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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
When the student of medieval literature busies himself, as he must so often do, with the chronological sequence of an author's works, he finds himself saying that a given writing was ‘published’ in a given year. What does the word ‘published’ mean? Obviously it must mean something different from the modern process of printer's proofs, advance notices, public sale, and book-reviews. When the textual critic strives to wrest from the existing manuscripts of a medieval work the evidence which shall enable him to reconstruct the author's original autograph, he finds himself speaking of copies made directly from this autograph. Under what conditions were these earliest copies ordinarily made? To both literary historian and textual critic it should be of service to make as clear as may be just what was involved in the act of publication before the discovery of printing introduced the sort of publication with which we are now familiar, and to determine under what conditions an author's work might circulate during his lifetime.
page 417 note 1 This paper covers part of a larger investigation on the ‘Author and his Public in the Later Middle Ages’ which the present writer has in hand, an investigation which will include such matters as the author's relations to his patron, the extent of his reading public, and his opportunities for winning pecuniary rewards.
page 418 note 1 For Petrarch's Epistolae de Rebus Familiaribus (referred to as Epist. Fam.) and for his Epistolae Varias (Epist. Var.) I have used the edition of G. Fracassetti, Florence, 1859-1863. For the Epistolae de Rebus Senilibus (Epist. Sen.), of which there is no modern edition, I have used Fracassetti's Italian translation, Lettere Senile di Francesco Petrarca, Florence, 1869-1870. For Boccaccio's letters I have used the edition of Corazzini, Lettere Edite ed Inedite di Boccaccio, Florence, 1877 (Referred to as Corazzini).
page 418 note 2 Corazzini, pp. 363-367.
page 419 note 1 Corazzini, pp. 231-234.
page 420 note 1 Epist. Fam., 12, 7.
page 420 note 2 Epist. Fam., 13, 11.
page 420 note 3 Epist. Sen., 2, 1.
page 420 note 4 Several ms. copies of these 34 verses are still in existence. In 1781 Lefebre de Villebrune, finding one of the mss., took the lines to be a lost fragment of Silius Italicus, whose works he was editing, and accused Petrarch of having copied Silius in his Africa. See Fracassetti's note in his translation of the Lettere Senile, Vol. i, pp. 94-97. One can imagine Petrarch's rage at his friend Barbato, could he have foreseen this charge.
page 421 note 1 Corazzini, pp. 349-358.
page 422 note 1 Epist. Fam., 23, 6.
page 422 note 2 Epist. Var., 60.
page 422 note 3 Epist. Fam., 12, 18.
page 422 note 4 Epist. Sen., 16, 3.
page 422 note 5 Epist. Var., 65.
page 422 note 6 Epist. Fam., 22, 2.
page 424 note 1 Epist. Sen., 13, 10; cf. Epist. Var., 9.
page 424 note 2 Epist. Var., 9: ‘Incorrectionem operis si qua erit, mea excuset occupatio, qua obsessus feci hæc per alios revideri, quamquam ego ipse vix demum semel raptim oculo trepidante perlegerim.‘
page 424 note 3 W. Wattenbach: Das Schriftwesen im Mittelalter, 3d ed., Leipsic, 1896, p. 339.
page 425 note 1 Wattenbach, p. 339.
page 425 note 2 Epist. Fam., 22, 3.
page 425 note 3 Epist. Sen., 5, 1.
page 425 note 4 Epist. Fam., 20, 5; Epist. Var., 49.
page 425 note 5 Epist. Fam., 18, 5.
page 426 note 1 Epist. Var., 4.
page 426 note 2 Pp. 561-562.
page 426 note 3 Philobiblon, Cap. 8.
page 427 note 1 The stationarii seem, however, to have acted as publishers for the universities. Rashdall (Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, 1, p. 192) refers to a statute of the University of Bologna which required that every doctor, after holding a disputation, should, under penalty of fine, write out his argument and deliver it to the General Bedel of the University, by whom it was to be transmitted to the stationarii for publication. And Wattenbach (p. 561, n. 3) quotes a censor's order of Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, issued in 1418, which concerns a volume of Wiclif's writings: ‘Approbatum universitatis nomine ac auctoritate stationariis tradatur ut copietur; et facta collatione fideli petentibus vendatur justo pretio sive detur, originali in cista aliqua universitatis extunc perpetuo remanente.‘
page 428 note 1 B 496-497.
page 428 note 2 Prologue 61-63 (Piers the Plowman and Richard the Redeless, ed. Skeat, 1, 605).
page 428 note 3 See the E. E. T. S. edition of Lydgate's translation of the Pélerinage, pp. 6-8.
page 429 note 1 Chroniques, ed. Lettenhove, Vol. 11, p. 85. Cf. also Froissart's poem, Le Dit du Florin.
page 429 note 2 Œuvres de Deschamps, ed. Queux, Vol. 1, pp. 248-249 (Balade 127).
page 429 note 3 Troilus 1, 5; 1, 30; 1, 50-52; 2, 29-31; 2, 43-44; 2, 1751; 3, 499; 5, 1785. Legend 1554, 2401-2402. Anelida 165-167. Cf. Tatlock, Development and Chronology of Chaucer's Works, pp. 110-111.
page 429 note 4 Œuvres Poétiques de Christine de Pisan, ed. Maurice Roy, Vol. 1, pp. vi, xii, 248-249.
page 429 note 5 Chroniques, ed. Lettenhove, Vol. 15, p. 141.
page 430 note 1 Oxford Chaucer, 1, p. 379.
page 430 note 2 Works of John Gower, Vol. 4, pp. lix-lxv.
page 431 note 1 Troilus, 5, 1795-1796.
