ABSTRACT
The English School has certainly been both influential and prolific in the new field of manuscript research in recent years. In addition, over the past two decades, a wealth of markworthy studies that may be classified in the same field have been published in France, Italy, Ireland, Scandinavia, Japan, and China, to name but a few. Simultaneously with the research into English literary history, or following on from it, scholars in many countries have turned their attention to handwritten transmission in the centuries following the advent of movable-type technology. The focuses and subjects of study have varied from country to country and scholar to scholar, but the collective conclusion of their work is that the written culture of the early modern and modern era was not confined purely to print and its products. A range of studies has thus revealed the importance of the handwritten medium alongside the growing print culture and the differing dynamics of the two media. In simple terms, each country or cultural region may be said to have specialized in a certain field of research on latter-day manuscript research. The English School has, as discussed earlier, long focused on the transmission of poetry of the Renaissance era in England-the leading poets and the book culture of the English upper classes-while women’s manuscript transmission has also been prominent, as mentioned earlier. This chapter explores developments outside the English-speaking world and highlights the special characteristics of manuscript research in different places around the world.
