The ‘Un-publication’ of Middle English Romance in Early-Modern England
You are invited to join this seminar, “The ‘Un-publication’ of Middle English Romance in Early-Modern England”, taking place on 6 February 2024, held in the Cargill Lecture Theatre, Minerva Building 5 – 6.30pm.
How do we choose what (not) to publish? Today’s publishers rely on metrics and ‘big data’, but what about publishers of the early modern world? Though we are reasonably well informed about the conditions and considerations that drove the printing of certain medieval literary works, we know little about the reasons why early modern book-trade pioneers neglected or rejected texts we know were popular at the time and widely transmitted in manuscript. This paper will focus on a case study to offer insight into some of the dynamic conditions and tastes that caused medieval ‘bestsellers’ to become lost in print.
The Middle English Floris and Blancheflour has survived in four medieval manuscripts, including the famous Auchinleck manuscript. The text’s appearance in volumes like Auchinleck, and its wide publication across Europe well into the 1600s, confirms the narrative’s enduring commercial capital. However, no English printer published the text. This paper will explore why the fledgling English publishing trade set aside this previously “good bet”, despite readily printing other metrical romances.
Please register for this talk here: https://forms.office.com/e/YCnDfsTqgL
Speaker: Professor Leah Tether (Bristol)
Bio: Leah Tether is Professor of Medieval Literature and Publishing at the University of Bristol and has just stepped down from a term as Head of the School of Humanities in order to pursue her new, Leverhulme-funded project ‘Unpublished: Medieval Literature and the Early Modern Publisher’. Professor Tether has published widely, including four monographs, on the manuscripts of medieval Arthurian literature, as well as on book, publishing and library histories more generally. She is also International Vice-President of the International Courtly Literature Society.
Story submitted by Renée Ward
rward@lincoln.ac.uk