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Index of Middle English Prose: Cotton Collection

We aim to compile a catalogue of one of the foremost collections of medieval manuscripts and to develop a search tool for Middle English prose.

Man sitting at a table flipping through the Cotton Collection.
Photo: Alpo Honkapohja

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:

  1.  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.
  2. 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

Collaborators

Duration

01.09.21 — 31.08.23


News


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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.

Published Jan. 24, 2022 10:38 AM - Last modified Dec. 12, 2023 8:29 AM

Contact

Project leader: Alpo Honkapohja

 

Participants

  • Alpo Honkapohja Universitetet i Oslo
Detailed list of participants