Category Archives: Uncategorized

Update: EBS at Kalamazoo 2021

While nearly all speakers scheduled for May 2020, the cancelled conference, have said they wish to return in May 2021, there are still spaces available. The EBS sessions for 2021 are the same as for 2020. These are listed below. We will also have to see what happens with international travel before May 2021, but all previously accepted speakers are encouraged to reapply. All previously accepted speakers must reapply through the portal. Please see the instructions here: https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions
The sessions needing more papers are Copying, Editing and Correction, and What makes an English Book English? If there is another session that interests you, you might submit an abstract and see what happens.

 ‘What’s Past Is Prologue’: Transition of Literary Works from MS to Print 
Presider: Patricia Stoop, University of Antwerp
“Translating the Past: Antonio de Nebrija Rewrites the Catholic Monarchs”
— Bretton Rodriguez, University of Nevada, Reno
“An Early Modern/Medieval Book”
— Catherine E. Corder, University of Texas—Arlington
“Printing the Past? Seeking ‘Authenticity’ in an Icelandic Proverb Collection”
— Christine Schott, Erskine College

Bi- and Tri-Lingual Manuscripts and Early Printed Books 
Presider: Martha W. Driver 
“English Women’s Bilingual Manuscripts: Latin AND (not OR) the Vernacular”
— Caitlin Branum Thrash, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
“Multi-lingual Apocalypses in Late Medieval England”
— Karen Gross, Lewis & Clark College
“‘Bremschet Scripcit’- A Multilingual Female(?) Annotator of Stephen Scrope’s Letter of Othea”
— Sarah Wilma Watson, Haverford College

Migrating Manuscripts and Peripatetic Texts 
Presider: Sarah Wilma Watson
“Travelling scholars and manuscripts: the influence of the Paris university book trade on English intellectual life and visual art”
— Alison Ray, Canterbury Cathedral Archives and Library
“Total Oblivion? Wycliffite Gospel Commentaries and their Textual Afterlives”
— David Lavinsky, Yeshiva College, Yeshiva University
“Short Migrations with Long Consequences: Loan Chests and Book Movement in Late Medieval Oxford”
— Jenny Adams, University of Massachusetts—Amherst

Visual and Verbal Portraits in Manuscripts and Printed Books 
Presider: Jill C. Havens, Texas-Christian University 
“Imagining the ‘Best Knight’ in the World: Sir Lancelot in the Old French Vulgate and in the Images of the Yale 229 Lancelot Codex”
— Elizabeth Willingham, Baylor University
“Jean de Vignay at the Heart of the Early Valois Court: The Portrait of the Translator in the Jeu des échecs moralisé (Morgan G. 52)” 
— Lisa Daugherty Iacobellis, Special Collections, The Ohio State University Libraries
“‘Marie our Maistresse’: A Verbal Portrait of Queen Mary I at her Accession”
— Valerie Schutte, independent scholar
“‘A Knyght ther was, and that a noble man’: The Knight’s portrait in Caxton’s illustrated edition of the Canterbury Tales 1483″
— Anamaria Ramona Gellert

Copying, Editing and Correction: How Accurate Is It? 
Presider: S. C. Kaplan, Rice University 
“Remaking Old Texts New Again”
— Lori Jones, Carleton University, University of Ottawa
“Multiple Copies, One Source? 15c Redactions of John of Tynemouth’s Sanctilogium in Cotton, Tiberius E. I”
— Virginia Blanton, University of Missouri-Kansas City

What Makes an English Book English? 
Presider: Neil B. Weijer, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida 
“Decorating to Anglicize the Book”
— J. R. Mattison, University of Toronto
“A Greek Lectionary in New Zealand”
— Alexandra Gillespie, University of Toronto

Whittington’s Gift: Reconstructing the Lost Common Library of London’s Guildhall

This three-year project, led by Dr Ryan Perry at the University of Kent and Dr Stephen Kelly at Queen’s University Belfast, has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust (£367,000) and will appoint two postdoctoral research assistants, one to be located at each institution.

On the project: Whittington’s Gift aims to demonstrate that London citizens created new programmes of religious education for both the City’s clergy and for literate lay communities that have hitherto gone largely unnoticed by scholarship. Thanks to the legacy of Richard Whittington (d. 1423), perhaps London’s most storied mayor, an extraordinary resource for religious education emerged under the auspices of Whittington’s innovative executor, John Carpenter, common clerk of London’s Guildhall. By tracking the transmission of texts that the applicants contend were sourced from the Guildhall Library, we aim to radically complicate understanding of fifteenth century literary culture in the capital and beyond.

Candidates must have excellent palaeographical and codicological skills, and have a research focus on fourteenth and fifteenth century English devotional literature and culture.  

The PDRA based at Kent will work closely with Dr Ryan Perry on the codicological assessment of the project’s corpus, with a view to identifying codices the project team believe were either produced or copied from exemplars originally held at the London Guildhall Library.

The PDRA based at Queen’s will have responsibility for producing diplomatic transcriptions of the project’s textual corpus, for inclusion in one of the project’s main outputs, Meke Reverence and Devocyon: A Research Anthology of Late Medieval English Religious Writing (the first since Hortsmann in the 19th century). Familiarity with the protocols of contemporary textual scholarship will be a benefit.

It is hoped that posts will be advertised in the summer with the PDRAs hopefully commencing in late September (current circumstances allowing).


The Early Book Society at Kalamazoo 2020

EBS has six sessions to fill for Kalamazoo 2020 (May 7 to 10). Please send abstracts by Sept 15 or before, along with any a-v requirements you might have. Please send to Martha Driver at mdriver@pace.edu with Kazoo 2020, your surname and the session in which you wish to participate in the subject line. See also below.

The sessions are these:
Bi- and Tri-Lingual Manuscripts and Early Printed Books
Copying, Editing and Correction: How Accurate Is It? (1 accepted)
Visual and Verbal Portraits in Manuscripts and Printed Books (1 accepted)
Migrating Manuscripts and Peripatetic Texts
“What’s Past Is Prologue”: The Transition of Literary Works from Manuscript to Print
What Makes an English Book English?

Contact:
Martha W. Driver
Pace Univ. Dept. of English
41 Park Row New York, NY 10038
Phone: (212) 346-1676 Fax: (212) 346-1754
Email: mdriver@pace.edu

Each speaker must include a Participation Information Form with an abstract, which are available at https://wmich.edu/medievalcongress/submissions.

Brut in New Troy 2020

Brut in New Troy 2020, a conference devoted to discussions of the Brut tradition in all of its variety and the first scholarly conference about the Brut tradition as a whole, will take place at the University of Notre Dame’s London Centre in Trafalgar Square from 26 to 29 June 2020. In the heart of New Troy, we seek to provide a forum for comparative, multilingual, cross-period, and cross-disciplinary discussion of Brut-related texts and manuscripts, both canonical and less familiar, and by no means limited to ‘legendary’ material. The event will feature a keynote address by Professor Jane Roberts. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 15 October 2019. Full information is available on the conference website: https://www.brutinnewtroy.com/

Scribal Cultures in Late Medieval England: A Conference in honour of Linne R. Mooney

23 May 2019, at King’s Manor, York

With papers from leading scholars, this one-day conference honours Linne Mooney’s contribution to the study of medieval English manuscripts.

Keynote speakers: Derek Pearsall and Simon Horobin

Other speakers: Margaret Connolly, Daryl Green, Helen Killick, Nicola McDonald, Andrew Prescott, Wendy Scase, Sebastian Sobecki, and Deborah Thorpe

With a special display of manuscript fragments donated to the University by Professor Toshiyuki Takamiya

For booking details and a provisional programme, please visit the website.

Registration: £22, £16.50 concessions

Generously supported by the Centre for Medieval Studies, the Department of English & Related Literature, and Boydell & Brewer

Poetica (89 & 90) published

A double-issue of Poetica ( 89 & 90), edited by Ed Potten and entitled Association and Provenance, was recently published in Tokyo and includes several authors who are members of the Early Book Society. The volume is dedicated to Eric Stanley, who was a founding adviser of Poetica since its inception. Download full details and table of contents here.

If EBS members are interested in acquiring a copy of this and future issues for themselves or for their libraries, please contact Keiko Umishima at <keiko.umishima@maruzen.co.jp> for payment details. The product code is 0600103343.