S. P. Cerasano. and Steven W. May., eds. In the Prayse of Writing: Early Modern Manuscript Studies: Essays in Honour of Peter Beal. London: British Library, 2012. xxi + 326 pp. £50. ISBN: 978–0–7123–5857–6.

2013 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 1476-1477
Author(s):  
Jonathan Gibson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Manuscript Studies ◽  
British Library

Sweet Echo

2019 ◽  
pp. 179-202
Author(s):  
Katherine R. Larson
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Level Of Detail ◽  
British Library ◽  
Classroom Discussions ◽  
Performance History ◽  
Musical Settings ◽  
Performance Context ◽  
Acoustic Impact ◽  
And Performance

Although music was integral to masques, the genre’s visual extravagance tends to overshadow its acoustic elements in scholarly and classroom discussions. This chapter focuses on “Sweet Echo,” the Lady’s song in Milton’s A Mask Presented at Ludlow Castle (Comus), which was performed in 1634 by 15-year-old Alice Egerton. The unusual level of detail that survives about this masque’s performance history, combined with the musical settings extant in Henry Lawes’s autograph manuscript, now held at the British Library, facilitates a suggestive evaluation of early modern song in terms of the rhetorical interplay between lyric, musical setting, and performance context. It also constitutes a striking case study for considering the acoustic impact of women’s singing voices. Milton’s depiction of temptation and self-discipline in Comus, whose moral message is encapsulated in miniature in the Lady’s performance of “Sweet Echo,” hinges on his audience’s experience of song as an acoustic, embodied, and gendered phenomenon.

Meeting Lydgate’s Ghost: Building Medieval History in Seventeenth-Century England

2019 ◽  
Vol 71 (299) ◽  
pp. 251-271
Author(s):  
Mimi Ensley
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
British Library ◽  
John Lydgate ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
English History ◽  
The Past ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Historical Resources

Abstract This article examines a manuscript poem composed by the seventeenth-century author John Lane. Writing in what is now London, British Library, Harley MS 5243, Lane revives the medieval poet John Lydgate in order to re-tell the story of Guy of Warwick, famous from medieval romance. In Lane’s poem, Lydgate returns from beyond the grave to proclaim the historicity of Guy’s legend and simultaneously preserve his own reputation as a chronicler of English history. While some scholars suggest that Lydgate’s popularity declined in the post-Reformation period due to his reputation as the ‘Monk of Bury’, and while it is true that significantly fewer editions of Lydgate’s poems were published in the decades after the Reformation, Lane’s poem offers another window into Lydgate’s early modern reputation. I argue that Lane’s historiographic technique in his Guy of Warwick narrative mirrors Lydgate’s own poetic histories. Both Lane and Lydgate grapple with existing historical resources and compose their narratives by compiling the accreted traditions of the past, supplementing these traditions with documentary sources and artefacts. This article, thus, complicates existing scholarly narratives that align Lydgate with medieval or monastic traditions, traditions perceived to be irrecoverably transformed by the events of the Reformation in England.

scholarly journals “The intolerable business": Religion and diplomacy under Elizabeth’s rule

Sederi ◽  
2016 ◽  
pp. 159-174
Author(s):  
Susana Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Foreign Affairs ◽  
The Political ◽  
British Library ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Its Analysis ◽  
Single Piece ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Insight Into

Within the scope of foreign affairs between Portugal and England during Elizabeth’s rule, numerous events indicate the challenges faced by the Portuguese ambassadors on their missions. Regrettably, little is known about these envoys and one rarely finds any reference to their names or their diplomatic accomplishments in Early Modern studies. This paper focuses on a diplomatic incident which involved Francisco Giraldes, a Portuguese resident ambassador in England, aiming to shed some light on “the intolerable business” that led to a confrontation with the Bishop of London, Edwin Sandys. Attending a Catholic Mass in the context of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement involved certain challenges that should be considered. Diplomats, however, enjoyed certain immunities, including the droit de chappelle, and were allowed to hold Catholic services in their ambassadorial residences. But in March 1573, while Mass was being held, Francisco Giraldes’s residence was raided by the Sheriff of London’s men, working under the Bishop of London’s instructions. The ongoing tension between the religious and the political areas of power was, thus, exposed. Two letters, written by the Bishop of London, included in the Lansdowne Manuscripts Collection of the British Library, registered the event. As Sandy’s correspondence appears to be the single piece of surviving evidence regarding this diplomatic incident, it stands to reason that its analysis will provide significant insight into the coexistence, as well as the clash, of oppositional forces, while further contributing to an interpretation of Anglo-Portuguese affairs in Early Modern times.

Junius's knowledge of the Old English poem Durham

2001 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 231-245
Author(s):  
Daniel Paul O'Donnell
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Old English ◽  
British Library ◽  
Stanford University ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
English Poem ◽  
University Library ◽  
Special Collections ◽  
Original Manuscript

Until recently, the late Old English poem Durham was known to have been copied in two manuscripts of the twelfth century: Cambridge, University Library, Ff. 1. 27 (C) and London, British Library, Cotton Vitellius D. xx (V). C has been transcribed frequently and serves as the basis for Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie's standard edition of the poem in the Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records. V was almost completely destroyed in the Cottonian fire of 1731. Its version is known to us solely from George Hickes's 1705 edition (H).In a recent article, however, Donald K. Fry announced the discovery of a third medieval text of the poem. Like V, the original manuscript of this ‘third’ version is now lost and can be reconstructed only from an early modern transcription - in this case a copy by Francis Junius no win the Stanford University Library (Stanford University Libraries, Department of Special Collections, Misc. 010 [J1]). Unlike V, however, Junius's copy is our only record of this manuscript's existence. No other transcripts are known from medieval or early modern manuscript catalogues.

Named-entity recognition for early modern textual documents: a review of capabilities and challenges with strategies for the future

2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Humbel ◽  
Julianne Nyhan ◽  
Andreas Vlachidis ◽  
Kim Sloan ◽  
Alexandra Ortolja-Baird
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Named Entity Recognition ◽  
Research Field ◽  
The State ◽  
Entity Recognition ◽  
British Library ◽  
Extensive Literature ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Named Entity

PurposeBy mapping-out the capabilities, challenges and limitations of named-entity recognition (NER), this article aims to synthesise the state of the art of NER in the context of the early modern research field and to inform discussions about the kind of resources, methods and directions that may be pursued to enrich the application of the technique going forward.Design/methodology/approachThrough an extensive literature review, this article maps out the current capabilities, challenges and limitations of NER and establishes the state of the art of the technique in the context of the early modern, digitally augmented research field. It also presents a new case study of NER research undertaken by Enlightenment Architectures: Sir Hans Sloane's Catalogues of his Collections (2016–2021), a Leverhulme funded research project and collaboration between the British Museum and University College London, with contributing expertise from the British Library and the Natural History Museum.FindingsCurrently, it is not possible to benchmark the capabilities of NER as applied to documents of the early modern period. The authors also draw attention to the situated nature of authority files, and current conceptualisations of NER, leading them to the conclusion that more robust reporting and critical analysis of NER approaches and findings is required.Research limitations/implicationsThis article examines NER as applied to early modern textual sources, which are mostly studied by Humanists. As addressed in this article, detailed reporting of NER processes and outcomes is not necessarily valued by the disciplines of the Humanities, with the result that it can be difficult to locate relevant data and metrics in project outputs. The authors have tried to mitigate this by contacting projects discussed in this paper directly, to further verify the details they report here.Practical implicationsThe authors suggest that a forum is needed where tools are evaluated according to community standards. Within the wider NER community, the MUC and ConLL corpora are used for such experimental set-ups and are accompanied by a conference series, and may be seen as a useful model for this. The ultimate nature of such a forum must be discussed with the whole research community of the early modern domain.Social implicationsNER is an algorithmic intervention that transforms data according to certain rules-, patterns- or training data and ultimately affects how the authors interpret the results. The creation, use and promotion of algorithmic technologies like NER is not a neutral process, and neither is their output A more critical understanding of the role and impact of NER on early modern documents and research and focalization of some of the data- and human-centric aspects of NER routines that are currently overlooked are called for in this paper.Originality/valueThis article presents a state of the art snapshot of NER, its applications and potential, in the context of early modern research. It also seeks to inform discussions about the kinds of resources, methods and directions that may be pursued to enrich the application of NER going forward. It draws attention to the situated nature of authority files, and current conceptualisations of NER, and concludes that more robust reporting of NER approaches and findings are urgently required. The Appendix sets out a comprehensive summary of digital tools and resources surveyed in this article.

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