Assignments
Final Assignment
Login to Moodle and click the "Final Assignment Texts " link. This will open a PDF containing transcriptions and questions for all the texts. You only need to look at or print the pages relevant to the image you chose.
Examine the texts, and answer one of the exercises in a short essay (maximum 3 pages).
To submit your answer, login to Moodle and click "Final Assignment". Then follow the instructions.
Due Date: Wednesday, May 18 by noon.
Assignment 3
Login to Moodle and click the "Transcriptions and Questions" link. This will open a PDF containing transcriptions and questions for all the texts. You only need to look at or print the pages relevant to the image you chose.
Examine the transcriptions, as well as their accompanying translations and the questions at the end of the section. Make some notes and be ready for class discussion on Wednesday.
One important note. In my transcriptions I have not taken into account the pointing or the word spacing in the manuscript. You will need to take this into account in forming your questions and conclusions about these phenomena.
Assignment 2
Go to http://medievalwriting.50megs.com/writing.htm. Click on Paleography exercises using Flash. If you do not have Flash, download it here.
Do the exercises listed below. Remember that these exercises are hard. The on-screen pictures are not of the best quality, and all of the examples are in Latin or Old English, so you don't know necessarily know what you're transcribing. Also, there are a few quirks in the design of the exercises. For instance, it is not possible to type ð, so the designers refer to it by name (edh, as they spell it) and make you transcribe it as <th>. When you get something wrong, look at the correct answer and learn from it. You should also read about each text, and especially the abbreviations. You may also wish (at your leisure) to do some of the reading on the rest of the site; it is very informative about medieval manuscript culture. So just remember that this is practice to give you a taste of what it is like to do palaeography. You are not expected to get the answers to these exercises correct, and you will not be submitting this to your portfolio.
That said, please do the exercises by Friday so that you are ready to begin work on the next portfolio project. So, with no further ado, here are the exercises:
Under Book Hands, do the exercises for the following texts:
- Vespasian Psalter preface (8th century rustic capitals, Latin language)
- Vespasian Psalter (8th century uncial, Latin language)
- Lindisfarne Gospels (7th century insular half uncial, Latin language)
- Bede (9th century insular minuscule, Latin language)
- Colophon to Lindisfarne Gospels (10th century insular minuscule, Old English with a bit of Latin)
Under Book hands used in documents, do the exercises for the following text:
- Charter of Christ Church, Canterbury (12th century protogothic and insular minuscule, Latin and Old English)
Assignment 1
Background
In class we saw the complexities of representing Grimm's Law on the blackboard. We are required to visualise the consonant systems for both Indo-European and Germanic and to imagine the transformation of one to another as a multi-part process. When we try to explain how and why the changes took place, we need to break the change down into its constitutent parts.
The Solution
One possible way to aid our understanding of the sound change known as Grimm's Law is to imagine it as a kind of story in which we observe the changes in action. We mentioned in class that it might be worthwhile trying to produce a sort of animated video of Grimm's Law. That may be beyond our abilities (unless one of you is brave enough to try it), but there is a technique called "storyboarding" which can help us get close. Storyboarding (according to Wikipedia) was pioneered by Walt Disney as a form of "pre-visualisation" for the animation process. Artists would sketch still pictures of successive stages of the story in order to get a sense of how it would look as it developed. Gone with the Wind (again, according to Wikipedia, for what it's worth) was the first live action film to use storyboarding. Perhaps it is possible to use storyboard-type sketches to describe the process of Grimm's Law in such a way that it can be understood easily.
The Assignment
Your assignment is to produce a series of sketches which attempt to storyboard Grimm's Law. There are only two requirements: (1) your sketches must include a description of all the changes, and (2) your sketches must provide an explanation of how and why the changes took place. You may take inspiration from the origins of storyboarding in the movie industry; your sketches need not be expressed merely as IPA symbols and arrows. Be as creative as you want. You are not being graded on your artistic skills, so let go of your inhibitions and have some fun. You can use colour or black and white. You can draw or use a computer.
Deadline
The "storyboards" will be the first entry in your portfolio, so, when you are done, get a notebook, and stick them in there with a title page indicating to which assignment they belong. You will want to have this assignment done by Monday, February 28 so that you can begin to work on the next project.