Author: Steven W. May Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198878001 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
English Renaissance Manuscript Culture: The Paper Revolution traces the development of a new type of scribal culture in England that emerged early in the fourteenth century. The main medieval writing surfaces of parchment and wax tablets were augmented by a writing medium that was both lasting and cheap enough to be expendable. Writing was transformed from a near monopoly of professional scribes employed by the upper class to a practice ordinary citizens could afford. Personal correspondence, business records, notebooks on all sorts of subjects, creative writing, and much more flourished at social levels where they had previously been excluded by the high cost of parchment. Steven W. May places literary manuscripts and in particular poetic anthologies in this larger scribal context, showing how its innovative features affected both authorship and readership. As this amateur scribal culture developed, the medieval professional culture expanded as well. Classes of documents formerly restricted to parchment often shifted over to paper, while entirely new classes of documents were added to the records of church and state as these institutions took advantage of relatively inexpensive paper. Paper stimulated original composition by making it possible to draft, revise, and rewrite works in this new, affordable medium. Amateur scribes were soon producing an enormous volume of manuscript works of all kinds--works they could afford to circulate in multiple copies. England's ever-increasing literate population developed an informal network that transmitted all kinds of texts from single sheets to book-length documents efficiently throughout the kingdom. The operation of restrictive coteries had little if any role in the mass circulation of manuscripts through this network. However, paper was cheap enough that manuscripts could also be readily disposed of (unlike expensive parchment). More than 90% of the output from this scribal tradition has been lost, a fact that tends to distort our understanding and interpretation of what has survived. May illustrates these conclusions with close analysis of representative manuscripts.
Author: Kathryn James Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300254350 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 146
Book Description
This richly illustrated book provides an essential introduction to the manuscript in early modern England. From birth to death, parish record to probate inventory, writing framed the lives of the early modern English. Offering a technical introduction to the handwriting of the period, case studies tracing the significance of manuscript to British cultural identity, and exercises to practice reading and transcription, the book opens the study of early modern English manuscript to a new generation of students and scholars.
Author: Michael Hattaway Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 1405106263 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 806
Book Description
This is a one volume, up-to-date collection of more than fifty wide-ranging essays which will inspire and guide students of the Renaissance and provide course leaders with a substantial and helpful frame of reference. Provides new perspectives on established texts. Orientates the new student, while providing advanced students with current and new directions. Pioneered by leading scholars. Occupies a unique niche in Renaissance studies. Illustrated with 12 single-page black and white prints.
Author: Brian Richardson Publisher: Cambridge University Press ISBN: 9781107425521 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Even after the arrival of printing in the fifteenth century, texts continued to be circulated within Italian society by means of manuscript. Scribal culture offered rapidity, flexibility and a sense of private, privileged communication. This book is a detailed treatment of the continuing use of scribal transmission in Renaissance Italy. Brian Richardson explores the uses of scribal culture within specific literary genres, its methods and its audiences. He also places it within the wider system of textual communication and of self-presentation, examining the relationships between manuscript and print and between manuscript and the spoken or sung performance of verse. An important contribution to a lively area of the history of the book, this study will be of interest both for the abundance of new material on the circulation of texts in Italy and as a model for how to study the cultures of manuscript and print in early modern Europe.
Author: Steven W. May Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198878028 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 289
Book Description
English Renaissance Manuscript Culture: The Paper Revolution traces the development of a new type of scribal culture in England that emerged early in the fourteenth century. The main medieval writing surfaces of parchment and wax tablets were augmented by a writing medium that was both lasting and cheap enough to be expendable. Writing was transformed from a near monopoly of professional scribes employed by the upper class to a practice ordinary citizens could afford. Personal correspondence, business records, notebooks on all sorts of subjects, creative writing, and much more flourished at social levels where they had previously been excluded by the high cost of parchment. Steven W. May places literary manuscripts and in particular poetic anthologies in this larger scribal context, showing how its innovative features affected both authorship and readership. As this amateur scribal culture developed, the medieval professional culture expanded as well. Classes of documents formerly restricted to parchment often shifted over to paper, while entirely new classes of documents were added to the records of church and state as these institutions took advantage of relatively inexpensive paper. Paper stimulated original composition by making it possible to draft, revise, and rewrite works in this new, affordable medium. Amateur scribes were soon producing an enormous volume of manuscript works of all kinds—works they could afford to circulate in multiple copies. England's ever-increasing literate population developed an informal network that transmitted all kinds of texts from single sheets to book-length documents efficiently throughout the kingdom. The operation of restrictive coteries had little if any role in the mass circulation of manuscripts through this network. However, paper was cheap enough that manuscripts could also be readily disposed of (unlike expensive parchment). More than 90% of the output from this scribal tradition has been lost, a fact that tends to distort our understanding and interpretation of what has survived. May illustrates these conclusions with close analysis of representative manuscripts.
Author: Erik Kwakkel Publisher: Leiden University Press ISBN: 9789087283025 Category : Books Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Though Latin dominated medieval written culture, vernacular traditions nonetheless started to develop in Europe in the eleventh century. This volume offers six essays devoted to the practices, habits, and preferences of scribes making manuscripts in their native tongue. Featuring French, Frisian, Icelandic, Italian, Middle High German, and Old English examples, these essays discuss the connectivity of books originating in the same linguistic space. Given that authors, translators, and readers advanced vernacular written culture through the production and consumption of texts, how did the scribes who copied them fit into this development?
Author: Arthur F. Marotti Publisher: Cornell University Press ISBN: 9780801482380 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 372
Book Description
The last of the literary genres to be incorporated into print culture, verse in the English Renaissance not only was published in anthologies, pamphlets, and folio editions, it was also circulated in manuscript. In this ground-breaking historical and cultural study of sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century lyric poetry, Marotti examines the interrelationship between the two systems of literary transmission and shows how in England manuscript and print publication together shaped the emerging institution of literature. Surveying a wide range of manuscript and print poetry of the period, Marotti outlines the different social and institutional contexts in which poems were collected and transmitted. He focuses on the two kinds of verse that were circulated more commonly in manuscript than in print--the obscene and the political--and he considers the contributions of scribes and compilers, particularly in composing "answer poetry" and other verse. Analyzing the process through which print gradually replaced manuscript as the standard medium for lyric verse, he identifies four crucial events in the history of publication in England: the appearances of Tottel's Miscellany ( (1557), Sir Philip Sidney's works in the 1590s, Ben Jonson's folio Workes (1616), and the posthumous editions of the poems of Donne and of Herbert (both 1633). Marotti also considers how certain material features of the book determined the reception of poetry, and he explores how poets attempted to establish their authority in print in relation to publishers, patrons, and readers.
Author: William W. E. Slights Publisher: University of Michigan Press ISBN: 9780472112296 Category : Antiques & Collectibles Languages : en Pages : 320
Book Description
A sideways look at books that sheds light on the activities of authors, printers, and readers during the English Renaissance
Author: Michael Hattaway Publisher: John Wiley & Sons ISBN: 0470998725 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 792
Book Description
This is a one volume, up-to-date collection of more than fifty wide-ranging essays which will inspire and guide students of the Renaissance and provide course leaders with a substantial and helpful frame of reference. Provides new perspectives on established texts. Orientates the new student, while providing advanced students with current and new directions. Pioneered by leading scholars. Occupies a unique niche in Renaissance studies. Illustrated with 12 single-page black and white prints.
Author: Erik Kwakkel Publisher: Leiden University Press ISBN: 9789087281823 Category : Books Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
This book unites six essays related to manuscript culture in Britain. The main emphasis is on the physical appearance of books. The essays highlight, in different ways, the tight relationship between the paleographical and codicological features of manuscripts and the culture in which the objects were produced and used. Extending their expertise to a broad audience interested in the medieval book, the contributors discuss various aspects of written culture, including the development of Insular scripts, book culture in Mercia, the layout of Anglo-Saxon charters, and the transition from Anglo-Saxon to Norman inspired script and book production.
Author: Steven W. May
Author: Kathryn James
Author: Michael Hattaway
Author: Brian Richardson
Author: Steven W. May
Author: Erik Kwakkel
Author: Arthur F. Marotti
Author: William W. E. Slights
Author: Michael Hattaway
Author: Erik Kwakkel