Re Using Manuscripts In Late Medieval England

A fresh appraisal of late medieval manuscript culture in England, examining the ways in which people sustained older books, exploring the practices and processes by which manuscripts were crafted, mended, protected, marked, gifted and shared. During the "long fifteenth century" (here, 1375-1530), the demand for books in England flourished. The fast-developing book trade produced them in great quantity. Fragments of manuscripts were often repurposed, as flyleaves and other components such as palimpsests; and alongside the creation of new books, medieval manuscripts were also repaired, recycled and re-used. This monograph examines the ways in which people sustained older books, exploring the practices and processes by which manuscripts were crafted, mended, protected, marked, gifted and shared. Drawing on the codicological evidence gathered from an extensive survey of extant manuscript collections, in conjunction with historical accounts, recipes and literary texts, it presents detailed case studies exploring parchment production and recycling, the re-use of margins, and second-hand exchanges of books. Its engagement with the evidence in - and inscribed on - surviving books enables a fresh appraisal of late medieval manuscript culture in England, looking at how people went about re-using books, and arguing that over the course of this period, books were made, used and re-used in a myriad of sustainable ways.

A fresh appraisal of late medieval manuscript culture in England, examining the ways in which people sustained older books, exploring the practices and processes by which manuscripts were crafted, mended, protected, marked, gifted and shared.

"One of the most important developments in medieval English literary studies since the 1980s has been the growth of manuscript studies. The thirteen essays in this volume discuss aspects of the design and distribution of manuscripts in late medieval England, focusing particularly on vernacular manuscripts of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries." "This binary focus on secular and devotional texts illuminates shared networks of production and dissemination, and considerably expands current knowledge of regional and metropolitan book production in the period before printing."--BOOK JACKET.

Essays exploring the great religious and devotional works of the Middle Ages in their manuscript and other contexts.

This book situates the medieval manuscript within its cultural contexts, with chapters by experts in bibliographical and theoretical approaches to manuscript study.

This volume consists of sixteen important studies, all dealing with manuscripts produced in medieval England. The first group reflects the meticulous analysis of liturgical manuscripts that characterize the honorand's career. These treat both early and late medieval liturgical concerns and include liturgy for Gilbertine lay brothers, a lost treatise by Amalarius, the re-working of an Anglo-Saxon Gospel book; the music for the Vigil of St. Thomas Becket; and the continuity of Processions from Old Sarum to Salisbury Cathedral. Two studies examine the liturgies having to do with saints in Sarum missals and breviaries. The second, historical, section of this volume includes three studies on Anglo-Saxon manuscripts. Six other analyses concern the high and later Middle Ages.

This volume elucidates the craft practices, cultural conventions and literary attitudes of scribes of late medieval English manuscripts to students and researchers. Introducing misunderstood and overlooked aspects of these manuscripts, it convincingly challenges current understandings of late medieval literary and material culture.

The works of four major fifteenth-century writers re-examined, showing their innovative reconceptualization of Middle English authorship and the manuscript book.

This volume explores the richness of Middle English and Latin material in prose and verse, concerning the preaching of the word of God in late medieval England. The focus of this volume, on Middle English and Latin material in prose and verse, concerns the preaching of the word of God in an expansive sense in late medieval England. This collection of essays explores the multiple ways in which the sermon in England in the later Middle Ages both influenced and was influenced by other devotional and didactic material, both implicitly and explicitly. The essays pay special attention to examples of textual complexity in the sermon as manifested in the manuscript and early printed traditions. By examining sermon technique and methodology contributors present related material that either travels alongside sermons or shares the same preaching or teaching milieu.

Essays on book history, manuscripts and reading during a period of considerable change. The production, transmission, and reception of texts from England and beyond during the late medieval and early renaissance periods are the focus of this volume. Chapters consider the archives and the material contexts in which texts were produced, read, and re-read; the history of specific manuscripts and early printed books; and some of the continuities and changes in literary and book production, dissemination, and reception in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Responding to Professor Julia Boffey's pioneering work on medieval and early Tudor material and literary culture, they cover a range of genres - from practical texts written in Latin to works of Middle English poetryand prose, both secular and religious - and examine an assortment of different reading contexts: lay, devotional, local, regional, and national. TAMARA ATKIN is Senior Lecturer in Late Medieval and Early RenaissanceLiterature, and JACLYN RAJSIC is Lecturer in Medieval Literature, at the School of English and Drama, Queen Mary University of London. Contributors: Laura Ashe, Priscilla Bawcutt, Martin Camargo, Margaret Connolly, Robert R. Edwards, A.S.G. Edwards, Susanna Fein, Joel Grossman, Alfred Hiatt, Pamela M. King, Matthew Payne, Derek Pearsall, Corinne Saunders, Barry Windeatt, R.F. Yeager.