Manuscript Studies

Manuscript Studies
Medieval and Early Modern

Introduction

Site begun and maintained by
Stephen R. Reimer
Professor of English
University of Alberta
Edmonton, AB
Canada T6G 2E5
email: Stephen.Reimer@UAlberta.Ca

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Medieval and Early Modern Manuscript Studies

This website offers a sketch of an on-line course in medieval paleography and codicology, especially for students of Middle English and early modern English literature. It was originally designed some 20 years ago in response to some discussions that were held with colleagues at several Western Canadian universities seeking a cooperative method to provide a course in paleography, codicology, or medieval and early modern book history. While our individual institutions rarely have such students in sufficient numbers to warrant mounting such a course or courses locally, we wished to explore the possibility of cooperatively offering such a course over the web, as an interdisciplinary and multi-institutional course in certain aspects of research methodology, and the website was developed as a set of resources towards such a course. The course itself never materialized, but with some regularity I receive correspondence suggesting that the website, despite its sketchy and rudimentary nature, has been and continues to be of some value.

After a long period of neglect, an effort is currently being made to revise the site, particularly in terms of incorporating into the bibliographies a decade's worth of accumulated notes and updates, including a variety of suggestions and corrections that I have received from those who have used the site. I am grateful to Professor Yin Liu of the University of Saskatchewan both for encouraging that this revision be done as well as for assigning one of her Research Assistants, Megan Wall, to help with the work.

This site currently has the following sections:

The Manuscript Studies site Main Page, being this page which you are currently viewing, and the main jumping off point to th rest of the site;
Course Notes (for lack of a better term): for the moment, and for illustrative purposes, this section includes some definitions of terms, a sample paleographical transcription, and other materials to show the scope of the course and to illustrate some of the potential of the web to deliver such a course;
Bibliography: a 1000-item bibliography, covering many of the topics to be included in this course.

As they stand currently, these notes and bibliographies obviously reflect my own interests (late Middle English literature) and limitations; additional materials to broaden the scope are needed. Your comments, suggestions, corrections, and contributions will be greatly appreciated. Send them to
Stephen.Reimer@UAlberta.Ca.

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email: Stephen.Reimer@UAlberta.Ca
URL: https://sites.ualberta.ca/~sreimer/ms-course.htm