Edición y estudio del manuscrito Manchester, Biblioteca de Chetham, MS Mun.A.3.127

Resum

The present PhD dissertation focuses on Late Middle English scientific writing since the unedited medical manuscript Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS Mun.A.3.127 (Mun.A.3.127 hereafter) has been selected. This PhD thesis aims at the following objectives: 1) to carry out the physical description of Mun.A.3.127 from a palaeographical and codicological perspective; 2) to offer the semi-diplomatic edition of the text; 3) to supply the glossary of the lexis in the text; 4) to provide the dialectal analysis of the four primary hands in the codex. Bearing in mind the objectives of this PhD dissertation, the methodological procedure can be divided into the following processes. The first step has been the physical description of Mun.A.3.127 focusing on palaeography and codicology. For this task, the digitised images have been consulted, whilst in situ observation of the manuscript has also been essential to gather information otherwise inaccessible. For the edition, the conventions of a semi-diplomatic edition have been followed to offer a faithful reproduction of the original text. For the glossary, the lexis of Mun.A.3.127 has been extracted and transferred to an Excel spreadsheet which has been tagged later with the headwords from the Middle English Dictionary (Lewis et al. 1952-2001) (MED hereafter) or other complementary lexicographical resources as the Oxford English Dictionary (Murray et al. 1884-2000). For the dialectal analysis, the linguistic features of the four primary hands in the codex have been studied by means of the electronic version of A Linguistic Atlas of Late Mediaeval English (eLALME henceforth). Particularly, a linguistic profile (LP hereafter) of the different hands has been obtained. Later, the “fit-technique” has been implemented and the different orthographic realisations have been mapped on the dot and user-defined maps in order to localise the hands geographically. Finally, the LPs of Hands A, B, C and D have been compared to several other LPs in eLALME and with complementary bibliographical resources to confirm the areas of provenance. Results suggest a number of different aspects. Focusing on the physical description of the codex, only two scribes left their signature, “Richard Wermyncham Spens” in folio 5v and “Rycard denyas spens” in folio 68v. The poet and collector of books John Byrom was the main owner of the manuscript. Focusing on codicology, among other aspects, leather has been the only material used to produce the covers. Six flyleaves were added during the restauration process carried out in the twentieth century and whiter pieces of paper and tracing paper were added to even the measurement of the folios, to amend the torn-out folios and to protect the most deteriorated ones. A frame may be witnessed to provide a defined area of writing. The main colours used in the text are black and red with distinct functions. Focusing on palaeography, fifteen different hands took part in the writing of the manuscript and most of them make use of the Anglicana or Secretary scripts and one of them the Textura script. The numerals used by the scribes are both Roman and Arabic. Abbreviations and scribal corrections are typical in the period. Finally, the punctuation system, traditionally considered inconsistent and haphazardly used, has proved to follow certain patterns and has been analysed. The second process has provided the editorial principles followed to carry out the semi-diplomatic edition. Editorial intervention has been kept to a minimum to offer an accurate reproduction of the original text. A graphemic approach has been followed in order to unify the use of different allographs for the same letters. The original orthographic realisations have been kept, as well as punctuation marks, word division, capitalisation and numerals. Italics have been used to expand the abbreviated letters or words and word-final otiose strokes have been marked by means of an apostrophe. A footnote apparatus is given to offer relevant information, as the classification of the corrections, information provided in the marginalia and decorative aspects. The third phase has offered the glossary including both content and function words. For this, the transcription of the text has been transferred into an Excel spreadsheet. After this process, the words have been analysed individually and word division has been modified to provide complete units of sense. The words have been tagged with the following labels: headword, grammatical category, meaning and folio number and face. Once this has been complete, the lemmas have been put in alphabetical order and the different spelling variants have been added in descending order of frequency. The MED has been the main lexicographical resource consulted. The last step has been the dialectal analysis of the primary hands. Hands A, B, C and D have proved to come possibly from the eastern part of the country: the first has been localised in the border between Lincolnshire, Leicestershire, Rutland, Northamptonshire and Cambridgeshire; the second comes from the northern part of Lincolnshire in the border with West and East Yorkshire; the third may be from the border between Yorkshire, Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire; the fourth may come from either the border between Lincolnshire and Yorkshire or Norfolk, or the text in this hand may even be an example of Mischsprachen. The LPs of these four hands have been compared with others included in eLALME so as to corroborate these hypotheses.