Legal Records, Reading Practices, and The Meaning of Paper in Late Medieval English Literature (for the DTP CDA project "Writing Technologies in Trans

在书籍史上，中世纪与羊皮纸的使用有关，羊皮纸是由兽皮制成的，而纸是由植物材料制成的，主要被认为是后来的领域。但是，在英国，如果将我们对“文学”的定义扩大到包括这一时期的大量行政记录，就会发现，在中世纪晚期流传着数量惊人的纸质手稿，许多中世纪英语诗歌抄写员在日常工作中抄写的各种官僚文本。安德鲁·普雷斯科特（Andrew Prescott）写道，从数量上看，这些文件“是中世纪英格兰典型的抄写作品”，这一事实往往被文学学者所忽视，这表明，由纸张本身推动的文学和读者实践值得更多关注。因此，我的项目将调查很少被研究的国家档案馆KB145，这是一个包含从地区法院带到伦敦国王法庭的法律记录的档案馆。我将重点放在14世纪和15世纪的记录以及剑桥收藏的中世纪英语诗歌的纸质手稿上，希望能阐明纸在中世纪晚期英格兰的意义。中世纪的读者给纸上文学带来了什么样的期望、联想和身体习惯？纸上文学是一种从抒情诗到擦洒的东西无所不有的材料。我的目的是阐明，作为一种技术，纸对逐渐接受它的读者意味着什么，它是我们世界的一种颠倒，逐渐将它抛在身后。

In book history, the Middle Ages are associated with the use of parchment, made from animal hides, in bookmaking,while paper, made from plant matter, is primarily considered the province of later periods. But, in England, expanding ourdefinition of "literature" to include the wealth of administrative records from the period reveals that a surprisingly largenumber of paper manuscripts, the sorts of bureaucratic texts many scribes of Middle English poetry copied for their dayjobs, circulated in the late medieval period. By volume, these files, as Andrew Prescott writes, "are the characteristicscribal productions of medieval England," a fact often ignored by literary scholars, which suggests that the literary andreaderly practices prompted by paper itself deserve more attention. Thus, my project will investigate the little-studiedNational Archives KB145, an archive containing legal records brought to the King's Bench in London from regionalcourts. Focusing on its fourteenth- and fifteenth-century records alongside paper manuscripts of Middle English poetry inCambridge's collections, I hope to elucidate the meaning of paper in late medieval England. What expectations,associations, and physical habits did medieval readers bring to literature on paper, a material used for everything fromepic poetry to wiping up spills? I aim to shed light on what paper, as a technology, meant to readers who graduallyadopted it, an inversion of our world which gradually leaves it behind.