A Network of Literary Texts
[1] 500-year-old prayer roll sheds new light on Christian devotion in medieval England, Dustin Manduffie, October 25, 2021, https://www.courthousenews.com/500-year-old-prayer-roll-sheds-new-light-on-christian-devotion-in-medieval-england/ .
[2] Networks, Crowds, and Markets, by David Easley and Jon Kleinberg, Cambridge Press, 2010
[3] William’s Vision of Piers Plowman, William Langland, edit. Ben Byram-Wigfield, https://www.ancientgroove.co.uk/books/Piers_Plowman.pdf
Dustin Manduffie of the Courthouse News Service reported on October 25 of this year that “[a] prayer roll from around the time of King Henry VIII [was rediscovered and] has provided researchers with new details about religious rituals in England and a fabled monastery that now stands in ruins” (Manduffie). “The Bromholm Prayer Roll,” as it has been named, likely derives its name from the priory the text refers to; but the Prayer Roll also refers to literary texts such as William Langland’s Piers Plowman and Chaucer’s Reeve’s Tale (Manduffie).
From a networks perspective, I believe that the relationship of the Bromholm Prayer Roll to these texts and to the priory may be thought of as one link of a large “directed graph,” where the Prayer Roll points to other texts (Easley & Kleinberg, ch. 13, p.336). I believe it is important to consider it this way because it refers back to the “long history” of “information networks” (Easley & Kleinberg, ch. 13, p.333). To demonstrate the validity of my analogy, I shall use the example of Piers Plowman. The text, for example, refers to the Old and New Testament: in the critical apparatus, the editor, Ben Byram-Wigfield notes that “I perceived of the power that Peter had to keep;
To bind and unbind, as the Book telleth” refers to Matthew 16:9; furthermore, Byram-Wigfield notes that the line “That witnesseth Holy Writ, whoso will it read: Vae terrae ubi puer rex est!” is a direct quotation from Ecclesiastes and also refers to the fact that Richard II became king in his childhood (Langland & Bryam-Wigfield, p. 7, 10). These references may be thought of as part of the greater network that these texts function in.