G: Paleography and editorial techniques (Prof Helena Sanson)

Please note that this mini-seminar will meet *weekly* during the first half of Michaelmas term, in order to give students ample time to develop their projects later in the term.

Recommended introductory reading:
McGann, Jerome, The Beauty of Inflections: Literary Investigations in Historical Methods and Theory (Oxford: Clarendon, 1985), Part 2 ch 1, ‘The Monks and the Giants: Textual and Bibliographical Studies and the Interpretation of Literary Works’ [e-book through iDiscover]
Cavallo, Guglielmo, and Roger Chartier, A History of Reading in the West, translated by Lydia G. Cochrane (Oxford: Polity Press, 1999) ***Highly recommended!*** The Introduction [pdf] is particularly helpful.
Chartier, Roger, Inscription and Erasure: Literature and Written Culture from the Eleventh to the Eighteenth Century, translated by Arthur Goldhammer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007)

...or other books by 

Roger Chartier, such as The Order of Books or Forms and Meanings.
Cerquiglini, Bernard, In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, translated by Betsy Wing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)
Busby, Keith, ed., Toward a Synthesis? Essays on the New Philology (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1993)
Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), first two chapters. 

Session 1: Introduction to medieval and early modern manuscripts

Suzanne Paul & James Freeman

This session will take place at the University Library.

In this session, students will encounter a range of medieval and early modern vernacular manuscripts from the University Library collection, as far as possible tailored to their research interests. Topics covered will include:
*    how manuscripts were made and used
*    a brief introduction to codicology
*    some guidance on what to look for when looking at manuscripts
*    the similarities and differences between manuscripts and printed books 

Recommended reading:
Clemens, Raymond, and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007).
De Hamel, Christopher, Scribes and Illuminators, Medieval Craftsmen (London:  British Museum Press, 1992)
A selection of digitised manuscripts, to compare and contrast:

Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose: 
- https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-GG-00004-00006/1
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Add_MS_31840

Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia:
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?ref=Yates_Thompson_MS_36
- http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/FullDisplay.aspx?index=3&ref=Egerton_MS_943

Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival:
- https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/csg/0857
- https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/bbb/AA0091

Poetry in Castilian:
- https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b84363921
- https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8436399x

Multilingual manuscripts:
- https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-GG-00001-00001/1
- https://www.e-codices.unifr.ch/en/list/one/bpun/A0020

Session 2: Transcription and editing of medieval texts

Giulia Boitani

This session will give a brief overview of the development of medieval scripts, but most of the session will be devoted to a collaborative workshop in which students transcribe a passage from a medieval French and/or Italian text.
 
Recommended reading: 
Brown, Michelle P., A Guide to Western Historical Scripts from Antiquity to 1600 (London:  British Library, 1993)
Clemens, Raymond and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca and London:  Cornell University Press, 2007)
De Hamel, Christopher, Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (London: Allen Lane, 2016)
Derolez, Albert, The Palæography of Gothic Manuscript Books, from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Century (Cambridge:  CUP, 2003)
Foulet, Alfred and Speer, Mary Blakely, On Editing Old French Texts (Lawrence:  Regents Press of Kansas, 1979), ch 1, ‘An Historical Orientation’ [pdf]

A useful tool for this session is:

Cappelli, Adriano, Dizionario di Abbreviature latine ed italiane. Usate nelle carte e codici specialmente del medioevo (Milan: Ulrico Hoepli, 1929). Also available online here: https://archive.org/details/CappelliDizionarioDiAbbreviature

Session 3: Editing texts: introduction to textual criticism 

Rodrigo Cacho

This session will offer a general introduction on textual criticism, focusing both on its theoretical background and the different methodologies available for editing a Medieval or Early Modern text. There will be an introduction to the two stages of a critical edition (recensio, constitutio textus), the principles for the presentation of texts, the construction of a critical apparatus and the opposition between old spelling and modernization. We will also look at a case study of French printed material of the sixteenth century.

Editing Texts. Recommended reading:
L. D. Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, ‘Textual Criticism’, in Scribes and Scholars: A Guide to the Transmission of Greek and Latin Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991, 3rd ed.), pp. 207-241.

William P. Williams and Craig S. Abbott, ‘Critical Editing’, in An Introduction to Bibliographical and Textual Studies (New York: MLA, 1999, 3rd ed.), pp. 75-85.

Editing Texts. Further reading:
David C. Greetham, Textual Scholarship: An Introduction, New York and London: Garland, 1994 (Chapter 9 ‘Editing the Text: Scholarly Editing’, pp. 347-72)
Michael Hunter, Editing Early Modern Texts: An Introduction to Principles and Practice (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)
E. J. Kenney, The Classical Text: Aspects of Editing in the Age of the Printed Book (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1974)
Christopher Kleinhenz (ed.), Medieval Manuscripts and Textual Criticism (Chapel Hill: North Carolina Studies in the Romance Languages and Literatures, 1976)
Paul Maas, Textual Criticism (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1958).
G. Thomas Tanselle, Textual Criticism and Scholarly Editing (Charlottesville-London: University Press of Virginia, 1990)
James Thorpe, Principles of Textual Criticism (San Marino, California: The Huntington Library, 1972)
Paolo Trovato, Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Lachmann’s Method: A Non-standard Handbook of Genealogical Textual Criticism in the Age of Post-Structuralism, Cladistics, and Copy-Text, Padova: Libreriauniversitaria.it edizioni, 2014.

For those with a familiarity with Italian, see:
Stoppelli, Pasquale (ed.), Filologia dei testi a stampa (Cagliari: CUEC, 2008)

Session 4: Writing and printing in pre-modern Europe and Book Design
 
Rodrigo Cacho & Emma Gilby
 
If possible, this session will take place at the University Library
 
This session will outline the role of the printing press in the development of literary culture in early modern Europe. It will probe the differences between different book formats, asking how the advent of print changed book production and the relationship of readers, writers, and editors to the book. In particular, it will consider the role of paratexts in early modern printed books and how these reflected authorial strategies, as well as the role they played in literary theory and literary quarrels in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Students will be encouraged to engage actively in discussion of relevant issues during the session, and are strongly advised to do some preparatory reading, making their own selection from among the texts suggested below.
 
In the first part of the seminar we will visit the Historic Printing Room (UL). In the second part, we will look at some manuscripts and early printed books.
 
Recommended reading:
Asa Briggs and Peter Burke, A Social History of the Media: From Gutenberg to the Internet (Cambridge: Polity, 2005), first two chapters.
Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), introduction and chapter 8.
Helen Smith and Louise Wilson (eds.), Renaissance Paratexts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), especially the introduction.
 
Further reading:
Andrew Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven, Conn and London: Yale University Press, 2010)
Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, The Printing Press as an Agent of Change, 2 vols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979)
Ignacio García Aguilar, Poesía y edición en el Siglo de Oro (Madrid: Calambur, 2009)
Brian Richardson, Print Culture in Renaissance Italy: The Editor and the Vernacular Text, 1470-1600 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994)
Brian Richardson, Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)
Brian Richardson, Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009)

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