Communicating Early English Manuscripts (Studies in English Language)
Cambridge University Press, 1/29/2015
EAN 9781107646506, ISBN10: 1107646502
Paperback, 314 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.8 cm
Language: English
In an obvious way, manuscripts communicate. This is the first book to focus on the communicative aspects of English manuscripts from the fourteenth to the nineteenth century. It investigates how the authors and scribes of these manuscripts communicated with their audiences, how the characters depicted in these manuscripts communicate with each other, and how the manuscripts communicate with scholars and audiences in the 21st century. It covers a wide variety of genres, such as stories, scientific writing, witchcraft records, personal letters, war correspondence, courtroom records, and plays. The volume demonstrates how these handwritten texts can be used to analyse the history of language as communication between individuals and groups, and discusses the challenges these documents present to present-day scholars. It is unique in bringing together studies by distinguished international experts examining primary handwritten sources from the perspectives of several fields, including historical pragmatics, historical sociolinguistics, corpus linguistics and literary scholarship.
Introduction
1. Communicating manuscripts
authors, scribes, readers, listeners and communicating characters Andreas H. Jucker and Päivi Pahta
Part I. Authors, Scribes and their Audiences
2. Commonplace-book communication
role shifts and text functions in Robert Reynes's notes contained in MS Tanner 407 Thomas Kohnen
3. Textuality in late medieval England
two case studies Gabriella Del Lungo Camiciotti
4. The significance of now-dispersed Bute 13
a mixed-language scientific manuscript Patricia Deery Kurtz and Linda Ehrsam Voigts
5. Communicating attitudes and values through language choices
diatopic and diastratic variation in Mary Magdalene in MS Digby 133 Maurizio Gotti and Stefania Maci
6. Constructing the audiences of the Old Bailey Trials 1674–1834 Elizabeth Closs Traugott
Part II. Communicating through Handwritten Correspondence
7. A defiant gentleman or 'the strengest thiefe of Wales'
reinterpreting the politics in a medieval correspondence Merja Stenroos and Martti Mäkinen
8. Sociopragmatic aspects of person reference in Nathaniel Bacon's letters Minna Palander-Collin and Minna Nevala
9. Poetic collaboration and competition in the late seventeenth century
George Stepney's letters to Jacob Tonson and Matthew Prior Susan Fitzmaurice
10. Handwritten communication in nineteenth-century business correspondence Marina Dossena
Part III. From Manuscript to Print
11. The relationship between MS Hunter 409 and the 1532 edition of Chaucer's works edited by William Thynne Graham D. Caie
12. The development of play-texts
from manuscript to print Jonathan Culpeper and Jane Demmen
13. Communicating Galen's Methodus medendi in Middle and Early Modern English Päivi Pahta, Turo Hiltunen, Ville Marttila, Maura Ratia, Carla Suhr and Jukka Tyrkkö
14. Prepositional modifiers in early English medical prose
a study ON their historical development IN noun phrases Douglas Biber, Bethany Gray, Alpo Honkapohja and Päivi Pahta
15. The pragmatics of punctuation in Older Scots Jeremy Smith and Christian Kay
Part IV. Manuscripts and their Communicating Characters
16. Greetings and farewells in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales Andreas H. Jucker
17. Attitudes of the accused in the Salem witchcraft trials Leena Kahlas-Tarkka and Matti Rissanen.