ABSTRACT
In the present collection of articles by Malcolm Parkes two overarching concerns emerge: the palaeography of manuscript books in relation to what Parkes has previously called the 'grammar of legibility'; and the importance of considering the circumstances in which medieval books were produced, copied and read. The individual studies discuss the handwriting of individual scribes, and the evidence script can provide of the circumstances of a book's production, the effect of punctuation and layout of text on the reader's interpretation of a work, and the provision and production of books for communities of readers, both clerical and academic. From a discussion of the scribe of the Hereford Mappa Mundi to a comprehensive study of book provision in the medieval University of Oxford, a wealth of information is conveyed in these articles, now conveniently accessible in one volume, about books and their histories by one of the most knowledgeable of manuscript scholars today.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part 1|110 pages
Scribes and Scripts
chapter 2|12 pages
Richard Frampton: A Commercial Scribe c.1390–c.1420
chapter 4|42 pages
Archaizing Hands in English Manuscripts
part 2|58 pages
Punctuation
chapter 5|14 pages
Latin Autograph Manuscripts: Orthography and Punctuation
chapter 6|14 pages
Punctuation and the Medieval History of Texts
chapter 7|14 pages
Medieval Punctuation and the Modern Editor
part 3|84 pages
Readers
chapter 9|22 pages
Rœdan, areccan, smeagan: how the Anglo-Saxons read
chapter 11|32 pages
Stephan Batman’s Manuscripts
part 4|112 pages
Book Provision