounded ? We are fortunate to have some of his original letters and thus a little bit of evidence of his pronounciation.

In a University of Leicester exclusive podcast interview, Dr Philip Shaw from the School of English discusses how Richard III may have sounded in his own lifetime.

With the use of two letters with notes from Richard III himself, Dr Shaw delves deeper into what the man was really like.  Both letters provide a sneak peek into the world of Richard III’s language, spelling and grammar.

As both letters begin with formulaic and neat words from a secretary, Dr Shaw has used this as a point of comparison with Richards’ less polished notes.

The first of the two letters was written before Richard was king and is his earliest surviving letter, dating back to 1469. The letter itself was written when Richard was travelling with Edward IV to put down a disturbance in Yorkshire. Writing from Castle Rising, Norfolk, he urgently requests a loan of £100 from Sir John Say, the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. Richard appends a two-line note in his own hand to the letter, emphasising the urgency of his requirement.

The second letter was written in 1483, on learning of the Duke of Buckingham’s rebellion against him. King Richard dictated a letter asking his Chancellor to send the Great Seal to him. Richard also attaches a personal note at the bottom of the letter, expressing his desire that the Chancellor come in person, if possible, and expressing his expectation that he will soon suppress Buckingham.

Dr Shaw said: “I found that Richard III’s spellings are relatively consistent, and in many ways reflect the same educated spelling practices employed by his secretaries.  However, he also differs from the practice of his secretaries occasionally, and such quirks may provide clues to how he spoke.

“Like today, there were various dialects (with different features of accent and grammar) around the country. Unlike today, individuals were more likely to spell words in ways that reflected their local dialect. Therefore, by looking at Richard’s writing, I was able to pinpoint spellings that may provide some clues to his accent.

“The language used within the two postscripts shows no evidence of northern English dialect features, largely reflecting the relatively standard, London-derived spelling system also used by Richard’s secretaries. However, there is also at least one spelling he employs that may suggest a West Midlands accent.”

Find out more and listen to Dr Philip Shaw read out Richard III’s letters

The Photo is of a letter sold at Christies June 2012. It was valued to £10.000 – 15.000, but sold for £109.250.

 

Oct 17

boccacio

Boccaccio 2013

Giovanni Boccaccio (1313 -1375) stood on the threshold of the Renaissance

We know him for his work of fiction – foremost Decameron, which is still worth reading just for the fun of it.  Added to this should nevertheless be his work as biographer, poet and literary scholar in both Italian and Latin; as well as his work as a merchant – banker, courtier, scribe, philologist, geographer, social critic, lecturer, cleric and ambassador of the Florentine Republic. As such he left a substantial correspondence, which offers an enticing window on the changing worlds of fourteenth-century Europe.

Next year scholars will celebrate the 700th anniversary of his birth with a number of conferences and symposiums, while Italy will host a number of exhibitions and festivities, foremost an exhibition of his manuscripts “Autografi e biblioteca di Boccaccio. 
Mostra di manoscritti. Firenze, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, anno 2013″. Recently an international seminar took place in Firenze at Palazzo Strozzi, where perspectives, research and initiatives were planned for the centenary.

A list of the scheduled conferences may be found at the homepage of Casa del Boccaccio. Another place to visit in order to keep updated is the American Boccaccio Association

manuscript page boccaccio bib medicea Laurenziana 219x300 Boccaccio 2013

Autograph of Boccaccio in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana

Locating Boccaccio 2013
One of the more daring initiatives is a series of events to be held at the University of Manchester at the Town Hall as well as in John Rylands Library. Boccaccio – although agreed to be on par with Dante and Petrarca – often get somewhat bypassed. Is this a reflection of his own literary anxieties (initially he seems to have been less pompous in his affections and later he became very conventional in his writing)? Or is it a reflection of the grand industries of Dante and Petrarca, which might have side-lined Boccaccio to a supporting role in the narratives of these great poets and scholars? This is the overall question, which the conference seeks to address, while focusing on his forms of writing and their material context – manuscript traditions, palaeography, bibliography. But also the older critical traditions as well as more modern (queer and gender) perspectives will be presented. The conference will be held at the John Rylands Library, which holds one of the most remarkable collections of incunable editions of Boccaccio’s work.

Locating Boccaccio in 2013
Manchester Town Hall and John Rylands Library
Call for papers are open until 30.10.2012
10.07.2013 – 12.07.2013

The Decameron Web
Want to know more about Boccaccio’s Decameron and the poet? Then the place to start is the Decameron Web. Although dated it is still a very informative. The Decameron Web is a project of the Italian Studies Department’s Virtual Humanities Lab at Brown University.

Casa Boccaccio
Although totally destroyed during WW2, the last home of Boccaccio in Firenze has been rebuilt and functions today as a space for exhibitions, a library and a meeting place. The foundation keeps an updated homepage with the latest news.

Sep 18

Nicolas-de-houssemaine-cropped

De Houssemaine

L’Historie des comtes de Dammartin by Nicolas de Houssemaine has been restored to France   

Recently the Bibliothèque d’Angers acquired a remarkable manuscript with the L’Historie des comtes de Dammartin – “The History of the Counts of Dammartin”.

The illuminated manuscript, which is currently exhibited at the “Médiathèque Toussaint” in the centre of Angers, was written between 1500-1503 by Nicolas de Houssemaine. He was leading professor at the faculty of medicine at the University in Angers and is better known for a treatise on the Pest. However, he also dappled in the romance of history as is witnessed by this book, which he presented to the Comte de Dammartin at the beginning of the of the 16th century.

Jean de Chabannes 214x300 De HoussemaineThe manuscript – which is the original first copy – was recently bought back to France after having been in private hands for the last three centuries in England and USA. Until now the text was only known from a copy of the original, which was held in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

The first owner was Jean de Chabannes, comte de Dammartin. He is pictured in the frontispiece receiving the manuscript form the hands of Nicolas de Houssemaine. According to the prologue the history was written in order to tell the story of the ancestors of the present count de Dammartin and his kinship with the different royal families. However, in reality it is a rewritten version of a late chanson de geste – Theséus de Cologne – into which the story of the counts were interwoven. Set in the times of the Merovingian King Dagobert, the romance recounts the deeds of Theseus of Cologne, son of Floridas (King of Cologne in 632) and Alydone (maiden at the court of Dagobert) as well as his companions Ludovis of France, son of Dagobert, Ludovis’s faithful assistant Assaillant, Count of Dammartin, and Lambert, Count of Anjou.

The illuminations
The six extant miniatures (seven are missing) are the product of two artists. The Maître des Entrées parisiennes was likely responsible for most of the miniatures; he produced manuscripts for the royal court and was active between 1490 and 1520. The second artist, the Master of Etienne Poncher, was responsible for the border decoration and perhaps for the dedicatory miniature, although the face of Jean de Chabannes was added by the Master of the Paris Entries.

binding 199x300 De HoussemaineThe binding
The binding of the book is very rare. The original bi-colour velvet heraldic binding in alternate bands of purple and gold and adhered to the wooden boards is extremely rare.  The binding flaunts the heraldic colours of the arms of the Dammartin-Bourbon, which may also be found in the illuminated borders. Such bindings are known from the inventory of the royal library at Blois. However, only one other velvet binding of this type has come down to us (BnF MS fr. 5729). l both in content and appearance royal productions.

The manuscript was exhibited at the Louvre in 1210. A thorough description of the manuscript in English may be found here 

Presentation in French of the manuscript and its history

 

 

Sep 13

fragment-1

Anglo-Norman

Rare discovery of Anglo-Norman fragments illuminates history of a French medieval epic 

Old medieval vellum manuscripts were often reused for binding in the early modern age. Often the strips are nearly negligible in size as well as content. However, from time to time such fragments are more valuable than their size might initially hint at.

Recently Dr Marianne Ailes of Bristol’s Department of French found two such pieces of precious vellum in a box of manuscript fragments recovered from book bindings in St Andrews University Library; each roughly the size and dimensions of a cheque.

The two fragments, the only unidentified Old French manuscripts in the box, exhibit Anglo-Norman orthography, so they definitely were copied in England.  The larger fragment, dating from the late 13th century, contains ten lines of two columns.  The second fragment, which is probably from the first half of the 14th century, contains five lines of two columns.

The larger fragment is a section of text from the Chanson de Guillaume, one of the earliest surviving Old French texts, known until now in only one manuscript . The smaller fragment comes from a manuscript of Foulque de Candie, a late twelfth-century poem.

The Chanson de Guillaume, an important twelfth-century epic poem in Old French survives complete in only one manuscript, kept in the British Library. However, the contents of the fragment do not correspond to the narrative preserved in the London manuscript, but represent the version reflected in the later twelfth-century poem Foulque de Candie.

“The significance of these fragments is out of proportion to their size. As they are written with the spelling characteristic of Anglo-Norman texts they add to our understanding of the reception of this kind of text in England”, says Dr. Marianne Allis.

Behind this enigmatic comment hides an important scholarly controversy, which the fragments may help to illuminate. The controversy is sometimes headed under the epithet, “The Old French Epic Diaspora” and designates the in French eyes provincial character of these epics, as they have been preserved in the Occitan and in the Anglo-Norman languages/dialects. Anglo-Norman England was of course part of the French-speaking world and – as stated very recently by professor Philip E. Bennett – the accepted doctrine until recently “was that there were no Anglo-Norman chansons de geste, and that the copies of continental French epics made in England were no more than that; moreover, where they showed significant divergence from continental exemplars, they were corrupt and unreliable. Finally the making of copies of these poems in England was offered as proof of the provincial conservatism of the Anglo-Norman barons, who deemed to provide a public for them.”

He goes on to claim that this position is now untenable and that the existence of such creative “reworkings” as for instance the Chanson de Guillaume should be characterised as creative adaptions. These comments have recently (august 2012) been published in the journal, French Studies, in an article presenting an overview of the last 50 years of research into the geste; and are obviously reflecting the recent find, which professor Phillip Bennett contributed to the identification of.

État Présent. Chanson de geste and chanson d’aventures: recent perspectives on the evolution of a genre.
By Philip E. Bennett.
In French Studies, august 30 2012/advance access.

Press release from Bristol University