The Art of Reading Slowly – A Philological Appreciation of Medieval English Texts

Abstract

In recent years studies of English language and literature have been thriving in research which makes use of electronic corpora and Internet resources, producing a large number of publications. At the time of such flourishing computer-based quantitative research, our symposium “The Art of Reading Slowly – A Philological Appreciation of Medieval English Texts” ventured to practise traditional close textual reading, namely the art of reading slowly. Each of the four papers demonstrated what kind of new knowledge can be obtained by a close reading of medieval English texts. Our philological practice also pointed out that there still remain many unsolved textual issues even in the so-called canon, with its numerous editions and commentaries.