(We have just a few spots and would love some additional medievalists. Please write Prof Hahn [email protected])
Book and Body Professor Cynthia Hahn Dr Joshua O’Driscoll,
Mellon Seminar asst curator, Morgan Library and Museum
Books, that is hand-made manuscripts, were experienced intimately in the middle ages. As small objects that invited the viewer’s gaze and required bodily engagement in order to be read, they provided a unique medieval occasion of exquisite sensory stimulation. With prominent owner portraits, heraldry, and other illustrations and texts that shaped or reinforced beliefs, they were an important means of identity formation. Whether one turned their pages made of smooth and polished skins of sheep, or perhaps interacted in more unexpected ways—a pregnant woman might be wrapped in a protective scroll with the life of the patron saint of pregnancy, Margaret—in any case, books both invoked and provoked bodies.
This course will consider selected examples of late medieval manuscripts from the rich collection at the Morgan Library. Seminar sessions (8 at the Morgan) will include the examination of manuscripts as well as discussion of linked scholarship. Reading will include selections of Kate Rudy’s work on “dirty manuscripts” that reveal the grime of touch; Sarah Kay’s work on parchment as skin; Stephen Perkinson’s discussion of the rise of the portrait in the late middle ages; Susan Groag Bell’s seminal article on women’s book ownership; as well as other important recent work on manuscripts and codicology. Students will write a paper on a Morgan manuscript. A previous knowledge of manuscripts is not required.
Suggested preparatory reading: Christopher de Hamel, A History of Illuminated Manuscripts, 1986
