The most recent addition to Medieval Writing is The History of Gothic Book Hands. Not exactly the most original of topics, and probably to be found in more detail in every paleography book ever written, but I guess it should be there. In fact, it should have been there a long time ago, and now it is. In the course of preparing that I kept finding lots of other things that should be there, so I guess I will have to get to work.
A tour de force, as ever, useful and irreverent. I am now puzzling furiously about the Freudian significance of enlarged w's in royal documents...
ReplyDeleteAh yes, I call it the English celebration w. As it occurs around the time of the Hundred Years War, I suspect it is a way of saying to the French, "Guess what, we've got one of these and you haven't! Nyaaah, nyaaah, nyaaah!" My medievalist husband says that is just daft.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'd have thought there might be some mileage at the time in differentiating the language like that. It does smack rather of the myth of the two-fingered salute but I'm sure that with enough post-modern buzzwords it could become an irrefragable theory!
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