Poetic Exchanges and Scribal Agency in Early Modern Manuscript Culture

Scholarship on manuscript culture often privileges textual fluidity and scribal agency. However, a casual attitude toward texts and authorship was not universal in manuscript transmission. This essay focuses on BL, Harley MS 7392(2), which is representative of the type of miscellany compiled and circulated in learned institutions where poetry was highly valued and exchanging it helped to cultivate communal identities. The copying habits and attribution practices of its compiler reveal a concern for the integrity of the text and an interest in the question of authorship. This essay argues that, at times, copyists attempted to preserve more "fixed" forms that accorded with the wishes of authors, a feature that has been associated with print culture.