The Middle English ‘Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy’

A Parallel-Text Edition. Edited from London, British Library, MS Sloane 2453 with a Parallel Text from New York, Columbia University, MS Plimpton 260

edited by Carrie Griffin

Book cover: The Middle English ‘Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy’

Extent: 150 pages

Publisher: Universitätsverlag Winter

Subjects: Medieval Studies, Philosophy

Series: Middle English Texts

Series volume number: 47

Language: English

Paperback (Published)

(April 2013)

ISBN: 9783825361747

6.06 x 9.21 inches

Price: $55.00

In stock

Add to cart

Synopsis
Contributing Authors

The ‘Wise Book’ never circulated in printed form; however, its surviving manuscript witnesses are material testament to the wide variety of readers and audiences who copied, annotated, abridged, and used the information contained in it. The variety of its material formats extends the significance of the ‘Wise Book’ beyond its contribution to the history of ideas; as such, the manuscripts manifest considerable variation of form, materiality, and content, and bear witness to a wide and heterogeneous public for the ‘Wise Book’ and its theories. This is the first edition of the text, and includes an introduction, commentary, appendices, and a glossary.

The ‘Wise Book of Philosophy and Astronomy’, surviving in thirty-four manuscripts ranging in date from c. 1380 to c. 1600, was one of the most widely-copied, consistently read, and arguably influential treatises of its kind in the vernacular in the medieval and early modern periods in Britain. This pseudo-Aristotelian text, with its roots in the ‘Secreta secretorum’ tradition, reveals contemporary, widely held views regarding several strands of medieval thought: philosophy, astronomy/astrology, physiognomy, ‘computus’, and theology. The ‘Wise Book’ never circulated in printed form; however, its surviving manuscript witnesses are material testament to the wide variety of readers and audiences who copied, annotated, abridged, and used the information contained in it. The variety of its material formats extends the significance of the ‘Wise Book’ beyond its contribution to the history of ideas; as such, the manuscripts manifest considerable variation of form, materiality, and content, and bear witness to a wide and heterogeneous public for the ‘Wise Book’ and its theories. This is the first edition of the text, and includes an introduction, commentary, appendices, and a glossary.

Edited by Carrie Griffin

Other Titles in this Series

A Middle English Version of the ‘Circa Instans’

Edited from Cambridge, CUL, MS Ee.1.13

Volume 59

edited by Edurne Garrido-Anes

The Middle English ‘Liber Aureus and Gospel of Nicodemus’

Edited from London, British Library, MS Egerton 2658

Volume 48

edited by William Marx

Three Sermons for ‘Nova Festa’, together with the ‘Hamus Caritatis’

Edited from Caxton's 1491 Edition of John Mirk's 'Festial'

Volume 37

edited by Susan Powell

A Christian Mannes Bileeve

Edited from Washington, Library of Congress, Rare Book and Special Collections, MS 4

Volume 60

edited by Nicole D. Smith

Exornatorium Curatorum

Edited from Wynkyn de Worde's Text in Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, SP. 335.2

Volume 49

edited by Niamh Pattwell

Four Middle English Sermons

Volume 33

revised by Veronica O'Mara

The Fifteen Oes and Other Prayers

Edited from the Text Published by William Caxton (1491)

Volume 61

edited by Alexandra Barratt and Susan Powell

Middle English Text of ‘Caxton’s Ovid’, Book I

Edited from Cambridge, Magdalene College, Old Library, MS F.4.34 with a Parallel Text of The 'Ovide moralise en prose II'. Edited from Paris, Bibliotheque Nationale, MS fonds francais 137

Volume 43

Edited by Diana Rumrich

The Middle English ‘Mirror’

Sermons from Advent to Sexagesima

Volume 34

revised by Margaret Connolly and Thomas G Duncan

The Middle English ‘Mirror’

Sermons from Quinquagesima to Pentecost

Volume 62

edited by Margaret Connolly and Thomas G Duncan

A Middle English Statute-Book Part I

'Statuta Antiqua'. Edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS B 520

Volume 44

edited by Claire Fennell

John Trevisa’s Translation of the ‘Polychronicon’ of Ranulph Higden, Book VI

Volume 35

revised by Ronald Waldron

A Late-Medieval History of the Ancient and Biblical World / Volume I

The Text

Volume 63

edited by Cosima Clara Gillhammer

The Middle English Glossed Prose Psalter, Part 1

Volume 45

edited by Robert Ray Black and Raymond St-Jacques

La Estorie del Evangelie

Volume 30

revised by Celia Millward

Pepysian Meditations on the Passion of Christ

Edited from Cambridge, Magdalene College, MS Pepys 2125

Volume 56

edited by Mayumi Taguchi and Yoko Iyeiri

The Middle English Glossed Prose Psalter, Part 2

Volume 46

edited by Robert Ray Black and Raymond St-Jacques

The Middle English ‘Medicines for Horses’

Edited from the Manuscript formerly at Kensington Palace, HRH Duke of Gloucester MS s.n. (olim York House MS 45)

Volume 69

Edited by Kelly-Anne Gilbertson

A Middle English Statute-Book

Part II: Tracts. Edited from Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson MS B 520

Volume 57

edited by Claire Fennell

The Middle English Version of William of Saliceto’s ‘Anatomia’

A Critical Edition. Based on Cambridge, Trinity College MS R. 14.41 with a Parallel Text of The Medieval Latin 'Anatomia'

Volume 39

edited by Christian Heimerl

A Late-Medieval History of the Ancient and Biblical World / Volume II

Introduction, Commentary, Glossary, and Bibliography

Volume 64

edited by Cosima Clara Gillhammer

A Middle English Medical Remedy Book

Edited from Glasgow University Library MS Hunter 185

Volume 50

by Francisco Alonso Almeida

The Middle English ‘Kynge Appolyn of Thyre’

Translated by Robert Copland. Edited from the Text published by Wynkyn de Worde (1510). With a Parallel Text of The Medieval French 'La cronicque et hystoire de Appollin, roy de Thir'

Volume 58

edited by Stephen Morrison and Jean-Jacques Vincensini

The Middle English Text of ‘The Art of Hunting’ by William Twiti

Edited from an Uncatalogued Manuscript in a Private Collection, Ashton-under Lyne, with a Parallel Text of The Anglo Norman 'L'Art de Venerie' by William Twiti. Edited from Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 424/448

Volume 40

edited by David Scott-Macnab

‘An Epistle of Noble Poetrye

' A Middle English Translation of Christine de Pizan's 'Epistre d'Othea': Edited from London, British Library, MS Harley 838

Volume 65

edited by Richard J. Moll, Anne Schuurman and Emily Pez

John Page’s ‘The Siege of Rouen’

Edited from London, British Library MS Egerton 1995

Volume 51

edited by Joanna Bellis

Þe Instytucyonys and Specyal Dedys of Relygyows Carmelitys

Edited from London, Lambeth Palace, MS 192

Volume 54

edited by Valerie Edden

John Lydgate’s ‘Lives of SS Edmund & Fremund’ and the ‘Extra Miracles of St Edmund’

Edited from British Library MS Harley 2278 and Bodleian Library MS Ashmole 46

Volume 41

edited by Anthony Bale and A.S.G. Edwards

The Syon Pardon Treatise

Edited from London, British Library, MS Harley 2321

Volume 66

by Kari Anne Rand

On Famous Women

The Middle English Translation of Boccaccio's 'De Mulieribus Claris'

Volume 52

edited by Janet Cowen

Similar Books

Bias and the Middle Way

How to stop Absolutizing our Conditioned Assumptions

By (author) Robert M. Ellis

Charting the Future of Historical Humanities

Volume 16

edited by Pieter d'Hoine, Daria Kohler and Wim Decock

Chuck, Appearance and Reality

Everyday Philosophy in a TV Spy Comedy

By (author) Kelly Dean Jolley

Coins and Money in the Middle Ages

Studies in Honor of Alan Stahl

Volume 50

Edited by Merle Eisenberg Edited by Lee Mordechai Edited by David Yoon

Defining Comedy

Reflections on the Usual Suspects

By (author) David Ellis

Episcopal Power and Patronage in Medieval Europe, 998-1503

Volume 45

edited by Evan Gatti and Angelo Silvestri

Fairy Encounters in Medieval England

Landscape, Folklore and the Supernatural

By (author) Jeremy Harte

Fifty Years of Insight

Bernard Lonergan's Contribution to Theology and Philosophy

edited by Neil Ormerod, Robin Koning and David Braithwaite

Funeral Rites of the Yotvingians

Excavations from a Cemetery in North-eastern Poland

Volume 14

By (author) Ludwika Jończyk

Going through Hell

A Guide to Dante’s Inferno for the Intrepid Traveller

By (author) Robert-Louis Abrahamson

Greatest Debate

The 1409 Arts Quodlibet at the University of Prague

Volume 1

Edited by Luigi Campi Edited by Ota Pavlíček

Innovation and Medieval Communities

The Circulation of Ideas and Practices in and out of the Town (1200-1500)

Volume 63

Edited by Elodie Lecuppre-Desjardin Edited by Nils Bock Edited by Élodie Lecuppre-Desjardin

Lutheran Middle Ages

The Survival of Medieval Art in Lutheran Churches in Germany

By (author) Justin E. A. Kroesen By (author) Justin Kroesen

Medieval Yeghegis, Armenia

History, Archaeology, Society. Local Multiplicities and Global Connections of a Rural Centre on the Silk Road(s)

Edited by Zaroui Pogossian Edited by Michele Nucciotti

On Human Ambiguity

Writings on Religion and Subjectivity

By (author) Arne Grøn Edited by William Mathorne Edited by Bjarke Mørkøre Stigel Hansen

Pastoral Works

Priests, Books, and Compilatory Practices in the Carolingian Period

Volume 64

by Bastiaan Waagmeester

Paths to the Past

On the Conception of Medieval Architecture and Other Essays

Volume 13

by Wolfgang Schenkluhn

Power and Women in Southeast and Central Europe in Late Medieval and Early Modern Period (1300-1600)

Volume 10

Edited by Melina Rokai

Sextus Empiricus on Fallacies and Expert Knowledge

by Johanna Helene Schmitt

Speculative Cartographies

Material Ecopoetics and Weird Mappings

Volume 9

By (author) Grzegorz Czemiel

Tabule Resolute

The Central European Type of Alfonsine Tables

Volume 4

By (author) Petr Hadrava By (author) Alena Hadravová

The Gothic Cathedral in Cracow and the European Architecture Around the Year 1300

Volume 15

by Jakub Adamski and Piotr Pajor

The Occupatio by Odo of Cluny

Edition, Translation, and Commentary

Volume 18

By (author) Christopher A Jones By (author) Christopher A. Jones

The Old English Poet as Reader

Volume 7

by Daniel Thomas

The Venetian Dukes in Early- and High-Medieval Historical Texts: A Reader

A Reader

Edited and translated by Luigi Andrea Berto

Theologia modernorum

Research on Robert Holcot's Theological Questions

Volume 9

Edited by Pascale Bermon Edited by Christophe Grellard Edited by Pascale Bermon

Time, Space, and Narrative in Medieval Icelandic Literature

Volume 16

edited by Ben Allport and Alison Finlay

Transitive Media [Philosophy]

Think(er)ing Technologies in Real-Time

By (author) Wolfgang Ernst

Tributes to Elizabeth Sears

Activating the Eye and Mind

Volume 13

Edited by Achim Timmermann Edited by Heidi Gearhart

Women and Goddesses in Old Norse Mythology and Folklore

Volume 15

edited by Tommy Kuusela and Ingunn Asdisardottir

Women in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages

Studies from Western Europe and North Africa

Volume 44

Edited by Maijastina Kahlos Edited by Éric Fournier

Das unersetzbare Selbst

Der Mensch im Zeitalter der Kunstlichen Intelligenz

by Emil Angehrn

Hermeneutisches Wissen

Essays nach Gadamer

By (author) Tobias Keiling

Jan Schröder: Recht als Wissenschaft

Ein Kommentar

Edited by Marietta Auer Edited by Ralf Seinecke Edited by Stefan Vogenauer

Les Mondes du théâtre

Farces, sotties et autres spectacles XVe -XVIe siècles

By (author) Jelle Koopmans

Los oficios de los diplomas latinos de la Cataluna altomedieval

Estudio de las innovaciones lexicas: XI Premio Internacional de Tesis Doctorales Fundacion Ana Maria Aldama Roy de Estudios Latinos

Volume 106

by Carlos Prieto Espinosa

Natürliche Theologie

Beiträge zu ihrer Problemgeschichte und zur Frage ihrer gegenwärtigen Relevanz

Edited by Markus Höfner Edited by Matthias D. Wüthrich

Seiltanzer

Reflexionen uber eine Daseinsmetapher

by Gunnar Schmidt

Sitten zwischen Moralphilosophie und Politischer Okonomie am Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts

Mit einer zweisprachigen Edition von Ludwig Heinrich Jakobs Preisschrift Quelles sont les institutions les plus propres a fonder la morale d'un peuple

by Sonja Asal