What I’m Reading:

The primary sources and the secondary sources

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Primary Sources

Harley 2253

British Library, London, MS Harley 2253 [The cyber attack on the BL in October 2023 deleted the digital version of the MS, along with others. The database is slowly being reassembled, and this entry stands as a placeholder until it is restored.]

Brook, G. L., ed. (1948, 1956). The Harley Lyrics: The Middle English Lyrics of MS. Harley 2253. Manchester University Press. https://archive.org/details/harleylyricsmidd0000unse/page/n7/mode/2up

Fein, Susanna, David Raybin, & Jan Ziolkowski, eds. and trans. (2015). The Complete Harley 2253 Manuscript. 3 vols. TEAMS, Medieval Institute Publications. https://metseditions.org/editions/465Pm1LSPGpfxLahvLzDsbgz6MPj6m

Ker, N. R., ed. (1965). Facsimile of British Museum MS. Harley 2253. No. 255. Early English Text Society, Oxford University Press.

Other Primary Cultural Sources

Alighieri, Dante. (1990). De Vulgari Eloquentia: Dante’s book of exile. Marianne Shapiro, ed. Univ Nebraska Press.

Wessex Parallel Web Texts (2003). Harley Lyrics: Booklist. http://wpwt.soton.ac.uk/harl2253/harlbks.htm

Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Thelma Fenster, & Delbert Russell, eds & trans. (2016). Vernacular Literary Theory from the French of Medieval England: Texts & translations, c. 1120-c. 1450. Brewer.

Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn, Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor, & Ruth Evans. (1999). The Idea of the Vernacular: An anthology of Middle English literary theory, 1280-1520. Penn State Univ Press.

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Secondary Sources

Birkholz, Daniel. (2020). Harley Manuscript Geographies: Literary history and the medieval miscellany. Manchester University Press.

Fein, Susanna, ed. (2000). Studies in the Harley Manuscript: The scribes, contents, and social contexts of British Library MS Harley 2253. Medieval Institute Publications.

Jager, Katharine W., ed. (2019). Vernacular Aesthetics in the Later Middle Ages: Politics, performativity, and reception from literature to music. Palgrave Macmillan.

McGinn, Bernard. (2012). The Varieties of Vernacular Mysticism, 1350-1550. Herder & Herder.

Scase, Wendy, ed. (2007). Essays in Manuscript Geography: Vernacular manuscripts of the English West Midlands from the Conquest to the sixteenth century. Brepols.

Watson, Nicholas. (2022). Balaam’s Ass: Vernacular theology before the English Reformation. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Weiskott, Eric. (2016). English Alliterative Verse: Poetic Tradition & Literary History. Cambridge University Press

Wessex Parallel Web Texts (2003). Harley Lyrics: Booklist. http://wpwt.soton.ac.uk/harl2253/harlbks.htm (no point in copying and pasting this fine bibliography prepared by Bella Millett)