Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper and its So-Called ‘Oaths’
- Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 201 and its Copy of Piers Plowman
- Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis before Henry IV’s Usurpation?
- Le Songe Vert, BL Add. MS 34114 (the Spalding Manuscript), Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont, MS 249 and John Gower
- Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 33: Thoughts on Reading a Work in Progress
- The Rawlinson Lyrics: Context, Memory and Performance
- Linguistic Boundaries in Multilingual Miscellanies: The Case of Middle English Romance
- What Six Unalike Lyrics in British Library MS Harley 2253 Have Alike in Manuscript Layout
- Evidence for the Licensing of Books from Arundel to Cromwell
- Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts: Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love and the Arundel and Holland Connections
- The Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125: A Tentative Narrative about its Material History
- ‘Thys moche more ys oure lady mary longe’: Takamiya MS 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition
- Bookish Types: Some Post-Medieval Owners, Borrowers and Lenders of the Manuscripts of The Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy
- Laurentius Guglielmus Traversagnus and the Genesis of Vaticana Codex Lat. 11441, with Remarks on Bodleian MS Laud Lat. 61
- The Travels of a Quire from the Twelfth Century to the Twenty-First: The Case of Rawlinson B 484, fols. 1–6
- William Elstob’s Planned Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws: A Remnant in the Takamiya Collection
- Gutenberg Meets Digitization: The Path of a Digital Ambassador
- A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya
- Index of Manuscripts
- General Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
- York Medieval Press: Publications
Bookish Types: Some Post-Medieval Owners, Borrowers and Lenders of the Manuscripts of The Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 March 2023
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- List of Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- Abbreviations
- Preface
- The Early History of the Scriveners’ Company Common Paper and its So-Called ‘Oaths’
- Oxford, Corpus Christi College MS 201 and its Copy of Piers Plowman
- Did John Gower Rededicate his Confessio Amantis before Henry IV’s Usurpation?
- Le Songe Vert, BL Add. MS 34114 (the Spalding Manuscript), Bibliothèque de la ville de Clermont, MS 249 and John Gower
- Bodleian Library, MS Ashmole 33: Thoughts on Reading a Work in Progress
- The Rawlinson Lyrics: Context, Memory and Performance
- Linguistic Boundaries in Multilingual Miscellanies: The Case of Middle English Romance
- What Six Unalike Lyrics in British Library MS Harley 2253 Have Alike in Manuscript Layout
- Evidence for the Licensing of Books from Arundel to Cromwell
- Bishops, Patrons, Mystics and Manuscripts: Walter Hilton, Nicholas Love and the Arundel and Holland Connections
- The Choice and Arrangement of Texts in Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125: A Tentative Narrative about its Material History
- ‘Thys moche more ys oure lady mary longe’: Takamiya MS 56 and the English Birth Girdle Tradition
- Bookish Types: Some Post-Medieval Owners, Borrowers and Lenders of the Manuscripts of The Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy
- Laurentius Guglielmus Traversagnus and the Genesis of Vaticana Codex Lat. 11441, with Remarks on Bodleian MS Laud Lat. 61
- The Travels of a Quire from the Twelfth Century to the Twenty-First: The Case of Rawlinson B 484, fols. 1–6
- William Elstob’s Planned Edition of the Anglo-Saxon Laws: A Remnant in the Takamiya Collection
- Gutenberg Meets Digitization: The Path of a Digital Ambassador
- A Bibliography of Toshiyuki Takamiya
- Index of Manuscripts
- General Index
- Tabula Gratulatoria
- York Medieval Press: Publications
Summary
The Middle English Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy (hereafter Wise Book) is a text that was widely copied and circulated between the years c. 1380–1600. The text can perhaps best be understood as part of the Secreta secretorum or ‘advice to princes’ tradition from which it almost certainly emerged or, at least, by which it was influenced; it is a short exposition on the influence of the planets and the zodiac on human behaviour and character, on destiny, on (in some cases) appearance and on everyday life and living, interspersed with which are instructions on how to measure time, a debate on providence and free will, and some notes on the hours of the day and the reigns of the planets. Its tenure as one of the most popular and widely read texts of its kind in medieval England cannot be understated, and since the Wise Book describes in simple terms potentially complex concepts regarding the workings of the universe and presents them accessibly and comprehensibly, it evidently suited fairly widespread dispersal and copying: it is preserved (in varying degrees of completeness) in thirty-four late-medieval and early modern manuscript witnesses. It is frequently co-located with a set of nativities. Because of its logical structure which moves from macrocosm to microcosm and which normally comprises a prologue; an enumeration of the heavens, planets signs and months, and zodiacal signs; a debate by two philosophers on predestination and free will; sections on the spheres and heavens, the elements and complexions; and a computus, the Wise Book was easily fragmented and disseminated in parts; therefore it lends itself to the practices of scribes, compilers and patrons who, when assembling and planning books and texts, were increasingly selective.
The manuscripts of the Wise Book certainly may have been more numerous contemporary with and in the years after its composition or, at least, its first circulation. The Wise Book, however, never had an early modern life in print, so perhaps the dispersal of its manuscripts cannot be compared to, say, a medieval text in manuscript that was printed in the early years of the new technology. In other words, the Wise Book may have relatively quickly come to occupy a particular space in the textual landscape of early modern England.
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- Middle English Texts in TransitionA Festschrift Dedicated to Toshiyuki Takamiya on his 70th birthday, pp. 220 - 240Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2014