“Romanz reding on the bok”: ‘reauralising’ romances from later medieval English household manuscripts

Reading aloud has long been accepted as a dominant mode of medieval textual reception following detailed studies on medieval orality and ‘aurality’ (Coleman, Vitz, Putter). However, the further implications of this aurality have received little scholarly attention: theorising about performance is no substitute for the experience of reading aloud and hearing texts read. Using a selection of Middle English romances found in a range of fifteenth-century ‘household manuscripts’, I combine palaeographical analysis, archaeology and practical performance experimentation to investigate the original reading practices associated with these texts. I stage simulations of medieval reading practices in two historic buildings – Gainsborough Old Hall, in Lincolnshire and Barley Hall in York - to experientially examine how modern readers respond to these texts when ‘reauralised’ and returned to surviving late-medieval domestic spaces. This thesis uniquely combines first-person methodology from performance studies, experimental archaeology, reenactment and heritage performance with more traditional approaches from textual and manuscript analysis, allowing for a more nuanced and materially-conscious study that takes into account the lived experience of medieval readers. In reauralising texts directly from the manuscript page, I explore the practical considerations and experiences of reading aloud today and historically, giving new resonances to words, spaces and manuscript features.