Romance, affect, and ethical thinking in a fifteenth-century household book: Chetham’s Library, MS 8009.

Abstract

Manchester, Chetham’s Library, MS 8009 is a late fifteenth-century London household book containing a diverse range of works, including saints lives, ballads, prayers, husbandry texts, and romances. This essay looks to Chetham MS 8009 as an artefact of vernacular literary consumption in the fifteenth century, and as a representative witness to horizons of literary knowledge in the period. In using this manuscript to trace the affective potential of Middle English romance, this piece considers how emotions are linked to the various forms of ethical thinking that such miscellanies might activate.