English Manuscript Traditions

This chapter provides an overview of manuscript production and reception in the OE and ME periods. It focuses on how manuscripts were produced, the cognitive copying practices of its scribes, the subsequent use of manuscript texts by their readers, and the implications these issues have for the texts and data that survive. It considers the methodological issues that go with working on manuscripts in both their physical and edited forms. The chapter argues for the importance of considering manuscript evidence – including material aspects of the text – when using them as data for linguistic enquiry, and the value of this overlooked material for increasing our understanding of diachronic change. Finally, the chapter highlights and demonstrates some fruitful approaches to medieval textual material from the disciplines of historical sociolinguistics, dialectology, pragmatics and philology.