The Findern Manuscript: A New Edition of the Unique Poems

The Findern Manuscript (Cambridge University Library, Ff.1.6): A New Edition of the Unique Poems is the first critical edition of the thirty-four unique and unattributed Middle English poems contained in Cambridge, University Library MS Ff.1.6. This collection of unique poems is significant for its size and thematic coherence, and for the insight it provides into regional literary culture, that of south Derbyshire, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The poems, mainly short lyric texts, but also the narrative poem, The Parliament of Love, two topical complaints, and a romance known as the ‘Alexander-Cassamus Fragment’, are significant for the evidence they provide for creative responses to the metropolitan literature of previous generations, especially to the works of Chaucer, Gower, Hoccleve and Lydgate. The poems explore a range of amatory, religious and philosophical themes in a variety of lyric forms and genres. Their anonymity and experimentation with lyric voice and style make them an important site for exploring the contribution of women, as well as men, to late medieval regional literary culture.