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Add MS 28617
- Record Id:
- 032-002020030
- Hierarchy Root Ancestor Record Id:
- 032-002020030
- MDARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100000000037.0x0002c6
- LARK:
- ark:/81055/vdc_100161507197.0x000001
- SLARK:
- Format:
- ISAD(G)
- Reference (shelfmark):
- Add MS 28617
- Title:
-
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women
- Scope & Content:
-
This manuscript contains a fragmentary copy of The Legend of Good Women, written by the English poet Geoffrey Chaucer (b. c. 1340s, d. 1400). The Middle English poem takes the form of a dream vision and tells the stories of ten women from Classical history and mythology.
Other copies of the poem housed at the British Library are Add MS 9832 and Add MS 12524.
Contents:
ff. 1r-38r: Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women, written in Middle English with Latin incipits, comprising a collection of fragments of an originally complete copy of the text, repaired and bound together (see Boffey and Edwards, A New Index (2005), no. 100; for an edition of the text see, Cowen and Kane, eds., The Legend of Good Women (1996)). The fragments are arranged as follows:
ff. 1r-2r: The Prologue (ll. 513-579).
f. 2r-v: The Legend of Cleopatra (ll. 580-610).
ff. 3r-5r: The Legend of Thisbe (ll. 808-923).
ff. 5r-12r: The Legend of Dido, Queen of Carthage (ll. 923-1105, 1306-1367, interspersed with small fragments, showing only the beginning of some lines).
ff. 12r-18r: The Legend of Hypsipyle and Medea (ll. 1368-1679).
ff. 18v-21v: The Legend of Lucretia (ll. 1680-1801, 1852-1885).
ff. 21v-28r: The Legend of Ariadne (ll. 1886-2113, 2125-2137. 2151-2227).
ff. 28v-31v: The Legend of Philomena (ll. 2228-2393).
ff. 31v-35r: The Legend of Phyllis (ll. 2394-2561).
ff. 35r-38r: The Legend of Hypermnestra (ll. 2562-2723).
f. 38v: Added pen-trials, 'champ' initials, lines of music accompanied by partial verses, and fragments of other courtly lyrics, including the Latin, 'Henricus dei gracia / Rex Anglie & ffrancie', and English, 'Now must I lerne to syng for daunce can I no more / The .urte within I lafte my rang I haue childryn'.
Decoration:
Decorated initials in blue ink with red pen-flourishing at the beginning of each legend (ff. 2r, 5r, 12r, 18v, 21v, 28v, 31v, 35r).
- Collection Area:
- Western Manuscripts
- Project / Collection:
- Additional Manuscripts
- Hierarchy Tree:
- [{ "id" : "032-002020030", "parent" : "#", "text" : "Add MS 28617: Geoffrey Chaucer, The Legend of Good Women" , "li_attr" : {"class": "orderable"} }]
- Hierarchy Record Ids:
- 032-002020030
- Is part of:
- not applicable
- Hierarchy:
- 032-002020030
- Container:
- not applicable
- Record Type (Level):
- Fonds
- Extent:
- 1 volume
- Digitised Content:
- http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100161507197.0x000001 (digital images currently unavailable)
- Thumbnail:
-
- Languages:
- English, Middle
Latin - Scripts:
- Latin
- Start Date:
- 1450
- End Date:
- 1499
- Date Range:
- 2nd half of the 15th century
- Era:
- CE
- Access:
-
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- User Conditions:
- Physical Characteristics:
-
Material: Paper.
Condition: Badly torn in parts and stained, with historic mould on some folios. Paper fragments repaired and mounted on modern paper.
Watermark: A column, similar to Briquet Nos. 4350 (Colonne, 1427) and 4351 (Verceil, 1451): see C. M. Briquet, Les Filigranes: Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu'en 1600, A Facsimile of the 1907 edition with supplementary material, ed. by Allan Stevenson, 4 vols (Amsterdam: The Paper Publications Society, 1968), nos 4350 and 4351.
Dimensions: 270 x 190 mm (written space: 200 x 130 mm).
Foliation: ff. i + 38 (+ 3 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the beginning + 4 unfoliated paper leaves after f. 2 + 1 unfoliated paper leaf after ff. 8, 9, and 20 + 4 unfoliated paper flyleaves at the end); f. i is a paper flyleaf; ff. 9, 10, and 26 are fragments. At least four different sets of foliation visible on some folios.
Collation: Each leaf mounted separately on guards, in five reconstructed but unhistoric quires.
Catchwords (ff. 8v, 18v, 27v).
Script: Gothic cursive.
Binding: British Library in-house. Red half-leather binding. Rebound 1983.
- Custodial History:
-
Origin:
England.
Provenance:
Added pen-trials, 'champ' initials, lines of music accompanied by partial verses, and fragments of other courtly lyrics, including the Latin, 'Henricus dei gracia / Rex Anglie & ffrancie', and 'Now must I lerne to syng for daunce can I no more / The .urte within I lafte my rang I haue childryn' (f. 38v).
Inscribed, 16th century: 'Ihon kyng is with godson...' (f. 12v), 'Reigned kyng' (f. 27 [check]), and 'fad.y.r Thomas Worsonhall' (f. 38v).
Reverend Thomas Corser (b. 1793, d. 1876), British literary scholar and Church of England clergyman: his sale, Sotheby's, 13 February 1871, lot 203; purchased by the British Museum (see note, f. i recto).
- Publications:
-
Odd Texts of Chaucer's Minor Poems, ed. by Frederick J. Furnivall (London, 1880), pp. 133-212 [edition].
The British Museum Catalogue of Additions to the Manuscripts 1854-1875 (London: British Museum, 1887), p. 516.
Ernest Francis Amy, The Text of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1918), pp. vii, 10-11.
Ernest Francis Amy, 'The Manuscripts of the Legend of Good Women', The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 21 (1922), 107-18 (p. 109).
Constance S. Wright, 'The Printed Editions of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women: 1532-1889', The Chaucer Review, 24 (1990), 312-19 (p. 313).
Michael Seymour, 'The Manuscripts of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women', Scriptorium, 47 (1993), 73-90 (pp. 75, 76, 88-89).
Carol M. Meale, 'The Tale and the Book: Readings of Chaucer's Legend of Good Women in the Fifteenth Century', in Chaucer in Perspective: Middle English Essays in Honour of Norman Blake, ed. by Geoffrey Lester (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1999), pp. 118-38 (pp. 121-22).
Nicola F. McDonald, 'Chaucer's Legend of Good Women, Ladies at Court and the Female Reader', The Chaucer Review, 35 (2000), 22-42 (pp. 41 n. 35, 37).
Julia Boffey and A. S. G. Edwards, A New Index of Middle English Verse (London: British Library, 2005), no. 100.
William A. Quinn, 'The Legend of Good Women: Performance, Performativity, and Presentation', in The Legend of Good Women: Context and Reception, ed. by Carolyn P. Collette (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2006), pp. 1-32 (p. 14).
- Material Type:
- Archives and Manuscripts
- Legal Status:
- Not Public Record(s)