Speculum Vitae: A Reading Edition [2 volume set]

Speculum Vitae is the hitherto unedited translation into Middle English verse of Lorens of Orleans’ profoundly influential pastoral treatise, Somme le roi. The translation into four-stress couplets in Yorkshire dialect was extremely popular, as more than forty extant copies testify. Itis the product of an important regional centre, and should take its place alongside the other monuments of this tradition: Cursor Mundi, The Prick of Conscience and the Northern Homily Cycle. Moreover, it is important as a versification of Lorens’s catechetical classic, which was a ceaseless inspiration for Middle English prose translators - the Speculum is the onlyknown verse translation. This edition is based on a collation of the five early manuscripts, all Yorkshire productions, which communicate a distinct, and usually more satisfactory, form of the text than the remaining copies. The introduction contains a full discussion of the manuscripts, authorship, dialect and date, with an account both of its source other works which it has influenced. Volume I (original series 331) contains the introduction and the first half of the text; volume II (original series 332) contains the second half of the text, together with the notes and glossary.

Ralph Hanna is Professor of Palaeography at the University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow in English at Keble College.