rdf-syntax-grammar
mods:
  schema location: http://www.loc.gov/mods/v3 http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/v3/mods-3-2.xsd
  title info:
    non sort: The
    title: Middle English book
    sub title: scribes and readers, 1350-1500
  name:
    name part: Johnston, Michael (Michael Robert)
    name part: 1977-
    role:
      role term: creator
    role:
      role term: author.
  type of resource: text
  genre: bibliography
  origin info:
    place:
      place term: enk
    date issued: 2023
    copyright date: 2023
    issuance: monographic
  language:
    language term: eng
  physical description:
    form: print
    extent: xv, 288 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
  abstract: The Middle English Book addresses a series of questions about the copying and circulation of literature in late medieval England: How do we make sense of the variety of manuscripts surviving from this period? Who copied and disseminated these diverse manuscripts? Who read the literary texts that they transmit? And what was the relationship between those copying literature and those reading it? To answer these questions, this book examines 202 literary manuscripts from the period 1350 to 1500. First, this study suggests that most surviving manuscripts fall into four categories, depending on the proximity and relationship of that manuscript's scribes and readers. But beyond proposing these new categories, this book also looks at the history of writing practices, and demonstrates the ubiquity of bureaucracies within late medieval England. As a result, The Middle English Book argues that literary production was a decentered affair, one that took place within these numerous, modest, yet complex, bureaucracies. But this book also argues that, because literary production arose in such scattered bureaucracies, manuscripts were local products, produced within the cultural and economic milieu of their users. Manuscripts thus form a fundamentally different sort of cultural artefact than the printed books with which we are familiar, a form of centralized, urbanized and commercialized textual production that was just over the historical horizon in late medieval England.
  note: Michael Johnston.
  note: Includes bibliographical references (pages 240-280) and indexes.
  subject:
    topic: Manuscripts, English (Middle)
  subject:
    topic: English literature
    temporal: Middle English, 1100-1500
    topic: History and criticism
  classification: PR255 .J64 2023
  classification: 820.9/001
  related item:
    title info:
      title: Oxford studies in medieval literature and culture
  identifier: 9780192871770
  identifier: 0192871773
  record info:
    record content source: YDX
    record creation date: 230318
    record change date: 20240318201403.5
    record identifier: in00004781543