On Scriptae: Correlating Spelling and Script in Late Middle English

Abstract

espanolEn 1963, Michael Samuels identifico una serie de modelos ortograficos en el ingles medio tardio a los que denomino «tipos de estandar incipiente». Desde entonces se han senalado otros “tipos”, como por ejemplo en las copias del Confessio Amantis de John Gower y el Mirror of the Life of Christ de Nicholas Love. Este articulo defiende que los manuscritos soporte de tales textos, aquellos que tambien fueron transmitidos con caligrafias distintivas y en contextos codicologicos similares, fueron el producto de comunidades de practica identificables. La correlacion entre ortografia y caligrafia que se manifiesta en estos manuscritos, representa usos «expresivos» propios de tipos especificos de discurso. Estos que podemos designar como scriptae parecen funcionar, en palabras de Sebba (36) como «markers of difference and belonging, and be involved in the creation of identities at different levels of social organisation». Este trabajo intenta trasladar la paleografia y la historia del libro al ambito de la investigacion linguistica como parte de una reconceptualizacion de la filologia. EnglishIn 1963, Michael Samuels identified a sequence of late Middle English spelling-patterns that he termed “types of incipient standard”. Other “types” have since been identified, e.g. in copies of John Gower’s Confessio Amantis and Nicholas Love’s Mirror of the Life of Christ. This article argues that manuscripts containing such texts, which were also transmitted in distinctive forms of handwriting and in similar codicological contexts, were products of identifiable communities of practice, and that the correlation of spelling and handwriting such manuscripts manifest represented “expressive” usages characteristic of particular kinds of discourse. Such scriptae, as they might be called, seem to “function as markers of difference and belonging, and be involved in the creation of identities at different levels of social organisation” (Sebba 36). This paper attempts to bring paleography and book history into the realm of linguistic enquiry, as part of a reimagined philology.