Scribes of Space


Book Description

Scribes of Space posits that the conception of space—the everyday physical areas we perceive and through which we move—underwent critical transformations between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Matthew Boyd Goldie examines how natural philosophers, theologians, poets, and other thinkers in late medieval Britain altered the ideas about geographical space they inherited from the ancient world. In tracing the causes and nature of these developments, and how geographical space was consequently understood, Goldie focuses on the intersection of medieval science, theology, and literature, deftly bringing a wide range of writings—scientific works by Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan, the Merton School of Oxford Calculators, and Thomas Bradwardine; spiritual, poetic, and travel writings by John Lydgate, Robert Henryson, Margery Kempe, the Mandeville author, and Geoffrey Chaucer—into conversation. This pairing of physics and literature uncovers how the understanding of spatial boundaries, locality, elevation, motion, and proximity shifted across time, signaling the emergence of a new spatial imagination during this era.




Scribes of Space


Book Description

Scribes of Space posits that the conception of space—the everyday physical areas we perceive and through which we move—underwent critical transformations between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. Matthew Boyd Goldie examines how natural philosophers, theologians, poets, and other thinkers in late medieval Britain altered the ideas about geographical space they inherited from the ancient world. In tracing the causes and nature of these developments, and how geographical space was consequently understood, Goldie focuses on the intersection of medieval science, theology, and literature, deftly bringing a wide range of writings—scientific works by Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan, the Merton School of Oxford Calculators, and Thomas Bradwardine; spiritual, poetic, and travel writings by John Lydgate, Robert Henryson, Margery Kempe, the Mandeville author, and Geoffrey Chaucer—into conversation. This pairing of physics and literature uncovers how the understanding of spatial boundaries, locality, elevation, motion, and proximity shifted across time, signaling the emergence of a new spatial imagination during this era.




Space Between Words


Book Description

Silent reading is now universally accepted as normal; indeed reading aloud to oneself may be interpreted as showing a lack of ability or understanding. Yet reading aloud was usual, indeed unavoidable, throughout antiquity and most of the middle ages. Saenger investigates the origins of the gradual separation of words within a continuous written text and the consequent development of silent reading. He then explores the spread of these practices throughout western Europe, and the eventual domination of silent reading in the late medieval period. A detailed work with substantial notes and appendices for reference.




Invoking the Scribes of Ancient Egypt


Book Description

Tools to powerfully write about and manifest your life using the power found in the sacred sites of ancient Egypt • Reveals how to create meaning from one’s life experiences and manifest new destinies through spiritual writing • Contains meditations and creative writing exercises exploring sacred themes in the Egyptian Book of the Dead and other hieroglyphic texts of ancient Egypt • Shares transformative and inspiring pieces written by those who’ve attended the authors’ Egyptian sacred tours Within each of us is a story, a sacred story that needs to be told, of our heroic efforts and of our losses. The scribes of ancient Egypt devoted their lives to the writing of sacred stories. These technicians of the sacred were masters of hieroglyphic thinking, or heka--the proper words, in the proper sequence, with the proper intonation and the proper intent. Learning heka provided scribes with the power to invoke and create worlds through their words and thoughts. To the writer, heka is a magical way to create meaning from experience. Through heka we manifest new visions and new relationships to ourselves and to others. We can make new art filled with beauty and light. Revealing the spiritually transformative power of writing, the authors take us on a journey of self-discovery through the sacred sites of Egypt, from the Temple of Isis to the Great Pyramid of Giza. Through meditations and creative writing exercises exploring the powerful themes found in the hieroglyphic texts of ancient Egypt and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, they show how, through writing, we can live beyond the ordinary, give our dreams form, and discover who we really are and what our lives really mean. Sharing transformative and inspiring pieces written by those who’ve attended their Egyptian sacred tours, the authors reveal how writing your spiritual biography allows you to reconnect to the creativity and divine within, face your fears, offer gratitude for what you have, manifest new destinies, and recognize your life as part of the sacred story of Earth.




We Are the Scribes


Book Description

A young adult novel by Randi Pink about a teenage activist who is visited by the ghost of Harriet Jacobs, an enslaved woman. Ruth Fitz is surrounded by activism. Her mother is a senator who frequently appears on CNN as a powerful Black voice fighting for legislative social change within the Black community. Her father, a professor of African American history, is a walking encyclopedia, spouting off random dates and events. And her beloved older sister, Virginia, is a natural activist, steadily gaining notoriety within the community and on social media. Ruth, on the other hand, would rather sit quietly reading or writing in her journal. When her family is rocked by tragedy, Ruth stops writing. As life goes on, Ruth’s mother is presented with a political opportunity she can’t refuse. Just as Senator Fitz is more absent, Ruth begins receiving parchment letters with a seal reading WE ARE THE SCRIBES, sent by Harriet Jacobs, the author of the autobiography and 1861 American classic, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. Is Ruth dreaming? How has she been chosen as a “scribe” when she can barely put a sentence together? In a narrative that blends present with past, Randi Pink explores two extraordinary characters who channel their hopelessness and find their voices to make history.




Scribes and Scribalism


Book Description

This volume is a concentrated examination of the varied roles of scribes and scribal practices in ancient Israel and Judah, shedding light on the social world of the Hebrew Bible. Divided into discussion of three key aspects, the book begins by assessing praxis and materiality, looking at the tools and materials used by scribes, where they came from and how they worked in specific contexts. The contributors then move to observe the power and status of scribal cultures, and how scribes functioned within their broader social world. Finally, the volume offers perspectives that examine ideological issues at play in both antiquity and the modern context(s) of biblical scholarship. Taken together, these essays demonstrate that no text is produced in a void, and no writer functions without a network of resources.




Astronomers, Scribes, and Priests


Book Description

This book examines evidence for cultural interchange among the intellectual powerbrokers in Postclassic Mesoamerica, specifically those centered in the northern Maya lowlands and the central Mexican highlands. It includes a wealth of new data and interpretive frameworks in a comprehensive discussion of a critical time period in Mesoamerica.




Obscene Pedagogies


Book Description

In Obscene Pedagogies, Carissa M. Harris investigates the relationship between obscenity, gender, and pedagogy in Middle English and Middle Scots literary texts from 1300 to 1580 to show how sexually explicit and defiantly vulgar speech taught readers and listeners about sexual behavior and consent. Through innovative close readings of literary texts including erotic lyrics, single-woman's songs, debate poems between men and women, Scottish insult poetry battles, and The Canterbury Tales, Harris demonstrates how through its transgressive charge and galvanizing shock value, obscenity taught audiences about gender, sex, pleasure, and power in ways both positive and harmful. Harris's own voice, proudly witty and sharply polemical, inspires the reader to address these medieval texts with an eye on contemporary issues of gender, violence, and misogyny.




Scribal Correction and Literary Craft


Book Description

This extensive survey of scribal correction in English manuscripts explores what correcting reveals about attitudes to books, language and literature in late medieval England. Daniel Wakelin surveys a range of manuscripts and genres, but focuses especially on poems by Chaucer, Hoccleve and Lydgate, and on prose works such as chronicles, religious instruction and practical lore. His materials are the variants and corrections found in manuscripts, phenomena usually studied only by editors or palaeographers, but his method is the close reading and interpretation typical of literary criticism. From the corrections emerge often overlooked aspects of English literary thinking in the late Middle Ages: scribes, readers and authors seek, though often fail to achieve, invariant copying, orderly spelling, precise diction, regular verse and textual completeness. Correcting reveals their impressive attention to scribal and literary craft - its rigour, subtlety, formalism and imaginativeness - in an age with little other literary criticism in English.




Scribes and Scribalism


Book Description

This volume is a concentrated examination of the varied roles of scribes and scribal practices in ancient Israel and Judah, shedding light on the social world of the Hebrew Bible. Divided into discussion of three key aspects, the book begins by assessing praxis and materiality, looking at the tools and materials used by scribes, where they came from and how they worked in specific contexts. The contributors then move to observe the power and status of scribal cultures, and how scribes functioned within their broader social world. Finally, the volume offers perspectives that examine ideological issues at play in both antiquity and the modern context(s) of biblical scholarship. Taken together, these essays demonstrate that no text is produced in a void, and no writer functions without a network of resources.