On scriptae: correlating spelling and script in late middle English

Abstract

In 1963, Michael Samuels identified a sequence of late Middle English spelling-patterns that he termed “typesof incipient standard”. Other “types” have since been identified, e.g. in copies of John Gower’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.