The Materiality of Medieval Administration in Northern England
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Book Series
Utrecht Studies in Medieval Literacy, vol. 61
Graphic Practices and Literacies in the History of English
Matti Peikola, Jukka Tyrkkö, Mari-Liisa Varila (eds)
- Pages: xv + 355 p.
- Size:156 x 234 mm
- Illustrations:33 b/w, 16 col., 16 tables b/w.
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2025
- € 100,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-60045-1
- Hardback
- Forthcoming (Mar/25)
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- ISBN: 978-2-503-60046-8
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This volume brings together linguistics and book studies to investigate early English multimodal practices and related graphic literacies.
Subject(s)
BIO
Matti Peikola is Professor of English at the University of Turku, Finland. He specialises in Middle and Early Modern English philology, book studies and historical pragmatics.
Jukka Tyrkkö is Professor of English Linguistics at Linnaeus University, Sweden. His research interests include corpus linguistics, historical linguistics, and history of the book.
Mari-Liisa Varila is a lecturer at the Department of English, University of Turku specialising in late medieval and early modern English book culture.
Summary
Graphic devices such as tables and diagrams and other visual strategies of organising text and information are an essential part of communication. The use of these devices and strategies in books and documents developed throughout the medieval and early modern periods, as knowledge was translated and circulated in European vernaculars. Yet the use of graphic practices and multimodal literacies associated with them have mostly been examined in the context of Latin, Greek, Arabic, and Hebrew, and early vernacular writing remains an under-researched area. This volume brings together contributors from English historical linguistics and book studies to highlight multimodal graphic practices and literacies in texts across a range of genres and text types from the late medieval period until the eighteenth century. Contributions in the volume investigate both handwritten and printed materials, from books in the domains of medicine, religion, history, and grammar, to administrative records and letter writing.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Graphic Practices in Early English Texts
MATTI PEIKOLA, JUKKA TYRKKÖ, and MARI-LIISA VARILA
Part I
Conventionalising Strategies of Verbal and Visual information
COLETTE MOORE
The Pragmatics of Late Medieval English Accounts: A Case Study
KJETIL V. THENGS
Plague on the Page: Mise-en-page and Visual Highlighting in the John of Burgundy Plague Tract from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century
ALPO HONKAPOHJA
The Pragmatics of Punctuation in Early English Medical Recipe Books
JAVIER CALLE-MARTÍN and JESÚS ROMERO-BARRANCO 105
Visual Pragmatics and Late Modern English Letters
INGRID TIEKEN-BOON VAN OSTADE
Part II
The A to Z of Middle English Indexing? The Tables of John Trevisa’s Polychronicon
WENDY SCASE
A Visual and Linguistic Interpretation of the Pater Noster Table of the Vernon Manuscript
OLGA TIMOFEEVA
Visual Chronologies in Early Modern English Historiography
AINO LIIRA, MATTI PEIKOLA, and MARJO KAARTINEN 201
Visual Representation of Information in Medical Texts, 1500-1700
MARI-LIISA VARILA, CARLA SUHR, and JUKKA TYRKKÖ
Verbal and Visual Instruction in Early Dance Manuals: The Curious Case of John Playford’s Tables
HANNA SALMI
Graphic Elements in Early Printed Grammar Books
JANNE SKAFFARI and JUKKA TYRKKÖ
Afterword
JEREMY J. SMITH
Bibliography
Index
Notes on Contributors
