Work on the project this year has focused heavily on the production of the critical edition with the Early English Text Society. There therefore hasn’t been much to report, as it’s mostly been a lot of discussions back and forth about specific details of how the text is to be represented, what fonts we will use and where, what sort of information is to be included in the footnotes and glossary and so on. However, this week I’ve been at the International Conference on Middle English (ICOME 2022) in Glasgow to present the edition, letting some of the top people in the field know that the edition is coming and what it will be like. I talked about the condition of the manuscript, the damaged sections we’ve been able to recover, and the parts we’ve included from Jan van Vliet’s notebook. I also talked about the editorial principles and the sort of accuracy we’ve insisted upon. This fitted in with an informal theme of the conference as many speakers were, coincidentally, addressing editorial practice, especially with regard to punctuation. Like almost everything about the Ormulum, both the punctuation inventory, and how it is used, are unique. I attach the slides I used here in case they’re of any use to anyone. For reference purposes, the talk was given on August 24th in the Glasgow University Union Debating Chamber. It may be necessary to install the fonts, available elsewhere on this website, to read some of the slides.

-Andrew

ICOME 22 Presentation (2250 Kb)