Nigel of Longchamp, Speculum Stultorum

An edition and English translation of the Speculum Stultorum (The Mirror for Fools), a long Latin beast epic written near the end of the twelfth century by a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury. This was one of the most popular works of the Middle Ages, a favourite of Chaucer, Gower, and Henryson, and was copied for over three centuries, with a circulation extending as far as eastern Europe. It is not only a milestone in the history of medieval beast epic, but a rich source of information about contemporary life and events at Canterbury. The work is dedicated to William Longchamp, who was Richard I's chancellor, and the significance of this fact is shown.

This is a highly entertaining narrative about a donkey who longs to have a longer tail and journeys to Salerno to buy some (imaginary) medicines which will provide it. When his medicines are destroyed in an accident, he decides to become learned instead, and goes off to study at the university of Paris for seven years, but can still say only 'heehaw'. Interwoven into this simple narrative are other stories and long rhetorical set-pieces which satirise the distorted values of contemporary religious life or the corruption of the papal curia, and describe the qualities of an ideal bishop (which the donkey hopes to become).

Jill Mann

Jill Mann (BA Oxford, PhD Cambridge) was a Research Fellow at Clare Hall, Cambridge, and began her teaching career in 1971 at the University of Kent at Canterbury. In 1972 she took up a Fellowship at Girton College, Cambridge, where she subsequently became an Assistant Lecturer, Lecturer, and finally Professor of Medieval and Renaissance English. In 1999 she moved to an endowed chair at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. She retired in 2004. She is a Fellow of the British Academy, and an Honorary Fellow of St Anne's College, Oxford. She has published extensively on Chaucer and other Middle English authors, on medieval Latin literature, and on medieval French and Italian.

Preface
Sigla
Earlier Editions and Translations of the Speculum Stultorum
This Edition: Editorial Conventions
Headings
Translation and Notes
INTRODUCTION
Text and Context
The Poem
The Date
The Motive
The Manuscripts
Textual Transmission: The Manuscript Groups
Nigel's Metre and Style
SPECULUM STULTORUM
APPENDICES
APPENDIX A: The Interpolation on the Mendicant Friars
APPENDIX B: Epistola ad Willelmum in Vienna 3467
APPENDIX C: Borrowings from the Speculum Stultorum in Gower's Vox Clamantis
APPENDIX D: England and Sicily
MANUSCRIPT DESCRIPTIONS