Wednesday, October 31, 2012
Monday, October 29, 2012
From the Widener manuscript, Free Library of Philadelphia, Widener 002, 3rd quarter of the 15th century.
Your forgery assignment is from the first leaf (Genesis!)--first 9 (truncate) lines, up to (but not including) "Et ainsi".
Reading assignment: the second leaf, right-hand column, "Salemon le filz David" and following, as well as (if you have time) the third leaf, right-hand column, "Un homme estoit en la cité" and following. Good luck! I think you'll do great--I'm guessing you'll find this one easy.
Monday, October 22, 2012
This week's work is a beauty--not for the layout of the leaf, but for the beauty of the cursive gothic bastarda. Found among my lecture notes from a while back--perhaps some of you will remember this one? For now, I don't remember the bibliographic details, but I can estimate the year fairly closely: within a generation after 1415.
Hint: this is one of those where you should start wherever you can. I will have an educated guess as your your collective starting point: don't tell anybody where you began, okay?
Your forgery assignment: three contiguous lines, chosen at your discretion.
PS: it should probably go without saying that my own handwriting is not far off from a nice, cursive gothic bastarda such as you see above. Here is a quatrain from a recent sonnet of mine, written with a nice, loose Bic Mark-It Ultra-Fine-Point:
As a friend once (semi-)famously upined, "neat yet illegible".
PPS: if you select my own handwriting as your forgery sample, I will either be flattered as can be, or will fail you viciously.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Below: Philadelphia, Free Library of Philadelphia, Rare Book Department, LC 14 09.5
Second quarter of 15th c.; a very lovely, highly stylized gothic bastarda.
For your forgery exercise this week: line 7,
"[e]nemyez du Roy et du Roialme fussent exilez..."
Good luck, lads and lasses. This is a force 10.
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