We specialize in hard to find items
All Categories
A Codicological and Linguistic Study of the Voigts-Sloane Group of Middle English Manuscripts (Texts and Transitions)
Share Tweet
*Price and Stocks may change without prior notice
*Packaging of actual item may differ from photo shown
- Electrical items MAY be 110 volts.
- 7 Day Return Policy
- All products are genuine and original
About A Codicological And Linguistic Study Of The
Product Description In this fascinating study, Alpo Honkapohja takes a fresh interdisciplinary approach to the Voigts-Sloane Group of Middle English manuscripts, a group of medical and alchemical manuscripts dating from the 1450s and 1460s. First described by Linda Voigts in 1990, these manuscripts have received attention, since they may be evidence of co-ordinated commercial production of medical and alchemical books, only decades before William Caxton established his printing press in Westminster in 1476. Honkapohja examines these manuscripts with a combination of codicological and linguistic methodologies, looking at different ways which could be used to facilitate the production of manuscripts, including speculative production and copying separate booklets, as well as their dialect and the interplay between Middle English and Latin. The results cast new light on how these codices were copied as well as reveal surprising regularity in the dialects of scientific writing, an area which has received considerably less attention than administrative and literary texts. Review "Honkapohja provides an in-depth analysis of the codicological detail, dialect, and multilingual character of the manuscripts. The aim is to see whether further analysis can provide clues as to their production circumstances, audience, and intent. In seven chapters, Honkapohja offers a wealth of information on these manuscripts, which he has clearly studied with scrupulous care. . . . .There is no doubt that Honkapohjas book advances our knowledge of text production and dissemination of scientific texts in late medieval England. While the in-depth analysis sometimes simply appears to confirm Voigtss earlier suggestions, we do see important nuancing of her ideas and new discoveries and correctives as well. Among other interesting findings, the close inspection of language mixing and dialect points out significant distinctions between the different manuscript subgroups, and between medical and alchemical works." --Peter J. Grund, University of Kansas, Speculum 95/1 (January 2020)
