386 Gogol's Ukrainian Nights | HOL Presents "Mysteries of a Merlin Manuscript" (A Book Dreams Podcast)
The History of Literature
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The History of Manuscripts in the Renaissance
Em pasteans are fragments of old mediaeval manuscripts that were pasted on to the inside of renaissance books. Mediaeval manuscripts were made of vellum, which is basically treated calf skin. So they were extremely durable and quite valuable material even after they stopped being used as manuscripts. The librarian at bristol central library found these em pasteans in a thirteenth century france book. He saw the names arthur and merlin in it, and thought that this was potentially something interesting. Professor tether identified it as an arthurian text, as eight pages from the hestoire de merlin, the story of merlin. And we decided to work also with doctor ben
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