| Description |
Medieval books are handmade and often customized and highly personalized objects, ranging from lavishly decorated works of art to unadorned, less expensive manuscripts. They were produced in various circumstances and served a variety of functions: Books were a source of knowledge and entertainment; an aid of devotion or instruction; a sign of status or belonging.
This seminar explores the ways in which books were produced, circulated, and consumed in the era before print. We will consider the book in all its variety, probing its materiality, contents, and evidence concerning its early owners and readers.
We will discuss the materials and skills needed for the production of a manuscript and consider choices of size, format, script, commentary, decoration, and language; we will explore the functions of patrons, scribes, and illuminators; we will think about the circulation of books and the transmission of knowledge and ask how books or parts of books were passed on, taken apart, and reassembled; we will inquire into the safekeeping of books and the function of book curses; we will think about practices of reading and reading acquisition and the depiction of these practices in medieval books; we will probe the role of women in book production and the transmission of knowledge and the nature of textual communities. Throughout the seminar, we allow ourselves to be challenged to rethink established categories of cultural production and transmission and the meanings of ‘author’ and ‘reader’ and consider aspects of cultural sustainability.
The seminar involves a half-day visit to the Papiermühlemuseum Basel, where students will have the opportunity to learn hands-on about the processes involved in book production, and a visit to the Burgerbibliothek Bern, where we will view medieval manuscripts firsthand.
Required Reading:
• The Proem to The Book of Margery Kempe, trans. Anthony Bale (on ILIAS). Please also read the Middle English text, ed. by Lynn Staley (also on ILIAS).
• Lynn Staley’s introduction to her edition of The Book of Margery Kempe (on ILIAS)
• The chapter ‘Writing Supports’ from Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (on ILIAS)
• The British Library blog https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2014/03/the-life-of-a-mystic.html
• Please prepare the set of guided reading questions (on ILIAS, under week 1)
Please note that there will be a ten-minute entrance exam in the first session, which will be based on the require reading and guided reading questions.
Further reading:
• Christopher de Hamel, Scribes and Illuminators (London: The British Library, 1992).
• Daniel Donoghue et al (ed.), The Practice and Politics of Reading, 650-1500 (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2022).
• Martin Chase and Maryanne Kowaleski (eds.), Reading and Writing in Medieval England. Essays in Honor of Mary C. Erler (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2019).
• Raymond Clemens and Timothy Graham, Introduction to Manuscript Studies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2007)
• Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Maidie Hilmo, and Linda Olson, Opening Up Middle English Manuscripts: Literary and Visual Approaches (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012)
• Daniel Wakelin, Designing English: Early Literature on the Page (Oxford: Bodleian Library, 2018) |
User:
Öffentlicher Bereich
Support