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

This volume presents the first scholarly edition of a little-known fifteenth-century translation of William Twiti‘s Anglo-Norman prose treatise on hunting, ‘L ‘art de venerie‘, the earliest manual on the sport to be composed in England. The text in question, extant in a single manuscript held in a private collection in Ashton-under-Lyne, is far superior to the only other Middle English translation of Twiti‘s treatise that has hitherto been known to scholars: the amplified, but debased and at times incoherent, version found in BL, MS Cotton Vespasian B XII; it is also a far more accurate rendition of Twiti‘s Anglo-Norman original than the much altered redaction known as ‘The Craft of Venery‘, a text that has recently become confused with Twiti‘s treatise. Former editors of Twiti‘s work, such as Gunnar Tilander and Bror Danielsson, were unaware of the existence of the Ashton translation, and therefore founded their editions on the Cottonian text or ‘The Craft of Venery‘, both of which are problematic in a number of ways. In this volume, the Ashton translation is printed opposite a parallel Anglo-French text edited from Gonville and Caius College MS 424/448, and is followed by freshly corrected editions of the amplified Cottonian text and ‘The Craft of Venery‘. All three texts are provided with their own comprehensive notes, complemented by an integrated glossary that improves on many definitions currently in the ‘Oxford English Dictionary‘ and the ‘Middle English Dictionary‘.