The Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt and London, British Library, Cotton Julius E.vii: A Textual Study

This article highlights the textual distinctiveness of the Old English Life of Saint Mary of Egypt in its manuscript context in British Library, Cotton Julius E.vii. The Cotton Julius version of the Life is distinctive in the sheer number of scribal errors it contains but also in the purposeful changes to the original translation evident in it. Consideration of scribal performance across the manuscript and comparison with texts of Saint Mary of Egypt extant elsewhere lead to the conclusion that the purposeful changes in the Cotton Julius witness have probably been inherited from an exemplar, while the number of errors is likely due to the pressure under which the scribe was working in adding this text at a late stage of the manuscript’s composition. Despite its distinctive features, there is no evidence to contradict the recently argued contention that this version of Saint Mary of Egypt, along with the second half of the immediately preceding item in the manuscript, the Legend of the Seven Sleepers, was copied by the main scribe of Cotton Julius rather than being delegated to a colleague: although Seven Sleepers also seems to have been copied under pressure, Saint Mary of Egypt stands apart from it in broadly the same ways as it does from the rest of the manuscript.

‘Britones a Troianis duxerunt originem’: Historia Meriadoci, De ortu Waluuanii and their Galfridian companion-text in BL MS Cotton Faustina B VI

When a reader encounters the Latin romances Historia Meriadoci and De ortu Waluuanii in BL MS Cotton Faustina B VI, the romances are only the first two in a set of three texts copied by the same scribe on the same occasion. The third text, following directly on De ortu Waluuanii, is an abstract of books 1–6 of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s De gestis Britonum. While valuable in its own right as a witness to the DGB’s use and manuscript circulation, the abstract is presented and investigated here for what it may tell us about the Latin romances’ own transmission and reception, which have long been shrouded in mystery. As I argue, the abstract’s juxtaposition with the romances is no accident, and figures importantly in the romances’ presentation. Much as the opening stanzas of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight set the stage for King Arthur, in fact, the Latin synopsis begins with the fall of Troy and Brutus’ foundation of Britain before (much more expansively than the Gawain-poet) recounting the war and wrack of early British history, concluding with Merlin’s revelation to Vortigern of the warring dragons. In this and other ways this Galfridian abstract causes the Latin romances to quicken with correspondences to Geoffrey’s work; this effect may even suggest for the romances a date of composition not distant from that of the DGB itself. By exploring the interpretive possibilities of this widened manuscript context, the present paper seeks to initiate a re-examination of these mysterious Latin romances in relation to their Galfridian companion-text. This article concludes with an edition of the abstract itself, which until now has not been edited or translated.

Motion, Contact and Profanity in Rutebeuf’s Tales of ‘Charlot Le Juif’: (Not) Going There, (Not) Touching That

This article explores what we can learn about the context of thirteenth-century Paris from the relation between what is explicit and implicit in Rutebeuf’s tales of Charlot the Jew. Dated to the 1260s, these two texts – ‘La Disputaison de Charlot et du Barbier de Melun’ and ‘Charlot le juif qui chia dans la peau du lièvre’ – survive in Paris, BnF, MS fr. 1635. In themselves, in relation to one another and in their manuscript context, these tales reveal much about the function of hints and hidden jokes as soundings of intercommunal tensions and polemic in the period between the Paris Disputation of 1240 and the outbursts of violence later in the century. The discussion of the text focuses on the representation of cultural and religious provocation, and especially Rutebeuf ’s possible adumbrating of sensitive issues not always addressed in explicit fashion. Charlot’s seeming resistance to provocation in various regards may thus reflect a context in which Louis IX encouraged the lay population to take direct action in response to any perceived insults against Christianity from the Jewish population.

Teen Moms: Violence, Consent, and Embodied Subjectivity in Middle English Pregnancy Laments

This article examines power and coercion in five Middle English and Middle Scots lyrics voiced by pregnant, abandoned singlewomen. It focuses on the language of consent and embodiment in these pregnancy laments, arguing that they both protest and normalize masculine violence in heterosexual erotic relations, highlight the various factors that undermine young singlewomen’s consent, articulate acute dissatisfaction with gendered power inequalities, and demonstrate the devastating consequences of sexual ignorance. It explores the different ways that we can read these lyrics when considering issues of voice, audience, performance, and manuscript context. The essay closes by linking the popularity of medieval unplanned pregnancy narratives to modern-day reality television programming, arguing that the trans-historical popularity of these stories merits further exploration.

An unpublished poem on Porphyry

This paper offers an editio princeps, an English translation and a commentary of an interesting epigram on Porphyry, the commentator of Aristotle. The epigram was transcribed in Vat. Reg. 166 by Ioannes Malaxos (16th c.) and is ascribed to Petros Servilos, a poet unknown from other sources. The paper discusses the poem’s manuscript context, as well as its authorship, genre, content and function. Further, it attempts to shed light on the poem’s relation to Porphyry’s philosophy and his reception in Byzantine poetry.