Nature’s farthest verge or landscapes beyond allegory and rhetorical convention? The case of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight" and Petrarch’s "Ascent of Mount Ventoux"

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Petrarch’s Ascent of Mount Ventoux have both been held up as marking pivotal stages in the development of naturalism in landscape descriptions. This article attempts to gauge to what extent non-referentiality (both in figurative and formalistic terms) is sustainable in representations of landscapes in these two late-medieval texts. On close inspection, the portrayal of landscape in these two works suggests that proto-modernity has little purchase on their topographic verisimilitude, which functions not so much as a harbinger of proto-modernity but as a naturalistic signifier operative in conventional figural situations

The Handwriting of Fifteenth-Century Privy Seal and Council Clerks

Although most scholars of medieval English palaeography are familiar with the hand of the Privy Seal clerk and poet Thomas Hoccleve, almost nothing is known about the handwriting of his fellow clerks. This article is the first attempt to identify and describe the hands of a number of clerks who wrote for the Privy Seal and for the Council in the fifteenth century. In Part 1, I identify the handwriting of Hoccleve’s fellow clerks, including William Alberton, Henry Benet, John Claydon, John Hethe, John Offord, and Richard Priour, adding writs, letters, charters, and manuscripts in their hands. I also identify the hand of the Council clerk Richard Caudray and attribute further records to the Council and Privy Seal clerk Robert Frye. Part 2 offers a reconsideration of the features of Hoccleve’s handwriting in the light of the new findings. This article also identifies the scribal stints and hands in four documents produced by Privy Seal clerks: British Library, MS Add. 24,062 (Hoccleve’s Formulary); BL, MS Cotton Cleopatra F. iii (Part 1 of the Book of the Council); BL, MS Harley 219; and Edinburgh University Library, MS 183 (Privy Seal and Signet formulary, or ‘Royal Letter Book’). This article reveals the extent to which Privy Seal clerks participated in the copying of literature and offers a more nuanced understanding of the varieties of the secretary script used by government scribes

Proceedings relating to the disciplinary liability of prisoners in the state of New York

Prison disciplinary actions constitute one of the essential and – at the same time – necessary elements of penitentiary proceedings, which serve to ensure order and institutional security. When they are undertaken and conducted in a reasonable and moderate, and especially fair manner, then these activities not only protect the health, safety and security of all people participating in prison life, but also constitute a positive factor in the process of rehabilitation of prisoners. The article presents the rules of disciplinary proceedings in the State of New York.Działania dyscyplinarne stanowią jeden z zasadniczych, a zarazem niezbędnych elementów postępowania penitencjarnego, które służy zapewnieniu porządku oraz bezpieczeństwa instytucjonalnego. Gdy ich podejmowanie i prowadzenie następuje w sposób rozsądny i umiarkowany, a zwłaszcza sprawiedliwy, wtedy czynności te służą nie tylko ochronie zdrowia, bezpieczeństwa i zabezpieczeniu wszystkich osób uczestniczących w życiu więziennym, ale również stanowią pozytywny czynnik w procesie resocjalizacji więźniów. W artykule przedstawiono zasady postępowania dyscyplinarnego obowiązujące w stanie Nowy Jork

Don John Broadhook alias John Lydgate, 1424

In a note published in this journal in 2019, Sebastian Sobecki drew attention to a new life-record for John Lydgate. The document, which dates to late January or early February 1425, is of significance because it offers the earliest surviving record of Lydgate's tenure as prior of Hatfield Regis. However, the record only refers to him as "John, prior of Hatfield Regis." Here the author would like to present three new life-records from 1424, all of which mention Lydgate by name and identify him as prior of Hatfield Regis, therefore pushing back the evidence for his time as prior by a calendar year

A New Manuscript of John Peyton’s A Relation of the State of Polonia (1599-1619)

Long thought to have been written either by George Carew (c.1556–1612) or William Bruce (c.1560–after 1613), the anonymous but important late sixteenth-century English account of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, A Relation of the State of Polonia and the Provinces United with that Crowne, Anno 1598, has only been known to have survived in a single manuscript, British Library, MS Royal 18 B I. Having recently established that the text was composed by John Peyton (1579–1635), son of Sir John Peyton (1544–1630), Lieutenant of the Tower, I have been able to demonstrate that a lost complete copy of the text, named A Relation of the Kingdome of Polonia and the Provinces United with that Crowne, must have existed between 1751 and 1898. This copy surfaced in May 2013 and is now held by St Andrews University Library as ms38902. This article discusses the provenance, history, and date of the St Andrews manuscript, as well as its relationship with the British Library copy

An Edition of Miles Hogarde's "A Mirroure of Myserie"

"This is the first edition of A Mirroure of Myserie (1557), a poem by the Catholic propagandist Miles Hogarde and probably presented to Queen Mary. Cast as a dream vision, this combative dialogue draws on William Langland’s widely circulating medieval poem The Vision of Piers Plowman and offers a critical assessment of sixteenth-century morality in England. The Mirroure of Myserie has been edited from Huntington Library MS 121 and is accompanied by a short introduction. This accessible edition preserves Hogarde’s original spelling but adds modern punctuation and glosses of all unfamiliar words and concepts.