ENGL 4892/6892: Medieval Manuscripts and Where To Find Them

Course Description

In this, the second of the Hargrett Hours courses proper, the students built on the discoveries of the 2016 and 2017 students and built out the Hargrett Hours Edition website. The semester’s goal was to better understand the spiritual function of the Passion materials in the Hargrett Hours and to create the digital edition with facsimile for these sections of the manuscript.

After the bootcamp, the class dove quickly into the complex and often extravagant landscape of devotion to the Passion of Christ in the later Middle Ages. We read a wide variety of different devotional materials focused on the Passion in order to better understand the breadth and complexity of this spiritual trend; at the same time, the students were also studying (and blogging about) digitized Books of Hours that incorporate extensive Passion materials.

The course’s final unit, Hargrett Hours 2.0, focused on two sections of the Hargrett Hours: the account of the Passion from the Gospel of John and the cluster of prayers that follow it. Working in two teams, the students produced an edition of these sections. They also developed interpretive materials to better understand how distinctive these sections are among medieval Books of Hours.

A third team worked with the UGA DigiLab to create a website for the Hargrett Hours: a digital facsimile with full transcription and interpretive materials, available at http://hargretthoursproject.digilabuga.org/.  In so doing, we are starting to meet the major goals of this set of courses: to develop a full facsimile and edition of the Hargrett Hours, and to make public the students’ discoveries and conclusions about this distinctive and compelling Book of Hours.

Student Co-Investigators

Savannah Caldwell, Georgia Earley, Christian Gallichio, Kristina Going, Katherine Haire, Kara Krewer, Mikaela LaFave, Katie Lech, Zach McCannon, Ceciley Pangburn, Lucas Vaughn, Emily Walls.