Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- General Introduction: What's in a Name: the ‘French’ of ‘England’
- Section I Language and Socio-Linguistics
- Section II Crossing the Conquest: New Linguistic and Literary Histories
- Section III After Lateran IV: Francophone Devotions and Histories
- Section IV England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
- Introduction
- 27 French, English, and the Late Medieval Linguistic Repertoire
- 28 Aristotle, Translation and the Mean: Shaping the Vernacular in Late Medieval Anglo-French Culture
- 29 Writing English in a French Penumbra: The Middle English ‘Tree of Love’ in MS Longleat 253
- 30 The French of English Letters: Two Trilingual Verse Epistles in Context
- 31 The Reception of Froissart's Writings in England: The Evidence of the Manuscripts
- 32 ‘Me fault faire’: French Makers of Manuscripts for English Patrons
- 33 The French Self-Presentation of an English Mastiff: John Talbot's Book of Chivalry
- 34 A ‘Frenche booke called the Pistill of Othea’: Christine de Pizan's French in England
- Bibliography
- Index of Primary Texts and Manuscripts
- Index of Primary Authors
- General Index: Persons and Places, Subjects
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
29 - Writing English in a French Penumbra: The Middle English ‘Tree of Love’ in MS Longleat 253
from Section IV - England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- General Introduction: What's in a Name: the ‘French’ of ‘England’
- Section I Language and Socio-Linguistics
- Section II Crossing the Conquest: New Linguistic and Literary Histories
- Section III After Lateran IV: Francophone Devotions and Histories
- Section IV England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
- Introduction
- 27 French, English, and the Late Medieval Linguistic Repertoire
- 28 Aristotle, Translation and the Mean: Shaping the Vernacular in Late Medieval Anglo-French Culture
- 29 Writing English in a French Penumbra: The Middle English ‘Tree of Love’ in MS Longleat 253
- 30 The French of English Letters: Two Trilingual Verse Epistles in Context
- 31 The Reception of Froissart's Writings in England: The Evidence of the Manuscripts
- 32 ‘Me fault faire’: French Makers of Manuscripts for English Patrons
- 33 The French Self-Presentation of an English Mastiff: John Talbot's Book of Chivalry
- 34 A ‘Frenche booke called the Pistill of Othea’: Christine de Pizan's French in England
- Bibliography
- Index of Primary Texts and Manuscripts
- Index of Primary Authors
- General Index: Persons and Places, Subjects
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
Summary
In the Marquess of Bath's library at Longleat House, Warminster, is a small volume of 95 folios, now MS 253, whose medieval title appears to have been ‘The book of knyghthode’. It is best known to scholars for its inclusion (on fols. 2–75v) of a copy of the translation of Christine de Pizan'sEpistre d'Othea made probably round about 1440 by Stephen Scrope (c.1396–1472) for his stepfather Sir John Fastolf (1380–1459), a text edited from this manuscript in 1904 by Sir George Warner, and collated by Curt F. Bühler for his 1970 Early English Text Society edition, which was based on the copy in Cambridge, St John's College H. 5. Accompanying The Epistle of Othea, on fols. 76r–95v of MS Longleat 253, is a work that has received much less attention: in Warner's words, it is ‘An English poem or series of poems, probably also translated from the French, in which love is compared with the growth of a tree.’ This work was not included in Carleton Brown's and Rossell Hope Robbins's Index of Middle English Verse, and only vaguely outlined in the Supplement to this, in which it features as entry *3553.8: ‘A poem to his mistress likening her to a tree in various seasons – about twenty folios; first leaf missing.’ No folio numbers are given, no reference to an edition, no description of verse form.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language and Culture in Medieval BritainThe French of England, c.1100–c.1500, pp. 386 - 396Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009