Establishing the original order of the poems in Harward's Almanac using paleography, codicology, X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy, and statistical analysis.

ABSTRACT: This work presents the results of a transdisciplinary analysis performed on Harward's Almanac (Dublin, 1666), an extremely rare volume currently housed in the National Library of Ireland. The uniqueness and historical value of the Almanac is related to the presence of nineteen handwritten poems, entered by an anonymous scribe. These record textually important English clandestine satire circulating anonymously in Dublin in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. Following a comprehensive historical assessment, it appeared evident that the current order of leaves was incorrect. To reconstruct the correct order of the leaves, and hence the likely sequence in which the manuscript poems were inscribed, this study employed a codicological/paleographic analysis complemented by analytic

SUBMITTER: Biolcati V 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10724310 | biostudies-literature | 2023

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature