Courses
London Palaeography Summer School courses 2012
| Monday 18 June |
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| Tuesday 19 June |
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| Wednesday 20 June |
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| Thursday 21 June |
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| Friday 22 June |
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Bibles before the Year 1000
Professor Michelle Brown (IES)
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
This course charts the formative period when the Bible gradually developed, subject to various cultural influences. Some texts became part of the accepted canon, others were rejected as apocryphal or even heretical. In parallel, this period saw the development of the codex book, format that is particularly associated with the Bible. The physical evidence of surviving Bibles is examined, from fragments of papyrus and plain early parchment codices to grand illuminated manuscripts.
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Introduction to Latin Palaeography
Dr Marigold Norbye (UCL)
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
This course will provide a brief overview of the main elements of Latin palaeography, concentrating on scripts of the later medieval period (1100-1500). Whilst showing the most common abbreviation symbols and the evolution of letter forms, the course will consist of practical exercises, transcribing several different types of script. Participants must have at least elementary Latin in order to benefit from the course. It would be useful if they could indicate whether they have any previous experience of palaeography when applying.
Bibliography
B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, transl. from German by D. O' Croinin and D. Ganz (Cambridge, 1990)
M.P. Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (London, 1990)
S.H. Thomson, Latin Bookhands of the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1969)
L.C. Hector, The Handwriting of English Documents, 2 nd edn (London, 1968)
E.A. Gooder, Latin for Local History, 2 nd edn (London, 1978)
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Western Scientific Manuscripts
Professor Charles Burnett (Warburg)
Half day - from 10.00 to 13.00
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
This course will examine manuscripts of texts on arithmetic, geometry, astrology, astronomy, divination and medicine (using facsimiles), showing how scribes dealt with the representation of numbers and the setting out of tables and diagrams. Also to be explored is the didactic use of illustrations (e.g. in surgery), and the adaptation of the manuscript book, parchment and paper to practical exigencies (e.g. the use of paper dials, medical and astrological vademecums, and scraps of writing paper for sketching horoscopes). More generally, the role of the book in medieval science will be discussed.
Bibliography
J.E. Murdoch, Album of Science: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (New York, 1984)
P.M. Jones, Medieval Medicine in Illuminated Manuscripts (London, 1998)
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Identifying the Provenance of Medieval MSS: an Introduction
Mr Peter Kidd
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
This course will show how to use many different forms of evidence to identify the origins and subsequent provenance of medieval manuscripts, from the Middle Ages to the present day. It will cover three broad categories of evidence: (a) original evidence, including colophons, heraldry, calendars, litanies, Easter tables, and other liturgical elements; (b) added evidence, including ownership inscriptions, press-marks, bookplates, and bindings; and (c) secondary sources, especially 17th- to 21st-century auction and dealer catalogues. Participants are encouraged to submit their own problem cases in advance of the course.
Bibliography
David Pearson, Provenance Research in Book History: A Handbook (1994, reprinted 1998)
Seymour de Ricci, English Collectors of Books and Manuscripts (1530-1930) and Their Marks of Ownership (1930, reprinted 1969, 1990)
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Vernacular Editing: Chaucer and his Contemporaries
Professor Anthony Edwards (De Montford University)
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 12 students
Venue: Senate House
This course will examine the history of English vernacular editing, focusing on Geoffrey Chaucer, but with reference to contemporary authors and works, including William Langland's Piers Plowman and other works from the later fourteenth or fifteenth centuries. It will consider the history of procedures for establishing texts and the use by editors of manuscript and other evidence to produce. It will also examine the evolution of the roles of such procedures as collation, emendation, annotation and manuscript description in preparing editions as well as the concept of ‘edition' itself as it relates to vernacular works produced in the later Middle Ages in England.
Bibliography
W. W. Greg, ‘The Rationale of Copy Text,' reprinted in his Collected Papers , ed. J. C. Maxwell ( Oxford , 1966), pp. 374-91.
George Kane, ‘Conjectural Emendation,' and ‘ “Good” and “Bad” Manuscripts: Texts and Critics,' both reprinted in George Kane, Chaucer and Langland: Historical and Textual Approaches (Berkeley, CA, 1989), pp. 150-161, 206-13.
Paul Ruggiers, ed., Editing Chaucer: The Great Tradition, ed. P. Ruggiers. Norman, OK, 1984).
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Intermediate Latin Palaeography
Dr Marigold Norbye (UCL)
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
This course is aimed at those who attended the previous day's introduction to palaeography and who want to gain more practice in transcription. It is also open to students with some experience in Latin palaeography who wish to refresh or improve their skills. Participants must have at least elementary Latin in order to benefit from the course. It would be useful if they could indicate what previous experience of palaeography they have when applying.
Bibliography
B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages, transl. from German by D. O'Croinin and D. Ganz (Cambridge, 1990)
M.P. Brown, A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (London, 1990)
S.H. Thomson, Latin Bookhands of the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1969)
L.C. Hector, The Handwriting of English Documents, 2 nd edn (London, 1968)
E.A. Gooder, Latin for Local History, 2 nd edn (London, 1978)
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Late Anglo-Saxon and Ottonian Illumination: full-page images in their manuscript contexts.
Dr Carol Farr
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
Biblical, liturgical and devotional manuscripts of the late Anglo-Saxon and Ottonian periods (late 9 th through 11 th centuries) display a new wealth of iconographic themes and a greater variety of types of full-page pictures, compared with surviving earlier western manuscripts. The multiplication of full-page images in manuscripts can be related to developments such as monastic reforms, increasing monastic wealth, growing connections between crown and church, elaborations of liturgies, and growth of devotional forms. This course will introduce students to some of most important iconographic themes (Crucifixion, Trinity, kingship, clergy, monks, liturgical ritual, donors) and provide tools for investigating their significance. Lecture and discussion will emphasize relationships of the pictures to their manuscript contexts and broader developments. Course content will appeal those who enjoyed last year's ‘Entering Sacred Text' and 2010's ‘In the Beginning'.
Bibliography
Preliminary Reading :
I. General Introduction (art history and terms)
George Henderson. Early Medieval . Medieval Academy Reprints for Teaching (Toronto, 1993. (available from Amazon, £4.30)
Michelle P. Brown, Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: a Glossary of Technical Terms (London, 1994)
C. R. Dodwell. The Pictorial Arts of the West, 800-1200 (New Haven and London, 1995)
II. Late Anglo-Saxon and Ottonian
Janet Backhouse and Leslie Webster (eds), The Golden Age of Anglo-Saxon Art 966-1066 (London , 1984)
Michelle P. Brown, Manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon Age (London, 2007)
Adam S. Cohen, The Uta Codex: Art, Philosophy, And Reform In Eleventh-Century Germany (University Park, PA , c2000)
Richard Gameson, The Role of Art in the Late Anglo-Saxon Church (Oxford, 1995)
Catherine E. Karkov. The Art of Anglo-Saxon England (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2011)
Henry Mayr-Harting, Ottonian Book Illumination: an Historical Study, 2 vols in hardcover (London, 1991), 1 vol. in paperback (London, 1999)
Leslie Webster. Anglo-Saxon Art (London, 2011).
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An Introduction to Greek Palaeography
Dr Annaclara Cataldi Palau (Royal Holloway, University of London)
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
This is an introductory course in Greek Palaeography, consisting of two parts.
Part I is a brief investigation on the transmission of the texts and on its importance for our culture. Our literary and religious texts have arrived to us through the centuries thanks to the diligent work of scribes who have diligently copied them, this process is briefly examined.
Part II examines briefly a few manuscripts written in majuscule, the passage from manuscripts written in majuscules to those written in minuscules, and then concentrates on the Greek minuscule in the Byzantine period (9th-15th c.). Participants will learn how to transcribe a text from a facsimile of a Greek manuscript and examine basic codicological and palaeographical aspects, including the ruling of the manuscript, the layout of the text, the use of ligatures, nomina sacra , abbreviations, symbols, and colophons.
Bibliography
R. Barbour, Greek Literary Hands, A.D. 400-1600 (Oxford, 1981)
P. Canart, Paleografia e codicologia greca. Una rassegna bibliografica, Littera Antiqua, 7 (Vatican City, 1991)
R. Devreesse, Introduction à l'étude des manuscrits grecs (Paris, 1954)
P. Easterling and C. Handley eds., Greek Scripts: an Illustrated Introduction (London 2001)
V. Gardthausen, Griechische Palaeographie (Leipzig, 1879; repr. 1978)
B.A. van Groningen, Short Manual of Greek Palaeography (Leiden, 1967)
H. Hunger, Schreiben und Lesen in Byzanz (Munich, 1989)
La Paléographie grecque et byzantine, Paris 21-25 Octobre 1974, Colloques Internationaux du CNRS , 559 (Paris, 1977)
E. Mioni, Introduzione alla paleografia greca (Padua, 1973)
B.M. Metzger, Manuscripts of the Greek Bible: An Introduction to Greek Palaeography (New York-Oxford, 1981)
E.M. Thompson, An Introduction to Greek and Latin Palaeography (Oxford, 1906; repr. 1975)
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Early Modern Latin Palaeography, 1500-1750
Miss Elizabeth Danbury (UCL) and Dr Nigel Ramsay (UCL)
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 12 students
Venue: Senate House
This course will concentrate on documents and records written in Latin during the period 1500-1750. Its aim is to provide practical guidance on the transcription, understanding and interpretation of a range of the documents employed in personal, financial and administrative transactions in England and Wales in this period. Students must be competent in Latin (A-level or equivalent) in order to participate. They should have some experience of post-medieval palaeography, at the very least a knowledge of the letter forms.
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English Palaeography
Dr Debby Banham (Birkbeck and Cambridge)
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00. It is possible to take this as a half-day course on Anglo-Saxon Palaeography (morning) or Middle English Palaeography (afternoon).
Maximum: 12 students
Venue: Senate House
This course will focus on manuscripts written in English in the Middle Ages. The main emphasis will be on script, but we will also consider its relationship with book decoration and other aspects of manuscript production, the use of different scripts for different purposes, and the connections with cultural and intellectual developments in England . The special characters and abbreviations used in Old and Middle English will be explained. The morning will cover the period before the Norman Conquest, and the afternoon will follow developments in English vernacular writing beyond 1066 to the flowering of Middle English. Students may attend either morning or afternoon, or the whole day, and there will be reading practice in both Old and Middle English.
Bibliography
Michelle P. Brown, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (British Library, 1991).
Jane Roberts, Guide to Scripts used in English Writings up to 1500 (British Library, 2005).
Jean F. Preston and Laetitia Yeandle, English Handwriting, 1400-1650: an introductory manual , Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Binghampton, NY, 1992).
Alex Rumble, ed., Writing and Texts in Anglo-Saxon England ( Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 2006).
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Medieval Devotions and Liturgy I: books for mass and office
Dr Jenny Stratford (IHR) and Dr Rowan Watson (V&A)
Full day - from 10.00-17.00. One or two-day course. It is possible to take day one only of this course.
Maximum: 12 students
Venue: Senate House Library
What is the difference between a missal and a breviary, a psalter and a book of hours, an Antiphoner and a Gradual? Who owned these books and who left them in their wills? This course will provide an overview of the liturgical and devotional manuscripts and the early printed books of Pre-Reformation Europe, their production and decoration. Particular stress will be laid on their textual characteristics and on ways of recognising different types of book. Apart from secondary sources and facsimiles, teaching will also be based on some original works. Please bring a pencil.
Brief bibliography
Christopher de Hamel, A history of illuminated manuscripts, 2nd edn (London, 1994) and pbk
Eric Palazzo, A history of liturgical books from the origins to the 13th century (Collegville, 1998
Richard Pfaff, The liturgy in medieval England: a history (CUP, 2009)
Christopher Wordsworth and Henry Littlehales, The old service-books of the English church (London, 1904)
Roger Wieck, Time sanctified. The Book of Hours in medieval art and life (New York, 1988)
Michelle P. Brown, Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts (British Library, 1991).
Jane Roberts, Guide to Scripts used in English Writings up to 1500 (British Library, 2005).
Jean F. Preston and Laetitia Yeandle, English Handwriting, 1400-1650: an introductory manual , Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies (Binghampton, NY, 1992).
Alex Rumble, ed., Writing and Texts in Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies, 2006).
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A Scribe's View of aThousand Years of the History of Scripts
Ms Patricia Lovett (Calligraphy and Lettering Arts Society)
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
This course will consider the changes in historical letter-forms and the ways in which the letters were formed. Focusing on the major writing styles, letters will be analysed and the way in which they were written will be considered in each case. Writing materials and manuscript production will also be considered.
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Early modern English palaeography, 1500-1750
Miss Elizabeth Danbury (UCL) and Dr Nigel Ramsay (UCL)
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 12 students
Venue: Senate House
This course will concentrate on documents and records written in English during the period 1500-1750. Its aim is to provide a practical introduction to the transcription, understanding and interpretation of a range of the documents employed in personal, financial and administrative transactions in England and Wales in this period. It is open to beginners.
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History of Latin scripts I: Antiquity to Caroline minuscule
Dr James Willoughby (New College, Oxford)
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00. One or two-day course. It is possible to take just day one of this course.
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
This course will provide a detailed historical overview of the scripts in use in the Latin West from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Students will be introduced to key landmarks along the road and to the varieties of names and terms that palaeographers use when discussing handwriting. (Note: this course is not suitable for students who attended last year's History of Latin scripts course, unless they want to revisit the same material in more detail.)
Bibliography
Detailed bibliographies will be circulated in class, but for orientation students may wish to dip into any of the following:
B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge 1990). [Editions also in German, French and Italian.]
C. Sirat, 'Writing as Handwork. A History of Handwriting in Mediterranean and Western Culture', Bibliologia 24 (Turnhout 2006).
M. B. Parkes, Their Hands Before Our Eyes: a Closer Look at Scribes (Aldershot 2008). The various national catalogues of Dated and Datable Manuscripts
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Liturgical and Devotional Manuscripts II: books for mass and office
Dr Jenny Stratford (IHR) and Dr Rowan Watson (V&A)
Day two of two-day course. Day two is normally available only for those who have taken day one. This class will be held at the Victoria & Albert Museum, Cromwell Road , London , SW7 2RL .
Maximum: 12 students
Venue: NAL Seminar Room
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Medieval Manuscript Painting
Ms Patricia Lovett (Calligraphy and Lettering Arts Society)
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00. Additional cost £5
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
In the experience of this practitioner, it is only when actually copying a painting that you are able really to see what is there. This course will follow through the process of preparing parchment, transferring a copied image on to parchment, using real gold leaf, painting with the very fine sable brushes similar to those of mediaeval illuminators and ending up with a copied mediaeval miniature to take home.
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Transcribing and Editing Manuscripts: Palaeography after 1700
Dr Wim Van Mierlo (IES)
Half day - from 10.00 to 13.00
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
This course will introduce students to the basic characteristics of ‘modern' manuscripts produced in the period from 1700 onwards. This includes documents that belong to the composition and transmission of literary, philosophical and historical (notebooks, rough drafts, fair copies, etc.) as well as letters, diaries and other private documents. The main focus of the course is handwriting, and will include some discussion of the changes in types of hand from the eighteenth to the twentieth century. After treating the conventions of writing, you will test your skills in reading and deciphering manuscripts, using a wide range of examples. This in-depth, hands-on discussion will be rounded off with a consideration of commonly-used transcription methods and a discussion of good editorial practices.
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History of Latin Scripts II: Protogothic to Humanist
Dr James Willoughby (New College, Oxford).
Full day - from 10.00 to 17.00. One or two-day course. It is possible to take just day two of this course.
Maximum: 15 students
Venue: Senate House
This course will provide an historical overview of the scripts in use in the Latin West from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Students will be introduced to key landmarks along the road and to the varieties of names and terms that palaeographers use when discussing handwriting. (Note: this course is not suitable for students who attended last year's History of Latin scripts course, unless they want to revisit the same material in more detail.)
Bibliography
Detailed bibliographies will be circulated in class, but for orientation students may wish to dip into any of the following:
B. Bischoff, Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages ( Cambridge 1990).b [Editions also in German, French and Italian.]
C. Sirat, 'Writing as Handwork. A History of Handwriting in Mediterranean and Western Culture', Bibliologia 24 (Turnhout 2006).
M. B. Parkes, Their Hands Before Our Eyes: a Closer Look at Scribes (Aldershot 2008). The various national catalogues of Dated and Datable Manuscripts
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Writing and reading medieval manuscripts: folio layouts in context
Dr Anna Somfai (Central European University)
Full day - 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 12 students
Venue: Senate House
The course explores, covering the period from the 6 th to the 15 th centuries, what a close look at folio layouts of manuscripts can reveal about medieval writing and reading practices and the cognitive processes behind the design. We look at the production of the layout (ruling, using a hierarchy of scripts, planning the text-image spatial relationship, planting bookmarks, etc.) and the consecutive engagement with the content (the annotator-reader's textual and visual glosses, intellectual and physical additions and cut-outs). The layout reflects the physical and intellectual production and use of the manuscripts and the assumptions as to how to best transmit a specific body of knowledge, thus the design is directly relevant to the transmission of ideas and to medieval teaching and learning practices. Participants of the course are invited to create and discuss their own design of a folio in order to understand the intricacies of medieval layout design and to think of the reasons for privileging one design over another.
Brief bibliography
Mise en page et mise en texte du livre manuscrit , ed. Henri-Jean Martine, Jean Vezin, Paris 1990
Murdoch, John E., Album of Science. Antiquity and the Middle Ages, New York 1984Reading Medieval Images. The Art Historian and the Object , ed. Elizabeth Sears, Thelma K. Thomas, Michigan 2002
Sherman, Claire Richter, Imaging Aristotle. Verbal and Visual Representations in Fourteenth-Century France , Berkeley , Los Angeles , Oxford , 1995
Brown, Michelle P., Understanding Illuminated Manuscripts: A Guide to Technical Terms, Malibu, London 1994:
http://www.bl.uk/catalogues/illuminatedmanuscripts/glossary.asp
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German Palaeography
Dr Dorothea McEwan (Warburg Institute) and Dr Claudia Wedepohl (Warburg Institute)
Full day - 10.00 to 17.00
Maximum: 10 students
Venue: Senate House
This German Palaeography class is a reading class. Its aim is to familiarize students with a number of different handwritings. A variety of texts (in photocopies) will be examined and read: private correspondence, official correspondence of German courts and the Habsburg monarchy, petitions by individuals, replies by authorities, appeals, etc., from the 17th to the 20th centuries. The course will be flexible in as much as it will be possible to present documents from different centuries and handwriting styles in order to suit the needs of the participants. It is therefore important to state on the Registration Form which particular research interests the applicant is pursuing.
Bibliography
A Bibliography will be handed out to all students.
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