Testaments, Donations, and the Values of Books As Gifts ― A Study of Records from Medieval England Before 1450

Bischof draws from the fertile records of book donation mainly to the two new universities at Oxford and Cambridge and to various religious communities and churches, to explore shifts in emphasis and value attributed to the written word as literacy levels and cultural circumstances changed. She considers only manuscripts, because the advent of print brought factors that would change the nature and scope of the study. Her topics are the theoretical background of gifts and values, donations and testaments--the records of book gifts, indicators of value: the semantic fields describing books in gift records, and context-independent and context-dependent indicators of value. Annotation c2014 Ringgold, Inc., Portland, OR (protoview.com)

Janika Bischof studied English Philology in Munster (Germany) and St Andrews (UK). She worked as research assistant at the collaborative research centre Symbolische Kommunikation und gesellschaftliche Wertesysteme in the project Das Buchgeschenk in England im Spatmittelalter at the University of Munster. She is currently research assistant at a specialist library.