Dictaminal Attitudes: Transcribing and Compiling Peter of Blois

The Kim-Park Program for the Study of the Book is pleased to present Dictaminal Attitudes: Transcribing and Compiling Peter of Blois with Thomas C. Sawyer.

In 1993, Lena Wahlgren enumerated over 250 manuscript collections witnessing the epistles of Peter of Blois, each collecting several, dozens, or hundreds of epistles in a dizzying array of sequences, variants, and revisions. These witnesses had been categorized previously by Ethel Higonnet, whose 1973 thesis posited at least seventeen distinct manuscript groups reflecting a complex procedure of authorial revision, re-arrangment, and retractions. Whether and how Peter altered which of his own letters after their first inscription remains an open question, and the task of producing a complete edition of his works remains a feat of textual criticism few scholars might feasibly accomplish. He remains one of the most influential prose authors of over four-hundred years – and one of the least accessible to modern audiences.

Bewildering though the manuscript record may be in sum, individual witnesses reflect how medieval scribes and readers customized their encounters with Peter’s dictaminal ouevre. In this presentation, Thomas will share about his research that examines two manuscripts classified by Higonnet as “First Collection B Anomalous”: Lambeth Palace 421 (c. xiiin) and Bodley 570 (c. xvin). Through his work, Thomas identified a material link between LPL 421 and Bodley 570. This discovery occasions an assessment of the texts compiled alongside Peter of Blois in each instance. Examination of the production of these two manuscripts yields divergent views on the legibility of the epistolary collection as a genre and reflects changing motives for reproducing staggeringly popular texts in the weave of late-medieval scribal cultures.

This event is open to all with registration and will be held in The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center in Regenstein Library.

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