Graduate Program
English
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Semester of Degree Completion
2012
Thesis Director
Timothy Shonk
Thesis Committee Member
Rosemary Buck
Thesis Committee Member
David Raybin
Abstract
My thesis project, Book Production in the West Midlands: The Case for Organized Bookmaking, takes into consideration the geographical factors of the medieval manuscripts of the West Midlands in England from the mid-fourteenth to the early fifteenth centuries. The medieval manuscript is an artifact: it is a piece of the past that, if examined carefully, will present a narrative about bookmen, bookmaking practices, and the reading public of a specific period and, in this case, a geographical area.
To discover a more coherent picture of bookmaking and the way books were prepared and received in the West Midlands, I closely examine a series of manuscripts attributed to the West Midlands, a rural region in England: Leeds, Leeds University Library, Brotherton 500, a copy of the Prick of Conscience made at the turn of the fourteenth century; Houghton MS Eng 515 Harvard, a copy of the Prick of Conscience, made around the beginning of the fifteenth century; and Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, 293, a copy of William Langland's Piers Plowman, the C version, from the first quarter of the fifteenth century. I study the codicological evidence (i.e. the layout and decoration) presented in these manuscripts in order to determine whether commonalities of West Midland manuscripts suggest that there was a specific West Midlands style of organized bookmaking.
My thesis demonstrates that there was, in fact, a kind of organized bookmaking in the West Midlands. However, this organization, not regulated by guilds as bookmaking in London was, appears to be conducted on a much looser scale. I identify two types of rural bookmen taking part in this looser organization in rural West midlands. Type A scribes are those with some legal training who, perhaps seeking a means to earn some additional money, are either copying a single literary text or attempting to become skilled in copying literary texts. Type B scribes exhibit more professional skills in textwriting and perhaps might be considered commercial, provincial book producers. Though these two types of bookmen do not represent the whole of organized book production in any rural area, their work in the manuscripts, and the compilation of the manuscripts, demystifies aspects of bookmaking in the West Midlands.
Recommended Citation
Spear, Rashelle, "Book production in the medieval West Midlands: The case for organized bookmaking" (2012). Masters Theses. 1023.
https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/1023
