. Old English libraries; the making, collection and use of books during the middle ages. books are something much less than life: there is the open air,—the meadows bright with flowers,—the melody of birds,— . . Whan that the month of MayIs comen, and that I hear the foules that the flowers ginnen for to springFarwel my book. . .^ § HI By the end of the fourteenth century we find signsthat books more often formed a part of well-to-do house-holds, and that the formal reading and reciting entertain-ments were giving place gradually to the informal andpersonal use of books. Among many p
. Old English libraries; the making, collection and use of books during the middle ages. books are something much less than life: there is the open air,—the meadows bright with flowers,—the melody of birds,— . . Whan that the month of MayIs comen, and that I hear the foules that the flowers ginnen for to springFarwel my book. . .^ § HI By the end of the fourteenth century we find signsthat books more often formed a part of well-to-do house-holds, and that the formal reading and reciting entertain-ments were giving place gradually to the informal andpersonal use of books. Among many pieces of evidencethat this was so, Chaucer himself furnishes us with two ofthe best, one in the Wife of Baths Tale, and the other inhis Troilus and Criseide. The Wife took for her fifthhusband, God his soule blesse, a clerk of Oxenford— He was, I trowe, a twenty winter old,And I was fourty, if I shal seye sooth. Joly Jankin, as the clerk was called, Hadde a book that gladly, night and his desport he wolde rede alway. Legend of Good Women, prol. 3off. PI. A TE XXX. CARMELITE IN HIS STUDY END OF THE MANUSCRIPT PERIOD 185 He cleped [called] it Valerie and Theofraste,*At whiche book he lough alwey ful faste. And every night and day was his custume,When he had leyser and vacaciounFrom other worldly occupacioun,To reden on this book of wikked wyves. And having quickly taken measure of the Wifes character,he could not refrain from reading to her stories whichseemed to contain a lesson and to point a moral for lost patience, and was beten for a book, pardee. Up-on a night Jankin, that was our syre,Redde on his book, as he sat by the fyre. And when his wife saw he would never fyne to readthis cursed book al night, all suddenly she pluckedthree leaves out of it, right as he radde, and withher fist so took him on the cheek that he fell bakwardadoun in the fire. Springing up like a mad lion hesmote her on the head with his fist, and she lay upon thefloor as she wer
Size: 1504px × 1662px
Photo credit: © The Reading Room / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade19, booksubjectlibraries, bookyear1912
