Overview

Latin books are among the most numerous surviving artifacts of the Late Antique, Mediaeval, and Renaissance periods in European history; written in a variety of formats and scripts, they preserve the literary, philosophical, scientific, and religious heritage of the West. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography surveys these books, with special emphasis on the variety of scripts in which they were written. Palaeography, in the strictest sense, examines how the changing styles of script and the fluctuating shapes of individual letters allow the date and the place of production of books to be determined. More broadly conceived, palaeography examines the totality of early book production, ownership, dissemination, and use. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography includes essays on major types of script (Uncial, Insular, Beneventan, Visigothic, Gothic, etc.), describing what defines these distinct script types, and outlining when and where they were used. It expands on previous handbooks of the subject by incorporating select essays on less well-studied periods and regions, in particular late mediaeval Eastern Europe. The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography is also distinguished from prior handbooks by its extensive focus on codicology and on the cultural settings and contexts of mediaeval books. Essays treat of various important features, formats, styles, and genres of mediaeval books, and of representative mediaeval libraries as intellectual centers. Additional studies explore questions of orality and the written word, the book trade, glossing and glossaries, and manuscript cataloguing. The extensive plates and figures in the volume will provide readers wtih clear illustrations of the major points, and the succinct bibliographies in each essay will direct them to more detailed works in the field.

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9780195336948

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Reviews

This volume gathers an impressive wealth of expert knowledge, and the editors are to be applauded for bringing this impressive book project to fruition. * Erik Kwakkel, Speculum * this handbook will definitely be the standard work on palaeography for a long time to come. * Geoffrey D. Dunn, University of Pretoria, Journal of the Australian Early Medieval Association * In keeping with Leonard Boyle's conception of integral palaeography - the idea that the study of paleography is not an isolated discipline but rather is intimately entangled with other aspects of the handwritten book - the volume moves beyond examinations of different script styles to wide-ranging discussions of everything from codicology and textual genres to the technical aspects of manuscript cataloguing. * Lisa Fagin Davis, Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies * Splendid and immensely useful ... Latin Palaeography tackles the major types of script, material embodiment and techniques of manuscripts, their cultural setting, selected scriptoria and libraries, and varieties of book usage in sixty-three chapters penned by an international team of experts. I see that the book is already out of stock - as sure a sign as any of the timeliness and need. * Ivana Petrovic, Greece & Rome * The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography does exactly what it sets out to do, and more ... Written by an international Who's Who of Latin paleography, with smooth and expert translations from German, Italian, and French when necessary, the volume provides welcome introductions to Latin bookhands from late Antiquity to the Renaissance, with additional sections covering codicology, manuscript culture, and book history ... The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography should quickly become a staple on bookshelves and in classrooms, and many of the essays will become instant classics. * Lisa Fagin Davis, Manuscript Studies * We must be grateful to the editors, Coulson and Babcock, for their courage in organising this handbook. This impressive work will be of great value, both as an indispensable handbook of Latin palaeography and as a necessary starting point for research in palaeography, codicology and the cultural history of the Latin Middle Ages. * Paolo Eleuteri, The Classical Review *

Splendid and immensely useful ... Latin Palaeography tackles the major types of script, material embodiment and techniques of manuscripts, their cultural setting, selected scriptoria and libraries, and varieties of book usage in sixty-three chapters penned by an international team of experts. I see that the book is already out of stock - as sure a sign as any of the timeliness and need. * Ivana Petrovic, Greece & Rome * The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography does exactly what it sets out to do, and more ... Written by an international Who's Who of Latin paleography, with smooth and expert translations from German, Italian, and French when necessary, the volume provides welcome introductions to Latin bookhands from late Antiquity to the Renaissance, with additional sections covering codicology, manuscript culture, and book history ... The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography should quickly become a staple on bookshelves and in classrooms, and many of the essays will become instant classics. * Lisa Fagin Davis, Manuscript Studies * We must be grateful to the editors, Coulson and Babcock, for their courage in organising this handbook. This impressive work will be of great value, both as an indispensable handbook of Latin palaeography and as a necessary starting point for research in palaeography, codicology and the cultural history of the Latin Middle Ages. * Paolo Eleuteri, The Classical Review *

We must be grateful to the editors, Coulson and Babcock, for their courage in organising this handbook. This impressive work will be of great value, both as an indispensable handbook of Latin palaeography and as a necessary starting point for research in palaeography, codicology and the cultural history of the Latin Middle Ages. * Paolo Eleuteri, The Classical Review *

Author Information

Robert G. Babcock teaches Classics at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a Fellow of the Flemish Royal Academy of Belgium, Korrespondierendes Mitglied der Zentraldirektion of Monumenta Germaniae Historica, and has held fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung and the Belgian Institute for Advanced Studies. His publications focus on Latin manuscripts, Medieval Latin, and the transmission of Classical, Patristic, and Medieval Latin literature. Frank T. Coulson is Distinguished Professor of Classics in the Department of Classics at the Ohio State University. He has published widely on the reception of Ovid in the Medieval Ages and is currently finishing a volume for the Catalogus translationum et commentariorum on Ovid's Metamorphoses. He also serves as the Director of Palaeography for the Center for Epigraphical and Palaeographical Studies.

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