This new book by Malcolm Parkes makes a fundamental contribution to the history 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 purpose of this study is to focus on the writing 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 t...

First published in 1969, English Cursive Book Hands rapidly established itself as a key resource for the study and teaching of palaeography. It covers the changes in handwriting that arose from the mid-twelfth century, tracking the growth and development of the cursive script that came to dominate book production in medieval England. This reprint is a re-issue of the 1979 second edition published by Scolar Press. This study sets out the nature of the developments which took place in Englis...

In the present collection of articles by Malcolm Parkes two overarching concerns emerge: the palaeography of manuscript books in relation to what Parkes has previously called the 'grammar of legibility'; and the importance of considering the circumstances in which medieval books were produced, copied and read. The individual studies discuss the handwriting of individual scribes, and the evidence script can provide of the circumstances of a book's production, the effect of punctuation and l...

From its publication in 1992 Pause and Effect has become a cornerstone of the study of punctuation across the world. Described as 'magisterial' by Lynne Truss in her best-selling Eats, Shoots and Leaves, this book has stimulated interest and scholarly debates among writers, literary critics, philosophers, linguists, rhetoricians, palaeographers and all those who study the use of language. To celebrate this extraordinary achievement, Pause and Effect has been republished in September 2008, ...

Originally published in 1957, this classic work has guided generations of scholars through the arcane mysteries of medieval political theology. Throughout history, the notion of two bodies has permitted the postmortem continuity of monarch and monarchy, as epitomized by the statement, “The king is dead. Long live the king.” In The King’s Two Bodies, Ernst Kantorowicz traces the historical dilemma posed by the “King’s two bodies”—the body natural and the body politic—back to the Mi...

Generations of Feeling is the first book to provide a comprehensive history of emotions in pre- and early modern Western Europe. Charting the varieties, transformations and constants of human sentiments over the course of eleven centuries, Barbara H. Rosenwein explores the feelings expressed in a wide range of 'emotional communities' as well as the theories that served to inform and reflect their times. Focusing specifically on groups within England and France, chapters address communities...

Combining historical, literary and linguistic evidence from Old English and Latin, Becoming a Poet in Anglo-Saxon England creates a new, more complete picture of who and what pre-Conquest English poets really were. It includes a study of Anglo-Saxon words for 'poet' and the first list of named poets in Anglo-Saxon England. Its survey of known poets identifies four social roles that poets often held - teachers, scribes, musicians and courtiers - and explores the kinds of poetry created by t...

A group of men dig a tunnel under the threshold of a house. Then they go and fetch a heavy, sagging object from inside the house, pull it out through the tunnel, and put it on a cow-hide to be dragged off and thrown into the offal-pit. Why should the corpse of a suicide – for that is what it is– have earned this unusual treatment? In The Curse on Self-Murder, the second volume of his three-part Suicide in the Middle Ages, Alexander Murray explores the origin of the condem...

Authors of the Middle Ages is a new series designed for research and reference. Each part, by an expert on the subject, gives an account of the facts known about a particular Author’s life and immediate historical context, together with a review of subsequent scholarship. This is supported by citation of all known contemporary references; a dated and classified list of manuscripts and editions; a bibliography of secondary sources; and appendices listing or printing the key literary and doc...

It has often been held that scholasticism destroyed the literary theory that was emerging during the twelfth-century Renaissance, and hence discussion of late medieval literary works has tended to derive its critical vocabulary from modern, not medieval, theory. In Medieval Theory of Authorship, now reissued with a new preface by the author, Alastair Minnis asks, "Is it not better to search again for a conceptual equipment which is at once historically valid and theoretically illu...

Isidore of Seville (circa 570-636) was the author of the Etymologiae,. the most celebrated and widely circulated encyclopaedia of the western Middle Ages. In addition, Isidore's Synonyma were very successful and became one of the classics of medieval spirituality. Indeed, it was the Synonyma that were to define the so-called 'Isidorian style,' a rhymed, rhythmic prose that proved influential throughout the Middle Ages.Finding the Right Words is t...

The Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature (OHCREL) is designed to offer a comprehensive investigation of the numerous and diverse ways in which literary texts of the classical world have stimulated responses and refashioning by English writers. Covering the full range of English literature from the early Middle Ages to the present day, OHCREL both synthesizes existing scholarship and presents cutting-edge new research, employing an internati...