PhD student research interests
Fran Alverez
A comparative analysis of the palaeography of the manuscripts containing the bilingual version of the RSB written in England
My PHD thesis reflects my foremost interest in the production and use of manuscripts from the last part of the Anglo-Saxon age. I am particularly interested in codices containing bilingual texts, both in Latin and Old English. Besides the linguistic relevance that such texts have, I am primarily concerned with the way in which scribes responded to the complication of having to use two different scripts after the introduction of Caroline minuscule for the writing of Latin. One of the most relevant texts of this kind is the bilingual version of the Rule of St Benedict, translated by Æthelwold.
from the Anglo-Saxon period, nine copies have survived which form a significant basis for studying the crucial religious, political and palaeographical changes brought about by the Benedictine Reform. Under the supervision of Dr Alex Rumble, I aim at a deep analysis of the manuscripts beginning with a necessary socio-political contextualisation of the tenth-century reform process and then turning towards a concise description of the codices and the possible formal and textual similarities and differences between them. The project will finish with a set of conclusions, which will summarise the most important data obtained, offering a new vision of the changes in palaeography during the period, and most importantly, a detailed comparative analysis of the bilingual manuscripts which will render an overall picture of the state in which the most important Benedictine text reached most reformed communities.
My publications so far include:
'Changing Scripts: A case study of the use of different scripts in the bilingual text of C, CCC, 178, Part B', Quaestio Insularis (Forthcoming: 2008)
'DCL, B IV, 24: A palaeographical and codicological study of Durham's Cantor's Book' in Moskowich-Spiegel, I. and Crespo-García, B., eds, Bells Chiming from the Past; Cultural and Linguistic Studies on Early English (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2008), pp. 209-26.
'Changing Scripts: A case study of the use of different scripts in the bilingual text of C, CCC, 178, Part B', Quaestio Insularis 8 (2007)
'The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 755: an annotated bibliography of the Cynewulf and Cyneheard episode from Plummer to Bremmer', Journal of the Spanish Society of English Medieval Literature, SELIM 13 (2007), 99-117.
'The palaeography of Oxford, Corpus Christi College, 197', The Proceedings of the Manchester Centre for Anglo-Saxon Studies Postgraduate Conference I (2005) at
http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/mancass/epapers/