Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- General Introduction: What's in a Name: the ‘French’ of ‘England’
- Section I Language and Socio-Linguistics
- Section II Crossing the Conquest: New Linguistic and Literary Histories
- Section III After Lateran IV: Francophone Devotions and Histories
- Introduction
- ‘Cest livre liseez … chescun jour’: Women and Reading c.1230–c.1430
- 19 French Devotional Texts in Thirteenth-Century Preachers' Anthologies
- 20 Augustinian Canons and their Insular French Books in Medieval England: Towards An Assessment
- 21 Eschuer peché, embracer bountee: Social Thought and Pastoral Instruction in Nicole Bozon
- 22 The Cultural Context of the French Prose remaniement of the Life of Edward the Confessor by a Nun of Barking Abbey
- 23 The Vitality of Anglo-Norman in Late Medieval England: The Case of the Prose Brut Chronicle
- 24 France in England: Anglo-French Culture in the Reign of Edward III
- 25 Lollardy: The Anglo-Norman Heresy?
- 26 The Languages of Memory: The Crabhouse Nunnery Manuscript
- Section IV England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
- Bibliography
- Index of Primary Texts and Manuscripts
- Index of Primary Authors
- General Index: Persons and Places, Subjects
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
26 - The Languages of Memory: The Crabhouse Nunnery Manuscript
from Section III - After Lateran IV: Francophone Devotions and Histories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 February 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations and Tables
- Contributors
- Acknowledgements
- List of Abbreviations
- General Introduction: What's in a Name: the ‘French’ of ‘England’
- Section I Language and Socio-Linguistics
- Section II Crossing the Conquest: New Linguistic and Literary Histories
- Section III After Lateran IV: Francophone Devotions and Histories
- Introduction
- ‘Cest livre liseez … chescun jour’: Women and Reading c.1230–c.1430
- 19 French Devotional Texts in Thirteenth-Century Preachers' Anthologies
- 20 Augustinian Canons and their Insular French Books in Medieval England: Towards An Assessment
- 21 Eschuer peché, embracer bountee: Social Thought and Pastoral Instruction in Nicole Bozon
- 22 The Cultural Context of the French Prose remaniement of the Life of Edward the Confessor by a Nun of Barking Abbey
- 23 The Vitality of Anglo-Norman in Late Medieval England: The Case of the Prose Brut Chronicle
- 24 France in England: Anglo-French Culture in the Reign of Edward III
- 25 Lollardy: The Anglo-Norman Heresy?
- 26 The Languages of Memory: The Crabhouse Nunnery Manuscript
- Section IV England and French in the late Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries
- Bibliography
- Index of Primary Texts and Manuscripts
- Index of Primary Authors
- General Index: Persons and Places, Subjects
- YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
Summary
The Crabhouse nunnery manuscript, with its entries from the late thirteenth to the late fifteenth century, has been called many things: quaint, picturesque, confusing, or just plain jumbled. Although some scholars refer to it as a cartulary, the British Library labels the manuscript a ‘register’, as does Mary Bateson, its sole editor to date. Davis includes the manuscript in his Short Catalogue of Cartularies, but lists it in the category ‘Other Registers, etc.’ because it was ‘at some point wrongly described as a cartulary’. For lack of a better term, I will refer to the manuscript as simply that – the Crabhouse manuscript, for it is, in fact, a jumble, its fifty-four folios containing a verse prologue in Latin and French; a prose foundation legend and cartulary in French; three separate rentals – two in Latin, one in French; a terrier in Latin and another in French; two fairly long records commemorating a generous donation that are almost sermon-like in tone and address – written in French but with introductions in verse; and finally, two entries in English: a brief memorandum of a wedding and an annal-like entry commemorating the works of three prioresses but devoting enough attention to one of them to verge on hagiography. The table appended to this essay describes the contents of the Crabhouse manuscript in their order of appearance, with more detail than can be found in published guides to the text, including Bateson's edition.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language and Culture in Medieval BritainThe French of England, c.1100–c.1500, pp. 347 - 358Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2009