Texts
List of lays (Shrewsbury School MS 7)
Incoming data
The catalogue entry for this text has not been published as yet. Until then, a selection of data is made available below.
A list of 67 titles belonging to Old French lays, narrative poems and possibly romances, which is uniquely attested in the 13th-century English manuscript Shrewsbury School MS 7. Many titles are identifiable with extant texts, such as the lais of Marie de France, but there are also many tantalising references to texts that are unknown or not securely identifiable.
Manuscript witnesses
Text
Shrewsbury School Library, MS 7
The section in which the list occurs is a little later than the original manuscript, after 1270. It has been suggested that ff. 1-2 and 200-205 were originally intended as fly-leaves, but ended up as vehicles for new additions after the manuscript was compiled.
f. 200r
Sources
Primary sources Text editions and/or modern translations – in whole or in part – along with publications containing additions and corrections, if known. Diplomatic editions, facsimiles and digital image reproductions of the manuscripts are not always listed here but may be found in entries for the relevant manuscripts. For historical purposes, early editions, transcriptions and translations are not excluded, even if their reliability does not meet modern standards.
[ed.] [facs. ed.] Archibald, Elizabeth P., “The Breton lay in Middle English: genre, transmission and The Franklin’s tale”, in: Judith Weiss, Jennifer Fellows, and Morgan Dickson (eds), Medieval Insular romance: translation and Innovation, Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2000. 55–70.
60 (text); 61 (facsimile reproduction)
Secondary sources (select)
Busby, Keith, French in medieval Ireland, Ireland in medieval French: the paradox of two worlds, Turnhout: Brepols, 2017.
abstract:
This book is a ground-breaking study of the cultural and linguistic consequences of the English invasion of Ireland in 1169, and examines the ways in which the country is portrayed in French literature of the twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries. Works such as La geste des Engleis en Yrlande and The walling of New Ross, written in French in a multilingual Ireland, are studied in their literary and historical contexts, and the works of the Dominican friar Jofroi de Waterford (c. 1300) are shown to have been written in Ireland, rather than Paris, as has always been assumed.
After exploring how the dissemination and translation of early Latin texts of Irish origin concerning Ireland led to the country acquiring a reputation as a land of marvels, this study argues that increasing knowledge of the real Ireland did little to stymie the mirabilia hibernica in French vernacular literature. On the contrary, the image persisted to the extent of retrospectively associating central motifs and figures of Arthurian romance with Ireland. This book incorporates the results of original archival research and is characterized by close attention to linguistic details of expression and communication, as well as historical, codicological, and literary contexts.
176–182, also 196, 230, 274 Incl. on p. 177, a photographic reproduction of the relevant page.
Sims-Williams, Patrick, “Shrewsbury School MS 7 and the Breton lays”, Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies 60 (Winter, 2010): 39–80.
Busby, Keith, “Merlin, Barnagoys, l’Irlande, et les débuts du monde arthurien”, in: Nathalie Koble (ed.), Jeunesse et genèse du royaume arthurien: les suites romanesques du Merlin en prose: actes du colloque des 27 et 28 avril 2007, Ecole normale supérieure (Paris), Orléans: Paradigme, 2007. 145–156.
154–156
Archibald, Elizabeth P., “The Breton lay in Middle English: genre, transmission and The Franklin’s tale”, in: Judith Weiss, Jennifer Fellows, and Morgan Dickson (eds), Medieval Insular romance: translation and Innovation, Cambridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2000. 55–70.
