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Deciphering the Brut: Lambeth Palace MS 6 and the Perils of Transmission
- Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 3, Number 2, Fall 2014
- pp. 257-283
- 10.1353/dph.2014.0012
- Article
- Additional Information
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Art is some Brut manuscripts helped shape readers’ understanding of history. Whereas the Dartmouth Brut’s single painted border fulfills an “authorizing” function common in Middle English Prose Brut manuscripts, the seventy miniatures painted by the Master of Edward IV in Lambeth Palace Library MS 6 actually interpret history. This article transcribes instructions to the artist that survive on nine folios of Lambeth 6 and addresses how the manuscript planner and the artist negotiated differences of both medium (text, image) and language (English, French). The planner instructed that pictures match text; the artist’s interpretations and iconography yielded sometimes unexpected historical nuances.