Auchinleck manuscript

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The Auchinleck Manuscript, NLS Adv. MS 19.2.1, is currently contained in the National Library of Scotland and its story reveals more than merely that it is an illuminated manuscript, copied by hand on leather parchment, nearly seven hundred years ago in the London of the Middle Ages. The manuscript, or MS, provides a glimpse of a time during which much political tension was occurring in England. The English were struggling to reclaim their language and national identity, and to distance themselves from the Norman conquerors who had taken over 300 years previously after the Battle of Hastings.

The manuscript is named after Alexander Boswell, Lord Auchinleck, who was a lawyer and supreme court judge in Edinburgh, Scotland. Lord Auchinleck lived from 1706 to 1782, and was the father of James Boswell who wrote, The Life of Samuel Johnson. It is not known how Lord Auchinleck came to possess the manuscript, but it is believed he acquired it in 1740 and gave the book to the Advocates Library in Edinburgh in 1744 (Burnley, NLS/history). It is a mystery who owned the book in the four hundred years from the time it was completed to when Lord Auchinleck first laid hands on it, but there are clues within. On some of the pages are names that have been added in, which are presumed to be previous owners and their family members. One of the quires of the manuscript is a list of Norman aristocracy and at the end of this list has been entered, in a different hand, the list of members from a family named Browne. Also sprinkled throughout the text, others have entered their names individually for posterity, such as Christian Gunter and John Harreis. These names have never been researched against church or town records (Burnley, NLS/history).

Auchinleck is believed to have been produced in London, by hack scribes, who were laymen, not monks as was usually the case, and the number of scribes involved in the production is a source of debate with scholars of Middle English. The controversy involves not only the number of scribes who actually wrote the text out, but if they in fact copied the work from the exemplar, the original, or translated the works from French or Latin, inadvertently into their own Middle English dialects (Wiggins 11).

Through the use of paleography, or the study of ancient handwriting, it has been determined that there had to be at least four, perhaps five, different scribes. Some scholars have argued that there were six scribes, yet most agree that the majority of the manuscript is in the hand of one man, who it is believed translated most of the literature (Wiggins 10). With this knowledge, when one looks at the photographs of the manuscript found on the website of the National Library of Scotland, it is easy to see the discrepancies in the actual handwriting of the scribes. Some is tight and regimented, attributed to Scribe 1, while some more loose, as if the scribe didn't make the correct adjustments for space and repeatedly ran out of room at the ends of the lines. While this makes for fun visual entertainment when looking at the folios, or pages, the historical importance is that it gives clues into how the book might have been produced in a time when the commerce of making books for private clients in a secular bookshop began to flourish (Hanna 76).

The Auchinleck, in its present state, consists of forty-three pieces of literature. All of these works are in Middle English but the language used has been determined to be several differing dialects that would have been used in different parts of England (Sisam 265). These dialects further serve to determine the origins of the scribes, such as London as opposed to south-west Midlands, as they would have written the language in the manner they spoke as well as the spelling they were taught, which furthers the question of translation (Wiggins 12).

Since the language is consistent within each lay or romance, it is surmised the scribes worked independently on each whole story as opposed to the manner more commonly used in monasteries in which the monks would copy text directly from the exemplars, only one page at a time, with a catchword inscribed at the bottom corner for later collation. Although there are catchwords in the MS, each scribe would have been responsible for all of the pages of each of his assignments. This newer method of production suggests that one production manager was responsible for contracting the work, gave each scribe assignments that included whole stories, while overseeing the project, and being the contact person to the client if the book was indeed bespoke, or special order (Wiggins 12).

Also of significance is that the Auchinleck manuscript is the first known anthology of English literature, particularly the largest collection of English romances up until that time. Previously the use of Latin or French had been almost exclusive in books, but English was beginning to be an acceptable language for pamphlets and literature (Loomis 157). It was during this time that the English were beginning to shift away from French and to form a separate identity, socially and politically, so it would follow that the use of “Inglisch”, as it is referred to in the manuscript, in the written word would be a source of national unification (Calkin 8).

The Auchinleck manuscript was illuminated, although not as ornately as the religious books of the era, such as Books of Hours, yet many of the miniatures in the MS have been lost to thieves or people peddling the images for profit. The four remaining miniatures and the historiated letters suggest it was beautifully, yet modestly, decorated at one time. It has been determined through comparing artistic styles that the illustration was done by a handful of artists who illuminated other manuscripts commercially produced in the London area. This points to a group of illuminators, who it is believed collaborated on other works that have been preserved from the Middle Ages, whom have been studied independently, and whose work is now being seen in a new light as a collective community (Hanna 80).

The Auchinleck manuscript is not well known outside of scholarly circles, yet it is one of the most important English documents we have from the Middle Ages. Within its folios, it tracks not only the literature of the day, the tastes of the people in the days of Chaucer's birth, but also the development of a language as part of a national self image (Sisam x). It speaks to us of the independence of spirit with which the English people wanted to identify themselves as separate from their French cousins by claiming their own language in a very fundamental expression, in their literature.


[edit] Auchinleck MS Contents

The Auchinleck MS is a codex of medieval narratives ranging from Saint's vitae to conversion tales. The order of the contents (and respective folio numbers) is as follows:

[edit] References

  • Burnley, David and Wiggins, Alison, ed. The Auchinleck Manuscript. National Library of Scotland Website. 05 July 2003. Version 1.1. 20 Feb 2008. <http://www.nls.uk/auchinleck/editorial/history.html>
  • Calkin, Siobhain Bly. Saracens and the Making of English Identity: The Auchinleck Manuscript. New York: Routledge, 2005: 8-9.
  • Hanna, Ralph. London Literature, 1300 – 1380. Cambridge: Cambridge, 2005: 76–80.
  • Loomis, Laura Hibbard. “The Auchinleck Manuscript and a Possible London Bookshop of 1330-1340.” Adventures in the Middle Ages: A Memorial Collection of Essays and Studies. New York: Burt Franklin, 1962: 156-57. First published in PMLA 57 (1942): 595-627.
  • Sisam, Kenneth. Fourteenth Century Verse & Prose. Oxford: Clarendon, 1955: x, 265.
  • Wiggins, Alison. “Are Auchinleck Manuscript Scribes 1 and 6 the Same Scribe? The Advantages of Whole-Data Analysis and Electronic Texts.” Medium Aveum. 2004, Vol. 73 Issue 1, p10-26, 17p, 2 charts: 20 Feb 2008: 10-11. <http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspxdirect=true&db=a9h&AN=13870959&site=ehost-live>

[edit] External links