PhD defence
Mixed Methods: Making the Manuscript Miscellany in Early Modern England
- H.A. Riach
- Date
- Friday 20 February 2026
- Time
- Address
-
Academy Building
Rapenburg 73
2311 GJ Leiden
Supervisor(s)
Summary
In early modern England, one of the most prevalent mediums in which texts were stored and transmitted was the manuscript miscellany: bound volumes containing a wide variety of handwritten texts, ranging from poetic verses to household recipes and financial accounts, ordered in a seemingly miscellaneous fashion. These volumes were often produced over long periods of time, in a non-linear manner, and by the hands of numerous different scribes. They thus survive today as seemingly impenetrable cacophonies of hands. This thesis presents a new method through which we might better account for the polyvocality and structural complexity of such volumes, and the principles through which they were organized. It teases out the challenges faced by scribes and the opportunities afforded to them as they worked at the intersection between collaborative, communal miscellany-making and individual organizational practices.
Heretofore, the scribal agency and creativity that often underpin such unwieldy manuscript miscellanies has been largely obscured. By unravelling the material and textual histories of these volumes, however, this thesis uncovers the various tools with which their makers sought to creatively re-work the literature collected therein: removed from earlier literary contexts, textual fragments might be lent new coherence through a process of careful and inventive compilation. It therefore concludes that such volumes should no longer be viewed as inherently haphazard but as generative sites from which complex and intersecting modes of collaboration, knowledge production, and scribal agency can be recovered, ones from which new and often-overlooked textual actors can be unearthed.
PhD dissertations
Approximately one week after the defence, PhD dissertations by Leiden PhD students are available digitally through the Leiden Repository, that offers free access to these PhD dissertations. Please note that in some cases a dissertation may be under embargo temporarily and access to its full-text version will only be granted later.
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