The Annual History of the Book Lecture
Reading the Lindisfarne Gospels: image, text, context
Contact administrator.imrs@durham.ac.uk for more information about this event.
Time and Man: Authorship in the High Middle Ages
Wednesday 7 November 2012 at 5-30 pm in the Senate Suite of Durham Castle
To be given by Dr Greti Dinkova-Bruun of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies (PIMS), Toronto and COFUND Senior Research Fellow at University College
Leonius of Paris and Aegidius of Paris are Latin poets who lived and worked in the beginning of the 13th century. In their extensive biblical versifications these poets demonstrate a clear sense of their own unique authorial involvement with the material in front of them, be it the Bible or the work of a famous predecessor. In the case of Leonius, this is evident from the almost certainly authorial glosses added in the margins around his poem which draw the reader’s attention to Leonius’s own elaborations of the biblical story, whereas Aegidius justifies his interventions in the text of Peter Riga’s Aurora by calling himself “the ultimate corrector” who will improve the original by fixing confused order and expanding its contents. What emerges from these two examples are two different but complimentary attitudes to medieval authorship. Both Leonius and Aegidius think of themselves as embedded in a complex textual matrix that encompasses not only the Bible and its many versifications, but also the vast range of sources on which they both depend and against which they assert their own authority.
Please register your attendance for the lecture and reception via https://www.dur.ac.uk/conference.booking/details/?id=166 or contact Jacky Pankhurst on administrator.imrs@durham.ac.uk
Previous lectures
2007 Professor Henry Mayr-Harting, University of Oxford: ‘The Illustrated Service Books of the Emperors Otto III and Henry II'.
2008 Dr Christopher de Hamel, University of Cambridge: 'The Durham Books that Got Away: the fate of the Cathedral Library after the Reformation'.
2009 Professor Anne Hudson, University of Oxford: 'Books Chained and Books Burned: the fate of Wyclif's Writings in England'.
2010 Dr Anthony James West: 'Shakespeare's First Folio'.
2011 Professor John Lowden, Courtauld Institute: 'Royal Manuscripts on Exhibition at the British Library'.
2012 Dr Greti Dinkova-Bruun, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies: 'Time and Man: Authorship in the High Middle Ages'.
