This volume brings together essays by leading authorities on the production, reception, and editing of medieval English manuscripts in honour of Ralph Hanna, on the occasion of his retirement as Professor of Palaeography at the University of Oxford. Ralph Hanna has made an enormous contribution to the study of Middle English manuscripts; his numerous essays and books have discussed the development of London literature, alliterative poetry (especially Piers Plowman), regionalism, and the production and circulation of manuscripts. The essays included in this volume are arranged into four major sections corresponding to Ralph Hanna's core areas of interest: Manuscript production; Dialect; Regionalism; Reading and Editing manuscripts.

These essays, written by leading scholars in their fields, offer new insights into the manuscripts of major Middle English writers and on scribal practice, as well as studies of individual codices. Essays cover a wide regional and chronological range, stretching from the beginnings of London literature traced in the works of Peter of Cornwall to the circulation of John Lydgate's Troy Book, and encompassing manuscripts and texts composed and circulated outside the capital. Dialectal studies offer reconsiderations of the evidence for a Wycliffite orthography, the dialect of William Langland, and the vocabulary of the alliterative Morte Arthure. A final section on reading and editing investigates the structure and divisions in the manuscripts of the A Version of Piers Plowman, and examines specific readings in the Prick of Conscience and the Canterbury Tales. The volume also includes a tribute to Ralph Hanna and a list of his extensive publications.

Foreword —VINCENT GILLESPIE

Introduction — SIMON HOROBIN and ADITI NAFDE

The Tribulations of Scribes — DEREK PEARSALL

A Scribe of Lydgate’s Troy Book and London Book Production in the First Half of the Fifteenth Century — LINNE R. MOONEY

The Vocabulary of the Alliterative Morte Arthure — THORLAC TURVILLE-PETRE

Langland’s Dialect Reconsidered — SIMON HOROBIN

Observations on the ‘Wycliffite Orthography’ — ANNE HUDSON

Cambridge University Library Ms Ll.1.18: A　Southwell Miscellany — RICHARD BEADLE

The Migration of a Fifteenth-Century Miscellany — A. I. DOYLE

‘I Saw a Dead Man Won the Field’: The Genesis of The Battle Of Otterburn — RICHARD FIRTH GREEN

Peter of Cornwall’s Booktongue and the Invention of London Literature — ANDREW GALLOWAY

The Prologues and Ends of Piers Plowman A — ANNE MIDDLETON

Three Troublesome Lines in Chaucer’s General Prologue: 11 (So Priketh Hem Nature), 176 (The Space), 739 (Crist Spak Himself Ful Brode) — TRAUGOTT LAWLER

Ralph Hanna’s Publications

Index

Tabula Gratulatoria

“In sum, this collection is a fine tribute to the book's dedicatee. The editors have brought together a set of essays that are all intellectually rigorous, well written and edited, and appropriately illustrated.” (Leah Tether, in The Medieval Review, 05/06/2019)

“Horobin and Nafde have overseen an outstanding collection that will not onlymeet Hanna’s exacting standards butwill prove, much as Hanna’s own work continues to do, to be insightful, original, and lasting.” (Sebastian Sobecki, in Speculum:A Journal of Medieval Studies, 94/3, 2019, p. 845)

“In Pursuing Middle English Manuscripts and their Texts: Essays in Honour of Ralph Hanna Simon Horobin and Aditi Nafde gather an appropriately impressive collection of studies” (The Year's Work in English Studies, Volume 98/1, 2019, p. 211-212)