ABSTRACT

A late medieval, middle class, masculine, social self is performed in the content and prosodic, rhetorical, and textual form of moral poetry consisting of exchangeable, aphoristic couplets of advice, voiced from man to man, which reappear over a large range of poems in manuscripts owned or compiled by men. Manuscripts discussed are: Bodleian, MS Laud Misc. 108; Oxford, MS Balliol 354 (Richard Hill’s Book); BL, MS Harley 2252 (John Colyns’s Book); Bodleian, MS Rawlinson C. 813 (The Welles Anthology); Beinecke MS 365 (The Book of Brome); BL, MS Additional 37049 (a Carthusian miscellany); Durham University Library, MS Cosin V.III.9; St George’s Chapel, Windsor, MS E.I.I; and Bodleian, MS Eng. poet. e.1. The couplets’ repeatability as units of poetic exchange allows the men who wrote them into the flyleaves, blank spaces, and margins of manuscripts, or into their own household books, to perform reading and composing practices that reflect and create the social and textual networks in which the individual men are embedded. The “fungible couplets,” as the essay names them, perform the complications of middle class masculinity itself, marking its inescapable social components even while simultaneously expressing defensiveness and anxiety about the social sphere’s undesirable influences on the practice of self-management.

摘要

中世纪晚期，中产阶级，男性社会交往以道德诗歌的内容和韵律，修辞和文字形式表现出来，其中包括可交换的，格格不入的忠告对联，在人与人之间表达，并在各种诗歌中反复出现。在男人拥有或编辑的手稿中。讨论的手稿是：Bodleian，MS Laud Misc。108; 牛津，MS Balliol 354（理查德·希尔的书）; BL，MS Harley 2252（约翰·科林斯的书）；Bodleian，MS Rawlinson C.813（The Welles Anthology）；Beinecke MS 365（《罗马书》）；BL，MS附加37049（笛卡尔杂项）；达勒姆大学图书馆，MS Cosin V.III.9；EII，温莎，圣乔治教堂；和Bodleian，MS Eng。诗人。e.1。联以诗意交换为单位的可重复性，使将wrote联写进fly叶，空白处和手抄本边缘的人，或在自己的家庭书中进行阅读和写作，以反映和创造个人嵌入其中的社交和文本网络。正如文章中所说的那样，“可替代的对联”表现出中产阶级男性化本身的复杂性，标志着其不可避免的社会组成，甚至同时表达了对社会领域对自我管理实践的不良影响的防御和焦虑。