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Full Description
Unlike books familiar to us from print culture, every medieval book is unique, the product of individual circumstances of planning, execution, and history. This is a fundamental difficulty for study, particularly for those beginning the investigation of texts in manuscript. There are two conventional ways of approaching this difficulty: explaining the series of processes by which a manuscript book is constructed and explaining how to construct a professional description of a manuscript book. Neither addresses a problem fundamental for beginners: what happens when a librarian presents you with a manuscript? How should you proceed? Fundamentally, this is a problem of visual examination, and taking its procedure from the grand M. R. James and M. B. Parkes, this book attempts to stimulate the visual and experiential. It attempts, in a heavily exemplified account, to explain what might be there in a manuscript to perceive and what it might mean. The argument follows a process of examination that begins with the physical bulk of what's in front of you (and its cover, or binding) and ends with traces of the book's history.
Contents
Preface
What's in
front of you? What's its shape?
How big is
it?
The closed
book: what do you see first?
Opening the
book: what's it made of?
Membrane
Paper
Where's the
first leaf?
What does
the first leaf look like?
How come it
looks so neat?
How does
the scribe write?
What texts
does it contain?
How's it
been put together?
Are there
other discontinuities?
Where's it
been all this time?
Looking at Cambridge, Queens'
College, MS 10
