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| Paleography Exercises | |
| A poem Holy Meditation (British Library, Egerton 3245, f.193). All images by permission of the British Library. | |
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This poem is part of a volume of religious poetry and prose, aids to moral improvement and religious contemplation. The language is Middle English, which can make reading it a bit of a battle. Archaic spelling and vocabulary abound. The script is a cursive book hand of the general type referred to as cursiva anglicana. The volume dates from the late 14th century, when cursive scripts were commonly employed for most works which were not formal volumes of church liturgy. |
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| overview | text | alphabet | abbreviations | exercises | transcript | modern transcript | |
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| Click on each of the above to walk your way through the text. The transcript will appear in a separate window so that you can use it for reference at any time. These exercises are designed to guide you through the text, not test you, so you can cheat as much as you like. | |
 Script sample for this example |
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Index of Exercises |
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Index of Scripts |
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If you are looking at this page without frames, there is more information about medieval writing to be found by going to the home page (framed) or the site map (no frames). |
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