This Thursday, October 20, Dr. Charlotte Cartwright will give the second of our MRST talks this semester. Come to the Trible Library Room 170 at 4:30 to learn how to read a medieval manuscript.
As regular readers of this blog will know, over the past summer I worked with Dyllan Cecil, a History & Classics major here at CNU to transcribe and translate the cartulary of the nuns of the abbey of Saint Amand in Rouen, France. At this session I will introduce those who attend to the basics of transcription and translation. We will examine the materials that the cartulary is made out of, consider the style of the handwriting, and study the way that the document is written. Medieval Latin was highly abbreviated, so we will examine the ways that the scribes shortened their words to fit into as little space as possible. We will consider some of the problems that translators have to deal with, as well as how the information from a text like this can be used by historians to understand the nuns and their world.
Have a look at the cartulary in advance:
http://recherche.archivesdepartementales76.net/?id=recherche_guidee_cartulaires_detail&doc=accounts%2Fmnesys_ad76%2Fdatas%2Fir%2Fcartulaires_obituaires_coutumiers%2FFRAD076_IR_cartulaires_obituaires_coutumiers.xml&page_ref=2439&unittitle=Abbaye%20Saint-Amand%20de%20Rouen%20-%20Cartulaire%20de%20l%27abbaye%20de%20Saint-Amand%20de%20Rouen&unitid=55H7&unitdate=%20/%20Date%20de%20compilation%20:%201251-Fin%20XIIIe%20s.