Literature overtakes history, for literature gives you more than one life. It expands experience and opens new opportunities to readers.
Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 61, fol. 1v
Language: English (Southeast Midland)
Manuscript date: ca. 1420
Chaucer wrote his “book of Troilus” about 1381–6; it survives in 16 manuscripts and the same number of fragments; Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 61 is one of the earliest manuscripts. Only two others and an early Caxton print of the poem have illuminations, but the Corpus Christi College manuscript’s full-page illumination is much … Read the rest
Poem 1 “Miracle of the Boy Singer”
Bodleian Library MS English Poetry a.1, fol. 124v (Vernon) The Vernon manuscript is the longest and largest surviving volume of Middle English writings; it was originally over 420 vellum leaves long, the pages ruled in 2 or 3 columns with over 80 lines of text each. The contents include passages from the South English Legendary, Northern Homilies, miracles of our Lady, poems, and … Read the rest
Benedictine
Rule Monastic orders existed in Ireland and Wales in the fifth century, first arrived in England in the sixth and seventh centuries, and in the eighth century the Rule of St. Benedict (480–ca. 550), Benedict’s set of codes for behavior, also came to be known in the British Isles. Receiving additional impetus after 1066 and then again with the arrival of orders of canons and friars in the twelfth … Read the rest
Seated at last, you prepare to write, only to find yourself besieged with petty distractions.
All of a sudden you remember a friend you had promised to call, some double-
A batteries you were supposed to pick up, a neglected Coke (in another room)
growing warmer and flatter by the minute. If your paper is to be written, you have
only one course of action: collar these thoughts and for … Read the rest