Not for Profit: “Amateur” Readers of French Poetry in Late Medieval England

Abstract

In a letter to John Paston, Henry Windsor compares William Worcester’s delight in having “a good booke of Frensh or of poetré” with John Fastolf’s pleasure in purchasing a manor-house. Worcester’s reading habit was clearly an expensive one, and he was already in debt to his instructor for the purchase of “diverse bokes”: there is a considerable financial risk, Windsor tells Paston he has tried to warn their mutual acquaintance, in buying too many. But what, on the surface, is a rather unlikely comparison of late medieval book and manor-house invites us to think about the pleasure of purchasing goods for personal use in the later medieval period. In this case, the pleasure of purchasing material to read is similar to the pleasure of owning a home: the latter is a domestic, architectural space; the former designates a “space” for reading—perhaps domestically—with pages rather than rooms through which the purchaser might wander. As described by Windsor, Worcester’s particular bibliophilic pleasure was in acquiring books of poetry and books written in French. Both of these taken together, will be the subject of this chapter, which considers the practice of reading continental French poetry in late medieval England, the affective potential of such reading, and some of the ways in which surviving manuscripts can offer evidence of French reading in England The chapter provides a brief description and case study of one such manuscript—London, Westminster Abbey MS 21 (hereafter, Westminster MS 21)—in which a number of late fifteenth-century English readers left their trace.

William hath gone to scole to a Lumbard he called Karoll Giles, to lern and to be red in poetré or els in French, for he hath byn with the same Karoll every dey ii times or iii, and hath bought diverse bokes of hym, for the which, as I suppose, he hath put hym-self in daunger to the same Karoll. I made a mocion to William to have knoen part of his bisiness, and [he] answered and said that he wold be as glad and as feyn of a good boke of Frensh or of poetré as my Maister Fastolf would be to purchase a fair manoir; and therby I understand list not to be commyn withal in such matiers.

Henry Windsor to John Paston (about William Worcester), Paston Letters, August 27, ca. 1458¹