Cambridge and the Manuscript Tradition

18 okt 2011 2 kommentarer

av Karina Rose Mahan in England Stikkord: Cambridge, English, History, Manuscripts

“I’d like some fries please,” I said to the cashier at Burger King last night.

“Some chips, yeah?” he said, slightly puzzled.

“Thank you so much for the lovely cookies in the room,” I told my B & B host this morning.

“Cookies? You mean the biscuits?” An equally puzzled look.

“How much is this bag of chips?” I asked the cashier at Boots. “OH NEVER MIND.”

… I’m truly in another country. And speaking the language doesn’t seem to help. But on to more important things!

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In order to qualify for the Master’s of English language, all students MUST take an older English history course. I was torn between a lot of subjects (not really tempted to take any of them, to be honest), but chose “Chaucer and the Manuscript Tradition,” after toying between that or taking a crash course in Old English. I had no idea who Chaucer was, what manuscript paper is made of or what Middle English looked like. I also thought it would be an extremely boring and irrelevant course. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Chaucer is an old English poet. Really old. He’s from around the 14th century. When I first studied British history and literature, my logic was this: Victorian literature is extremely prim and proper, so the further back you go, the more conservative and boring it gets. Wrong. Before the Victorian period, the English were apparently known for having very … scatological humor. Chaucer writes about men farting in each others’ faces. He writes about women who talk about how great it is having sex with many men. He writes about scholars who device crazy postapocalyptic plots to just get laid. The list goes on. My point is that it was only for a very short time frame that the Brits had (what I would consider), boring, slow-paced literature. Middle English literature is pretty frickin’ awesome.

My second largest shock was finding out how manuscripts were made. England wasn’t very fond of paper in the 1300s. In fact, instead of using it, they would use … ANIMALS. Each sheet of paper (equivalent to ca four pages) is one entire calf. A large manuscript, like old bibles, could easily take hundreds of animals to produce. Scribes would have to transcribe the bibles for endless hours with perfect calligraphy. Just thinking about the amount of work to make one single manuscript is staggering. No wonder there are so few of them.

The Wife of Bath. Made out of animal skin. Can you tell the difference?

I was really uncomfortable at the thought of that holding one book is equal to hundreds of lives. When I read about how manuscript paper is made (IN DETAIL), I had vividly imagined the thick skin and fur. Yet when I finally touched a manuscript this morning, I could barely tell the difference between it and a normal piece of paper.

But what does all of this have to do with Cambridge?

During our course, our professor told us that we had to take a trip to Cambridge to see some real manuscripts before we could complete the course. She told us that some scholars of manuscripts haven’t even seen a real manuscript, so if a student was lucky enough to get the chance, they should take it. After reading about manuscripts for 3 weeks, I realized that feeling a manuscript would put all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle together, and was ok about sacrificing my weekend (well ok, only my Sunday) to go on a two-day trip to see real manuscripts. Our professor arranged everything so that we could see some of the most valuable manuscripts in the world.

A version of The Canterbury Tales. Located at Cambridge University Library.

How do I see a real English manuscript?

First of all, you don’t. Unless you have a kind professor and are REALLY lucky. We’ll take it from there. In order to get into a library that has such a manuscript, you need a card, even for just ten minutes. It has your full ID on it, birth date and everything. Then, you need a plastic bag, so everyone will know your contents (giggle) at all times. When walking into the manuscript part of the library (which is separate) you need to tell them your name and address and are only allowed to bring certain things into the room. Pens aren’t allowed, for one. But hey, they sell pencils. You ask for a certain manuscript and the librarian will bring it to you personally. There are special pillows for the books, since you can’t open them directly on the table. There are also special heavy cords that you put on either side of books, so you don’t touch the page when you’re looking at a particular page. It’s a very serious business. When we were at the library, there were about 4 – 9 people in the room examining manuscripts, typing furiously notes on their laptops and looking dead serious. Pretty cool, huh?

A very VERY brief history of the English Manuscript

This paragraph is for those of you who think English is a really old and powerful language. Or maybe it’s for those of you who hate the thought of English as a really old and powerful language.

The first English manuscript appeared in ca 800 A.D. Up until about the time of the Norman Conquest (1066), Norwegians and Englishmen pretty much spoke the same language. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that we frequently visited our neighbor to gas up and mooch off of (read: pillage and rape). Then the French came and ruined the gig.

With the arrival of the French, the arrival of Latin was inevitable. Everything was written in Latin, and it quickly established itself as the language of the Church, the noblemen and scholars. Nobody was interested in writing in English. It was considered to be the language of peasants, and anyone worth their salt knew how to communicate in Latin or French. Chaucer was very rare in this sense. He was a nobleman who wrote poems, and for reasons unknown decided to write all of his poetry in Middle English.

Then a man named John Wycliffe came along and decided that English should be for everyone. He made a very controversial copy of the bible (ca 1382), translating the entire bible to English for the first time ever. It was banned by the church, probably because they were afraid that peasants would start learning Christianity without the help of the Catholic Church, find a grain of autonomy in their own lives and thus create anarchy. But with this manuscript came hope and pride in the English language. And as Latin began dwindling and the print came to England, Latin slowly was replaced by English.

On the whole, the English manuscript tradition isn’t that great compared to other languages. We have no tradition for illustrations, there was no norm for spelling, and a lot of manuscripts were composite books (lots of unrelated manuscripts slapped together in one bind).

 Enough boring history, A bit about Cambridge:

I’m extremely tired, but I’ll try to write a bit about Cambridge. Today we were at Corpus Christi College:

Would you see this at the University of Oslo? HAHAHA.

We also went shopping today … at the pharmacy. For some reason they’ve turned the concept “pharmacy” here to a weird mall for sick people. They even have a food section.

There are lots of Asian restaurants and food stores in Cambridge. It’s an odd combination of “ooo quaint building,” “oo sushi bar,” “oo quaint building,” “ooo Indian restaurant.”

Also I couldn’t resist taking a bizarre picture of these swans swimming in a line in an extremely dirty pond:

Too cute!

Ok, I really have to go to bed now. Tomorrow we are going to St. John’s College, and then taking a plane home! Tata for now.

PS. I miss Norwegian breakfast. And I seriously miss Norwegian water. Sparkling cream soda just isn’t the same.