Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Interpreting MS Digby 86: A Trilingual Book from Thirteenth-Century Worcestershire

Interpreting MS Digby 86: A Trilingual Book from Thirteenth-Century Worcestershire

Fein, Susanna
Raybin, David
Russell, Delbert W.

Hardcover

Series: Manuscript Culture in the British Isles, Book 9

Literary CriticismGeneral Antiques & Collectibles

ISBN10: 1903153905
ISBN13: 9781903153901
Publisher: York Medieval Press
Published: Jul 19 2019
Pages: 330
Weight: 1.42
Height: 0.75 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
A range of approaches (literary, historical, art-historical, codicological) to this mysterious but hugely significant manuscript.

Extravagantly heterogeneous in its contents, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Digby 86 is an utterly singular production. On its last folio, the scribe signs off with a self-portrait - a cartoonishly-drawn male head wearing a close-fitted hood - and an inscription: scripsi librum in anno et iii mensibus (I wrote the book in a year and three months). His fifteen months' labour resulted in one of the most important miscellanies to survive from medieval England: a trilingual marvel of a compilation, with quirky combinations of content that range from religion, to science, to literature of a decidedly secular cast. It holds medical recipes, charms, prayers, prognostications, magic tricks, pious doctrine, a liturgical calendar, religious songs, lively debates, poetry on love and death, proverbs, fables, fabliaux, scurrilous games, and gender-based diatribes.

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