You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Contributors discuss early printed books and manuscripts between the 14th and 16th centuries under the section headings of: 'Imagined compilers and editors', 'Imagined patrons and collectors', Imagined readings and readers' and 'Beyond the book: verbal and visual cultures'.
This work represents an important contribution to the history of medieval books, providing full scholarly description and discussion of an otherwise very little known category of written artefact in quasi-book form, but one that the 60-odd identified examples suggest was relatively common. This volume will be of interest not only to medieval book-historians and codicologists but also to historians of medieval science and of the liturgy, and of medieval written culture and cultural practice more broadly. Although a large proportion of the volume takes the form of a catalogue, the information and explanatory material presented in the introduction to the catalogue as a whole and to each of the sections into which the catalogue is divided give the volume the coherence and value of a historical and codicological survey of this form of artefact, the kind of texts they contained, and how and by whom they were made and used. The way in which the catalogue is structured in chronological and thematic sections, each with their own introduction, also contributes to enhance this aspect of the volume.
This book provides a series of studies concerning unique medieval texts that can be defined as 'books of knowledge', such as medieval chronicles, bestiaries, or catechetic handbooks. Thus far, scholarship of intellectual history has focused on concepts of knowledge to describe a specific community, or to delimit intellectuals in society. However, the specific textual tool for the transmission of knowledge has been missing. Besides oral tradition, books and other written texts were the only sources of knowledge, and they were thus invaluable in efforts to receive or transfer knowledge. That is one reason why texts that proclaim to introduce a specific field of expertise or promise to present ...
For over three hunderd years, more Books of Hours were made than any other type of book, even the Bible. From c. 1225, when the first Books of Hours began to appear, to 1571, when during the Counter-Reformation Pope Pius V prohibited the use of all existing Books of Hours, nearly every European family of a certain means owned a Book of Hours. Books of Hours Reconsidered presents recent research on this medieval bestseller in twenty-one essays written by international scholars. The scholarship in this volume helps instill Books of Hours with new life and give them new meaning at a moment when interest in Books of Hours is on the rise.
The chapters in this volume investigate how visual and material features of early English books, documents, and other artefacts support - or potentially contradict - the linguistic features in communicating the message. In addition to investigating how such communication varies between different media and genres, our contributors propose novel methods for analysing these features, including new digital applications. They map the use of visual and material features - such as layout design or choice of script/typeface - against linguistic features - such as code-switching, lexical variation, or textual labels - to consider how these choices reflect the communicative purposes of the text, for example guiding readers to navigate the text in a certain way.
"A study of the lives and legacy of Picts and Britons in the Irish Church, looking at their impact on early medieval Irish society and how this impact came to be perceived in later centuries. Between the fifth and ninth centuries AD, the peoples of Britain, Ireland, and their surrounding islands were constantly interacting, sharing cultures and ideas that shaped and reshaped their communities and the way they lived. The influence of religious figures from Ireland on the development of the Church in Britain was profound, and the fame of monasteries such as Iona, which they established, remains to this day. Yet with the exception of St Patrick, far less attention has been paid to the role of t...
This volume is about the book itself, as shaped and made by medieval scribes and as conditioned by the cultural understandings that were present in the world where those scribes lived. Questions relating to the provenance, compilation, script, function, and use - both medieval and modern - of manuscripts are raised and are resolved in a fresh manner. A number of different literary genres and types are explored, ranging from devotional materials (e.g. psalters, sermons, and illustrated gospel books) to texts of a more worldly orientation. A number of plates illustrate the work of particular scribes. While some beautiful codices are showcased, the emphasis falls on plain books written in English, including the Vercelli Book, the Exeter Book, and the Blickling Homilies. Analyses of the history of palaeography and the theoryof editing raise the point that whatever we know from old books is conditioned by the tools used to study them.
Accompanying CD-ROM contains 257 full-color images corresponding to the 257 illustrations found in the printed edition, along with 2 short videos (11 min. and 6 min. in length, respectively) showing conservation techniques.
Renaissance sources of polyphonic music not only convey a rich repertoire of some of the most impressive music ever written. From the point of view of their layout or mise-en-page, they are also amongst the most complex books of their time. They typically combine verbal text, musical notation and other graphic devices, and the different voice parts are arranged to be read separately by the performers, yet to be performed simultaneously. As an integral part of the production and use of these books, the mise-en-page thus provides crucial information for the understanding of the repertoire that is transmitted through them. The present volume combines a number of studies resulting from a research project funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) into this question, combining the examination of a number of overarching themes (e.g. luxury codices, printed polyphony, music theory books, illumination) with case studies of individual sources.
This series focuses on Western Europe in the Early Middle Ages and covers work in the areas of history, language & literature, archaeology, art history and religious studies. It brings together current scholarship on early medieval Britain with scholarship on western continental Europe and Viking Scandinavia; these areas have more traditionally been studied separately or in terms of the interaction of discrete cultures and regions. As well as advocating new approaches across geographical and political divisions, this series spans the conventional distinctions between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages on the one hand, and the Early Middle Ages and the twelfth century on the other. Resp...