English Palaeography
(photograph by Andrew Buchanan)
New 1-week intense format course starts 4-8th January 2027. Syllabus HERE. Apply HERE .
This course will familiarise students with English handwriting from the period 1400 to 1700. It will give students the skills to work with a range of English primary sources from the early modern period. Students will build a strong knowledge of early modern hands. Students will learn common abbreviations used in handwritten documents, as well as the idiosyncratic letter forms that make primary sources from the period initially seem so difficult to transcribe. See the course syllabus.
You should finish the course feeling secure in your ability to engage with handwritten documents of the period. You should also feel confident to go forward and transcribe primary sources relevant to your research.
Seminars will involve individual and group work on a wide range of documents such as literary texts, religious texts, letters, parliamentary documents, and recipes.
The weekly course will culminate in an informal exam, but the one week intense course will not. Useful online resources and bibliography can be found at the bottom of this page, and will be updated periodically. All classes will be taught virtually via interactive seminars on Microsoft Teams.
Recent course feedback: "Normally getting picked on to answer questions is terrifying but the tutor made it feel less scary and ok if we made mistakes. I thoroughly enjoyed the class and would definitely recommend it to other students".
All courses run by Warwick's Centre for the Study of the Renaissance (CSR), do not confer university credits. However, on the basis of students' performance in the final test of the 9-week course, or 100% attendance in the intense one-week course, the CSR will issue a certificate of completion and of having fully attended and engaged in, the course.
By the deadline set out in the offer letter, participants will pay £200 for the (1-week intense) course; there is no fee for University of Warwick students. Participants whose institution belongs to the Newberry Library Consortium may be eligible to receive consortium grants to cover the cost of the course. (Contact your local consortium representative for details).
Resources
Medieval Manuscripts app for iPhone and Android: http://www.agbooth.com/handwriting/iOS/medieval/
Late Medieval English Scribes https://www.medievalscribes.com/
The Auchinleck manuscript: http://auchinleck.nls.uk/
The Cotton Nero A.x Project: http://gawain-ms.ca/
The Piers Plowman Electronic Archive: http://piers.iath.virginia.edu/index.html