English Renaissance manuscript culture : the paper revolution /
"English Renaissance Manuscript Culture reveals how paper transformed the production and circulation of documents in England beginning in the fourteenth century. Medieval writing was restricted by the lack of any extensive writing surface other than parchment. Manuscript production was thus an...
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| Format: | eBook |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Oxford ; New York :
Oxford University Press,
[2023]
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| Online Access: | Connect to the full text of this electronic book |
| Summary: | "English Renaissance Manuscript Culture reveals how paper transformed the production and circulation of documents in England beginning in the fourteenth century. Medieval writing was restricted by the lack of any extensive writing surface other than parchment. Manuscript production was thus an expensive process carried out by professional scribes. Paper spawned an amateur scribal tradition that evolved in tandem with the ongoing professional medieval tradition. Paper allowed increasingly ordinary people to compose, copy, and collect texts of all kinds. Amateur scribes developed scribal communities that transmitted texts from hand to hand. Over time, these communities coalesced into an informal national network that circulated manuscript works quickly and efficiently throughout the kingdom. Our understanding of the resultant scribal culture has been somewhat obscured, however, by a belief that most of these works, especially creative writing, were circulated in exclusive coteries. A further consideration of document loss rates also brings into focus the actual nature of what has survived while allowing us to more accurately assess what we have lost. The hybrid scribal culture of the English Renaissance, composed of both professional and amateur practitioners, is in itself a cultural phenomenon about which there is much more to learn"--Publisher's description. |
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| Physical Description: | 1 online resource (vii, 273 pages) : illustrations (black and white) |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
| ISBN: | 9780198878018 019887801X 9780191988516 0191988510 9780198878025 0198878028 |