About the project
Access to medieval manuscripts, which form a major part of our collective heritage, is dependent on the search tools available to us.
The Index of Middle English Prose (IMEP) is the most important reference tool for Middle English non-verse texts. It seeks to locate and identify all surviving English prose texts composed between circa 1200 and 1500.
Our two-year EU-funded project contributes to the IMEP by completing a catalogue of the Cotton collection, brought together by Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571-1631), now located in the British Library. It is considered one of the most important collection of manuscripts ever assembled in Britain by a private individual.
Objectives
The project has two main objectives:
- Preparation of a printed catalogue of Middle English prose in the Cotton collection. It will be published as a volume in the IMEP series. It is based on notes left behind by the original editor, the late Brian Donaghey (University of Sheffield), and archival work carried out by Dr. Alpo Honkapohja.
- Developing a search tool that can handle spelling variation in Middle English. The tool will be developed at the Text Laboratory of the University of Oslo and incorporated into the IMEP website, which is under development at the Cambridge Centre for Digital Humanities.
Relevant links
- The Index of Middle English Prose (IMEP) (imep.lib.cam.ac.uk)
- Sir Robert Bruce Cotton (1571–1631) (brittanica.com)
- British Library (bl.uk)
- Brian Donaghey (medievalyas.home.blog)
Collaborators
- Associate Professor Jacob Thaisen
- Prof. Em. Kari Anne Rand
- Sabina Nedelius, PhD
- Professor Dag Haug
- Senior Engineer, Anders Nøklestad
- The Text Laboratory, University of Oslo
- Library Digital Humanities Coordinator, Huw Jones
- Cambridge Digital Humanities
Duration
01.09.21 — 31.08.23
News
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May 8, 2023 4:51 PM Middle English Written by a Woman? Elizabeth of York
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Nov. 5, 2022 8:12 AM Could Beowulf have been blown up in the Gunpowder plot?
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101025997.