Entertainment / Literature / Manuscript: A text written by hand, as opposed to one printed with a printing press. (Manus is Latin for 'hand', scriptum is a Latin participle for 'written.') Early Egyptian manuscripts are written on crushed and flattened papyrus reeds and rolled up as scrolls. Later, parchment and vellum (animal skins) became the primary means of transmitting texts. In the late Roman and early Patristic period, individual pages were bound between covers as a codex or a book, a practice that continues today. Paper as we know it became common in the Middle East in the twelfth century, but it took another three hundred years for the art of paper-making to spread through Europe. By Shakespeare's day, printed paper had largely replaced manuscripts written on vellum, but the mechanics of printing often tried to imitate the familiar features of manuscripts. In medieval scholarship, the abbreviation 'MS' stands for manuscript, and British scholars often use the plural form 'MSS' for manuscripts. 'TS' and 'TSS'are the equivalent terms for typeset documents. Some important medieval literary manuscripts include the Ellesmere, the Hengwyrt, and the Nowell Codex. You can click here to see the first page of Beowulf from the Nowell Codex. See also parchment, vellum, quire, hair side, and flesh side.
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Entertainment / Literature / Ellesmere Manuscript: Usually referred to as 'the Ellesmere,' this book is one of the most important surviving fifteenth-century manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. The beautiful Ellesmere manuscript contains the be MORE
Entertainment / Literature / The Guiot Manuscript: Technically referred to as MS Bibliothèque Nationale f. Fr. 794, this mid-thirteenth-century manuscript is the most important document containing Chrétien de Troyes's Arthurian romances after th MORE
Entertainment / Literature / Hengwrt Manuscript: (pronounced 'HENG-urt') One of the most important manuscripts of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, along with the Ellesmere text. The official designation of this book is Peniarth MS 392 D, but it is known MORE