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Get up close and personal with some of the most important treasures of the John Rylands Library: in this course, we will be examining highlights from its Latin medieval manuscript collection, one of the four great collections in the British Isles, alongside the British Library and the libraries of Oxford and Cambridge. This course combines historical enquiry with practical skill training, namely the reading and transcription of different medieval scripts. In alternating weeks, students will first learn to read medieval scripts, then apply such skills in practice with relevant manuscripts from the Rylands collection; these sessions will contextualize the history of these manuscripts and explore their production and use. The course is anchored in the consideration of these manuscripts as material objects; it will further explore the political, economic, intellectual and cultural contexts in which these remarkable volumes were produced.     
 

familiarise students with the mechanisms of manuscript production;  

introduce students to the methodologies of, and principal techniques used in source analysis of material from the medieval period;  

contextualise the variety of sources surviving from the medieval period, and illustrate how changes in script, manuscript production and decoration were influenced by changing intellectual and cultural demands;  
 

provide students with training in the comprehension and transcription of medieval scripts, and in the study of the book as a material object (codicology).  
 

Weekly 3 hour seminars at the John Rylands Library involving advanced reading preparation from secondary studies, small group work in class and directed learning led by the seminar tutor (with support from the Rylands staff). Students will be supported to read and transcribe a range of medieval scripts and to encounter at first hand relevant manuscripts from the Rylands collection. They will be guided to contextualise the history and production of manuscripts, to consider their significance as material objects, and to situate all of this in wider socio-cultural, religious, intellectual, and political settings. The course will be supported by the University of Â鶹Æƽâ°æ's online learning system, Canvas. This will be used to provide relevant course materials, including guided reading for each session, and any additional online resources. Student assignments will be submitted online via Turnitin on Canvas.

• evaluate the relationship between historical production contexts and manuscript outputs
• demonstrate an awareness of the basic principles of palaeography with reference to medieval Latin scripts 
• develop a critical understanding of the interaction between the form of the book, its function, and genre 
• demonstrate an awareness of the variety of contexts within which book production occurred.

• develop transcription skills relevant to Latin sources
• analyse textual material in terms of its context of production
• assess critically modifications and continuities in the history of the book, across genre and time

• develop palaeographic skills to read the most important medieval scripts
• sustain intellectual debate, informed by current scholarship on the history of the book, and the history of reading
• develop research and essay writing techniques, appropriate to the required assessment
• understand the application of general course themes to specific objects and case studies examined in the class

• develop oral presentation skills through group work and participation in discussions
• gain the ability to read historical handwriting
• gain time management skills through the preparation of assignments
  write fluent prose 
   

Transcription (mid-semester) 1,000 words (formative)

Transcription (end of semester) 1,000 words 40% (summative)

Study of a medieval manuscript in the Rylands (end of semester) 2,000 words 60% (summative)
 

Via Turnitin within 15 working days 

Bernhard Bischoff, Latin Paleography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1990).  

Clemens, Raymond, and Graham, Timothy, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (London, 2007).    

Derolez, Albert, The Palaeography of Gothic Manuscript Books from the Twelfth to the Early Sixteenth Centuries (Cambridge, 2003).  

de Hamel, Christopher, Making Medieval Manuscripts (Oxford, 2017).  

Johnston, Michael, and  van  Dussen, Michael (eds),  The  Medieval  Manuscript  Book:  Cultural  

Approaches (Cambridge, 2015).  

Kwakkel, Erik, McKitterick, Rosamond, and Thomas, Rodney, (eds), Turning over a New Leaf: Change and Development in the Medieval Book (Leiden, 2012).  

Parkes, Malcolm, Pause and Effect: An Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Aldershot, 1992).  

Richardson, Brian, Manuscript Culture in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 2014).