Harley 2253: A Transgender Manuscript

Abstract

London, British Library MS Harley 2253, completed circa 1330–1340, collects an extraordinary range of texts in Anglo-Norman, Middle English, and Latin. This extraordinary artifact of medieval English literary culture constructs itself as a transgender codex at every scale: the scale of the whole compilation, that combines and crosses over (trans-) genres, the scale of individual quires, and at the level of individual texts and passages of texts. This book is trans and tells its readers that it is trans. I make this argument through readings of key vernacular texts in the manuscript, with reference to codicological features. The monastic 'Vitas patrum' establishes the book’s concern with the institution of sexual difference by language – or, to put it another way, it uses grammatical gender to organise thinking about sexuality. 'The Life of Saint Marin·e' provides an unruly twist on this usage, by destabilising gender’s straightforward reference to the male/female binary. In the light of this hagiography, it becomes apparent that the love-lyrics that surround it in the seventh quire frequently undermine the very male/female binary they claim to establish. These lyrics also bring the destabilisation of gender reference to bear on sexual organs, an idea that is taken remarkably far by 'Les trois dames qui troverent un vit', in which a disembodied penis becomes a playful object of reinterpretation by a feminine community. This category of the trans sex organ gains a codicological capaciousness with 'Quant fu en ma juvente', which draws attention to the ways the book and its pages can be desired and penetrated. While that religious lyric constitutes the hole as an object of desire, the 'Chevaler qui fist les cons parler' makes the hole speak, and figures the manuscript itself as a sexually indeterminate, speaking sex organ.