Javier Calle Martín
Dept. de Filología Inglesa, Francesa y Alemana
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
Universidad de Málaga
Campus de Teatinos s/n, Málaga 29071
Telephone number: 952-131372 952-131786
Fax number: 952-131843
e-mail address: jcalle@uma.es

The Dating of Middle English Manuscripts: The Case of MS Egerton 2622

Traditionally, the dating of Middle English manuscripts has turned out to be a very complicate task given the striking scarcety of information that manuscripts themselves display concerning their own chronological composition. Editors, however, have made a great effort to provide their approximate date of composition, sometimes achieving a very high level of proficiency. But, unfortunately, in some other cases, their hypothesis has proven to be highly unsuccessful, as in the case of MS. Egerton 2622 titled The Crafte of Nombrynge. Robert Steel undertook its edition for the EETS in the year 1922, assuming that it was a fifteenth century manuscript, written approximately in 1425. However, our own research, based on the morphological analysis of the text, offers us faithful grounds to suppose that Steel's dating is mistaken. In this paper, therefore, we aim to provide a systematic description of all those morphological clues which have finally led us to consider it as a truly Middle English manuscript, ascertaining its composition earlier in time.