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Darrera modificació: 2011-08-11
Bases de dades: Sciència.cat
Parkes, Malcolm B., Their Hands before our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes. The Lyell lectures delivered in the University of Oxford 1999, Aldershot, Ashgate (The Lyell lectures, 1999), 2008, xix + 188 pp. + 69 pp. de làm.
- Resum
- Following on from his acclaimed study of punctuation, "Pause and Effect", this new book by Malcolm Parkes makes an equally fundamental contribution to the history of handwriting. Its purpose is to focus on the handwriting of scribes from late antiquity to the beginning of the sixteenth century, and to identify those features which are a scribe's personal contribution to the techniques and art of handwriting. Handwriting is a versatile medium that has always allowed individual scribes the opportunity for self-expression, despite the limitations of the pen and the finite number of possible movements.The book opens with three chapters surveying the various environments in which scribes worked in the medieval West. The next five, then examine different aspects of the subject, starting with the basic processes of handwriting and copying. Next come discussions of developments in rapid handwriting, with its consequent influence on new alphabets; on more formal 'set hands'; and on the adaptation of movements of the pen to produce elements of style corresponding to changes in the prevailing sense of decorum. The final chapter looks at the significance of customized images of handwriting on the page. The text is illustrated with 69 plates, and accompanied by a glossary of the technical terms applied to handwriting, which in itself makes a significant contribution to the subject. -- M.B. Parkes is Professor emeritus of Palaeography in the University of Oxford, and fellow of Keble College. He is a Senior Fellow of the British Academy and a Corresponding Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America.
Contents:
* Preface
-- Part I. Scribes and Their Environments:
* Before 1100
* 1100-1540 Religious orders in England
* 1100-1500 Secular scribes in England: clergy, scholars, professional and commercial scribes
-- Part II. Scribes at Work:
* Which came first reading or writing? The function and processes of writing and the problems of copying
* The hasty scribe: cursive handwriting in antiquity and the Middle Ages
* Set in their own ways: scribes and book hands c. 800-1200
* Features of fashion: scribes and style c. 1200-1500
* Through the eyes of scribes and readers: handwriting as image
-- Part III. Glossary, indexes and select list of printed works
-- Part IV. Plates
- Matèries
- Història del llibre
Codicologia
Paleografia
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