Reading for the End: Prescriptive Writing and the Practice of Genre.

Description: Studies a late medieval manuscript, San Marino, Huntington Library, HM 144 (c. 1500), which is a compilation of works chosen for their devotional and/or ethical content. Uses Mel to show how the scribe—by omitting portions of a text and interpolating Latin proverbs and maxims in a larger script, which the Middle English then comments on—directs readers from narrative to ethical emphasis, and preserves a simpler version of the narrative framework.