The Bobbio Missal was copied in south-eastern Gaul around the end of the seventh and beginning of the eighth century. It contains a unique combination of a lectionary and a sacramentary, to which a plethora of canonical and non-canonical material was added. The Missal is therefore highly regarded by liturgists; but, additionally, medieval historians welcome the information to be derived from material attached to the codex, which provides valuable data about the role and education of priests in Francia at that time, and indeed on their cultural and ideological background. The breadth of specialist knowledge provided by the team of scholars writing for this book enables the manuscript to be viewed as a whole, not as a narrow liturgical study. Collectively, the essays view the manuscript as physical object: they discuss the contents, they examine the language, and they look at the cultural context in which the codex was written.

Professor Beach's book on female scribes in twelfth-century Bavaria - a full-length study of the role of women copyists in the Middle Ages - is underpinned by the notion that the scriptorium was central to the intellectual revival of the Middle Ages and that women played a role in this renaissance. The author examines the exceptional quantity of evidence of female scribal activity in three different religious communities, pointing out the various ways in which the women worked - alone, with other women, and even alongside men - to produce books for monastic libraries, and discussing why their work should have been made visible, whereas that of other female scribes remains invisible. Beach's focus on manuscript production, and the religious, intellectual, social and economic factors which shaped that production, enables her to draw wide-ranging conclusions of interest not only to palaeographers but also to those interested in reading, literacy, religion and gender history.

From the time of its composition (c.1280) for Philip the Fair of France until the early sixteenth century, Giles of Rome's mirror of princes, the De regimine principum, was read by both lay and clerical readers in the original Latin and in several vernacular translations, and served as model or source for several works of princely advice. This study examines the relationship between this didactic political text and its audience by focusing on the textual and material aspects of the surviving manuscript copies, as well as on the evidence of ownership and use found in them and in documentary and literary sources. Briggs argues that lay readers used De regimine for several purposes, including as an educational treatise and military manual, whereas clerics, who often first came into contact with it at university, glossed, constructed apparatus for, and modified the text to suit their needs in their later professional lives.

The Byzantines used imagery to communicate a wide range of issues. In the context of Iconoclasm - the debate about the legitimacy of religious art conducted between c. AD 730 and 843 - Byzantine authors themselves claimed that visual images could express certain ideas better than words. Vision and Meaning in Ninth-Century Byzantium deals with how such visual communication worked and examines the types of messages that pictures could convey in the aftermath of Iconoclasm. Its focus is on a deluxe manuscript commissioned around 880, a copy of the fourth-century sermons of the Cappadocian church father Gregory of Nazianzus which presented to the Emperor Basil I, founder of the Macedonian dynasty, by one of the greatest scholars Byzantium ever produced, the patriarch Photios. The manuscript was lavishly decorated with gilded initials, elaborate headpieces and a full-page miniature before each of Gregory's sermons. Forty-six of these, including over 200 distinct scenes, survive. Fewer than half however were directly inspired by the homily that they accompany. Instead most function as commentaries on the ninth-century court and carefully deconstructed both provide us with information not available from preserved written sources and perhaps more important show us how visual images communicate differently from words.

This is a fascinating study of the making of the Harley Psalter, an illustrated manuscript which was produced at Christ Church, Canterbury, over a period of about 100 years, from c. 1020 to c. 1130. The Harley Psalter was closely based on the Utrecht Psalter, the most celebrated of all Carolingian illuminated manuscripts. Through meticulous observation of the Harley Psalter, William Noel analyses how the artists and scribes worked with each other and with their manuscript exemplars in making their illustrated text. The author demonstrates that this work is best understood not as a copy of the Utrecht Psalter, but rather as one of a series of Anglo-Saxon manuscript experiments that incorporated its imagery. This is a crucial work for understanding the development of art, script and book making during what has been termed the 'golden age' of Anglo-Saxon art.

A detailed study of the Trier Gospels, an important early medieval manuscript. Through an investigation of its production, Professor Netzer reveals the cross-cultural influences among the Insular, Continental and Mediterranean worlds in the eighth century, demonstrating in particular the complicated process of cultural interplay that took place in the scriptorium at Echternach. She traces the history of the production of the manuscript through a detailed analysis of its components: the individual texts, construction and arrangement of gatherings, scripts, ornamental initials, canon tables and illustrations. She sheds light on the manuscript's sources, on the different backgrounds of the two scribe-artists involved in its production, on the influences which determined the size and layout of the codex, the role of the pictures within the book, and the place of this manuscript in the development of Insular and Continental book production. This study makes a significant contribution to the understanding of early medieval book production and the influence of missionaries from the British Isles on early Continental culture.

Ancient writing gives us our first glimpse of history, people and institutions, and yet its origins remain mysterious. This book offers a treatment and examination of the origins of ancient writing. It studies often neglected writing systems, such as those of Mesoamerica. The leading scholars in the field collectively discuss new topics and highlight new subtlties about how these scripts came into existence and development during the first centuries of use. Egypt, Mesopotamia, Elamite, Mesoamerica and the Maya, Shang, and Runic are all represented.

The inscriptions dealt with in this book come from the Old Testament period (c. 1000 BC to c. 200 BCE) and constitute an important additional source for our knowledge of the Hebrew language and the religion, history and customs of ancient Israel. The corpus includes texts like the Lachish and Arad letters, the Siloam tunnel inscription, the recently discovered religious texts from Kuntillet Ajerud, and the hundreds of seals, seal-impressions and weights that are now known. Each text is given a unique reference number according to a specially devised system, with an indication of its date and place of origin (where these are known) and one or more bibliographical references. It covers all complete words in the texts (including prepositions and names of persons and places), and also the Egyptian hieratic numerals and other symbols that were used in them.

Professor Powell ties the origin and nature of archaic Greek literature to the special technology of Greek alphabetic writing. In building his model he presents chapters on specialized topics - text, orality, myth, literacy, tradition and memorization - and then shows how such special topics relate to larger issues of cultural transmission from East to West. Several chapters are devoted to the theory and history of writing, its definition and general nature as well as such individual developments as semasiography and logosyllabography, Chinese writing and the West Semitic family of syllabaries. He shows how the Greek alphabet put an end to the multiliteralism of Eastern traditions of writing, and how the recording of Homer and other early epic poetry cannot be separated from the alphabetic revolution. Finally, he explains how the creation of Greek alphabetic texts demoticized Greek myth and encouraged many free creations of new myths based on Eastern images.

Learning to read in medieval Germany meant learning to read and understand Latin as well as the pupils' own language. The teaching methods used in the medieval Abbey of St. Gall survive in the translations and commentaries of the monk, scholar and teacher Notker Labeo (ca. 950-1022). Notker's pedagogic method, although deeply rooted in classical and monastic traditions, demonstrates revolutionary innovations that include providing translations in the pupils' native German, supplying structural commentary in the form of simplified word order and punctuation, and furnishing special markers that helped readers to perform texts out loud. Anna Grotans examines this unique interplay between orality and literacy in Latin and Old High German, and illustrates her study with many examples from Notker's manuscripts. This study has much to contribute to our knowledge of medieval reading, and of the relationship between Latin and the vernacular in a variety of formal and informal contexts.

The service books of the Florentine Duomo of Santa Maria del Fiore were, like the church itself, a cultural reflection of the city's position of power and prestige. Largely unexplored by modern scholars, these manuscripts provided the texts and, sometimes, the music necessary for the celebration of the liturgical services. Marica S. Tacconi offers the first comprehensive investigation of the sixty-five extant liturgical manuscripts produced between 1150 and 1526 for both Santa Maria del Fiore and its predecessor, the early cathedral of Santa Reparata. She employs a multidisciplinary approach that recognizes the books as codicological, liturgical, musical, and artistic products. Their cultural contexts, and their civic and propagandistic uses, are uncovered through the analysis of extensive archival material, much of which is presented here for the first time. This important and fascinating study provides new insights into late medieval and Renaissance Florentine ritual and culture.

Over 5,000 years ago the first writing began to appear in Egypt and Mesopotamia. Later still, ancient scripts flourished in China and Mesoamerica, with secondary developments in places such as Scandinavia. Drawing on top scholars, The First Writing offers the most up-to-date information on these systems of recording language and meaning. Unlike other treatments, this volume focuses on the origins of writing less as a mechanistic process than as a set of communicative practices rooted in history, culture, and semiotic logic. An important conclusion is that episodes of script development are more complex than previously thought, with some changes taking place over generations, and others, such as the creation of syllabaries and alphabets, occurring with great speed. Linguists will find much of interest in matters of phonic and semiotic representation; archaeologists and art historians will discover a rich source on administration, display and social evolution within early political systems.

Object Lessons is a series of short, beautifully designed books about the hidden lives of ordinary things. Why do we sign our names? How can a squiggle both enslave and liberate? Signatures often require a witness—as if the scrawl itself is not enough. What other kinds of beliefs and longings justify our signing practices? Signature addresses these questions as it roams from a roundtable on the Greek island of Syros, to a scene of handwriting analysis conducted in an English pub, from a wedding in Moscow, where guests sign the bride’s body, to a San Franciscan tattoo parlor interested in arcane forms. The signature’s history encompasses ancient handprints on cave walls, autograph hunters, the branding of slaves, metaphysical poetry, medical malpractice, hip-hop lyrics, legal challenges to electronic signatures, ice cores harvested from Greenland, and tales of forgery and autopens. Part cultural chronicle, part travelogue, Signature pursues the identifying marks made by people, animals, and planetary forces, revealing the stories and fantasies hidden in their signatures. Object Lessons is published in partnership with an essay series in The Atlantic.

This book examines the evidence for literacy in early medieval Italy under the rule of the Lombards, the last of the barbarian invaders who established a kingdom in north and central Italy from 568 to 774. By examining different kinds of written documentation (legislation, charters, inscriptions and manuscripts), the study reveals that Lombard Italy actually possessed a relatively sophisticated written culture prior to the so-called Carolingian Renaissance of the ninth century.

A charming and indispensable tour of two thousand years of the written word, Shady Characters weaves a fascinating trail across the parallel histories of language and typography.

Whether investigating the asterisk (*) and dagger ( ) which alternately illuminated and skewered heretical verses of the early Bible or the at sign (@), which languished in obscurity for centuries until rescued by the Internet, Keith Houston draws on myriad sources to chart the life and times of these enigmatic squiggles, both exotic (

) and everyday (&).

From the Library of Alexandria to the halls of Bell Labs, figures as diverse as Charlemagne, Vladimir Nabokov, and George W. Bush cross paths with marks as obscure as the interrobang (?) and as divisive as the dash ( ). Ancient Roman graffiti, Venetian trading shorthand, Cold War double agents, and Madison Avenue round out an ever more diverse set of episodes, characters, and artifacts.

Richly illustrated, ranging across time, typographies, and countries, Shady Characters will delight and entertain all who cherish the unpredictable and surprising in the writing life."

Die Gesellschaft fur deutsche Sprache (GfdS), 1947 als Nachfolgeorganisation des Deutschen Sprachvereins gegrundet, trat ein problematisches Erbe an. Die personelle und ideelle Verflechtung der beiden Einrichtungen trug zunachst zu einer Konservierung uberkommenen Gedankengutes bei. Erst nach heftigen internen Debatten uber das Vereinsziel Sprachpflege begann eine vorsichtige Abgrenzung der GfdS von ihrem Vorganger, in deren Folge sie sich als anerkannte Sprachpflegeeinrichtung etablieren konnte.

Examining the role of envoys from the establishment of the first "barbarian kingdoms" in the West, to the eve of Justinian's wars of reconquest, this study reveals how Roman imperial administration influenced new patterns of political interaction in the earliest medieval states. Close analysis of sources with special interest in embassies offers insight into a variety of genres: chronicles, panegyrics, hagiographies, letters, and epitaphs. The study will make a significant contribution to the developing field of ancient and medieval communication.

The purpose of this book is to dispel misunderstanding about the genesis of the Homeric poems and other knotty problems in oral studies, such as the meaning of "orality," "literacy," "tradition," "memorization," and "text." The study is about the nature and history of writing--how it was used in the Ancient Near East, and especially in Greece, and its relationship to Homer. It suggests that a Semite invented the Greek alphabet, heir to an ancient bilingual Eastern tradition of recording poetry by dictation.

This book reconstructs and studies the music, liturgy, and illustrations of a twelfth-century manuscript from the Austrian monastery in Lambach. The manuscript was taken apart in the fifteenth century and subsequently sold to various collectors in the twentieth century. The pages are here brought together (albeit photographically) for the first time since the original manuscript was dismantled five centuries ago. The book includes a black-and-white facsimile of the recovered portion of the manuscript. Charts and tables are used to demonstrate how it compares to other twelfth-century liturgical manuscripts.

This book centers on the copy of the Homilies of Gregory of Nazianzus produced in Constantinople around 880 for the emperor Basil I as a gift from the patriarch Photios. The manuscript includes forty-six full page miniatures, most of which do not directly illustrate the text they accompany, but instead provide a visual commentary. Vision and Meaning in Ninth-Century Byzantium deals with how such communication worked, and examines the types of messages that pictures could convey in ninth-century Byzantium.

Japanese Kanji and Kana Workbook offers a systematic approach to learning Japanese characters. It is designed to be used with the best-selling Japanese Kanji & Kana: A Guide to the Japanese Writing System. Presenting all 92 Hiragana and Katakana and 617 high-frequency Kanji characters, this character workbook teaches you how to write the Kanji and Kana neatly and correctly. Included for each character are the Japanese and Chinese readings, stroke order writing guides, English meanings, vocabulary, radicals, and ample space for writing practice. This valuable Japanese language book also includes an introduction explaining how to begin learning the Japanese writing system and two Kanji indexes--one by radicals, the other by readings. The 617 kanji characters provided cover all Kanji required to take the AP Japanese Language and Culture Exam and the JLPT levels N5, N4, and N3.

From the time of its composition (c.1280) for Philip the Fair of France until the early sixteenth century, Giles of Rome's mirror of princes, the De regimine principum, was read by both lay and clerical readers in the original Latin and in several vernacular translations, and served as model or source for several works of princely advice. This study examines the relationship between this didactic political text and its audience by focusing on the textual and material aspects of the surviving manuscript copies, as well as on the evidence of ownership and use found in them and in documentary and literary sources. Briggs argues that lay readers used De regimine for several purposes, including as an educational treatise and military manual, whereas clerics, who often first came into contact with it at university, glossed, constructed apparatus for, and modified the text to suit their needs in their later professional lives.