Paper in Medieval England From Pulp to Fictions Cambridge Studies in Medieval Literature Series

Orietta Da Rold provides a detailed analysis of the coming of paper to medieval England, and its influence on the literary and non-literary culture of the period. Looking beyond book production, Da Rold maps out the uses of paper and explains the success of this technology in medieval culture, considering how people interacted with it and how it affected their lives. Offering a nuanced understanding of how affordance influenced societal choices, Paper in Medieval England draws on a multilingual array of sources to investigate how paper circulated, was written upon, and was deployed by people across medieval society, from kings to merchants, to bishops, to clerks and to poets, contributing to an understanding of how medieval paper changed communication and shaped modernity.

Paper and culture in medieval England: an introduction; 1. Paper stories; 2. The economics of paper; 3. Writing on paper; 4. The character of paper and its use in medieval books; 5. Paper in the medieval literary imagination; 6. Epilogue: the age of paper.

Dr Orietta Da Rold is Lecturer in Literature and Material Text, 1100 to 1500 at the University of Cambridge. She is the Co-Director (with Elaine Treharne) of the successful AHRC-funded project and e-book, English Manuscripts 1060 to 1220 and is currently editing the Cambridge Companion to British Manuscripts with Elaine Treharne.