SIR ISRAEL GOLLANCZ MEMORIAL LECTURE

Yorkshire Writers

Professor Ralph Hanna, Keble College, Oxford

30 May 2002

My title isn't unfamiliar to anyone; it reflects Carl Horstmann's opinion (1895) that Yorkshire literary activity centred in the writing and influence of the hermit contemplative, Richard Rolle (d. 1349). I hope to demonstrate that this thesis (as well as more recent formulations calling attention to the activities of archbishop John Thoresby) ignore several interlocking generations engaged in extensive literary efforts over the period c. 1290-1410.

I'll begin by examining a small part of a fascinating book strangely ignored by manuscript scholars, British Library, MS Cotton Galba E.ix. A complicated production, the MS attests, at the least, to a diverse sense of what should belong between two boards and to the rich stock of texts available in Yorkshire in the later fourteenth century. After a brief introduction to the book, I will concentrate on about 15-20 folios of the ensemble, sufficient to construct a narrative of local Yorkshire literary production stretching both backwards and forwards (and in which the name Rolle will not appear).

The congeries of books and texts my discussion will identify should produce some rethinking of Yorkshire culture in the fourteenth century (and to the place of Rolle within it). The remainder of my lecture will address the extraordinary popularity of the texts under discussion in Middle English literature at large. Although Yorkshire writing in the fourteenth century certainly began as a local culture, the second superlative example in the Middle English period, it had great success as an export commodity. I will examine certain aspects of this transmissional procedure, and as a concluding move, try to demonstrate how this success ultimately proved self-destructive. Finally, some transmission procedures, c. 1410, pretty much extinguished Yorkshire literary production by absorbing it into a national mainstream.

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