M.B. Parkes, Their Hands Before Our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes

The Lyell Lectures Delivered in the University of Oxford 1999

Ashgate, septembre 2008

Isbn (ean13):978-0-7546-6337-9

Présentation de l'éditeur

This new book by Malcolm Parkes makes a fundamental contribution to thehistory of handwriting. Handwriting is a versatile medium that has alwaysallowed individual scribes the opportunity for self-expression, despite thelimitations of the pen and the finite number of possible movements.The purposeof this study is to focus on the writing of scribes from late antiquity to thebeginning of the sixteenth century, and to identify those features which are ascribe's personal contribution to the techniques and art of handwriting.

The book opens with three chapters surveying the various environments inwhich scribes worked in the medieval West. The following five, based on theauthor's Lyell Lectures at the University of Oxford, then examine different aspects of the subject, starting with the basicprocesses of handwriting and copying. Next come discussions of developments inrapid handwriting, with its consequent influence on new alphabets; on moreformal 'set hands'; and on the adaptation of movements of the pen to produceelements of style corresponding to changes in the prevailing sense of decorum.The final chapter looks at the significance of some customized images producedby handwriting on the page.

The text is illustrated with 69 plates, and accompanied by a glossary ofthe technical terms applied to handwriting, which in itself makes a significantcontribution to the subject.

Table des matières

Preface; Part I Scribes and TheirEnvironments: Before 1100; 1100–1540 Religious orders in England; 1100–1500 Secular scribes in England: clergy, scholars, professional and commercial scribes. Part II Scribesat Work: Which came first reading or writing? The function and processes ofhandwriting and the problems of copying; The hasty scribe; cursive handwritingin antiquity and the Middle Ages; Set in their own ways: scribes and book handsc.800–1200; Features of fashion: scribes and style c1200–1500; Through the eyesof scribes and readers: handwriting as image; Part II Glossary, Indexes and SelectList of Printed Works: Select glossary of technical terms applied tohandwriting; Index of scribes referred to by name or pseudonym; Index ofmanuscripts cited; Select list of printed works cited; General index.

*

L'auteur

M.B.Parkes is Professor emeritus of Palaeography in the University of Oxford, and Fellow emeritus of Keble College. He is a Senior Fellow of the British Academy, a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, and has beenVisiting Professor at the University of Konstanz (1974 and 1980), James T. Hill Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota (1991), and Visiting Professor of Latin at Harvard University (1997).

*