* COLLOQUIA MEDIEVALIA *

Is There a Minstrel in the House?
MS Ashmole 61 and Domestic Reading
in Late Medieval England

a lecture by
George G. Shuffelton
of Carleton College

Thursday, February 8, 2007
at 4:00 p.m.
in 229 Nolte Center
315 Pillsbury Drive S.E., Minneapolis

Abstract:

Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 61, like many other collections of popular literature and Middle English romances, was once considered to have been a “minstrel book,” owned and used by itinerant performers. But the hypothesis of minstrel connections has been largely discredited, and recent scholarship has instead emphasized these manuscripts’ place in the late-medieval household. Tracing the many references to minstrels scattered throughout MS Ashmole 61, this paper argues that domestic reading at the close of the Middle Ages may have owed more to the idea of the minstrel than previously recognized. Minstrels and minstrelsy were, in this view, essential for the household’s articulation of its values: generosity, intimacy, and delight.