Abstract
This essay recounts lessons learned over a career studying medieval manuscripts and the stories of those who made, used, and collected them. Medieval books long outlast their intended or original audiences and have fascinating cultural interactions that extend to the present. What this most pressingly throws up for me is ways of knowing things, and the epistemological value of memory. One needs to store away the little anomalies that one encounters — and be prepared for them to surface without bidding in some new context where they might prove generative. If humility might be a first perquisite of scholarly work, certainly memory would be a second. The essay originated as a lecture, delivered remotely in March 2021 for the Renaissance Studies Center at the Newberry Library in Chicago, IL.
Highlights
This essay recounts lessons learned over a career studying medieval manuscripts and the stories of those who made, used, and collected them
As you’ve heard, my trade is known as palaeography. This I understand in a considerably wider sense than merely being a penmanship engineer; as the old joke says, palaeographers are commonly known as people who will date almost anything
I can date many medieval north European scripts and what I do has made me mainly a library-rat, is the broader ‘book-history’. In whatever form they take, to communicate texts; as such, they are embedded in communities — of authorship, transmission, and reception
Summary
This essay recounts lessons learned over a career studying medieval manuscripts and the stories of those who made, used, and collected them. As I pursued my study, I browsed around in the other, not-WalterMap/Valerius texts in Merton 249, just to get some sense of what the people who had originally assembled the book had thought they were doing.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
