Matti Peikola

Pragmatics on the Page

Early texts are characterised by diversity: pages containing largely the same text will vary in linguistic features, specific content, and, crucially for the present study, visual appearance. Within their separate arenas, both book historians and historical pragmaticians have embraced this diversity and variation in their research, but neither field has availed itself of the tool kit of the other. The present study therefore draws upon book history and materialist philology on the one hand and historical pragmatics and historical discourse linguistics on the other. The authors call their approach ‘pragmatics on the page’. In this article they propose a four-stage methodology and illustrate it by means of a case study based on the Polychronicon, a text composed in late medieval England and surviving in numerous manuscript copies and early printed editions.

Philology on the Move : Manuscript Studies at the Dawn of the 21st Century

The study of manuscripts has always been present in philological research, although traditionally its role has been largely confined to the editing of classical and medieval texts. Today, the association between philology and manuscript studies is closer and more multifaceted than ever before. This development reflects both new theoretical directions and methodological innovations. On the one hand, the increased presence of manuscript studies in philology manifests ‘the material turn in philology’ (Drout & Kleinman 2010 §8), a paradigm shift that highlights the importance of the material context of the book for historical linguistics and textual scholarship. While the agency of manuscripts as ‘carriers’ of texts and their language is what primarily makes them relevant to philological study, philologists are now increasingly seen to include non-textual or supra-textual features of the physical book (artefact) as contextual variables in their analyses (see e.g. Thaisen & Rutkowska 2011; Pahta & Jucker 2011). In doing so, they are informed by research in codicology and palaeography to scrutinize the physical structure, handwriting, layout, decoration and provenance of manuscripts. On the other hand, the current vigorous interest in manuscript studies in philology is also closely associated with the emergence of digital humanities and the increasing collaboration between philologists and specialists in digital media and computing science to develop new research tools and methods. The intensity of interdisciplinary scholarship in this field may be appreciated by examining recent contributions in journals such as Digital Medievalist, Digital Philology and Literary and Linguistic Computing, which report innovative research endeavours for example into editorial philology, handwriting analysis and the visual markup of manuscript texts (see e.g. Cloppet et al. 2011; Andrews & Macé 2013; Kiss et al. 2013). Recent years have also seen the publication of several highquality collections of articles addressing the interface between philology, manuscript studies and digital humanities (see e.g. Rehbein et al. 2009; Fischer et al. 2011; Meurman-Solin & Tyrkkö 2013). The twelve articles in this special issue illustrate current strands in manuscript studies as a multidisciplinary field. Early versions of the articles were presented at the symposium ‘Manuscript studies and codicology: Theory and practice’ in Uppsala, 28 October 2011, co-organised by the Department of English at Uppsala University and Turku Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (TUCEMEMS) at the University of Turku. In what follows, we will first describe each article individually and then highlight theoretical and methodological

The Vagaries of Manuscripts from the Salem Witch Trials: An Edition of Four (Re-)Discovered Documents from the Case Against Margaret Scott of Rowley

Rich documentary evidence survives from the witch trials in Salem, MA, in 1692–1693. We have at our disposal about 1,000 documents, including witness depositions, indictments, warrants, letters of restitution, and records of pretrial hearings (see RSWH). At the same time, it is clear from the extant body of texts that a substantial number of additional documents must have existed that no longer survive or whose locations are yet to be determined. There are also records that are not extant or have been assumed not to be extant but for which we have evidence in the form of later transcriptions or editions (see e.g. RSWH, nos. 414 and 417). This is the case of four witness depositions pertaining to the case of Margaret Scott of Rowley (for Scott’s case, see Rosenthal 1993: 171; Norton 2002: 254, 276–277, 317; Rice 2005: np). These depositions were transcribed and included in Thomas Gage’s History of Rowley published in 1840. As the

Tables of Lections in Manuscripts of the Wycliffite Bible

This chapter sets out to explore one frequent paratextual companion to the Wycliffite Bible: the table of lections - a liturgical tool for the Use of Sarum found in ca. 40 percent of the surviving manuscripts. The major part of the chapter surveys their form, content and function by discussing similarities and differences between them from a typological perspective. These observations are based on an inspection of approximately 80 percent of the surviving tables, from originals or reproductions; for the remaining 20 percent, the data was supplemented by descriptions of Wycliffite tables of lections in library catalogues and other secondary sources. The chapter addresses the tables from the point of view of the readers of the Wycliffite Bible. To provide necessary background information, it deals with the liturgical function of the table of lections, and summarises the main points of its historical development. Keywords:lections; liturgical tool; manuscripts; Wycliffite Bible