The Digital Medieval Manuscript

Material Approaches to Digital Codicology
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-70573-9
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 10, 250 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 544 g

Reihe: Studies in Art & Materiality

We increasingly encounter medieval books as digital facsimiles—zooming in on high-resolution images, clicking through virtual pages, or engaging with interactive displays. But what actually happens when a parchment manuscript is translated into a digital object? How does this change affect our understanding of cultural heritage?

This book explores the digital medieval manuscript as a unique cultural artifact, not just a copy of its physical counterpart. Through three case studies, it reveals how digital manuscripts function in libraries, museums, and scholarship today. Blending manuscript studies with digital humanities, it offers a fresh materialist approach to the discourse surrounding the digitisation of cultural heritage and provides a nuanced view of how it shapes the way we perceive, handle, and preserve medieval manuscripts in an increasingly digital world.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Haaren, Suzette van

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Alte Geschichte & Archäologie Vor- und Frühgeschichte, prähistorische Archäologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtswissenschaft Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Klassische Literaturwissenschaft
• Technische Wissenschaften Technik Allgemein Technik: Allgemeines

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface and Acknowledgements

List of Figures

1 Introduction 1 Digital Codicology 2 A Word on Terminology 3 The Whole Book 4 Digital Material 5 It’s a Matter of Time 6 Outline and Structure

2 The Bury Bible: Exploring Mediation, Materiality and Digitisation 1 Introduction 2 An Institutional and Environmental History of the Bury Bible 3 A New Presence: Capturing the Bury Bible for Digital Space 4 Conclusion 3 Reproduction, Fragmentation and Dissemination of Der naturen bloeme (kb, ka16) 1 Introduction 2 The Book of Nature in Copies 3 The Digital Fragment and Hyper-expansion of ka16 4 Conclusion

4 The Sustainable Prayer Book of Mary of Guelders 1 Introduction 2 The Interrupted Life of the Prayer Book of Mary of Guelders 3 Preserving the Fragile: Sustainability for Parchment and Pixel 4 Conclusion

5 Conclusions 1 Digital Codicology 2 Making 3 Using 4 Keeping 5 Time

Bibliography Primary Sources Literature

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Suzette van Haaren is a postdoc in the CRC Virtuelle Lebenswelten at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Her research reflects on the impact of the increasing digitisation (and virtualisation) of historical heritage. She is interested in the Middle Ages in contemporary media contexts.