BL MS Harley 2253

. . . to the intellectual and scholarly roots of a professor emeritus of English.

Over fifty years ago, I entered college, majoring in English with a romantic attachment to Medieval Studies that I had begun to cultivate during high school. By the time I was a senior, my interest had narrowed to the Middle English “lyric” poem (more about the irony quotation marks elsewhere). My senior projects under the direction of Prof. Spencer Cosmos at the Catholic University of America began with a review of the (then small) secondary literature on Latin and vernacular lyrics, from there to specific lyric genres, and finally to a close reading and critical edition of one poem.

After college I went on to graduate school at the University of Illinois, studying under medievalists Jackson Campbell, Joseph Traherne, and John Bloch Friedman (as well as early modernists Achsah Guibbory, U. Milo Kauffmann, and David Kay).

After earning the MA in English, I returned to CUA to enter the Theological College seminary and earn an MA in Theology. I was ordained and served as a priest but left in 1988 to return to academia, starting at a community college (while earning my PhD), a visiting stint at a comprehensive public university, and finally an appointment to the School of Nursing at the research intensive University of Connecticut (my doctoral dissertation [1997] and published book [2005] were under the umbrella of Medical Humanities and Health Studies, a field in which I continued to publish).

Nonetheless, despite the vagaries of my professional (and personal) life, part of my heart remained in Medieval Studies (as evident in my library where some of my college books still reside).

Having reached the biblical age of “three score and ten,” I retired with two resolutions: to audit courses each semester and to return to my roots in Medieval Studies and the Middle English lyric. This time, however, I determined to immerse myself not only in the broader secondary literature but also with an acute focus on one manuscript from the early fourteenth century that contains the largest single collection of Middle English short verse, the so-called “Harley Lyrics” of British Library Manuscript (MS) Harley 2253.

This blog, then, is a record of what I’m learning, a commonplace book for what I’m reading, a resource for others interested in the same topic, and a forum for like-minded students of late-medieval English literature.

“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. . . .

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, “Little Gidding”