Detail from WLC/LM/6
A major new resource based on our medieval collections has been launched on our website. In Wives, Widows and Wimples , you can see high-quality images of medieval documents relating to women, and their place in the society and literature of the middle ages. No knowledge of medieval languages is required, as the resource includes modern English summaries of all the handwritten documents.
The resource features 46 text extracts from original medieval manuscripts, 11 details of illuminations, miniatures or bindings from those manuscripts, and 5 extracts from later printed volumes referring to the middle ages. The extracts come from stories of knights and their quests; works of learning and instruction in moral conduct; records of saints and of religious practice; and legal documents relating to landholding and marriage.
They are drawn particularly from the Wollaton Library Collection (WLC), which has been the subject of a Heritage Lottery Fund award to secure the future of the collection at the University of Nottingham and to undertake work on cataloguing, preservation and other activities. The web resource is a core activity of the Lottery funded Wollaton Library Collection project , and has been a collaboration between Manuscripts and Special Collections, Information Services and academic colleagues from the University’s Institute for Medieval Research. It has also benefited from the related research programme, “The Wollaton Medieval Manuscripts: Texts, Owners and Readers”, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC).
From Friday 30 April to Sunday 8 August you can see the items from the Wollaton Library Collection on display in the exhibition Saints, Sinners and Story Tellers: Medieval Wollaton Manuscripts at the University of Nottingham , at the Weston Gallery, Lakeside Arts Centre.
Posted on Thursday 29th April 2010