This module is not currently running in 2024 to 2025.
Palaeography is the study of handwriting. This module aims to teach students how to read a variety of scripts that were used in western Europe from late antiquity to the early modern period. This also involves learning how to properly transcribe a document, in accordance with palaeographical conventions. The students will also learn to recognise particular types and families of scripts, which will in turn allow them to start dating the manuscripts.
The module also aims to provide students with a grounding in codicology and diplomatic. Codicology is the study of books and diplomatic is the study of the formal qualities of a document. The students will get the opportunity to work with original documents and learn how these were constructed and to what purpose, how to approach them as historical sources and how to formally describe them.
The course will be taught by 20 weekly 2 hr seminars. Students will be expected to devote approximately eight hours per week preparing for seminars and undertaking research for their in-class exercise, and a total of about 200 hours overall. Seminars and private study will focus on a selection of primary sources and the attendant secondary literature; a reader with the relevant texts will be provided and the students are expected to practice their skills on these texts.
MEMS MA Students only
The assessment for this module consists of five exercises which will be completed by the students at home.
The course will make use of original primary sources preserved in Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library and copies of other original Medieval and Early Modern documents and manuscripts, provided by the course convener.
See the library reading list for this module (Canterbury)
• Students will improve their close reading skills using original Latin, English and French source material, which will enable them better to analyse original primary sources
• Students will develop working knowledge of Medieval and Early Modern handwritings and the attendant research resources
• Students' ability to engage critically with the secondary literature in history, theology and literature will be cultivated through understanding of original primary sources
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