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Richard Gameson, M. B. Parkes, Their Hands before our Eyes: A Closer Look at Scribes., Notes and Queries, Volume 56, Issue 4, December 2009, Pages 639–640, https://doi.org/10.1093/notesj/gjp196
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Extract
BASED on the Lyell lectures for 1999, this book aims ‘to identify those features which are a scribe’s personal contribution to the techniques and art of handwriting’. Three preliminary chapters offer overviews of the various milieux in which scribes worked, first during the early middle ages in Europe as a whole, next within religious orders in England from 1100 to 1540, and finally in English secular society during the same period. In the main body of the book, the focus turns to scribal work per se, the factors that may have affected it, and the observable results. Reflections on general principles (Chapter 4)—ranging from how the pen was held, through the act of writing and the processes of transcription, to the reasons for errors–are followed by consideration of cursive script and the tension between the conflicting demands of speed and legibility (Chapter 5). The next pair of chapters explore the dynamics of the process of writing in relation to the nature and evolution of the formal book-hands that were used from c. 800–1200 (Chapter 6) and in the later Middle Ages (Chapter 7). The final chapter examines the aesthetic and symbolic values—as distinct from the purely graphic and communicative qualities—of different types of scripts and of their relationships to each other, probing the reasons that led scribes to choose one as opposed to, or alongside another. The text is supported by a helpful glossary of technical terms, indices of scribes and of manuscripts, and sixty-nine full-page black and white plates, closely linked to the content of Chapters 5–8.
