Manuscript Studies

Manuscript Studies
Medieval and Early Modern

Introduction

Site begun and maintained by
Stephen R. Reimer
Professor of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB
Canada T6G 2E5
email: Stephen.Reimer@UAlberta.Ca

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Medieval and Early Modern Manuscript Studies

Those of us who teach and supervise graduate students in medieval and early modern literature, languages, or history know that, once in awhile at least we come upon students for whom it would of great benefit to have a course in paleography, codicology, or medieval and early modern book history. But few of our institutions in Western Canada have such students in sufficient numbers to warrant mounting such a course or courses locally. This site, and its associated "listserv" discussion group, is intended to explore the possibility of cooperatively offering such a course over the web, as an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional course in certain aspects of research methodology.

This web site, then, is intended as a prototype, to suggest some of the things that such a web-based course could do, and to be a locus for collecting contributions from those who wish to participate. We hope to build a collection of pages on the web which introduces many and various aspects of doing primary research with manuscript and early printed materials. We could cover everything from paleographical descriptions of a range of scripts (with photographic facsimiles and transcription exercises) to anecdotes about what is involved in doing research in particular archives and libraries. The scope of the course could and should be pan-European at least, and global if possible; it should be historically inclusive to cover bibliographical issues throughout the medieval and early modern periods; it should meet the needs of historians as well as literary scholars. Of course, it cannot do well all of these things immediately: over time, we hope to build up a collection of materials, which could, gradually, come to meet a broad range of such needs.

This site currently has the following sections:

The Manuscript Studies site Main Page, being this page which you are currently viewing, and the main jumping off point to th rest of the site;
Course Notes (for lack of a better term): for the moment, and for illustrative purposes, this section includes some definitions of terms, a sample paleographical transcription, and other materials to show the scope of the course and to illustrate some of the potential of the web to deliver such a course;
Bibliography: a 960-item bibliography, covering many of the topics to be included in this course;
Links: a collection of links to related sites on the web, both sites related to the subjects of this course, and sites which could provide a model for the design of a web-delivered course;
Site Map: a list, in outline form, of the pages which constitute this web site, as an aid to navigating the site.

As they stand currently, these notes and bibliographies obviously reflect my own interests (late Middle English literature) and limitations; additional materials to broaden the scope are needed. Your comments, suggestions, corrections, and contributions will be greatly appreciated. Send them to
Stephen.Reimer@UAlberta.Ca.

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email: Stephen.Reimer@UAlberta.Ca
URL: http://www.ualberta.ca/~sreimer/ms-course.htm