Students and faculty recently had a opportunity to take part in a daylong workshop: Understanding Early English Manuscripts, led by Professor Elaine Treharne, Head of the English Department and Professor of Medieval Studies at the University of Leicester, who will be joining the FSU faculty in January 2007.
Professor Treharne provided an educational and entertaining overview of early English manuscripts--from the stretching and scraping of cow hides to make vellum, to the economics of manuscript production, to the methods used by scribes as they wrote, copied, or edited texts. We broke up into small groups for hands-on exercises that helped us understand the structure and features of manuscripts, as well as calculate pagination (and English students doing team math is always good for a laugh!). After an excellent lunch, Professor Richard Emerson, from the Art History Department, discussed “Image as Text” while showing us a number of illuminated manuscripts.
Attendees from Art History, Humanities, Modern Languages and Literatures joined us in the English Department’s Commons Room for this interdisciplinary experience. Professor David Johnson facilitated, and the workshop was sponsored by his FSU Council on Research and Creativity Planning Grant, “Reading Between the Lines: The Users and Uses of English Texts in Early Medieval Worcester.
photos and prose by Barrington Smith-Seetachitt
