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Likewise, and more directly pertinent to the field of Middle English religious��poetry, one of his meditations was translated into verse, preserved uniquely (and incompletely) in����(formerly MS English 1). In this poem (), in many ways comparable to the “Lamentation of St. Mary” attributed to St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d. 1153) in the Vernon manuscript (discussed by C. W. Marx), fifteenth-century English readers are presented both with Anselm as an authoritative figure (described in the translator’s original poetic prologue)��and��with a poetic adaptation of the text of one of Anselm’s laments—a text which the reader could perform for him or herself.

This poem has remained undiscussed since Bruce Dickens’s cursory treatment of the whole manuscript (published between the wars, when the book was still in private hands), and this is the first time that its text has been edited and made available in full. The work of preparing this edition was undertaken by students in my advanced seminar on Middle English lyric poetry in the Fall semester of 2017. Students first learned how to read fifteenth-century English scripts, and they then carefully prepared a transcription of the Penn manuscript, working from high-resolution reproductions and recording the text letter-for-letter. Next, they had to edit their transcription, consulting the����to decide on the meaning of obscure words and, in light of this research, deciding on its punctuation and capitalization (and, in just a couple of cases, needed emendations). As will be clear in the facsimile, this portion of the manuscript has been damaged such that several passages are no longer legible to the naked eye, and for these words and phrases students consulted high-contrast renderings and multispectral and ultraviolet images (samples of which are given in the edition’s “hot spots”). After the edited text was completed, students annotated it in����markup language, preparing it for display in the present digital edition.

The class’s edition strikes a balance between the norms of Middle English textual editing and the capabilities of the software used to render the digital edition. Punctuation and capitalization have, for example, been standardized in both the “Diplomatic” and “Interpretive” views (imprecise descriptors inherited from the��), while the former preserves abbreviation marks and the latter expands abbreviated material, rendering it in italics. The two views have also presented the opportunity to preserve the scribe’s spacing of words: as is typical in later medieval English writing, prefixes (e.g.,��un-,��in-,��a-) tend to pull away from the words they modify. The “Interpretative” view will, consequently, be the easiest way to access the edited text, while the “Diplomatic” version will preserve many of the challenging details of Middle English scribal practice with which the students gained familiarity (and, it must be said, confidence and even expertise). Further conventions are described in the edition itself: see the "Info" tab after following the link below.

Students in the course worked hard and earned their top grades on this assignment. They are:��Claire Alderson,��Dillon Bishop,��Julia Camp,��Katherine��Devney,��Emily Garrett,��Grace Holt,��Nicole Jozefiak,��Zack Klein,��David Menchaca,��Kathy Millar,��Jessica Phillips,��Daniel Rothschild,��Chelsea Runacres,��Tiana Sanchez, and��Emily Wood. As a class, we must also thank��Ian Green��for generating high contrast images of the manuscript, and��Dot Porter��(at the Univ. of Pennsylvania Library) for supplying the multispectral and UV images of sections that remained difficult to decipher, as well as permission to reproduce the images from����in the facing-page facsimile.��Ever brilliant, ever generous,��Gina Hurley��(Yale Univ.) provided invaluable guidance in the preparation of the TEI file. And the support of��Elizabeth Poff��at �԰����� Univ. Library was crucial to getting the website finalized.
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