On this Masters-level course, students will have the opportunity to acquire skills necessary to undertake research using Early Modern manuscripts. We will focus upon developing the ability to read and decipher Early Modern handwriting (in different scripts). In addition, students are set practical exercises related to the challenges and opportunities today for archival research presented by a range of Early Modern texts - such as letters, financial accounts, wills, court records and poetry.

10 x 2 hour weekly seminars as scheduled on MyCampus.

This is one of the options for the MSc in English Language & Linguistics and may not run every year. The options that are running this session are available on MyCampus

None

None

Course project (3500 words) - 75%

Practical skills assessment consisting of transcription during in-class timed test (90mins) - 25%

This course will provide students with the opportunity to:

■ acquire specialist skills needed to search for, identify and handle Early Modern handwritten sources

■ develop technical and interpretative capabilities necessary for the decipherment, description and transcription of a range of manuscript texts

■ gain confidence in how to present independent work based on archival sources

By the end of this course students will be able to:

■ reproduce and illustrate a significant range of key skills in Early Modern palaeography and manuscript studies

■ represent and critically evaluate core aspects of textual bibliography and archival research, including those informed by forefront development

■ select, recognize and apply a range of standard and specialized library and IT tools for Early Modern English studies

Students must submit at least 75% by weight of the components (including examinations) of the course's summative assessment.