| Abstract | Paper -a:
In the 11th and 12th centuries, English scribes began emphasizing verse structure by punctuating each full line and then, later, each half-line of poetry. Because these shifts in punctuation predate the use of rhymed verse in vernacular poetry, the two phenomena have traditionally been analyzed separately. Examining both developments in tandem within the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle poems, I suggest that the new punctuation practices indicate significant innovation. I argue that these changes in graphic form gave scribes the freedom to experiment with rhyming verse structures and new textual layouts. In other words, they led to new poetic forms within the verse genre.
Paper -b:
In the late-10th century the Lombard laws were augmented with a selection of Frankish and Saxon capitularies relating to Italy, in a redaction known as the Liber legis langobardorum. This text continued to be adapted throughout the following century and beyond, and survivies in seven mansucript witnesses from the period. This paper will examine the production of one of the latest of the manuscripts, Padua, Episcopal Library, MS 528, dating to the first quarter of the 12th century, and its implications for the scholarly contexts and book-culture in which it was used.
Paper -c:
European manuscript culture came to Norway with the process of Christianisation during the 10th-11th centuries. Most of the medieval manuscripts survive as fragments only, but these fragments reveal the importance of European influence on early Norwegian book culture: they provide evidence not only of manuscripts that were imported from cultural centra abroad, but also of various cultural impulses in early Norwegian-made manuscripts. In my talk I discuss the fragments believed to be from French-made manuscripts in Norway. What can the fragments tell us about French-Norwegian contact during the high Middle Ages in Norway (1050-1300)? Do they reveal a more extensive contact than what has previously been assumed?
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