Suggested Texts (also on reserve):          

M.T. Clanchy, From Memory to Written Record: England 1066ñ1307, 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1993.

David Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction. NY: Garland, 1992.     

Armando Petrucci, Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy: Studies in the History of Written Culture, trans. C. Radding. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1995.

Barbara Shailor, The Medieval Book. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.

Additional Text for Italian Program Students Registered for M503:

Corrado Bologna, Tradizione e fortuna dei classici italiani, vol. 1: Dalle origini al Tasso. Torino:  Einaudi, 1993.

Course Work:

Presentation: The presentation is designed to allow the student to investigate the textual tradition of a specific area or work/s or problem in her or his field of interest (such as Italian, English, French, Latin, archival materials, histories, early vernacular poetic texts). From this presentation, the student will develop the final project. Additional short presentations and class participation are expected.

Papers:   1. 4 page study of a question or problem and bibliography

                2. 20-25 page research project (final paper)

Grade Calculation:  

Class assignments and preparation = 15%, Papers = 55% (5/50), Participation = 15%, Presentation = 15%.

Course Objectives:  

This course is designed to introduce students to the study of medieval manuscripts and primary historical documents as well as to problems of evaluation of the cultural contexts of their production, readership, and use.   This is not a course devoted solely to palaeography but will approach manuscript studies and diplomatics from the point of view of material philology, incorporating codicology, palaeography, traditional philology, history of the book, and diplomatics.   Ancillary topics will include issues of manuscript illumination, the preparation of modern editions, current trends in textual criticism, the assessment of readership and patronage, the development of libraries and literacy.

The first part of the course will be dedicated to readings on and discussions of topics applicable to European manuscript production in the Middle Ages.   In the second part of the course students will investigate applications in their individual fields of research and specialization.   Lectures and discussions will be conducted in English. Readings in English, Italian, French, Spanish, and German according to fields of interest.   A knowledge of Latin is helpful for the course.

Schedule of Topics:

January

• Introduction to Concepts, Tools, Problems, and Methods; The Nature of Evidence:   Introduction and Overview: Problems of Ms. Transcription, Transmission, and Codicology; Issues of Textual Criticism and ìNew Philologies
• The ìillusion of authentic historyî (Petrucci)
• Fundamentals and Categories of Manuscript Production: Preliminaries on the preparation of documents (mss and records)
• Scribes, Notaries, and Illuminators
• Role of Illumination in Production: early scientific texts and the development of the image as gloss feature
• Issues of Literacy
• Writing and Records, production and preservation; Libraries

February

• Concepts and Cultural Implications of Reading
• Readership, the Concept of Audience and Uses of Documents
• Study, Description and Evaluation of Documents
• Problems and Issues in Paleography and Codicology
• Evaluation, Critique and Editing of Documents

March

• Philology and Textual Criticism
• Development of Philology and its Contributing Fields
• Theory and Pragmatics of the Text
• Texts and Ideologies / New Philologies

April

• Theory vs. Pragmatics of Texts: demonstrations and presentations

Reserve texts:

Alexander, Jonathan J.G. Medieval Illuminators and Their Methods of Work. New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1993.  

Boyle, Leonard. Medieval Latin Palaeography. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1984.

Brown, Michelle P. A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600. Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1990.

Cerquiglini, Bernard. …loge de la variante: histoire critique de la philologie. Paris: Seuil, 1989.

Dagenais, John. The Ethics of Reading in Manuscript Culture: Glossing the Libro de Buen Amor. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994.

Dain, Alphonse. Les manuscrits. Paris: Belles-Lettres, 1949 (2nd ed. 1964).

De Hamel, Christopher. A History of Illuminated Manuscripts. London: Phaidon,             1994.

Destrez, Jean. La pecia dans les manuscrits universitaires du XIIIe et du XIVe siÈcle. Vautrain, 1935.   

Gamble, Harry Y. Books and Readers in the Early Church. New Haven: Yale, 1995.

Gameson, Richard. The Early Medieval Bible: Its Production, Decoration and Use. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994.

Gilissen, LÈon. ìLa composition des cahiers, le pliage du parchemin et líimposition,î Scriptorium XXVI (1972): 3-33.

______. ProlÈgomËnes ‡ la Codicologie. Recherches sur la construction des cahiers et la mise en page des manuscrits mÈdiÈvaux. Publications de Scriptorium, Vol. 7. Gand: …ditions Scientifiques Story-Scientia, 1977.

______. Líexpertise des Ècritures mÈdiÈvales. Gand: Story-Scientia, 1973.

Grafton, Anthony, Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarship. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1990.

Greetham, David, ed. Scholarly Editing, N.Y.: MLA Publications, 1995.

Greg, Walter W. The Calculus of Variants. An Essay on Textual Criticism. Oxford: Clarendon, 1927.

Grendler, Paul E. Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning 1300ñ1600. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1989.

Hanna III, Ralph. Pursuing History: Middle English Manuscripts and their Texts. Stanford: Univ. of Stanford Press, 1996 (0-8047-2613-2)

Maieru, Alfonso, ed. Grafia e interpunzione del latino nel medioevo. Rome: Edizioni dellíAteneo, 1987.

Maas, Paul. Textkritik, 4th ed. Leipzig, 1960 (tr. Textual Criticism, by Barbara Flower. Oxford, 1958).

Nichols, Stephen G., ed. The New Philology. Special Issue of Speculum 65, n. 1 (1990).

______ and Siegfried Wenzel, The Whole Book: Cultural Perspectives on the Medieval Miscellany. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1996.

P‰cht, Otto. Book Illumination in the Middle Ages. London: Harvey Miller, 1986.

Parkes, Malcolm B. ìInfluence of the Concepts of Ordinatio and Compilatio on the             Development of the Book,î in Medieval Learning and Literature, eds. J. J. G. Alexander and M. T. Gibson. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976, pp. 115ñ41.

______. Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West.             Berkeley/Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1993.

Petrucci, Armando. ìLíedizione delle fonti documentarie: un problema sempre aperto,î Rivista Storica Italiana LXXV (1963): 60ñ90.

______, Writers and Readers in Medieval Italy. New Haven: Yale Univ.   Press, 1995.

Reynolds, L.D.   and N.G. Wilson. Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek & Latin Literature, 3rd ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991.

Scheller, Robert W. Exemplum: Model-Book Drawings and the Practice of Artistic Transmission in the Middle Ages (ca. 900 ñ ca. 1470), trans. by Michael Hoyle. Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press, 1995.

Stevick, Robert D. The Earliest Irish and English Bookarts: Visual and Poetic Forms Before A.D. 1000. Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1994.

Storey, H. W. Transcription and Visual Poetics in the Early Italian Lyric. NY: Garland, 1993.

Thompson, Daniel V. The Materials and Techniques of Medieval Painting. N.Y.: Dover, 1956.

Timpanaro, Sebastiano. Il lapsus freudiano: Psicanalisi e la critica testuale. Firenze: La Nuova Italia, 1974 (also in English translation).

Trost, Vera. Scriptorum: Book Production in the Middle Ages. Heidelberg: Braus, 1986.