Malcolm Beckwith Parkes (26 June 1930 – 10 May 2013), credited as an author as M. B. Parkes, was an English

paleographer Palaeography ( UK) or paleography ( US; ultimately from grc-gre, , ''palaiós'', "old", and , ''gráphein'', "to write") is the study of historic writing systems and the deciphering and dating of historical manuscripts, including the analysi ...

, notable for his contributions to the scholarship of medieval manuscripts. His studies of the manuscripts of

Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer (; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He wa ...

and

William Langland William Langland (; la, Willielmus de Langland; 1332 – c. 1386) is the presumed author of a work of Middle English alliterative verse generally known as ''Piers Plowman'', an allegory with a complex variety of religious themes. The poem tr ...

were especially important, and his 1978 article "The Production of Copies of the 'Canterbury Tales'" was described as "seminal". Parkes was a student of

Neil Ripley Ker Neil Ripley Ker (; 1908–1982) was a scholar of Anglo-Saxon literature. He was Reader in Palaeography at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford until he retired in 1968. He is known especially for his ''Catalogue of Ma ...

and wrote his B.Litt. thesis on the

Secretary hand Secretary hand is a style of European handwriting developed in the early sixteenth century that remained common in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries for writing English, German, Welsh and Gaelic. History Predominating before the dominance ...

. From 1965 to 1997 he was a fellow at

Keble College, Oxford Keble College () is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. Its main buildings are on Parks Road, opposite the University Museum and the University Parks. The college is bordered to the north by Keble Road, to th ...

, and held a personal chair in paleography in the University of Oxford. At Keble he taught Old and Middle English language and literature. Among his important individual achievements are the dating of the Oxford MS. of ''

The Song of Roland ''The Song of Roland'' (french: La Chanson de Roland) is an 11th-century ''chanson de geste'' based on the Frankish military leader Roland at the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778 AD, during the reign of the Carolingian king Charlemagne. It is t ...

'' and his work on early manuscripts of the ''Canterbury Tales'' (with Ian Doyle), still considered a standard. His 1969 book ''English Cursive Book Hands, 1250-1500'' is "the authoritative account", according to David Ganz, and its formatting is still employed by other scholars. His work on punctuation (''Pause and Effect: an Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West'', 1993) focuses on "visual reading aids" and was highly influential. His Lyell Lectures at Oxford discussed the prosopography of English scribes and focussed on how they wrote, rather than on terms for identifying scripts, and proved him an erudite and entertaining lecturer. His books have glossaries which demonstrate how precisely he used language. He compiled a catalogue of Keble College's medieval manuscripts which was published in 1979 by Scolar Press, London.Parkes, M. B., comp. (1979) ''The Medieval Manuscripts of Keble College Oxford: a descriptive catalogue, with summary descriptions of the Greek and oriental manuscripts''. xxi, 365 pp.; facsimiles. London: Scolar Press Parkes was elected to the Comité international de paléographie latine in 1986 and was a corresponding fellow of the

Medieval Academy of America The Medieval Academy of America (MAA; spelled Mediaeval until c. 1980) is the largest organization in the United States promoting the field of medieval studies. It was founded in 1925 and is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The academy publishes ...

from 1992. He died on 10 May 2013.

References

External links

Malcolm Parkes, "Book Provision and Libraries at the Medieval University of Oxford: The Robert F. Metzdorf Memorial Lecture 1987"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Parkes, Malcolm 1930 births 2013 deaths British medievalists English palaeographers Fellows of Keble College, Oxford