The broken book: reading and materializing Middle English literary compilations
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Abstract
This dissertation explores the multifaceted relationship between medieval books, their materiality, and the networks of human and non-human actors that shape their existence. Drawing from New Materialist studies and Bill Brown's "Thing Theory," it examines how medieval readers interacted with texts and material books, acknowledging the intricate web of people and objects involved in their production and reception. By focusing on the materiality of medieval books, this dissertation seeks to unveil the often-overlooked connections between various human and non-human actors involved in book production and reading. Each chapter delves into a specific case study, starting with the Auchinleck Manuscript, an early compilation of Middle English texts and romances. This chapter argues that the manuscript's composite nature reflects and encourages a similar mode of self-fashioning in its readers, linking English identity formation to the compilation of texts. The second chapter explores the Oxford Group Manuscripts and Chaucer's dream vision poems. It investigates how these manuscripts, produced in fascicles, parallel the imaginative process and recombination of sensory data in Chaucer's dream narratives. Chapter three examines the "compilation narratives" framing Thomas Hoccleve's poems, emphasizing their depictions of scribal labor and textual communion. Comparing these narratives to Hoccleve's holographs reveals the intersections between authorial self-fashioning and fifteenth-century bookmaking. The final chapter analyzes Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte Darthur in its earliest forms, the Winchester Manuscript and William Caxton's printed edition. It argues that Malory's work is fundamentally a compilation, and that Caxton's edition represents a broader shift towards author-centric and commodified books. The chapter also explores the paratextual features of Le Morte Darthur in its manuscript and printed forms to discern the impact they would have had on the reception and interpretation of the text.
This dissertation challenges traditional notions of authorship and intentionality in book production, highlighting the agency of material objects and their role in shaping the meaning and reception of medieval texts. It offers new understandings of the dynamic interplay between human and non-human actors within the networks that shape late medieval English book culture.
Description
2024
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Attribution 4.0 International