This dissertation focuses on fragments of Notre Dame manuscripts that made their way to German speaking Europe during the medieval period. The first chapter focuses on their contexts of reuse. Dominican, Cistercian as well as Franciscan bookbinders played a role in these processes of medieval and early modern recycling. The potential for fragments to elucidate bookbinders’ techniques will be explored, and existing hypotheses as to the circulation of Notre Dame manuscripts will be critically reviewed. Furthermore, an emphasis is placed on the importance of the reconstruction of medieval book collections. The second chapter is dedicated to the discovery of a set of conductus fragments reused by a bookbinder of the Dominican convent of Soest. Taking one known fragment as a point of departure, I was able to assign five further leaves(now in Münster, Cambridge and New Haven) to this set of fragments. The third chapter sheds new light on the history of two host volumes, in which, during the twentieth century, organum fragments were discovered. It addresses questions of the changing ownership of manuscripts, focusing on the role of post Reformation and nineteenth century book collectors. The final chapter, a case study of the conductus Porta salutis ave, discusses editorial problems in conjunction with a close analysis of the piece’s main stylistic features. As the text was originally designed as a seal inscription, questions of material culture and music are also addressed. Furthermore, my systematic search for text sources for the distich Porta salutis ave revealed more than twenty previously unconsidered manuscripts transmitting the poetic text only, whose fuller, contents point to complementary contexts and functions to those suggested in the musical sources and the seals.

This thesis offers an examination and analysis of the manuscript compilation of three poems: Judgement Day I, Resignation A and Resignation B (ff.115v-19v) found in Exeter Cathedral Library MS 3501. It argues that paratextual information including textual division, subordination and manuscript layout are indicative of compiler intention and are significant in the interpretation and subsequent editing practice of Old English texts. An examination of other Old English manuscripts reveals that compilation of this sort was not uncommon; this compilation is indicative of the intended function of the poems as conceived by the manuscript compiler. Evidence from Old English homilies provides a context for the compilation of JDayI with ResA and ResB, where the poems can be seen to share themes common to sets of Rogationtide homilies. An analysis of the use of textual division markers found throughout the Exeter Book manuscript is also provided. This thesis is divided into five main sections: methodology; thematic evidence; contextual evidence; manuscript evidence; and a transcription of JDayI, ResA and ResB. Section I presents the methodology which informs this study, examining the significance of manuscript context in the interpretation and editorial practice of Old English poetry; it also provides an editorial rationale for the semi-diplomatic transcription of Section V. Section II: Thematic Evidence provides an individual review of each poem’s critical history, genre classification and literary analysis, and re-evaluates the poems anew. Section III: Contextual Evidence brings together the thematic evidence of Section II to argue the poems were compiled together in the Exeter Book because they reflected themes common to Rogationtide homilies. Using evidence of similar manuscript compilation in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, MS 201 (CCCC 201) and in the Vercelli Homilies (specifically VercHomXIX-XXI) it is argued the three Exeter Book poems were placed together for use during Rogationtide, and thereby designed to promote compunction, confession and penance among the audience. Section IV: Manuscript Evidence examines the layout and textual division of these three texts and results displaying the textual division and subordination practice found throughout the Exeter Book manuscript are provided. Finally, Section V: Transcription presents a diplomatic transcription of the texts with facing facsimile image to reflect their manuscript context. The original contributions of this thesis are therefore twofold: i. It presents original data and analysis of textual division practice used in the Exeter Book manuscript ii. It provides thematic, contextual and manuscript evidence of manuscript compilation of JDayI, ResA and ResB and provides an explanation of the purpose such compilation sought to offer.

This thesis addresses a range of research questions regarding literacy in early modern Scotland. Using the early modern manuscripts and printed editions of Robert Lindsay of Pitscottie’s late sixteenth-century 'Cronicles of Scotland' as a case study on literacy history, this thesis poses the complementary questions of how and why early modern Scottish reading communities were encountering Pitscottie’s 'Cronicles', and how features of the material page can be interpreted as indicators of contemporary literacy practices. The answers to these questions then provide the basis for the thesis to ask broader socio-cultural and theoretical questions regarding the overall literacy environment in Scotland between 1575 and 1814, and how theorists conceptualise the history of literacy. Positioned within the theoretical groundings of historical pragmatics and ‘new philology’ – and the related approach of pragmaphilology – this thesis returns to the earlier philological practice of close textual analysis, and engages with the theoretical concept of mouvance, in order to analyse how the changing ‘form’ of Pitscottie’s 'Cronicles', as it was reproduced in manuscript and print throughout the early modern period, indicates its changing ‘function’. More specifically, it suggests that the punctuation practices and paratextual features of individual witnesses of the text function to aid the highly-nuanced reading practices and purposes of the discrete reading communities for which they were produced. This thesis includes extensive descriptive material which presents previously unrecorded data regarding twenty manuscripts and printed witnesses of Pitscottie’s 'Cronicles', contributing to a gap in Scotland’s literary/historiographical canon. It then analyses this material using a transferable methodological framework which combines the quantitative analysis of micro-data with qualitative analysis of this data within its socio-cultural context, in order to conduct diachronic comparative analysis of copy-specific information. The principal findings of this thesis suggest that Pitscottie’s 'Cronicles' were being read for a combination of devotional and didactic purposes, and that multiple reading communities, employing highly nuanced reading practices, were encountering the text near-contemporaneously. This thesis further suggests that early modern literacy practices, and the specific reading communities which employ them, should be described as existing within a spectrum of available practices (i.e. more or less oral/aural or silent, and intensive or extensive in practice) rather than as dichotomous entities. As such, this thesis argues for the rejection of evolutionary theories of the history of literacy, suggesting that rather than being described antithetically, historical reading practices and purposes must be recognised as complex, coexisting socio-cultural practices, and the multiplicity of reading communities within a single society must be acknowledged and analysed as such, as opposed to being interpreted as universal entities.

The present dissertation investigates the process of transmission of hieroglyphs from Egypt to Early-Modern Europe. This phenomenon has been studied by Egyptologists and Art Historians, mostly from a historical and descriptive standpoint, but here an original theoretical perspective was adopted: Grammatology or the study of writing. In order to understand this process of stimuli diffusion, and its outcome, it was deemed necessary to delve into both the Egyptian writing-system and the hieroglyphic phenomenon in the Renaissance, which led the dissertation to be divided into two parts. The First Part is devoted to The Ancient Hieroglyph: Chapter One addresses the mechanics of Egyptian hieroglyphs, their grammatological functions and the outline of a theory for the text-image dynamics in this context; Chapter Two examines the terminology of “hieroglyph” in Egypt, and its conceptual difference from the Greek and Contemporary views on the matter; Chapter Three describes the historical development of the Egyptian writing and a hypothesis for the emergence of a “hieroglyphic hermeneutics”; Chapter Four is dedicated to Horapollon’s Hieroglyphica, which is regarded as the main vector of diffusion between Ancient and Modern hieroglyphic traditions. The Second Part focuses on The Early-Modern Hieroglyph: Chapter Five outlines the early process of diffusion and the first ideas of hieroglyph in the Renaissance; Chapter Six discusses the creation of new hieroglyphic codes; Chapter Seven tackles the role of hieroglyphs in the birth of the emblematic tradition and its continuous relationship on different culture levels; Chapter Eight look into the Spanish jeroglificos, regarding it as a hybrid genre of hieroglyphs and emblems; Chapter Nine explores the impact of Renaissance hieroglyphs on the cultural perception of writing; and finally, in Chapter Ten, the process of convergence between hieroglyphs, alchemical iconography and emblems is analysed in the light of the previous chapters. It was found that there is an objective relationship between Ancient and Modern hieroglyphs, not easily perceptible and often downplayed as a result of a certain logocentrism, but of great importance – especially in terms of its impact on the establishment of a European text-image tradition. Another conclusion is that, if Renaissance scholars, artists and poets thought it possible to write through images, and in fact created speaking pictures, visual compositions can be considered as a form of writing - being therefore a potential subject of Grammatology. This finding does not exclude other instruments of analysis, but creates a number of theoretical solutions in the field of text-image studies that have been employed in the present study.

In the field of manuscript studies, the identification of individual scribes and the reconstruction of their lives and work through examination of manuscript material has recently undergone revival. This thesis contributes to that field by presenting two biobibliographical case-studies of two fifteenth-century scribes and Carthusian monks, William Mede and Stephen Dodesham of Sheen. It sets out to demonstrate the value of an integrated biographical and comparative approach in the examination of the making and circumstances of making of manuscript books. This is demonstrated by building scribal biographies based on the integration of evidence from documentary record and the analysis of the material manuscript output of Mede and Dodesham. Dodesham, as the more prolific of the two, has been more fully investigated in recent scholarship. New documentary evidence, however, has necessitated a fresh appraisal of his life and the contexts of his copying, contexts which I argue are strongly educational. I show that Mede’s life and work as a Carthusian reader, copyist, and perhaps writer, is therefore worth further scholarly investigation. Chapter one considers the current state of the field of historical biography and, more specifically, scribal biography. It assesses the usefulness of integrating biographical and codicological approaches in the study of manuscripts and provides a definition of codicology in its broader sense (as a means of writing biobibliographical histories). As not all aspects of codicology are considered here, I also identify those aspects of codicological enquiry I have chosen to apply to the manuscripts of Mede and Dodesham. The case is made for the usefulness of codicological methods as a means of interpreting historical material. As the main focal points of this study are the lives and work of two Carthusian scribes, chapter two provides context on the Carthusian life, incorporating an evaluation of recent work on Carthusian textual culture, a brief summary of the Order’s history, its administrative structure, Carthusian spirituality, its participation in the intellectual culture of the late medieval period, how it responded to changing patterns in devotion, and its members’ attitudes and approaches to the acts of reading, writing and copying. This background is essential in contextualising the scribal activity of Mede and Dodesham and will be referred to in the following chapters. Chapters three and four are dedicated to the case studies examining the lives and work of William Mede and Stephen Dodesham of Sheen. Chapter three, containing the case study of William Mede, includes analysis of his Anglicana and other idiosyncratic features of his hand; full descriptions of each of the six manuscripts so far attributed to him; and study of his language and punctuation practices, which vary, I argue, depending upon for what sorts of audience Mede is writing or copying. A detailed study of the Speculum devotorum demonstrates this adaptive scribal behaviour in action and also investigates the possibility that Mede may have been the author of the text. The above are all discussed in relation to the making and circumstances of making of Mede’s manuscripts. The conclusion to the chapter offers a summary of Mede’s life and work and makes the case for the importance of further investigation of this Carthusian scribe. Chapter four, the case study of Stephen Dodesham, includes a reappraisal in light of new evidence of his early scribal career, including his ordination at Sheen charterhouse, potential connections with the prominent Dodesham family of Somerset and connections with middle-class, professional families in London and around the south-western counties of England. This new evidence has made it possible to more firmly place the contexts of Dodesham’s manuscript copying. Much of chapter four is dedicated to analysing his language, and providing brief descriptions of those manuscripts so far attributed to him; the above all discussed in relation to the making and circumstances of making of Dodesham’s manuscripts. The conclusion offers a summary of Dodesham’s life and work and makes the case for the importance of further investigation as of particular interest in the areas of developing literacy and education. In chapter five, I bring both case studies together, assess the usefulness of the biographical approach in the context of this particular study, and evaluate its successes and limitations as a framework for combined biographical and codicological investigation.

Thomas Middleton’s work as a playwright and pamphleteer was highly collaborative: from 1601 to 1627 he wrote with at least ten of his contemporaries including Dekker, Jonson and Shakespeare. However, Middleton’s texts are even more collaborative than these writing partnerships would suggest. This thesis defines collaboration as the act of sharing in the process of making meaning, and so proposes that Middleton’s collaborators included not only his many co-writers but also performers, printers and editors. Middleton’s partnership with Thomas Dekker, the three plays and two pamphlets they co-wrote together, are the starting point from which I explore early modern collaboration. Since these texts have survived only in print form, the best information available about the creative processes that generated them is archival sources and the evidence provided by attribution studies. Yet there are two potential problems with the use of attribution evidence. First, because attribution involves assigning parts of texts to writers, it can imply that co-written texts were always singly authored in separate sections then pieced together. Secondly, attribution’s concern with tracking the presence of authors can suggest that non-authorial contributions to a text are not worthwhile. This thesis challenges both of these assumptions. To resolve the tension between valuable evidence provided by attribution studies and their misrepresentation (as I see it) of collaboration, this thesis takes as its starting point those poststructuralist theories which call for a decentred conception of the author. Co-writing can then be understood as an essential aspect of how meaning in a text is made but not the only significant aspect. My thesis reframes attribution evidence in light of this idea and uses it to gain insight into how and why Middleton and Dekker wrote together, rather than to discover ‘who wrote what’. I argue that Middleton began writing with the more experienced Dekker to hone his craft and that their process changed as Middleton became more practised. Taking this approach to attribution scholarship means that I can investigate co-writing without devaluing non-authorial collaboration: Middleton and Dekker’s co-writing is presented alongside the collaborative acts of those who performed, printed and edited their texts. By applying the idea of a decentred author to attribution evidence, this thesis offers an original way to approach early modern collaboration: one which analyses co-writing whilst recognising it as part of a larger network of collaborative acts.

O presente trabalho constitui-se de estudos paleográficos e codicológicos de documentos manuscritos dos séculos XVIII e XIX - datados entre 1707 e 1822 -, referentes à Capitania de São Paulo, inicialmente, e, após, às Capitanias de Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais e Goiás, área mais tarde identificada como da \"cultura caipira\". Esta descrição está precedida de resenha dos aspectos históricos considerados mais relevantes do período colonial brasileiro, com foco na área de referência dos documentos, seguida de edições fac-similar e semidiplomática justalinear e de perspectivas de estudos lingüísticos. / Paleographic and codicological studies are made of manuscript documents of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries - between 1707 and 1822 -, referring to the Province of São Paulo, initially, and subsequently to the Mato Grosso, Minas Gerais and Goiás provinces, an area identified later as that of the \"caipira culture\". This description is preceded by a review of the historical aspects considered most relevant in the Brazilian colonial period, focusing of the area referred to in the documents, and followed by fac-similar and semidiplomatic justalinear editions and perspectives of linguistic studies.

O presente trabalho trará a edição semidiplomática dos processos criminais e autos de devassa dos séculos XVII ao XX, bem como a análise do emprego dos diacríticos. O período escolhido proporcionará analisar a evolução do uso dos sinais gráficos agudo (´), circunflexo (^), grave (`) e til (~), bem como traçar uma similaridade entre os usos, contextualizadas às aplicações estabelecidas no período, quando existentes. O trabalho filológico estará presente em todas as análises realizadas e inicialmente partiremos da transcrição semidiplomática dos manuscritos, que nos possibilitarão identificar alguns fatores que contribuíram com a diversificação do uso dos diacríticos, bem como sanar dúvidas quanto a sua aplicabilidade. Após essa análise e a descaracterização de similaridades, ou seja, a minimização de dúvidas quanto a identificação do diacrítico, devido ao traçado utilizado, partimos para uma segunda etapa da análise do corpus: a diversificação dos usos nos diferentes séculos e suas motivações. Em paralelo, e não menos importante, buscaremos no contexto político-social as perspectivas socioculturais que apresentem a dinâmica na forma de apresentação e estruturação documental, bem como identificar os autores dos documentos e sua influência na elaboração dos autos. Buscando em gramáticas, ortografias e manuais de escrita das épocas relacionadas, estabelecemos relações entre o contexto social, político e ideológico refletidos nas obras linguísticas dos séculos XVI ao XX à utilização dos sinais diacríticos presentes na documentação. Essa correlação serviu-nos de base para que identificássemos similaridades entre os usos defendidos pelos gramáticos, ortógrafos e mestres e os escribas responsáveis pela feitura dos documentos. O objetivo desse estudo é apresentar novos contextos acerca do uso destes sinais gráficos a partir de uma análise linguística e histórico-social dos dados coletados nos autos de devassa, contribuindo assim com futuras pesquisas e estudos na área da filologia e da linguística histórica. / This paper will focus on both the semi-diplomatic edition of the criminal proceedings, autos de devassa (case files), from the 17th to the 20th centuries, and on the analysis of the use of diacritics. The chosen time period will not only make it possible to analyze the development of graphic signs: acute (´), circumflex (^), grave (`), and tilde (~), but also draw a similarity between the uses, contextualized to the applications set out in the period - when existing. The philological research will permeate all the conducted analyses, and we will start with the semi-diplomatic transcription of the manuscripts, which will enable us to identify several factors which contributed to the diversification of the use of diacritics, and will also answer questions as to their applicability. After making this analysis and detracting from the characterization of the similarities, that is, minimizing questions regarding the identification of the diacritic, due to the designed plan, we move on to the second phase of the corpus analysis: the diversification of the uses in the different centuries and their motivations. In addition, and importantly, we will seek in the sociopolitical context the sociocultural perspectives that present the dynamics in presentation form and documental structuring, and also identify the authors of the documents and their influence on the drafting of the files. Searching in grammars, orthographies and writing manuals of the related times, we have established relationships between the sociopolitical and ideological context reflected in the linguistic works of the time period from the 16th to the 20th centuries, and the use of diacritical signs laid out in the documentation. This correlation served as a basis for us to identify similarities among the uses upheld by grammarians, orthographers, professors and the scribes responsible for drafting the documents. The purpose of this study is to introduce new contexts on the use of these graphic signs based on a linguistic, social and historical analysis of the data collected in the autos de devassa (case files), thus contributing to future research in the fields of philology and historical linguistics.

Esta dissertação tem como primeiro objetivo preparar as edições facsimilar e semidiplomática de atas da Câmara Municipal de Botucatu, datadas de 1858 e 1859. Por ser o trabalho filológico uma atividade multidisciplinar, propomo-nos, também, a levantar alguns aspectos codicológicos e paleográfios do livro no qual estas atas se encontram. Durante a leitura destes documentos, notamos que os diferentes alógrafos dos grafemas s e z, especialmente em posição intervocálica, podem, muitas vezes, proporcionar dificuldades de leitura a pesquisadores preocupados com questões de linguística histórica. Além da variação entre alógrafos, há também a variação no emprego dos grafemas s e z quanto à representação de diferentes fonemas. Baseados na constatação de que s e z apresentam variação quanto à forma e ao fonema que representam, nosso segundo objetivo é examinar, no corpus estudado, ocorrências de alografia de s e z que suscitam maior dificuldade do ponto de vista paleográfico e verificar a variação de uso dos grafemas s e z apenas em posição intervocálica. / The first objective of this dissertation is to prepare both the fac-similar and the semi diplomatic editions of minutes of the municipal council of Botucatu, São Paulo State, which date back to 1858 and 1859. As the philological labor is a multidisciplinary activity, we also propose to raise some codicological and paleographic aspects of the book in which these minutes lie. While reading these documents, we noticed that the different writings of the graphemes s and z, especially in intervocalic position, might, at times, cause difficulties in reading to researchers preoccupied with historic linguistics issues, because the variation, both in writing and use of these letters, is wide. Besides this, there is also variation in the use of the graphemes s and z in representing different phonemes. Based on the finding that s and z present variation both in shape and the phoneme they represent, our second objective is to examine, in our corpus, occurrences of s and z allographs that raise greater paleography difficulties and verify the variation in the use of the graphemes s and z only in intervocalic position.

O presente trabalho trará a edição semidiplomática de manuscritos do século XIX, da Administração Geral dos Correios em São Paulo. Seu objetivo é analisar os sinais diacríticos, em especial o diacrítico (´). Tendo em vista, a abordagem quase inexistente acerca do assunto, buscou-se relacionar a intensidade, duração e timbre das vogais e sílabas no latim clássico e vulgar com o emprego destes sinais nos documentos do XIX. O objetivo é contribuir com os estudos da filologia, linguística histórica e história social. A dissertação foi dividida em duas partes: a primeira parte descreve aspectos histórico-sociais da instituição e da sociedade da época, trazendo uma análise codicologica do material; a segunda parte consiste no levantamento paleográfico, com especial atenção aos sinais diacríticos, abordando estes e os sinais de pontuação, suas funções e emprego, a terceira parte constituirá a edição semidiplomática dos documentos. / The present work bring the semidiplomatics edition of manuscripts of XIX century, of General Management of Post Office in Sao Paulo. Its objective is to analyzes diacritics signals, in special the (´). In view of, the almost inexistent boarding concerning the subject, searched to relate the intensity, duration and stress of the vowels and syllables in the vulgar and classic Latin with the job of these signals in documents of the XIX. The objective is to contribute with the studies of philology, historical linguistics and social history. The paper was divided in two parts: the first part describes social historics aspects of the institution and the society that period, bringing a codicological analysis of the material; the second part was based on dates obtained from paleographycal aspects specially the diacrítical signals dealing with pontuation signal and its functions; the third part constitute the semidiplomatics edition of documents.