A Study of Four Single-Witness English Texts from the 14th and 15th Centuries in Manuscript, Early Print, and Modern Editions

This dissertation examines four single-witness manuscripts, written in English, dating from between the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the third quarter of the fifteenth: London, British Library MS Cotton Nero A.x, which contains the Pearl poems; Cambridge, Cambridge University Library MS Ll.iv.14, containing the fragmentary poem Richard the Redeless; London, British Library MS Additional 41666, which holds the fragmentary poem Mum and the Sothsegger; and London, British Library Additional MS 61823, which contains The Book of Margery Kempe. Each chapter traces the editorial and scholarly history of a single-witness medieval literary text from its first manuscript inscription through its various later forms, including manuscript marginalia, early printed versions, as well as modern editions from the mid-nineteenth century through to the present day. What unites each of these studies is a central interest in the relationship between the single manuscript version of each text and the various other versions of the text that have emerged since its medieval composition. I interrogate the decisions made by individual agents as they read, transcribed, edited, and critiqued these texts across time, and in the way that these decisions reflect contemporary scholarly, social, and political concerns. I am interested in the intractability of certain kinds of editorial decisions, even long after the assumptions that preceded them have changed or disappeared, and in the way that certain decisions—many of them built on editorial principles of authority and textual stability—become cemented in the editorial tradition of the texts, sometimes against manuscript evidence or to the exclusion of other, equally possible readings. Throughout, I hope to enact a kind of criticism that is mobilized by curiosity: curiosity about why editors and critics made the choices that they did, and curiosity about what else might be possible if we could get out from under the weight of already-inscribed interpretations. I am interested in seeing what happens when the editorial tradition of these texts is cracked open: when texts whose form has seemed to be settled can be unsettled again, even temporarily, in order to generate new ways of seeing them.Ph.D