Foreword

This second Yearbook edition of Marginalia brings together a selection of the best coursework essays to be submitted as part of the 2005-2006 MPhil. The essays cover a range of texts and topics, from time in the N-Town Cycle to the theme of God’s covenant with man in the poems of the Pearl manuscript, and from the processes of translation in Handlyng Synne to the different economies of exchange and reward that appear in the B-text of Piers Plowman and in Wynnere and Wastoure. These pieces result from one element of a twelve-month course in medieval studies, which also includes bibliographical, palaeographical and codicological studies and a more extensive dissertation; they display the ability and imagination of new graduate students as they engage in literary analysis.

Monica Majumdar considers the N-Town Cycle as a drama that comprehends the whole of human history, and examines the different ways in which its mortal and divine characters describe their different places inside and outside the passage of time. Majumdar establishes a contrast between God’s simultaneous knowledge of past, present and future and the way that the human characters tend to ‘see the past and future only in terms of the present’. She notes that the audience occupies a paradoxical position in relation to this contrast, since ‘If God is outside of time, the audience must also be placed outside the continuum’. She explores this paradox through the figure of Contemplacio, a character who mediates between the biblical drama and the audience, and who makes it possible for ‘the mortal audience … to step outside of time during the plays and view human history from an eternal perspective’.

Models of ‘winning and wasting’ form the basis for Ruth Roberts’ comparison between Wynnere and Wastoure and the Visio of Piers Plowman’s B-text. She notes the ‘linguistic continuity between worldly and spiritual economy’ in these poems, which use the language of economics to describe both material gain in the world and the divine gift of God’s grace. Roberts’ essay compares the ways in which the poems distinguish between these categories. She suggests that Wynnere and Wastoure begins by invoking apocalyptic language and then turns away from it, establishing that its focus is on the immediate consequences of economic policy, rather than on those consequences of doing well in a spiritual sense that will become clear at the last judgement. Piers Plowman, on the other hand, begins with a discussion of localised economic interactions in the field of folk, but turns away from this to consider the more ultimate consequences of doing well within the spiritual economy. When one model is frustrated, Roberts writes, ‘the reader is alerted to the introduction of a new value system that will alter the notion of winning’.

Elizabeth Dearnley considers what Robert Mannying has to say about the process of translating the Manuel des Pechiez as the basis for his Handlyng Synne. She begins with a passage where Mannyng ‘maps out the cognitive steps of the appropriation process by which a word is accepted from one language into another’, and investigates some examples of this process taking place in his text. Dearnley considers Mannying’s proclaimed suspicion of French influences and his description of English as a ‘simple speche’ and finds them to be somewhat disingenuous. In fact, she argues, ‘Mannyng’s detailed dissection of the technical aspects of literary composition … suggests a knowledge of and deep fascination with these forms even as he appears to dismiss them.’

Linda Bates explores the ways in which the poems of the Pearl-manuscript address the biblical covenant between God and man. She suggests a loosely typological relationship between the poems in this manuscript, one which is ‘figural’ rather than ‘allegorical’, and which puts a particular emphasis on Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, involving its narratives of trial and reward with a broader discussion of the testamentum that sets out people’s obligations to God. Bates writes that ‘by reading the poems in the context of figural imagery, the use of covenant in the works of the Gawain-poet points to a soteriological understanding of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Gawain himself becomes a type for humanity and his final encounter with Bercilak in the chapel thus communicates a model of penance, forgiveness and salvation’.

Thanks are due to everyone who helped to put this issue of Marginalia together. In particular, we wish to thank the Advisory Board for their ongoing support, and the Editorial Board for their hard work and enthusiasm. We are indebted to the faculty members who supervised these essays and suggested their inclusion, and to the contributors for permission to reproduce their work. Finally, we would like to thank all those who attend and contribute to the Medieval Reading Group, from which this journal continues to draw energy and inspiration.

Alastair Bennett, on behalf of the Medieval Reading Group