Prosopography of the Book and the Politics of Legal Language in Late Medieval England

Abstract

This article explores the intersection of book history and prosopography. It uses several case studies of copies of the medieval parliamentary statutes translated into English, together with later copies of English statutes translated into French, to argue for both thick prosopographical study of individual volumes and large, statistically based studies of books drawn from the largest possible data sets. Together, these methods amount to a new “prosopograhy of the book.” The case studies analyzed here reveal a complicated politicized relationship not only between script and print but also between French and English in the early Tudor era.