istory of the Book Lectures istory of the Book Lectures Sponsored by Illinois State University and Marquette University, the History of the Book Lectures are designed to provide a forum for recent scholarship on the production and use of books as objects within medieval and early modern culture. The seminar topics encompass a wide variety of academic disciplines and theoretical approaches. At each seminar, the speaker will present an informal paper on one aspect of the history of the book , after which there will be time for questions and discussion. The events are free and open to the public.
The History of the Book Lectures are directed by Raymond Clemens, Illinois State University, and organized by Lee Beier, Illinois State University; Albert Rivero, Marquette University; Paul F. Gehl, Newberry Library; and Paul Saenger, Newberry Library.
**Please note that on Friday, November 7, Jeffrey Hamburger has been replaced by Edward Tenner.
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2 p.m. Friday, November 7, 2008
Edward Tenner, Princeton University
Albert Robida (1848-1926), a French illustrator, journal publisher, and writer, is today best known as an astonishingly accurate forecaster of twentieth-century technology. But much more of his own work was the imaginative reconstruction of an idealized Middle Ages and Renaissance, conflated as the Old France. He published sumptuous books of travel and costumes, admired by collectors today, with an eye to armed knights and fortifications, but his masterpiece may have been the design of a medieval-Renaissance Paris for the World Exhibition of 1900, of which at least one film and an illustrated album survive. He also presented Old Paris in the Ombres Chinoises proto-cinema shadow plays popular in late 19th-century Paris. As recent scholarship has shown, there is no contradiction in Robida's simultaneous pursuit of futurism and nostalgia. He could observe the efflorescence of historical styles at French resorts, many of these fantasies no doubt supported by profits from the factories he deplored. Robida's Renaissance is not about classical learning or natural science but is more a final efflorescence of medieval style. In this, too, he is prophetic, a harbinger of the post-industrial Renaissance Faires of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. His work is also a reminder of how technological innovation helps shape our concept of the Renaissance.
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2:00-4:30 p.m. Friday, February 13, 2009
Kent Emery, University of Notre Dame
A reception will follow the seminar.
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1:00-3:30 p.m. Friday, April 19, 2009
Katharine Breen, Northwestern University
In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle asserts that the first step towards virtuous behavior is disciplined reception. Unless a student already possesses the habit of listening intelligently, he will be unable to attain the subsequent moral habits of justice, prudence, fortitude, etc. In the first vernacular translation of the Ethics, prepared in 1372 at the request of Charles V of France, Nicole Oresme takes this mandate seriously, seeking to teach his patron ethics by teaching him new ways to read and listen. To this end Oresme deploys more than 450 neologisms, defining many of them at length in a "Table des Moz Divers et Estranges (Table of Different and Strange Words)" and an elaborate program of marginal glosses. Together, these learning aids seek to expand and refine the king's moral sense by doing the same to the language in which he thinks. Even more fundamentally, however, Oresme uses the design of his presentation copies, Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MS 9505-06 and The Hague, Museum Meermanno MS 10 D-1, to inculcate new, text-based ways of making decisions. The manuscripts' many codicological bells and whistles - including glosses and glossary, multiple prefaces and tables of contents, and two programs of miniatures designed by the translator himself - thus become tools for thinking. The codices themselves, I argue, become highly elaborated versions of Aristotle's habit-inducing objects. Just as a lyre creates a lyre player through repeated playing and a building creates a builder through the work of construction, so Oresme's Ethiques manuscripts seek to create an ethical monarch by adapting clerical reading practices for lay use. In particular, Oresme's cycles of miniatures do not simply illustrate the text but become a primary means of training the king and his courtiers in its proper use.
A reception will follow the seminar.
View a list of past History of the Book programs
PLEASE NOTE: Future announcements of History of the Book Lectures will be made by email only. To ensure that we have your most current information, please send an email to renaissance@newberry.org with "History of the Book Lecture list" in the subject line.
While there is no fee to attend these programs, participants must register in advance. To register, please contact the Center for Renaissance Studies at 312.255.3514, or at renaissance@newberry.org.
Funds may be available for graduate students and faculty of Consortium institutions to travel to the Newberry Library to attend this program. If you have any questions, please contact the Center for Renaissance Studies.