University of Virginia Library

V. From Profile to Rationale

Although the firm identification of five distinct types of scribal intervention
constitutes in itself a worthwhile discovery, especially for editors attempting to
ascertain Thornton's role in his unique texts, the results also encourage con-
sideration of what motivation might lie behind these changes. Two possibilities
immediately suggest themselves, random chance and scribal laxity, but these
simple explanations prove inadequate. Attributing the copyist's unique readings
to chance, for instance, overlooks both the pervasiveness of the changes made
and the striking regularity in both their method and function. It clearly violates
the principle of Occam's razor to suppose each of these individually minor altera-
tions could occur by accident in such predictable and patterned ways. However,
while chance may be quickly ruled out as unlikely, the tendency among scribes
to "simplif[y] their task by reproducing content and sense rather than exact de-
tails of wording and language" that Frances McSparran credits for Thornton's
variations in Octovian requires more deliberation.[49] McSparran's belief that such
changes reflect the translation encouraged by relaxed copying procedures, espe-
cially if one defines this process in terms of idiolects rather than dialects, offers a
tempting rationale for the choices Thornton makes. Still, this approach fails to
account for the somewhat obsessive spelling changes identified by Mary Hamel

in her study of this copyist's self-corrections.[50] It defies reason to propose that
the same scribe who commonly altered his spellings in an attempt to mimic his
exemplar would add several hundred words to each text without considering
their purpose. One must therefore conclude that the emphases placed on syn-
tactic structure and semantic markers by the scribe's intervention originate in a
conscious attempt by Thornton to shape his work.

As previously indicated, determining the specific agenda behind those pur-
poseful changes Thornton made to his exemplars requires an examination of
his scribal habits in light of what can be established about his background. This
involves, in effect, an appeal to the "cultural milieu" in which the Lincoln and
British Library texts were compiled.[51] Thornton's particular social environment,
as reflected in the choice and arrangement of his manuscripts, appears to value
especially the didactic potential of the written word. As George Keiser points
out, "Robert Thornton [along with another of his contemporaries, Elizabeth
Sywardby] … clearly found in the book an important, perhaps even an essential
means to spiritual fulfillment and … their interest in the book for this purpose
does not make them by any means unusual members of their society."[52] By divid-
ing his miscellanies evenly between religious tracts and moralistic secular content,
Thornton signals to his audience that these texts should function as exemplars
for good-living. Even the vernacular romances largely conform to this principle,
on occasion stating explicitly in their incipits that the portrayals of "owre eldurs
olde" were meant to teach "soothe sawys."[53] Although perhaps not self-evident,
a connection between Thornton's interest in presenting chivalric tales as if they
were secular saints' lives and his copying habits can be made. Considered as a
system of scribal intervention, the changes revealed in the preceding consider-
ation of the Thornton manuscripts seem complementary to each other in their
efforts to simplify, smooth, and emphasize different grammatical elements essen-
tial to sense. All of these interventions, then, reveal the common scribal desire to
alert readers to potentially confusing narrative elements and ensure that no one
misinterpret the author's perceived intent.[54] This inclination can be reconciled
with a counter-tendency to preserve minutiae like the exemplar's spellings if one
allows that, given Thornton's concern that each tale's didactic message reach his
audience, an intermittent willingness to sacrifice literal fidelity to preserve his
texts' underlying meaning might represent another form of conservatism. In a
sense, the pattern of intervention revealed here suggests that Thornton elected

to follow a rational tertium quid between the extremes of mechanical and creative
copying ascribed to him by previous scholars to ensure the moralistic themes he
saw as important would be accessible to his audience.

While concern for his readers' understanding provides a unifying motivation
for the copyist's interventions, it falls short of explaining why Thornton em-
phasized one specific set of syntactic transitions and semantic markers so much
more than his contemporaries. The final explanation of Thornton's grammati-
cal tinkering instead depends upon the overlap between the ways in which the
scribe emended his exemplars and the textual features some critics have used to
argue that his romances were copied down from performances by minstrels. The
proliferation of linking words, poetic filler, and other redundancies created by his
changes were all considered symptomatic of oral composition and the demands
it placed on the poet's creative resources. Representing a standard interpretation
of Thornton's romances grounded in oral composition theory, Casson claims that
"X [Sir Degrevant's archetypal form] was committed to memory by a minstrel.
He probably transmitted the poem to another of his kind, and the process may
have continued for several generations (in the textual sense). This is the most
satisfactory way of accounting for most of the numerous periphrases, anticipa-
tions, recollections, upset rhyme schemes, inconsistencies, insertions of redun-
dant words and general literary dilution to be found on almost every page of
[Thornton's Lincoln manuscript]."[55] However, disenchantment with theories of
oral composition and dissemination has led to a rejection of such generalizations
as demonstrated in McSparran's recent introduction to Octovian: "The rather free
variation of wording.… seems inconsistent with this preservation of phonologi-
cally non-significant details of spelling from the archetype. The first would be
compatible with oral transmission, the second could not survive it, and must de-
pend on a written tradition."[56] McSparran's explanation of variation between the
two copies of Octovian, supported by Hamel's work on self-correction, seems ef-
fectively to refute Casson's argument proposing oral composition. However, her
subsequent admonition to "consider the [presumably written] cultural context in
which popular romances were produced and circulated" must be combined with
recognition that those oral elements identified by Casson aptly summarize the
grammatical features privileged by Robert Thornton's scribal habits.

While the widespread oral composition of late medieval literature has seemed
increasingly unlikely to critics in recent years, study of Thornton's cultural con-
text suggests that the oral recitation of romances may represent the key to our
copyist's patterns of intervention. The most plentiful evidence of such oral reci-
tation comes from the works themselves, wherein poets repeatedly exhort their
audience to listen attentively, although Thorlac Turville-Petre is certainly right to
warn that such evidence "may be suspected of being an idealization."[57] Despite
such cautious doubt, though, even Turville-Petre concedes that "[i]t is probable
enough that recitation, whether by a professional.… or member of the family,
was one method of dissemination [for romances]" and provides intriguing evi-

dence of such oral delivery in his edition of the fragmentary "Lament for Sir John
of Berkeley."[58] This rhymed alliterative poem gives a short account of another
unremarkable fifteenth-century member of the English gentry whose rank and
interests seem suggestively similar to those of Thornton:
The audience is told that John of Berkeley was "a generous householder who
entertained in the grandest fashion … with food and jollity, song and … the
reading of romances."[60] If one remains open to the possibility that Thornton, like
Sir John, intended either to read his texts aloud for friends and family or have
them read by another, his copying style begins to make better sense. This slightly
unorthodox explanation of Thornton's alterations would mean that emphasis on
syntactic structure and semantic meaning stems from the scribe's belief that his
audience would misunderstand more subtle grammatical constructions better
suited to the eye than the ear when listening to the tales presented aloud.[61]

The conclusion, albeit tentative, that Thornton consciously crafted the ver-
nacular romances in his miscellanies for spoken delivery suggests an approach
to the relationship between scribe and exemplar that would significantly change
our view of this copyist's work. While previous characterizations of Thornton
as alternately conservative or innovative seem to capture in part the complex
interaction he engaged in with his texts, these arguments have never been able
to account for what seem to be his contradictory tendencies. These failures most
likely reflect the assumption that the value of a scribe's work can only be mea-
sured against the yardstick of authorial intention and that the need to recover
an original meaning precludes in-depth study of individual copyists. Concentrat-
ing on scribal intention, though, encourages one to see consistent patterns of
intervention like those Thornton engages in as rational attempts to reconcile a
received text with an anticipated use. These patterns and the statistical evidence
illustrating them can be used then to establish with greater accuracy archetypal
readings. In fact, combined with other types of textual evidence, knowledge of

Thornton's scribal agenda could have a profound effect on the editing of those
texts he copied by allowing for the recovery of authorial readings even in unique
witnesses where collation is not possible.