Manuscript Laboratory, Medieval Manuscript Leaves (ca. 400-1500 CE)

Laboratory Instructions: As you did in the printed book leaf laboratory, describe the leaf you are assigned as completely as you can.  Notice what the digital surrogate reveals to you, and notice what you cannot determine from the digital surrogate.  Use the class-meetings devoted to the laboratory to investigate the leaves, themselves, taking great care to subject them to as little stress, moisture, or contamination as possible.  Share your evidence with your fellow researchers in person and using the public folder for English 241.  Create a list of questions you need to research in order to improve your bibliographic description and, for each, a short list or note of resources you will consult to answer the question.

        Note that the leaf numbers given in this table are only temporary, and do not necessarily correspond to the leaves actual position in the book from which they were disbound.  You may be able to determine, in consultation with your colleagues or by examining each other's leaves, your leaf's relationship to the others.  Also, because books of certain types always were constructed with contents in the same general order, the relative position of a leaf within a known type of book would also give you clues about its contents (e.g., if it were a dictionary or a phone book, a page from the letter "b" would necessarily come before a leaf from the letters "d" or "z").  You also could learn much from evidence that leaves were consecutive or (even!) conjoint, that is, originally made from one bifolium of parchment that was cut in half when the book was disbound.  Clicking on any "Reduced Image" hyperlinked to this page will take you to a full-sized image for closer inspection.  Note what you can and cannot detect using the high-quality digital image, and those questions which only could be answered by examining the document, itself.