> Dear List Members,
> I have been studying the reading and writing of poetry in Cistercian
> monasteries and have uncovered an interesting pattern in the order's
> manuscripts. Looking through A. Vernet's recent edition summarizing the
> contents of the library at Clairvaux I find numerous examples of poetic
> texts, especially proverbs, inserted between major works or included as
> addenda. They seem mostly to have been added by later readers, as they
> are in different hands than the original text. I know that many of these
> poetic texts must be fairly standard but I wonder in some cases if monks
> did not surreptitiously attach their own compositions to these
> collections.
> This is an especially intriguing idea considering that the majority
> of these additions seem to come in the thirteenth century, in the period
> after the Cistercian legislation "forbidding" versification. Is it
> possible that such texts represent an outlet, however small, for the
> literary ambitions of non-elites within the monastery?
> I don't know a whole lot about the role of such marginalia in
> medieval manuscripts and would welcome any commentary on this idea. I'm
> especially interested to know if others have observed this phenomenon
> in monastic texts and if scholars have had anything to say about it in
> print or on-line.
>
> Brian Noell
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