A01=Ralph Hanna
Author_Ralph Hanna
book history
book production
Category=AKHM
Category=CFL
Category=DSBB
Category=NHDJ
codicology
eq_art-fashion-photography
eq_bestseller
eq_biography-true-stories
eq_dictionaries-language-reference
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
manuscript bibliography
medieval manuscripts
Product details
- ISBN 9781836243434
- Dimensions: 156 x 234mm
- Publication Date: 04 Feb 2025
- Publisher: Liverpool University Press
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Paperback
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
Unlike books familiar to us from print culture, every medieval book is unique, the product of individual circumstances of planning, execution, and history. This is a fundamental difficulty for study, particularly for those beginning the investigation of texts in manuscript. There are two conventional ways of approaching this difficulty: explaining the series of processes by which a manuscript book is constructed and explaining how to construct a professional description of a manuscript book. Neither addresses a problem fundamental for beginners: what happens when a librarian presents you with a manuscript? How should you proceed? Fundamentally, this is a problem of visual examination, and taking its procedure from the grand M. R. James and M. B. Parkes, this book attempts to stimulate the visual and experiential. It attempts, in a heavily exemplified account, to explain what might be there in a manuscript to perceive and what it might mean. The argument follows a process of examination that begins with the physical bulk of what's in front of you (and its cover, or binding) and ends with traces of the book's history.
Ralph Hanna is Professor of Palaeography (Emeritus) and Emeritus Fellow at Keble College, Oxford. He is a former Guggenheim Fellow, former Fellow of the Radcliffe Institute (Harvard University), and winner of the British Academy Sir Israel Gollancz Prize for English Language 2015. His many books with Liverpool University Press include John Ridewall, Fulgentius metaforalis (2023), Looking at Medieval Books: Learning to See (2023), Robert Holcot, exegete (2021) and Malachy the Irishman, On Poison (2020).
