"THE STORIE OF ASNETH": A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY COMMISSION AND THE MYSTERY OF ITS EPILOGUE

Field: Arts and Humanities (Social Sciences)

The Storie of Asneth is a fifteenth-century poem, written in heavily alliterating rhyme royal stanzas, which retells the apocryphal story of how Joseph, son of Jacob, came to marry the Egyptian Asneth and have children with her: events that are briefly mentioned in Genesis 41, verses 45 and 50. The story was little known in England, and the fifteenth century might seem a surprising time for an English version of a biblical apocryphon to be written. However, in the prologue to the poem the narrator explains that he translated it from Latin at the request of a lady:As I on hilly halkes logged me late,Biside ny of a Ladi sone was I war;La Bele me desired in Englysh to translateThe Latyn of that lady, Asneth Putifar. (lines 1-4)1After some demurral, as he protests his poor abilities, he agrees to take on the translation, following his Lady's advice:'That servant ys not to blame, but fully excused,That meketh hym to his maystresse, and doth as he can.' (lines 23 f.)And the prologue ends with him addressing the Lady:And yf ye fynde fautes, grave hem with yowr glose,I pray yow thus, my maystresse, of yowre good grace, (lines 3if.)That final direct address suggests that the prologue is a fictionalized version of a real relationship between the poet and the Lady whom he serves.2 This article will explore why the Storie might have been commissioned in the fifteenth century, and consider its place in contemporary religious and literary cultures. I will argue that, although Russell A. Peck's inclusion of the Storie in a collection of Middle English biblical poetry is not inappropriate, the Storie has more features in common with contemporary saints' lives, while meeting a largely unmet demand for a religious story that would resonate better with secular, married women than tales of virgin martyrs. And, although at this distance it is probably impossible to identify its original patron, I will argue that its prologue, its semi-detached epilogue, and certain details of the poem proper show that its original meaning was closely bound up with that patron's identity. By proposing one candidate for the role I will explore how the poem might have reflected her values, aspirations, and religious tastes. Along the way, I hope to correct some misconceptions in the existing scholarship about the poem's precise source and its presentation in MS Ellesmere 26. A. 13.IThe story of Joseph andAseneth first appeared some time between the first century bc and the second century AD.3 Christoph Burchard has shown that - despite the claims of its nineteenth-century editor Batiffol - the text is most likely to have been composed in Greek by a Jewish author for a Jewish audience, probably in Egypt. It circulated widely and was translated into other languages, and its popularity in the twelfth century may have prompted the making of two Latin translations before 1200.4 Burchard proposes that one version, which he designates Li, may have been composed at Christ Church, Canterbury, and shows that the manuscripts containing this text were all copied in England between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries.5 The story was probably best known in late medieval England through Vincent of Beauvais's abbreviated version in his Speculum historiale (c.i 26o).6 But it was relatively obscure: the only reference to Aseneth in Middle English outside The Storie of Asneth is in Lydgate's poem 'To Mary, the Queen of Heaven', where he mentions Assenek of Egypt, of beute pereles' (line jj).7 The Storie does not use Vincent's version as a source, as R. A. Dwyer has demonstrated, but a few verbal details reveal that it derives from a Latin text - probably a full length Li text.8 (Peck suggests that Cambridge, Corpus Christi College, MS 424 could have been the specific source, but there is little evidence to support this, and there must also be doubt over the only alternative he discusses, CCCC MS 288. …