Guide to Scripts Used in English Writings up to 1500 (Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies) - Softcover

Roberts, Jane

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1781382662 ISBN 13: 9781781382660

Publisher: Liverpool University Press, 2015

Synopsis

The resurgence of interest in the history of the English language has prompted this indispensable introductory guide to the scripts used in Old and Middle English writing. The best way to gain a sense of changes in scripts across time is through visual examples. The reader is introduced gradually to vocabulary suitable for the description of script through a range of plates, for example, Caedmon’s Hymn (the earliest extant English poem); the opening of an Exeter Book poem; the Lindisfarne Gospels; the opening page of King Alfred’s first translation; an illustrated version of the story of Abraham and Isaac; passages from the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle; early (Laȝamon) and late tellings of the story of Arthur (Malory); contrasting manuscripts of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde; Langland; York plays. Each plate is reproduced full size where possible, accompanied by a full transcript, commentary and notes.

About this title

About the Author

Jane Roberts MRIA, FSA, FEA is Emeritus Professor of English Language and Medieval Literature at the University of London, where she is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of English Studies. She is the author of A Guide to Scripts used in English Writings up to 1500 (Exeter Medieval Texts and Studies, Liverpool University Press, 2015) and co-edited the Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 2009).

From the Back Cover

Reviews of original hardback edition (published by British Library, 2005)

?The cumulative impact is powerful. Page after page shows English in use to explain, teach, translate and entertain, serving as an adjunct to other languages, even written outside England, in Scotland and Ireland. But this is a volume that conveys a strong sense of the continuity of written English and it deserves to be widely consulted by students of English culture and vernacular culture more generally.?
Julia Crick, Early Medieval Review

?It should be (and surely will be) on the shelf of every early medievalist.?
Richard Marsden, The Medieval Review

?? an immensely interesting and useful book for teachers and students of English palaeography, and equally for interested bibliophiles not engaged in any formal scholarly study of handwriting.?
Linne R. Mooney, Times Literary Supplement

?This book is set to become the only tool for teachers and learners of English medieval palaeography.?
Sue Powell, Journal of the Early Book Society

?All in all this is an excellent Handbook that should be useful to anyone studying Old or Middle English texts who wants to move towards an understanding of their manuscript context, an area of study that has always been important and is increasingly fashionable.?
Rebecca Rushforth, The Library

?Here is that rarity, a book for scholars and enthusiasts alike ? for anyone, in fact, with a feeling for our earliest literature, and the manuscripts in which it has come down to us.?
Jacqueline Banerjee, English Studies

Edition details

• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1781382662
• ISBN 13: 9781781382660
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 328