A Middle English Grosseteste: The Seven Liberal Arts

The Middle English treatise The Seven Liberal Arts incorporates a significant portion of Grosseteste’s treatises On the Liberal Arts and On the Generation of Sounds. It was composed in two phases with its initial version possibly in the first two decades of the fifteenth century; the later treatise survives, with additions to the original, in a single manuscript from the late 1450s and 1460s. While the current volume does not offer a comprehensive or considered history of the reception of Grosseteste’s thought, a consideration of The Seven Liberal Arts adds fascinating layers to the interpretation both of Grosseteste’s treatises on their own terms, and also to the exploration of his ideas in later years. In philological terms the Middle English translator seems to be using a Latin copy of Grosseteste’s works which no longer survives. This helped in the establishment of difficult readings in On the Liberal Arts in particular. In intellectual terms the ways in which the Middle English translator extracts and situates Grosseteste’s texts provides additional grounds for the elucidation of his thought.