Introducing English Medieval Book History - (Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies) by Ralph Hanna (Paperback)
About this item
Highlights
- This book offers an introduction to medieval English book-history through a sequence of exemplary analyses of commonplace book-historical problems.
- About the Author: Ralph Hanna is Professor Emeritus of Palaeography at the University of Oxford and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of California, Riverside.
- 240 Pages
- History, Europe
- Series Name: Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies
Description
About the Book
This book is the first to address medieval book history for graduate students of medieval English literature. Ralph Hanna presents a history of the English medieval book through a series of examples centred on carefully chosen texts and their physical and cultural surrounds.Book Synopsis
This book offers an introduction to medieval English book-history through a sequence of exemplary analyses of commonplace book-historical problems. Rather than focus on bibliographical particulars, the volume considers a variety of ways in which scholars use manuscripts to discuss book culture, and it provides a wide-ranging introductory bibliography to aid in the study. All the essays try to suggest how the study of surviving medieval books might be useful in considering medieval literary culture more generally. Subjects covered include authorship, genre, discontinuous production, scribal individuality and community, the history of libraries and the history of book provenance.Review Quotes
'This handsome volume teaches far more than the facts of book history, manuscript culture, and Middle English Literature. It is a model of how to sleuth, how to think critically, how to enter into a detective mindset 'in which every implicit assumption of knowledge [is] teased out, queried and productively qualified.'
Archiv für das Studium der neueren Sprachen und Literaturen
'This is a first-rate book from a scholar at the forefront of palaeographical and bibliographical study; it will have a wide readership. It will be an excellent partner for the recent Owen-Crocker volume 'Working with Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts.'
Series Editors
Reviews
'Scholarship in this work is superb. Quotations, translations, bibliography are spot on. Professor Hanna's lifetime of intelligent work in the field glows at all points of discussion.'
MS referee
About the Author
Ralph Hanna is Professor Emeritus of Palaeography at the University of Oxford and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of the University of California, Riverside. He has published on Langland, literary culture and medieval manuscripts, including The English MS of Richard Rolle (University of Exeter Press, 2010 [now published by Liverpool University Press]).
