Their Hands Before Our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes: The Lyell Lectures Delivered in the University of Oxford 1999 - Hardcover

Parkes, M.B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 075466337X ISBN 13: 9780754663379

Publisher: Routledge, 2008

Synopsis

This new book by Malcolm Parkes makes a fundamental contribution to the history of handwriting. Handwriting is a versatile medium that has always allowed individual scribes the opportunity for self-expression, despite the limitations of the pen and the finite number of possible movements.The purpose of this study is to focus on the writing of scribes from late antiquity to the beginning of the sixteenth century, and to identify those features which are a scribe's personal contribution to the techniques and art of handwriting. The book opens with three chapters surveying the various environments in which scribes worked in the medieval West. The following five, based on the author's Lyell Lectures at the University of Oxford, then examine different aspects of the subject, starting with the basic processes of handwriting and copying. Next come discussions of developments in rapid handwriting, with its consequent influence on new alphabets; on more formal 'set hands'; and on the adaptation of movements of the pen to produce elements of style corresponding to changes in the prevailing sense of decorum. The final chapter looks at the significance of some customized images produced by handwriting on the page. The text is illustrated with 69 plates, and accompanied by a glossary of the technical terms applied to handwriting, which in itself makes a significant contribution to the subject.

About this title

About the Author

M.B. Parkes (1930 - 2103) was Professor Emeritus of Palaeography in the University of Oxford, and Fellow emeritus of Keble College. He was a Senior Fellow of the British Academy, a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, and had been Visiting 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).

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 075466337X
• ISBN 13: 9780754663379
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 280