A documentary edition of Alexander Craig's 'Pilgrime and Hermite,' 1631: print and manuscript culture across the Union of Crowns

MacBean, Lorna (2013) A documentary edition of Alexander Craig's 'Pilgrime and Hermite,' 1631: print and manuscript culture across the Union of Crowns. MPhil(R) thesis, University of Glasgow.

Abstract

This thesis presents the materials for a documentary edition of Alexander Craig’s ‘The Pilgrim and Hermite,’ the facsimiles of the manuscript, a diplomatic transcription of the manuscript & a transcription of the printed witness. These texts are found in Edward Raban’s 1631 print of Craig’s The Pilgrime and Heremite, in forme of a dialogue, and NLS Adv. MS 35.4.14 or The Thoirs Family Commonplace Book. This thesis presents the first available transcription from the manuscript and facilitates the comparison of both texts.
The first objective of this project was to make the manuscript text available for further study. Prior to the text itself is an apparatus including a description of both the print and manuscript witnesses and a linguistic description of the manuscript, the data of which is available in the appendix. Secondly, the discussion of the text is evidenced in and commented upon by the culture surrounding the print and manuscript. I have provided the context of each witness and have begun work to document the transmission of the text, the findings of which will necessarily form a separate study.
The project is a proof of concept for future work on Craig and editorial studies. Where the sixteen hundreds or, as Priscilla Bawcutt describes it, ‘the neglected seventeenth century’, in Scotland has been charged with detracting from the mastery of the Makars, it is now proving to be a critical area in forming narratives of literature in Scotland. Bringing texts from this period into contemporary literary theory, historical materialist approaches are proving fruitful and encouraging discoveries of networks of literary interests and practice, evidencing experimental and versatile uses of text. These literary pluralities are paralleled in the textual pluralities of the manuscript and print culture of Scotland. Through the further study of manuscript miscellanies, commonplace books, and anthologies, we are starting to form a picture of how texts were used and transmitted, and how they functioned and were understood.

• Item Type: Thesis (MPhil(R))
• Qualification Level: Masters
• Keywords: Scottish Literature; Alexander Craig; Pilgrim; Hermit; Edward Raban; Print culture; Manuscript culture; seventeenth century; Renaissance writers; contrafactum; documentary editing; textual criticism.
• Subjects: P Language and Literature > P Philology. Linguistics; P Language and Literature > PE English; P Language and Literature > PN Literature (General) > PN0441 Literary History
• Colleges/Schools: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Critical Studies
• Supervisor's Name: van Heijnsbergen, Dr. Theo and Smith, Prof. Jeremy
• Date of Award: 2013
• Depositing User: Miss Lorna MacBean
• Unique ID: glathesis:2013-6844
• Copyright: Copyright of this thesis is held by the author.
• Date Deposited: 13 Nov 2015 08:35
• Last Modified: 16 Nov 2015 16:07
• URI: https://theses.gla.ac.uk/id/eprint/6844